Better to be forgotten than remember quite so fondly.

In a memorial to the recently murdered former UCI professor, the student newspaper wrote:

Mischievous and daring, [he] was the kind of person who danced with friends and in cars.

First, the sentiment is utterly inane.  Second, only had he danced while driving a car do I even see how the first bit relates to the rest of the sentence.  Third, the next sentence begins:

On July 13, 2008, police entered [his] Long Beach apartment after receiving calls from neighbors who had noticed a strong smell emanating from [his] home.

Utterly inane is to be expected.  Boilerplate newswire prose in a memorial is not.  The AP Style Guide neither loves no one and remembers no one.  Don't invite it to the wake.  Know what else doesn't?  Cheap shots:

[He] was consistently five to 10 minutes late to class, and he would pause his lectures to go outside and smoke a cigarette.

I could list a few more of his professional failings, but I'm not about to do it while commenting on his memorial.  (Much less were I writing it.) 

His liberal political views infiltrated his teaching style, a bias that many students found refreshing, but others found abrasive.

True enough.  But true enough that we ought to let his detractors have the last word?  No.  And yet:

One student interpreted [his] political theories and observations as Marxism and believed that the professor's liberal bias was excessive and unnecessary.

The memorial veers from boilerplate newswire prose to boilerplate conservative kvetching in under five paragraphs.  I'm not sure whether I should be more offended by the callousness of the editorial staff or the audacity of the anonymous student Horowitzing about his grades in a memorial. 

Comments

[Ahistoricality]

You left out some of the most surreal bits:

His sarcasm carried an educated tone.

Huh?

Barrett’s intellectual and academic passions were the concepts of race and slavery, and he dedicated his lectures to helping students understand slavery. Barrett kept a balance of fun and seriousness in his classes.

Non Sequitur alert: The fun side of race and slavery!

[AcademicLurker]

We must all do our part to promote the widespread acceptance of term "Horowitzing".

[Rich Puchalsky]

Student newspaper: what do you expect. Given that supposedly professional journalists are mostly incapable of turning out anything but tripe, their undergraduates versions should probably be congratulated for subject-verb agreement and the use of periods at the end of sentences.

[Tom Hitchner]

To illustrate Rich's point about student newspapers (and that one in particular),

[Tom Hitchner]

Wellll, I guess you guys don't get to see the link. Who knows why. Basically, the New U quoted me as saying this about Take Back the Night:

While some had heard of the event either through flyers, e-mail or from a friend, other bystanders were just surprised an event was occurring late Wednesday night at UCI, such as Tom Hitchner, a fifth-year graduate student in English.

“Particularly, the campus is empty at night, it’s really interesting to see all these lights on and all the events going on,” Hitchner said.

I think both reporter and subject excelled there.

[Marc Bousquet]

You may find your explanation here:

http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=education_contest_winners_ant2003

check out "third place" essayists.

But I'd hold the editors of the paper responsible. Any young student journalist can make mistakes like this, journalistic or ideological.

The editors, though? At Irvine? Is there a faculty advisor?