Darts and Laurels: May 21, 2019

No shade in sight, you stand at the bus stop. The wretched RTS app lies: listing bus five as minutes away. But you’re on campus and the GPS location of the vehicle proclaims your chariot is chugging along on Archer Road. Being the genius you are, you conclude there is no way the bus is as close as it says it is, so you go to Starbucks to get the sickly sweet, bright pink tea.

“Beautiful” you think to yourself. There’s no line. You place your order and wait for the barista to shake your drink up. Then you check your phone. The bus has somehow managed to bend the space time continuum and now it’s only a minute away. How long can it possibly take to pour a splash of tea and an unproportionally large amount of water into a cup? The barista hands you your beverage. You race to the exit and as you cross the threshold, you watch your bus drive right past the stop you were standing at just five minutes ago. You look down at your drink and see they didn’t even get your name right. Instead it reads…

DARTS & LAURELS

On Friday, Taiwan’s parliament legalized same-sex marriage. We are giving a laurel to Taiwan for being the first place in Asia to do so. In 2017, the state’s constitutional court ruled the Taiwanese constitution guarantees same-sex couples the right to marriage and gave lawmakers two years to bring laws up to its new standard. According to BBC News, the most progressive of three bills to legalize same-sex unions was the one signed into law with a 66-to-27 vote. The law goes into effect this Friday.

Ohio State University released a report Friday stating the university’s deceased athletic doctor Richard Strauss sexually abused at least 177 male students over the course of 20 years. We are giving a dart to OSU because an independent investigation found the university knew about the abuse as early as 1979, according to NPR. It wasn’t until January 1996 that OSU started to investigate complaints against Strauss. That summer he was removed as a physician but was still kept as a tenured faculty member. The more than 200 page report includes 520 people’s interviews and brought to light the abuse Strauss inflicted on students and athletic members.

The recent James Charles and Tati Westbrook beauty community drama has us giving a dart to cancel culture. “Canceling” someone is the act of no longer supporting someone (usually a celebrity or online personality) by either financial or digital means because their actions are regarded as problematic by the masses. In the case of James Charles and Tati Westbrook, popular beauty Youtuber Westbrook posted a video titled “Bye Sister” and essentially started the cancelation of Charles, a Youtuber with 13 million subscribers and the first ‘coverboy’ for makeup brand CoverGirl. We are giving a dart to cancel culture because it allows for toxic public shaming without due process. All the drama may be fun to watch unfold, but there are serious implications for assuming guilt.

We are giving a laurel to Game of Thrones. After eight years, the HBO series ended Sunday night. Regardless of criticism of this recent season’s writing and character development (or the squashing thereof), the show seemed to unite millions in fan theory, debate and hilarious memes. The 73-episode show won 47 Primetime Emmy Awards and maintained over 12 million viewers based on audience measure by Nielsen Media Research. But now that the beloved fantasy show is over, there’s no need to spiral into a GOT-deprived abyss. According to CNBC, there are at least three spin-off series planned. We are giving a dart to the water bottle behind Samwell Tarly’s foot. Why are such mistakes making their way into the final cut to a multimillion dollar budget production? Could it be because the showrunners wanted to hurry up and finish to get on to making Star Wars? Also, why are these people still using plastic water bottles in the first place? Maybe buy a reusable one with the largest budget in television history. 

Lastly, we are giving a laurel to internet sensation Grumpy Cat. She died May 14 at the age of 7 (roughly 44 years in “human years”) from complications from a urinary tract infection. Although she always sported a frown, the comedy associated with her grimace always put a smile on our faces. Grumpy Cat, whose real name is Tardar Sauce, became famous via Reddit six years ago when her owner, Tabatha Bundesen, posted the cat’s picture introducing her to the Internet world. We hope kitty heaven is everything worth smiling about for Grumpy Cat.