Reply #1: For a while I knew a lot of administrators. [View All]

[Igel]

We could talk freely, since we had to cooperate on things for a couple of years. Since I was a high-level person in student government, the administrators were high-level in a university. (Not so much the chancellor, that stayed fairly formal, but vice-chancellors were both people I could drop in on uninvited, people I had to listen to, and people who tended realize they made a mistake if they didn't listen to me--because the chancellor would.)

I got an earful about invited speakers. Not just in my own department; most invited faculty speakers were forced to be humble. It was the ones invited by the university that had administrators irate. Special food, special cars ("nothing by Toyota"), special foods. Dinner had to be at one of several restaurants, at precisely the right time. They had to have extra rooms for meeting with other people, they had to have special clothing, they had to have special lighting. One specified the make and model of microphone that he'd use--that or no lecture. They stipulated the lighting--not too much blue, not too much red. One liked a specific brand of "sparkling water," but insisted on a specific temperature--and since it was a bit *too* sparkling he insisted that he be opened X minutes before consumption (but not more than a certain amount, because then it wasn't sparkling enough, and it had to be replaced after the lecture but before the questions). You get stipulations as to aides--sex, age, clothing style, hair color, quantities and right to object and have an instant replacement if the first one isn't a good "fit."

Seriously. It's hard to imagine how you can satirize something like this. The Onion doesn't succeed at this bit of satire, it just insults (which is fine for some, but I've never found base insult to be humorous).

It's like satirizing Stalin's accent--if you exceed his accent, in some ways, it's unintelligible; if you exceed it in others, you're merely stereotyping and insulting all Georgians--which people who stereotype Georgians found and find funny, in any event; if you mirror his accent well, it's merely an impersonation, albeit one that can land you in a prison; if you don't make it extreme enough, you're a Party member.