Excellent response Emanuel. Thank you.

Emanuel, as i read your response, i actually began crying. Up until this article was published, i felt safe being of the Jewish faith here at Grand Valley State University. I never felt any form of bigotry. I no longer feel safe. I feel that for you to publish this article, you are saying its okay to allow discrimination. Obviously you have shown me and the students and the staff at Grand Valley that you in NO WAY WHATSOVER care about our school or our well being. You can apologize if you like, but the damage has been done. The only solution to this is for you to resign. You might be laughing right now. You might be thinking “this guy is crazy”. And that’s fine. What you don’t realize is that a school newspaper is much more important to the school and you have shown us all that obviously do not understand that at all. For you to publish an article about discriminating other people’s beliefs is easily one of the most disgusting things i have ever heard. So please, if you do care about this school and care about the student body, you will let someone who shows MUCH more compassion take your position. Thank you.

I understand satire, and I understand journalistic freedom. I wrote in high school and had some very controversial sports pieces and etc. that although I thought were harmless, sparked a reaction among players, fans, and other students. Like you said, without the vocalics of personal communication, it is nearly impossible to pickup on sarcasm, without the use of italics. This piece had no indication of satire at all. He should have written at the beginning some type of sentence that clarified this was meant as a joke. I don’t want any repercussions for Chris, because normally I enjoy his articles. But this was just not worded carefully enough. Just please be more careful and avoid controversial topics if possible. I did not find this article necessary at all, even with the satire.

I read it. I read it to Jewish friends. I read it to Christian friends and atheist fiends. Everyone laughed.

There is no need for anyone to comment on this article to reflect their misunderstanding of the original. Don’t like it? Move on. Enjoyed it? Move on.

Too bad I’m not about to follow my own advice.

I, for one, feel like the statement of carrying mistole toe “just in case” set the satirical tone. The “dying tree” decorated with “glass bulbs” only complimented it. The “ignore-uh the menorah” part? Would anyone honestly make that a serious rhyme?

The great thing about America is our right to speak freely and our ability to be sarcastic. Just look at the examples in this article.

Really? You don’t feel safe on campus? Becuse someone took a bigoted Facebook post and pointed out how terrible it was? Seriously? That just mean there is some issue inside you that you should set up an appointment to talk about to someone who has a degree to do so. And I recommend you stay off the Internet. Or away from classic literature. Or the television.

Hey, Mr(s) No Respect, you should probably read over this article more carefully. He is not apologizing, because the article was satire. Chris was posing as a bigot in order to point out how absurd bigoted thinking is. HE IS ON YOUR SIDE. I know Chris personally. He is not some kind of Mel Gibson wannabe. He is a tolerant and funny person. Please learn to understand sarcasm and satire. Look it up in the dictionary if you have to.

I have been to many different colleges and Grand Valley by far has thee smartest students I have encountered. Today, I was proven wrong. All of you who responded negatively to Chris’s brilliant writing missed the mark by a couple hundred miles. If you can not understand that this entire article was written solely from the Facebook post Chris himself was offended by, then I don’t know what to tell you. IT IS SATIRE PEOPLE!!! Chris is making fun of America and the bigoted mindsets we have, not other religions/beliefs. It is true that America is entirely way too close minded. I’ll be the first one to tell you. Even the responses I have read on here are worse than Chris’s satirical article. Talk about hypocrisy. Lighten up (no pun intended), it’s the Holiday’s people. Happychristmahanukwanzika!!!

The GVSU Lanthorn will continue to lose credit in the GVSU community if an apology statement is not released. Whether readers caught onto the sarcasm and satire of the article, it still has no place within this community.
Swallow your pride as writers and address the countless students you have offended.

This response disgusts me even more than the original article. It is petty and immature. “You can take solace in the fact that I won’t be around to make such decisions after next week.” Really? Swallow your pride and have the balls to address the minority students that were hurt and offended. It has nothing to do with whether readers “got the joke” — WE DID. And offense was still taken. How ridiculous to employ an argument of South Park—which perpetuates real-life violence and DOES cross the line. Do you think the readers who were offended by Chris’s article would not be equally offended by such comedy shows? As a wise commenter stated before me here: The Lanthorn already had an iffy track record, and this has done nothing but solidify that. Some changes need to be made very quickly if you are meant to be taken as serious journalists.

I generally follow the Lanthorn, particularly since the cartoonist and I have had a long relationship, so I am familiar with some of the currently infamous writer’s work. What initially appeared to be a very hostile piece, quickly became apparent as an attempt to use over the top satire to make a point quite opposite to the bigotry being mocked by the words. Unfortunately, and obviously the writer failed to convey his message clearly, or grossly overestimated his readerships’ ability to “get” his sarcasm. . I do not believe him to be an antisemitic hostile writer, based uipon the style I’ve seen him attempt in previous pieces. The harsh criticism that he is currently having to endure will hopefully encourage him to improve his writing skills further, and not discourage him. The editor, who clearly understood the intentions of the article chose to publish an imperfectly written student written satirical piece in a student newspaper. Since he’s standing by his decision (with explanation), I only wish he had included a certain cartoon that i think would have added clarity to the current controversy!

— 5:58 AM December 8, 2011, by Michael Sills

This is disgusting. I cannot believe you refuse to take up the responsibilities of your position just because you are leaving soon. Chris’ article was offensive. That is not open for debate. It cannot be disproven, as the very act of someone being offended makes it offensive, and there were quite a few people who were offended. You cannot shout down hurt. It’s there, its real. You only have 3 real responses: 1) to apologize, 2) to ignore), 3) to antagonize, making it worse. You don’t want to do 1), so why not do 2)? Its way better than the what you did do. What do you expect? To convince people they weren’t offended? “Oh I guess I didn’t stub my toe on that rock. That pain and bleeding was caused by gremlins.”

How much offense does it do you or chris to state simply that “I apologize for offense. None was intended”. You talk like you don’t have to take responsibility for your words, but then I would say that that is the resposibility that you have taken up. You publish something, you take responsibility for it. You are media. This isn’t a personal dispute, as a gatekeeper in this media, you have the duty to answer for everything your particular media puts out. If you don’t have within yourself to uphold the responsibility and dignity of Lanthorn, then you never had the right to that wear that title.

Actually the difference between the Lanthorn and South Park, other than the latter being appealing to the masses, is that even though the Lanthorn may not officially be associated with Grand Valley as an official paper, you’re still representing the university. This column was misinterpreted, and clearly had a satirical undertone. Unfortunately it wasn’t interpreted correctly by many readers. Yet this being your response to those upset with the column should be an embarrassment to the Lanthorn as well as Grand Valley. Take responsibility for your actions.

Simply because someone took offense to the article doesn’t make it wrong. Doug E. “Jaglowski” Fresh’s “Stubbed my toe – gremlins” analogy is ridiculous. If I walk through the park and someone playing catch misses the ball and it hits me, it might sting. I have no right to tell them to get the he77 out of the park. They had no intention to ‘injure’ me in any way.

The response by the editor is clear. He believes Slattery’s columns parody the extremism in parts of today’s society. Before you comment against his articles, think about whether you are part of extremism in your own way. If a professor says I’m wrong and my feelings get hurt and I try to get them fired, I would be deemed “out of [my] _______ mind”.

Satire is not meant to be LOL funny, it is meant to mock. Maybe those of you who get riled up about this article are no better than those who actually agree with the facebook post Mr. Slattery referred to.

Phantom mike you show your own maturity when you demonstrate your need to make fun of my name.

Hey “No respect” you obviously need to look up the meaning of SARCASM! an article saying that we need to be tolerant of other religions, think about what we post on facebook and accept the diversity of Gv has made you feel unsafe. I guess adding more cops on campus would also make you feel unsafe too? huh

Mr. Johnson, you have been an excellent editor-in-chief this past semester. Thank you for writing your letter, defending Chris’s article, and thank you for making the decisions and choices that you did about the Lanthorn. I honestly felt that Mr. Slattery’s article was a breath of fresh air and a brilliant piece of satire. Sometimes satire forces us to put a mirror up and make us take a look at what is really going on. His writing and execution are hilarious, intelligent, and I support your decisions to include the articles he has written this semester. I will miss your editing and choices next semester, and I’m really grateful that you posted the letter. Some might say that it shows you don’t care about your community or have no compassion. The letter shows that you care about defending your community’s right to their opinion in writing, and you’ve opened a door for conversation and debate. I know you and Mr. Slattery are getting a lot of negative comments about the past two issues, and they probably won’t stop for a while. But stay strong and keep writing. You were a great editor-in-chief, Mr. Johnson, best of luck to you. And Mr. Slattery, don’t stop writing.

If anyone is still unsure whether Mr. Slattery’s article was satire or not, I suggest watching a single episode of The Colbert Report. Mr. Slattery’s article is what good satire is, and it’s not easy to find these days. I applaud the paper and its officials for standing their ground.

There is an oft-repeated maxim in writing that if you have to explain something, then it is not satire. So, 11 paragraphs of explanation should have been unnecessary.

I had a longer comment, but the Lanthorn’s crummy website ate it.