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I’m feeling bad for Rick Santorum these days. I thought my college life was full of angst, but it seems as if Rick is still trying to get over his Penn State days. My psyche was scarred when my prom night ended at the stroke of midnight with a tepid kiss in front of the couple with whom we had double-dated (my first mistake). That traumatic experience in my college days left me the bitter, cynical columnist you are reading today. But Santorum suffered far, far worse.
Rick was unhappy in the midst of Happy Valley. How does that happen? Rick reveals that he was surrounded by leftists at the university. He has only given us sketchy details of his specific encounters, but I offer my speculation in place of facts. I do this in honor of the dearly departed Andrew Breitbart, conservative blogger and master of fictional investigations.
Rick took advantage of the government-supported lower tuitions at Penn State and was accepted in 1976, the year he stopped listening to rock because of suggestive lyrics. He majored in political science when he found out that the school did not offer courses in political theology, which he brought to the attention of the school president.
The first sign of trouble was when Rick noted that his professors often wore open-necked shirts and had facial hair. One in particular annoyed him because during classroom breaks, the teacher could be heard humming snatches of “Play That Funky Music, White Boy.”
Rick knew he was going to have trouble in his first political science class. He was seated on the left side of the room. As if that weren’t bad enough, the female student sitting next to him was noticeably not wearing a bra. Rick found it difficult to concentrate on the assigned chapter in Adam Smith’s “Wealth Of Nations.” Amateur psychologists today theorize that Santorum’s love of pure capitalism may simply be a substitute for an understandable attraction to braless women.
The youthful Rick clashed with his teachers and students, who refused to accept the notion that carrying contraceptives to outdoor rock concerts was wrong and immoral. It got worse in a minor film course when he charged that “All the President’s Men” was liberal propaganda about a “third-rate burglary.”
In lit class, he was mocked for choosing Ayn Rand as the most important author of the 20th century. Santorum later soured on Rand when he found out that she also believed in free love and abortion. It was the same story in every class. Rick clashed with an instructor in a health class when he tried to promote the theory that masturbation affected your eyesight. One student actually challenged Santorum to a contest to see which one could more accurately read an eye chart.
Santorum pledged a fraternity, Tau Epsilon Phi, admittedly to get dates. He was stoic, make that heroic, during the entire hazing process. He never complained when he was forced to walk naked through the cafeteria wearing only a sweater vest, carrying a poster of Debbie Boone and singing “You Light Up My Life.” He didn’t even let out so much as a gripe when he was forced to eat pig feces while drinking a case of Budweiser. It was only when he was subjected to attending a course on prenatal care with pregnant Penn State students that he felt himself losing it. But Rick survived the test to become a member of the fraternity (although his anti-contraceptive stance kept him from being very popular on the dating scene).
Rick continued to have problems with the liberal curriculum — (favoring the study of JFK over Calvin Coolidge, feminism over a woman’s place in the home, and labeling homosexuals gay). Santorum correctly pointed out that most of the homosexuals he knew were no happier than himself. But when it came to test scores, Rick got straight 100s on every test. Even the plump hippie who sat behind him in many of his classes copied from Santorum. Yet when he received his transcripts, Rick found he received only Cs. How could this be?
Santorum conducted his own investigation. He hid in the closet after class one day (the only time that, contrary to liberal propaganda, he has ever been in the closet) and caught his political science teacher marking down Rick’s grades in all of his classes. This teacher, who wore a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt in his leisure time, disliked Santorum for some reason. In fact, he really hated Rick as if he were Satan himself.
Penn State was not what he had expected. It was not a pastoral setting where abstinence was practiced and the poems of the beat writers were banned. Penn State was liberal! Football was only a ruse, a way to seduce the innocent conservative into a college life of debauchery and left-wing politics.
Santorum’s traumatic college experiences were life altering. The college Rick became the man who realized that college aspirations could be the gateway to hell. Santorum is the man in a sweater vest, on a holy crusade to drive the devil out of the United States, the way St. Patrick did in Ireland.
And he can read an eye chart from a 100 paces.
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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