By Eric Holder

Wait, what did I do? You mean I signed off on subpoenas for the phone records of the Associated Press, the most important news agency in the English speaking world?

No way. Really?

I don’t believe it. You mean I totally approved an inappropriate violation of journalistic integrity? Why would I do such an unspeakable thing? You’re seriously telling me that I just ordered the government to go out there and uncover protected sources?

That’s just wrong. Now whenever people try to inform journalists of something terrible going on, like whistleblowers narking on corporate fraud or governmental abuse of power, they would have to worry that the Justice Department can figure out who they are just like that.

So I made that happen? Huh, no kidding.

No, seriously. When I first saw that, I just skimmed it. It said something about Yemen and terrorists, so I totally thought it was just another white paper legally justifying drone strikes. Well, you know how it is. They send me those so often these days that I eventually stopped reading them. I usually come up with a bunch of meaningless crap to deflect blame anyways so it’s not like I need to actually read all of them. I just never expected my aides to sneak this one in the pile without even telling me.

Man, I really messed up this time.

Eric Holder is the Attorney General of the United States. He is the author of “Due Process? You Die When I Say You Die” and “Drones and You: Your Constitution Can’t Save You Now.”

SALA DEL NOROESTE, EVANSTASIONE — All was set to go as planned in the ASG Senate meeting this past week. All the officer vacancies for next quarter were filled except for three, and candidates had all been nominated. But then, tragedy struck.

Just as Martín Lobos, nominee for Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion, was about to be confirmed, Natalie Suarez burst into the senate meeting, her flowing red ball gown swirling in the Santa Ana winds from the nearby Louis room.

“No!” Natalie screamed. “I cannot let you be confirmed, for you are mi hijo!”

Lobos, dumbstruck, dropped his ASG-funded non-single-use gavel and stared into his mother’s eyes as tears began to form in his. Time stood still as madre and hijo rushed towards each other, until Leticia Perdigón senator from el CRC stood up and spoke.

“Martín may be your son, but he is my lover,” the woman professed. “That’s right,” she continued, “Martín and I are in love, and there’s nothing any of you can do to change how we feel!”

“It is true, mother,” Lobos proclaimed, stopping short. “We have been in love for over a month now, and I can no longer hide it! She has my corazón all to herself.”

The story might have ended there, but the saga continued. The door to the senate burst open unexpectedly for the second time that noche, this time bringing a saddened man before the senate.

“Me llamo es Federico Álvarez De Toledo, and I am Leticia’s husband,” he pronounced.

A few sharp cries rang out in la Sala del Noroeste, before a silence fell as thick as the stupor induced by politically-incorrect tequila. You could cut the tension with a machete. All eyes were on Leticia as hers darted left and right, back and forth between Federico and Martín.

“It’s true,” she said, solemnly. “Federico is my husband of four years, but we have grown so distant… My eyes now are for only Martín!”

“As are mine!” Federico declared. “We have been lovers for the past year.”

And with that, Federico strode up to where Martín was standing and kissed him passionately on the lips. They embraced for two entire seconds before Martín shoved Federico away, a disgusted look on his face.

“What are you doing?!” Martín asked, confused. “I don’t even know who any of you are. Or what I’m doing here. What the hell is going on?”

“¡Ay dios mio!” Natalie yelled. “He must have amnesia!”

Join us next week, when ASG still won’t confirm anyone to be Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion.

By Professor Donald Nally, Northwestern Conducting and Ensembles

As some of you may know, a minor fracas occurred last week in one of my ensembles when a Masters student refused to sing an arrangement of a Walt Whitman poem, as his “independent research” had uncovered evidence that Walt Whitman was supposedly racist.

This student even went so far as to file a complaint with the NAACP when I refused to let him cherry-pick the repertoire pieces he wanted to sing for our next concert, and got a local news affiliate to sympathize with his “plight.”

Now, hey, I’m not denying that Walt Whitman may have been racist. It’s certainly plausible. But unless I ask you to sing a song about Blacks, Jews, and Asians deserving to get lynched because they’re sub-human cretins, I’m going to need you to shut the fuck up, grit your teeth, and let that magnificent bass voice of yours soar. Because you’d think a Masters student would have realized this by now, but most great artists are really shitty people.

Seriously, if you had a dollar for every truly great composer or lyricist whose work you performed, and who also happened to be a racist, anti-Semite, pedophile, wife-beater, drug addict, alcoholic, all-around asshole, or even a straight-up pimp (shout out to Jelly Roll Morton), you’d have more money in your pocket than you’ll ever make as a singer, especially if you spend your career as a reactionary, antagonistic twat.

So please, learn to separate the artist from the work, or else our next concert will be about 30 seconds long. If not, we’ll just have to do a full concert of Aaron Copland; he actually seemed like a halfway-decent dude. So let’s not read his biography.

Disclaimer: No, this was not actually written by Dr. Nally. Remember what website you’re on.

By Alexander Timothy Rawlings III, the British exchange student living on the seventh floor of Plex

I can’t believe this. I bloody can’t. A bloke who’s been the head coach of one of the most famous football (yes, real football, not that sodding joke of a sport that’s ripping off rugby) clubs in the world for TWENTY-SIX YEARS resigns and NOBODY in this country bloody notices? I mean, I’m pretty tolerant, so I understand that you yanks pay more attention to your baseball and other crap boring long games, but how can it happen that a LEGEND like Sir Alex Ferguson retires and I can’t see a bleeding line of text about it on the news?

He led them to NOT ONE, BUT TWO Champions League titles and THIRTEEN victories in the Premiership? Oh, right, you wankers don’t even know what the Premiership is, I bet you nitwits probably think it has something to do with our prime minister and sailing. Oh Lord. This lad was like a FATHER to legends like Cantona, Giggs, Schmeichel, and Beckham. Yeah, Beckham used to play pretty good football before he went Los Angeles to do knickers adverts for a living. I mean come on, there is a massive statue of Ferguson standing outside the home of Manchester United. Oh, and did I mention he was knighted by the queen?

But you lot just don’t seem to get it. You care about the Red Wings, but not the Red Devils. You care about your Wrigley Field, but not Old Trafford. I could go on, you care about – WHAT?! PAUL SCHOLES IS RETIRING AS WELL? Wow, this is huge, let’s see the coverage on the telly…

SERIOUSLY? NOT A MENTION? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE BLOODY KIDDING ME!!!

DISCLAIMER: The Flipside doesn’t even know Alexander Timothy Rawlings III is. He must have hacked our WordPress. Who is Sir Alex Ferguson?

HOLLYWOOD, CA — The producers of Jurassic Park 4 announced last week that the upcoming film is being indefinitely delayed until cloning technology makes “several large breakthroughs.”

Patrick Crowley, one of the two producers, said, “This film is going to be groundbreaking. We’re going to use real dinosaurs, no more of that crummy CG-stuff audiences can so easily tell is fake. After only measurable success with the first films in the franchise, we knew we wanted to take 4 to the next level. We just need to wait for technology to catch up with our vision.”

Crowley’s co-producer Frank Marshall explained what went wrong, causing the delays. “The real dinosaurs idea is phenomenal, but it’s been tough to get around the staggering lack of dinosaurs on this planet. We tried cloning a dinosaur, combining crocodile DNA with some DNA we extracted from blood trapped in a mosquito preserved in a piece of amber, but that didn’t work. The dinosaurs were too vicious and agile and escaped from their cages and ate two of the cameramen.”

Marshall continued, “We decided to wait until cloning technology was good enough that we could combine our dinosaur DNA with a friendly bunny rabbit. Right now our best velociraptor has a little bunny tail and two floppy bunny ears. It’s super cuddly and nice and loves snuggling. It’s absolutely ridiculous, completely unusable. We had to have it shot. We need the ferocious look and the friendly personality. Cloning technology just isn’t there yet.”

Crowley added, “Worst case scenario is that we’ll just release the footage of our first velociraptors eating our cameramen.”

Crowley said he is sure Jurassic Park 4 won’t fall into the same trap the 2009 film Avatar did. Avatar was delayed 15 years so that technology could create James Cameron’s dream for the film, which had “very pretty visuals, but no compelling storyline whatsoever.”

“There’s no way our gory, action-packed, many-year-delayed, multimillion dollar sequel-to-a-sequel-to-a-sequel will lack a story worth telling.”

Dear fellow Northwestern students,

As Memorial Day rapidly approaches, the members of the Anglo-Saxon Student Alliance would like to take a moment remind all members of the Wildcat community to please celebrate this time-honored and all-American holiday respectfully.

Please remember that eating hot-dogs, hamburgers, and inordinate amounts of pie is not representative of American culture. In fact it marginalizes and offends entire sectors of our community who would prefer cheeseburgers and hot-fudge sundaes.

Spending time sun-bathing, swimming and playing backyard games like wiffleball and cornhole is both frustrating and upsetting to Northwestern students who are missing out on their family BBQs to study for their Orgo midterms and write the Political Science papers they should have started two weeks ago. Try to understand their emotional isolation, having been reduced to wistfully reading their semester system high-school friends’ drunk texts about illegally shooting off fireworks while holed up in the third floor East tower of Main Library for twenty-two consecutive hours.

Please STOP honoring veterans. Who are you to thank that middle-aged man in a US Army t-shirt in the Whole Foods dairy section? He might not have even BEEN IN the army. Besides, he probably got that t-shirt on a tour of West Point.

PLEASE DO NOT lounge around on the lakefill, loudly listen to patriotic music or generally enjoy a holiday weekend centered around appreciating America’s war heroes by celebrating the freedoms they’ve secured. 95% of you indicated a preference for “anything but country music” on roommate surveys, so listening to Toby Keith’s “Proud to be an American” twelve times on repeat during a Bud Light case race ISN’T FOOLING ANYONE.

Most of all, please refrain from consuming any and all forms of coleslaw. Or watermelon. And DEFINITELY DO NOT USE French’s mustard. No self-respecting patriot eats vegetables, fruit, or anything debatably European.

Sincerely,

Bradley Fitzgibbon
President of the Anglo-Saxon Student Alliance

Timmy O’Flanagan
Pie enthusiast

UPDATE: The Flipside has informed members of the Anglo-Saxon Student Alliance the term “Anglo-Saxon” refers to British heritage. Neither Bradley nor Vice President Jimmy Peterson was prepared to make an on-the-record comment. The Alliance’s secretary indicated both were away from campus for a hot-dog-eating contest.

NASHVILLE, TN — NRA Executive Vice President/Walking Effigy Wayne LaPierre took to the stage today to thoroughly denounce the recent spate of “3D-printed” guns as irresponsible, deadly, and a major unchecked threat to the security of his end of year bonus.

Speaking to a rapt, ravenous audience of gun owners who seemingly didn’t have anywhere else to be on a Monday afternoon, LaPierre framed the plastic, largely-untraceable devices (which could become increasingly problematic as the price of 3D printers drop) as a violation of the NRA’s First Amendment rights:

“Citizens United established the right to corporate ‘money for free speech,’ and these new… Socialist, free guns could cut off the entire money supply to the protectors of your Second Amendment rights, from Smith & Wesson to Beretta! No money means no lobbying, and that is an unacceptable trampling of our First Amendment right to Free Speech! The Obama administration is at it again!” The audience erupted into a staggering chorus of hisses and boos.

“I don’t know about you,” LaPierre stated rhetorically, stepping away from his podium to be closer to his audience, “but if Obama thinks I’m going to give up the rights our forefathers sacrificed so much for, all the way back in 2010, he’s got another thing coming! Now, who’s with me?!?” Like steam bursting through a vent, the sheer magnitude of applause the final comment elicited forced several reporters in attendance to stagger backwards.

Although he successfully convinced the most enthusiastic members of his fan base that giving thousands of dollars to the NRA and and its sponsors was the only way to prevent Hitler’s return, LaPierre did face challenges from outside commentators who saw the free-to-download blueprints as the ultimate culmination of their belief in the Second Amendment.

“I SWEAR TO GOD,” LaPierre later bellowed in response to his critics, “if my salary with bonuses this year is less than 2.4 mil, I will SINGLE-HANDEDLY ensure gun control passes.”

EVANSTON — Following the Met’s annual Costume Institute Gala on May 6th, Northwestern students have been experimenting with some trends of their own. While most Wildcats may not be wild enough to try out Kim’s Mrs. Doubtfire look, here are the Flipside Fashion Department’s favorite on-trend things for spring:

Spirit Jerseys

Do you like to wear over-sized clothing so no one actually knows what your size or general body type is? Are you ever tempted to throw what you know? Is one of your favorite past times taking photos on the beach at sunset? The best way to do all of these things at the exact same time is in a spirit jersey with your sorority’s letters. While there may be an extended debate over the merits of coral or azure (Quad-Delt already ordered coral ones, so back off bitches), there will be no question as to which sorority you’re in when the letters on your back are bigger than your head.

Other Colleges’ Apparel

A tried-and-true Northwestern staple is back and more fashionable than ever in the form of wearing other universities’ merch. When your president is non-enthusiastic about anything and everything, you should probably just forget about the one purple thing you own (thanks Wildcat Welcome) and school spirit all together.

Ivy League sweatshirts are the perfect way to express the fact you’re “…totally over Brown. I mean, like, they waitlisted me but whatever, right?” Ironically rocking state school gear is another way to go when you want to maintain some dignity after bombing your Orgo midterm, because you could have “totally coasted at UConn, guys.”

Kilts

Inspired by the Flipside’s favorite campus style icon, kilts are just so hot right now. Not only do they channel the Met’s theme this year “Punk: Chaos to Couture,” but kilts are also a great way to revive your inner rebel (OMG, new FOB album? Our middle school selves are just dying). Wearing a kilt also shows off your legs that haven’t seen sun since NUFB won a bowl game (Shit, that joke doesn’t work anymore. Go ‘Cats.)

Most importantly, all of these hot trends are perfect to mix-and-match with your closet staples: black Northfaces left at the Deuce, groutfits, your respective student group quarter zips, and, of course, Kinetik pullovers.

HOUSTON, TX — Jeff Skilling, the former CEO of Enron, will have 10 years removed from his prison sentence for his role in the collapse of the Houston-based energy company. Skilling could be out of prison as soon as 2017, at which point he will have spent nearly 10 years in jail. After hearing the news of his early release, Mr. Skilling sat down with The Flipside for an interview.

NF: What went through your mind when you heard about your early release?

JS: I was overjoyed. To be honest, it is still hard to believe that I could be out before I’m 70. Although, I will say I think I’ll actually miss the ice cream sandwiches.

NF: Even after the verdict and your sentencing, you never admitted you were guilty. Do you still maintain your innocence?

JS: Oh, absolutely. I have said time and again that I was set up by a group of British contractors; the real criminals are still out there. All I ever received were instructions from someone named “Mr. F” but nothing was face-to-face. I was told to burn the instructions, so when the feds investigated, it all fell on me. When the charges were filed, I had no evidence of the Brits’ involvement. At that moment I thought to myself, “I’ve made a huge mistake.” I guess that’s why you always keep the note.

NF: Your attorney, Bob Loblaw, hinted that you were in the dark about the sentencing deal until it was actually finalized. Is there any truth to that?

JS: My brother, Oscar, alluded that some good news was coming, but he couldn’t say what it was. Other than that, yes, I had no knowledge of it. When Bob finally told me, I wanted to give him a big hug, but, of course, we’ve got a very strict “no touching” policy here.

NF: How have you dealt with being incarcerated for this long?

JS: It was tough at first. The other inmates all harassed me because I would never go fully nude in the shower; they would call me a chicken and yell, “Koo-Koo-Ka-Cha! Koo-Koo-Ka-Cha!!” But my family has really been there for me; they visit practically every day.

NF: How has your family handled you being in prison?

JS: It has definitely been hard for them. It was especially difficult for my youngest son at first, but I’ve got to hand it to him, the family was leaderless and he really took up the loose seal. In the end, he turned out all right.

NF: Any idea what you will do when you get out?

JS: I figure I might take a long vacation to Portugal, head down ol’ South America way. After that, who knows? Apparently there is a documentary about our family in the works, so maybe I’ll spin that into a TV gig. I heard that Carl Weathers gives some great acting classes.

The documentary on the Skilling family will be released directly to Netflix on May 26.

If you’re one of many people out there who are still clinging to their last hopes of being surprised by the new film adaptation of The Great Gatsby because you were too lazy to Sparknote it in high school, turn back now.

Let’s just get one thing straight, “spoiler alerts” should be rendered void after a book has been published for, oh, I don’t know, ALMOST A CENTURY. Be honest with yourself for a minute and realize that if you haven’t cared to peruse the roughly 150 page novel by now, you probably aren’t going to. This principle carries over into all subsequent film versions of said text, so before you write an angry letter saying I ruined the magic of the Jazz Age for you, know that this is completely your fault.

For those of you that have read the book, congratulations on being the smuggest of assholes since the movie was announced. Your literary prowess has earned you the right to be better than all of your ignorant peasant friends who couldn’t be bothered to read one of the greatest works in all of American literature. That is, until they make a new version of Moby Dick, which I mean, really, who actually read the whole thing? You, you erudite scholar, are immune to all spoilers, and are therefore probably the only ones still reading this. So let’s get down to the details, what should you expect from Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby?

First of all, Jay Gatsby is going to die at the end. I know you know it, so please, don’t look so surprised. And although Leonardo Dicaprio is probably going to be flawless, unless the Academy creates a new category for being heartbreakingly handsome, he probably isn’t going to win an Oscar. Don’t worry, his latest supermodel girlfriend will help him dry his sweet, precious tears.

Is your favorite part of the book going to be in the movie? Probably not! I know that haunting sentence from Chapter 4 completely changed the way that you view American decadence, but Dicaprio looked kind of sweaty and puffy in that scene, so they had to cut it.

Lastly, try to remember that this is an adaptation of a book, not a seven hour film version of the novel. They’re going to get stuff wrong. They’re going to change, cut, augment, and bastardize what you think is the pivot point that the whole story hangs on, and you needed to get over that, like, yesterday. So please stop bitching and moaning about all the great stuff they left out, and start bitching and moaning about how expensive your ticket was like the rest of us.