Matthew Shaffer
Matthew Shaffer
Recent Stories
SHAFFER: Dangerous conversations
On Truth and Lies
My education was largely self-referential — that is, a recursive reflection on and defense of the value of a liberal-arts education itself.
9/11 Reflection: Matthew Shaffer
President George W. Bush, Davenport ’68, loved to say that “9/11 changed everything.”
Shaffer: Childhood, interrupted
NEW YORK — On Aug. 21, I finished moving in, and stared at my ceiling, and felt what I tried to feel after graduation when I wouldn’t smash my church pipe, and was too hurried to feel in the road trips and fellowships that followed — Yale and childhood were over. That night, down Manhattan and across the Hudson, my oldest brother Christopher fell over in his apartment in Hoboken and died.
Shaffer: Paradise lost
On Truth and Lies
Everywhere I go people ask me what Yale is like. I always reply, “It’s paradise.” As I contemplate my imminent expulsion, the metaphor seems particularly apt. The work isn’t backbreaking. God, country and Yale love and indulge us. Nubile young things are just across the hall, and free libidinal play is, I am told, easy to come by. Intoxicating fruits surround us, and none are yet known to be forbidden. We can even dash through the library naked with impunity. Every residential college is a garden; 10 of them are breathtaking; and others tend them before we wake up.
Shaffer: The Twins are coming
On Truth and Lies
Satire is dead. Satire is dead and we have killed him. On Tuesday, the Ying Yang Twins are coming to Yale. I don’t know why the Ying Yang Twins were invited, and I don’t know why there isn’t more outrage. But they really were invited; they really will perform. I can’t stop them. All I can do is reflect on what they say about us. In a way, it’s appropriate that the Ying Yang Twins were selected, because they constitute the apotheosis of our generation’s sexuality, music and feminism.
Shaffer: Poetry: Philosophy’s daddy
On Truth and Lies
In short, the death of philosophy constitutes a beginning for poetry. We are all fond of unveiling the etymology of philosophy — that it is the love of wisdom. But I find more joyful wisdom in the multiple simultaneous perspectives, the inhabitation of several personae, the embrace of ambiguity and irony, the wearing of many masks that is the characteristic of the poet, so far divorced from the philosopher and his systems.
Shaffer: The world is porridge
God has a delicious sense of irony. The essay contest subject was globalization. And here, at the center of Manhattan, between the mahogany panels and liveried waiters of the Harvard Club, amid the donors of the Templeton foundation, was a shy Nigerian boy. This Matthew was another winner. In his first venture outside of his poor, small Nigerian village and university, he was flown to the throbbing heart of capitalist power. His wore a suit — a bit big, a bit overbuttoned — and happily told me in grammatical but halting English how his family would use his $5,000 cash prize. His experience was globalization writ large — lifted from poverty, immersed in Western cultural hegemony.
Shaffer: Psychoanalytic politics
On Truth and Lies
Last week, The New York Times printed one editorial under three different names. Charles M. Blow has a degree in mass communications. It paid off in hits. He explains Obamacare opposition thus: “The bill’s most visible and vocal proponents included a gay man (Barney Frank) and a Jew (Anthony Weiner)” (“Whose Country Is It?” March 26). Is that how we explain the backlash against Lieberman? When Howard Dean cried “we want our country back,” and Paul Krugman agreed, was it a subtle anti-gay slur aimed at pro-war blogger Andrew Sullivan?
Shaffer: Too big still fails
On Truth and Lies
Zak Newman ’13, says our new health care legislation will “increase competition,” “lower the government deficit,” and fulfill our “promise to the protection of life” of the most unfortunate in our society (“Realizing reform,” March 22). Let’s hope he’s right.
Shaffer: Beauty, irony, Gaga
On Truth and Lies
“The genius of Gaga” was a good start, but Kathryn Olivarius ’11 doesn’t go far enough. She doesn’t appreciate Gaga like I do.