A combination of things in last week’s Mass Media set me to smiling-mainly, the photo of me in a pirate’s outfit on page A16, and, of course, the errors.

I remember that I once said I use a “drunken pirate” style of leadership. I’m not really sure what that meant, but I think I explained that I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, and, besides preventing mutinies and looking for gold, I just deal with what lays ahead of me. And I drink a lot.

Those are my tasks-dealing with whatever is on the horizon each day, preventing mutinies, looking for gold, and drinking.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit I have no management training, that I wouldn’t know a management style if it were growing in my refrigerator. But those things are meaningless. I’m supposed to keep the ship sailing, that’s it.

And sailing requires a crew. So as long as we have a crew, we keep sailing. That’s what the crew does, sail the ship. But a crew demands gold, so we hunt gold as we sail.

And, other than sailing, and lusting for gold, we don’t do anything specific, just deal with what lays in front of us. And drink.

Now, least it seem that I am advocating drinking, let me set the record straight-I am opposed to drinking. Drinking is bad.

So, now that we’ve straightened out that little misunderstanding, I’m sure you’ve figured out that I’m just a bad man. (And that’s kinda’ my point.)

Perhaps I am a bad man, and I’ve turned this newspaper into a pirate ship. But I am what I am, and we are what we are: we drink, and fight, and write.

Maybe it’s bloody and reprehensible, but we’ve increased revenue and we put out a newspaper every week. We actually accomplish what we are responsible for accomplishing.

But all of this brings up another point-I don’t really have much respect for other “leadership styles” I’ve observed on campus.

I was just at a presentation and at the end a woman asked the speaker a question, and the speaker pontificated on dichotomies and tensions, but didn’t offer any advice, or answer the question. Another audience member actually stood up and answered the question.

And then, as we were leaving, another woman was speaking to her friend and said, “The wage gap [between rich and poor] in Connecticut and Massachusetts grew the most of all states during the boom nineties, that says a lot about us; we talk and talk and nothing gets done.”

I couldn’t agree more. I see a whole lot of talk on campus but I’m wondering if anybody around here has actually accomplished anything.

We have a College of Public Policy, and yet UMB’s staff is threatening to strike. Um, isn’t this situation a result of public policy?

And this goes on and on. But if I listed all of that crap here I’d hear things like I heard last year at a Black Student Center “event”-“The Mass Media asked what we are doing for Black History Month-I say, what is The Mass Media doing for Black History month?”

What we did is cover their “event.” And we were kind enough to leave his obnoxious and ignorant quote out of the article WE PUBLISHED.

That’s what we do, we publish a newspaper and try our best to report on the “events” on campus, which are usually just some well schooled academics who have never run a business, or written public policy, telling everybody else how they should run a business, or what policies should be implemented.

And on and on. You want me to get started on the low level bureaucrats I have had to deal with for years?

Screw that-I, along with a few other scurvy pirates, am going to publish a newspaper, the product you are holding in your hands, steal some gold, get drunk, and listen to the complaints we always get, and then do it all over again next week.