Polacks Protest Haverford Alum's 'Satire'
"Mocking Poles for being stupid is perhaps the last form of politically correct prejudice," wrote Haverford '05 graduate and proud Greenpoint gentrifier David Langlieb. Um, guess not. The article, which ran as a 'Moved To Speak' column in the Haverford alumni newsletter (way to flout those stereotypes about xenophobic small private liberal arts college grads, guys!) and went on to bemoan "the high density of Polish people infesting [Greenpoint's] rowhouses," was supposedly a sendup of kids who move to ethnic neighborhoods and bemoan the lack of Starbucks on every corner, but we tend to agree with Haverford president Thomas Tritton that "the writing was insufficiently clever and the language so ineptly employed that . . . the end result came through as mean spirited and close minded."
Unfortunately, though, the response from the Polish community isn't going to open any of those closed minds.
"Reading the article is like coming from a Jurassic park of Ku Klux Klan times and racial ethnic hatred," the consul general of Poland in New York, Krzysztof Kasprzyk, said.
Oh, give him a break. Do you know Polish?
City's Polish Community Up In Arms Over Stereotypes In Article [NYSun]
Moved to Speak [Haverford Publications]