God bless you, Mr. Rosewater

Yeah, this is more of my application to write for my school paper. Suck it.

This one was prompted:
500 words on why Kurt Vonnegut is better than Aristotle. Here it is:

Aristotle versus Kurt Vonnegut? Please. At least give Vonnegut someone a little more challenging. Jeez, Ayn Rand stands a better chance. Show me someone who prefers Aristotle to my man Kurt, and I will show you a pretentious, boring liar. Or a really depressing grad student.

Aristotle was a proto-fascist woman hater. Yeah, okay, he’s the father of modern science and medicine, or whatever, but he didn’t even believe in experimentation. Also, dude is boring. For real, that is some dry stuff. At least Plato threw an allegory in there every once in a while to keep things interesting. On Dreams is right. I mean, really, Ari baby, talk about an instant REM cycle. I can hear you now: “But Elana, most of western thought is based in the writings of Aristotle.” And? Do I look like I care? Waxing philosophic is so two millennia ago. Played out.

In all seriousness, though, I took a political philosophy class and a history of science class, and I still couldn’t tell you any specifics of Aristotelian philosophy. There are four causes, and ethics aren’t separate from politics. That’s pretty much all I got. What can I say? I am a philistine. Philosophy, it’s all Greek to me! (I apologize for that. I really could not help myself). Kurt Vonnegut, though. Now there is a guy I can get behind.

I am loath to admit how much I love Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. I am a literature major, and not a fifteen year old boy, but if you made me choose between Sirens of Titan, or even Timequake and, say, The Riverside Shakespeare, it’d be bye-bye Bill. And I don’t even like science fiction. So that’s really saying something. There’s just no beating that wry, stark language. Or thinly-veiled social critique. See, there’s some deep stuff in there. Take that, Aristotle. I mean, Vonnegut’s staunch humanism is pretty much the exact opposite of Aristotle’s super stratified, hierarchized political theory. So, you know. There’s that.

Plus, the Vonnster attended our very own Cornell! And, he worked for the Sun. (Did you know that both UChicago and Cornell brag about Vonnegut even though he dropped out of both places? Fun fact). Most importantly, he drops the ol’ alma mater name bomb more often than Andy on “The Office.” When’s the last time Aristotle mentioned Cornell? Oh, that's right. Never.

What I’m really trying to say is, Kurt Vonnegut would pwn Aristotle in a “Celebrity Death Match” so hard. Harder than, well, a very hard thing.