Fox news shouldn’t have gotten involved in the Care Bear situation

As I’m sure everyone at UMass is well aware of by now, last week an RA in Birch, a dorm situated in the Honors Residential Area, put up a poster that featured Care Bears and tidbits of information to help students cope with the stress of finals. The poster sported notes such as: "surround yourself with supportive people" and "promote a nutritious and healthy diet."

Instead of just looking at the poster and cracking a smile, or finding it asinine and ignoring it, sophomore, Bradley Polumbo, decided that this was a pressing issue that needed to be addressed. On December 7, @brad_polumbo tweeted the following:

This caught the attention of many interested, and incredibly biased, news sources such as CampusReform and Fox News.

CampusReform is a right-wing website that publishes a variety of stories that, according to their website, “expose(s) the radical left’s aggressive and often violent attempts to suppress free speech and conservative thought at America’s colleges and universities.” In case you aren't already convinced of CampusReform's blatant disregard for balanced journalism and unbiased reporting, just check out their website for more ultra-conservative dialogue, but I'll spare you that here (you're welcome).

Fox News, another notably conservative media outlet, aired a video recently in which Polumbo presents his case against the University. He makes sure to emphasize the coddling that so deeply offended him.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I have no bias because everyone does, no matter how hard you try. I am simply a student… a brutally fucking honest student who will tell you exactly how he sees it. And I’ll tell you what, I have no time for this childish bullshit.

Did these Care Bears really affect you so much that you felt the need to share your story with Fox News? Of course they didn’t. However, Bradley Polumbo jumped on the opportunity to have somebody listen to his drivel on how patronizing cartoon characters are. Conservative news outlets are ripe for a story that allows them to attack college students; thus, a puppet who happily feeds them what they want to hear is icing on the cake.

I’m not trying to insult Mr. Polumbo. In fact, I actually think he made a very smart career choice in telling this non-story. Now he has his name out there and gained some sort of twisted respect from a majority of conservative outlets.

You may be reading this saying, “that is quite a leap to make, isn’t it?” I would agree with you if he hadn’t already appeared on conservative outlets including NRAtv. Not to mention, he boasts about being on Fox News and writes for a variety of right-leaning organizations on his Twitter bio. For that, I congratulate Mr. Polumbo on a successful publicity stunt. You got what you wanted AND threw an RA under the bus for trying to put up some cute notes on stress management. Bravo, Bradley.

However, this notion won't stop people from reacting in anger, and rightly so. This poster appeared on 1 floor of 1 building on a campus of close to 30,000 people. It is ridiculous to act as though a piece of paper, that would have realistically only been seen by a handful of students, connotes to the coddling of thousands.

Here are some of the best tweets that I could find to accurately assess the feelings of students on campus regarding the whole situation.

On the other hand, a lot of the commentary that supports the so-called "Care Bear Coddling" theory suggests that such childish images won’t help you in the workforce and that you shouldn’t need a Care Bear to cope. Needless to say, the majority of these comments come from middle-aged men and women with horrible selfies as their profile pictures.

To those individuals, I just have to say: lighten the fuck up Barb (or Linda or Joe or Terri or Hank; whatever basic name you have). How can you call someone else a snowflake, implying that they cannot deal with the realities of the world, when you’re getting your knickers in a bunch over a poster?

Let's start to focus on the real issues our world is facing, like net neutrality…or pretty much anything other than Care Bears.