Dave Frohnmayer on the
Oregon Commentator
An occupational hazard of guiding the University of Oregon is suffering the slings, arrows, and spitballs hurled by the Oregon Commentator. Following Dave Frohnmayer’s near-fatal heart attack, a photo of a drawn-looking president appeared on the OC’s cover with the caption “1940-1999.” Ouch. The back cover looked much like the front, but featured a hale and smiling president, the headline “Whoops!” and a quote from editor William Beutler: “Fire the fact checker! What, we don’t have a fact checker?!” “Das Frohn,” as the OC nicknamed Frohnmayer, took the ribbing in stride; a staunch free speech advocate, he even agreed for the twenty-fifth anniversary edition to a staged photo taken on the steps of Johnson Hall, showing him tearing up a copy of the publication. The photo is included in the new book, By the Barrel: 25 Years of the Oregon Commentator, along with the following tongue-in-cheek note from Frohnmayer, which appears both on the book’s dust jacket and in its front matter, alongside the OC mission statement.
A Note from University of Oregon
President Emeritus Dave Frohnmayer
Picking up a new issue of the Commentator is like acknowledging an unwelcome addictive behavior: It is done furtively, and with a self-loathing shudder. Once more, one can read the juvenile, potty-mouthed rants of frustrated student politicos. You gape at the beery indifference to the law of defamation. You read character assassinations that overpower any minimal standard of editorial good taste.
The Commentator is useful every several years to test UO administrators’ resolve to defend the First Amendment in the face of outrageous journalistic excess. It has an alumni roster that shows surprising cases of postgraduate distinction (one wonders that they survived the celebrated lifestyle to graduate at all).
But for the most part, the Commentator should be handled like any other potential toxic: plucked up carefully between thumb and forefinger of a latex-gloved hand, and deposited gently with the recycling, where, by decomposing, it finally can begin to perform a minimally useful social function.
Dave “Das Frohn” Frohnmayer
University of Oregon President Emeritus and Professor of Law
