Editor's Note

I didn’t go to Countdown to Craziness, so I wasn’t privy to this information until a moment ago. But apparently the event showcased something called “Duke Worldwide,” which is a thing like a music video. I say it is like a music video because I want to emphasize that it is not actually a music video. It is a compilation of snippets of interviews with Duke basketball players, time-stretched and rearranged over one of those truly terrible electro beats to loosely resemble a genre called “rap” or “hip-hop.” For example: “Everything we do is first class”—the attribution is uncertain, but again, these are direct quotes from basketball players— is made to rhyme with “We really make a statement on the glass.” Tell me I’m wrong: that s**t is fire.

OK, I’m wrong. You may have heard that Duke doesn’t have the best reputation among the average human: it has something to do with our disproportionately large representation in the one percent, maybe, or fraternity social e-mails. Or something like that (there was a thing about lacrosse players, but it’s slipped my mind). As someone who’s never done anything in his life to deserve that kind of reputation, I’ve spent a lot of time fighting the popular perception of Duke. After all, it’s not like we’re any more self-absorbed than the similarly entitled yuppies at any number of Ivy League schools. But like so many proverbial camels, my will to fight back against the ever-expanding legions of Duke haters was broken by a single straw, and that straw is “Duke Worldwide.”

I know that the kids on the team had no idea, when they were saying whatever they were saying to innocuous reporter-types, that their words would be chopped and screwed into the only basketball-related rap project more offensive than Allen Iverson’s “40 Bars.” I’m no lawyer, but I think that they probably have some sort of libel case against DJ Steve Porter, the individual contracted by Duke to put together “Duke Worldwide” and someone I didn’t need Google Image search to tell me was white.

But that hardly matters. The crux of the whole “Duke Worldwide” thing is that a) Duke asked for someone to make it, and then played it at a high-profile event of its highest-profile sports team, and b) it is literally the douchiest thing ever committed to video. I’ve reviewed a lot of awful media in these pages, including a Lil Wayne album full of mall-rock. But there is literally nothing in my experience to prepare me to critically assess “Duke Worldwide.” The word “abortion” comes to mind, but, truly, the task is beyond my understanding of the English language.

So, Duke, I’m giving up on defending your reputation (other than that of your judicial process for student conduct violations, which is nothing if not a bastion of individual liberties and the rule of law). I didn’t want it to end this way. I dreamed of convincing everyone who doubted it—from my high school buddies now at UNC to my crunchy, women’s-studies-major ex-girlfriend—that Duke was in fact a bastion of humility and self-awareness.

It is not. I’d tell you to check out “Duke Worldwide” for evidence, but I’d recommend—like always—that you take my word for it.