How Witty

Wapo's struggling gossip column reports:

"Stephen Trachtenberg, president of George Washington University, went a little beyond the usual inspirational pablum at graduation ceremonies May 16, deciding to make a political statement. 'If anybody has a mortarboard, you can move your tassels from right to left, right to left, which is what I hope happened to your politics in the last four years,' he said. Sure, some laughed, but wasn't this further evidence of academe as an inculcator of liberal values? University spokesman Matt Lindsay insisted otherwise yesterday: 'His politics are known, I would say, but I don't think he's trying to impose them on anybody.' "