Editor's Note:
We did send this letter to Harvard (in the section marked "Begin Letter" with a physical trophy to the university.
Unfortunately, Harvard has not confirmed receipt, though we like to imagine it's because they're still crying over the devastating profundity of our words.
I mean, it's not, but we like to imagine it all the same.
Normally the Vidalia News Recorder School of the Institute of Philosophical Satirophistry and Technical Veterinarian Astrology is aggressively pursuing excellence (and dominance when all else fails) but this year we acknowledge the good work Harvard has done maintaining it’s facade as the “World’s Most Popular Harvard-Like School.” We reached out to congratulate Harvard for somehow beating us in 2025 and promised that next year will be different.
Below is our congratulatory note. With it we will fuel our rage for scholastic vengeance in 2026.
Begin Letter
Messieurs et Mesdames Harvard
Office of the President and Head Harvarder, Alan M. Garber
Harvard University
Massachusetts Hall
Cambridge, MA 02138
It has come to our attention that your school is under political and financial attack from various government agencies. Under normal circumstances, being your school’s greatest rival since Paul Bunyon first & simultaneously satirized the industrial revolution and bovine agricultural practices, we would laud any attempt to trade fancifully churlish barbs with lesser universities, like Yale or MIT, over the sweetly glazed and roasted name of Harvard. However, times are dire and, though we’ll never discuss our shared involvement over what happened to Mrs Yale’s cat at Martha’s Vineyard, we can all agree that the current political climate is untenable as relates to American sovereignty, dignity, innovation, leadership, and excellence. By the end of this letter you’ll also agree that anytime The Vidalia News Recorder School of the Institute of Philosophical Satirophistry and Technical Veterinarian Astrology attempts to speak intelligently about issues like dignity and excellence then things in this world have truly gone awry.
For anyone unfamiliar with the definitely real and most certainly long-standing rivalry between our great schools, allow us a short introduction wherein we will dazzle and delight the reader with mastery over literary arts such as: boredom, bad writingness, improper grammar & spehlyng, and a wonderful series of confusing and meandering sentences reaching for the illusive zeitgeist yet failing repeatedly like that time we got drunk and started driving Dartmouth and Brown around to The Waffle House at 4 in the morning because they had midterms the next day and they hadn’t even studied but we–Harvard and Vidalia–were going to make sure our younger brothers…ummm… “Digression” est mon nom. Où étais-je? The Vidalia News Recorder School of the Institute of Philosophical Satirophistry and Technical Veterinarian Astrology, is the scholastic arm of the much larger and absolutely well-known Vidalia News Recorder, being an online publication rich with punctuation, carriage returns, and a delightfully piquant malaise. Originating in a galaxy far, far away, the VNR now dominates the satire industries in the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy and Lower Temecula. Our sponsors include Big Peanut Butter, the 14th Largest Chamber of Commerce in Temecula, and the Dumpster Fires Local Union. Despite both our school’s years of competing for the title of the “World’s Most Popular Harvard-like School,” this is a time for us to come together and join ranks against a growing tyranny.
Much like Harvard, greatness of mind and purpose have been defining characteristics of America and of being an American. While the United States is not alone in greatness or innovation, it can be said that our core ethos, the rock that holds our “City on a Hill” for the world to see, is and has always been the grit, inventiveness, determination, and will of spirit, of a nation that won’t be cowed by ill-fate or fashionable villainy. This greatness was with us at our nation’s birth, then again at every step as we decided to grow and acknowledge the ignorance and savagery of our past, and also with every modern innovation–both incremental and paradigm shifting–that allowed our nation to modernize a world with a rapidity unseen in all history.
We built greatness from barren soil, we carved mountains, chased planets, and pioneered curiosity driven engineering. We made great achievements into a daily occurrence. We did that for each other, for our families, and for better lives. And still… our drive to innovation is also alive in our social awareness, in civics, law, politics, community-building, and indeed in how we defined and constructed our liberty. Damn. We did that. It’s profoundly amazing.
The story of America is a recurring story of people brought low that then reached higher than ever expected, creating waves that changed the world. America has done this methodically and tumultuously with fairness, righteousness, curiosity, and persistence. We grew our minds, our hearts, our bodies, and our communities so that everyone would know that the future is not tyranny, despotism, kakistocracies, or plain and stupid bullying. We improved ourselves so we could lift our neighbors, and when that didn’t work we lifted our neighbors because this is our home.
To be a part of what makes America great is an honor. Both of our universities have instructed the greatest minds of the age, yours in the various studies of: maths, sciences, law, arts, letters, business, engineering, philosophy, and medicine, and ours in: star charts for celebrity pets, and circumlocutive treatises on tom and janefoolery. Because Harvard is a constant in American, and global, achievement and leadership, we know you can become a lighthouse guiding all the hopeful back to that city on a hill. On behalf of a sick America, the VNR thanks you for all efforts past, present, and to your future defense of the core values of the American way of life.
To acknowledge your effort and our future hopes, please accept the enclosed award with the understanding that next year will be our year to finally win the award for “World’s Most Popular Harvard-Like School.” If there is anything that a numbskull group of misfit satirists can do to assist, please let us know.
Thank you,
Scribbles O’Hanrahan
Dean Supreme, The Vidalia News Recorder School of the Institute of Philosophical Satirophistry and Technical Veterinarian Astrology
Editor in Chief, The Vidalia News Recorder, the Greatest Investigatively Satirical News Source in the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy and Lower Temecula
P.S. Are you still free this Friday to TP Yale and blame it on Stanford?
P.P.S. Please forgive our use of the Oxford Comma. Our Harvard Comma hasn’t arrived yet.
Corrections
Harvard did not likely respond with red ink…
Vidalia News Recorder 