If you read The Clarion regularly, you’ve probably noticed that our Opinions section has started to incorporate a large number of columns to make up for the fact that we only ever receive letters to the editor when we write something offensive and/or borderline racist.

Thanks to the content of these columns, it’s become one of our most-read sections behind the crime report and the front page (which we count as having been read if you happen to pass by one of our newsstands).

You’re probably wondering how you can get in on that sweet action. Well, I’m going to tell you.

The trick to being a great columnist is to make carefully measured, intelligent arguments with clever but tasteful jokes interspersed throughout.

Here’s where we run into our first problem, because you are a product of the University of Denver’s curriculum and are therefore quite incapable of doing any such thing. You’ll have to resort to other means of crafting a column.

First, you must choose a target for your ridicule. Now, you might be saying that not every column needs to target someone necessarily, that it can be about an issue or an idea. But if you were to say that, I’d say you must be one of those brainless business majors. Am I right, non-business majors?

See? I’ve chosen an entire subset of DU as my target. That makes it topical AND ensures that I’ll be getting a big fat pile of the attention I’ve craved since Mom stepped out for cigarettes 16 years ago.

Sure, it may be in the form of angry business students who don’t like that I’ve categorically derided all the hard work they’ve been doing for a few cheap shock laughs, but that’s just the cost of great satire.

Next comes the part where you make jokes. Reading the columns in The Clarion, you could be forgiven for thinking this step is optional. That’s because we here at The Clarion believe in a high-brow style of comedy. If you don’t get it, that means you’re probably illiterate.

You see what I did there? I chose a new target for my column, though this one is a significantly smaller subset of the DU community: Clarion readers.

You can often get around the need for humor by simply leaping back and forth between jibes at people you don’t like or think would make an easy target.

Okay, now you’ve got enough material. You can probably string together a few sentences, and as our opinions editor Katie pointed out a few issues ago, we will quite literally run anything that’s handed in for us to print. Anything.

But The Clarion isn’t your only outlet. Does your column go on for a thousand words and cite no fewer than three French philosophers while trying to justify growing marijuana in the community garden? Then the [dis]claimer should be right up your alley. And if instead of writing words you slammed your face repeatedly against the keyboard until the page was full, then you should look into the Press Club.

Now we come to our final section: how to deal with criticism. With all the personal attacks you’ll be squeezing into your column, you’re bound to attract some negative attention.

Everyone from whatever the student senate is calling itself these days to rival columnists who are upset that your idiotic ranting is taking attention away from their idiotic ranting is going to want a piece of you. You can rest easy though.

The worst Senate can do is give way too much money to Alpine Club and your fellow columnists will congratulate you on a great piece to your face while anonymously deriding you on the Internet.

For everyone in between…well, odds are good that if you’ve resorted to writing for The Clarion, your social life has already hit rock bottom, so no real loss there.

Now you’ve got the basics down. It’s time to get out there and start attacking people.

May your future in punditry be a happy one! Unless you’re one of those idiot engineering students, in which case you can go directly to hell.