By TIM RATH

Guest Columnist

It’s time for me to throw another bracket into the fire.

Collegehumor.com is adding new meaning to the term “March Madness,” with their latest addition to the internet intelligentsia, “America’s Hottest College Girl ’08.”

Those familiar with NCAA basketball’s season-ending frenzy will appreciate the creativity involved in the idea: sixty-four co-eds armed with a few pictures and a short Q&A session have been entered into a tournament bracket, divided by region.

From there, users vote to determine who advances to the next round. The tournament champion receives $10,000 and all the prestige garnered as “College Girl ’08.”

Discussing the implications of this seemingly-innocuous attempt at comedic competition is as difficult as discarding my fantasy NCAA bracket was.

I had UConn in the title game — never again.

I can’t understand it from my own perspective, that of the red-blooded, male Oakland University student.

To me, the lunchtime walk through the Oakland Center is oftentimes an exercise in hedonism, as I’m surrounded by beautiful women and reminded of one of my favorite reasons to attend OU: the nearly 2-to-1 female-to-male student ratio.

I’m satisfied enough so that by the time I reach my destination in the basement computer lab, preparing for my next class has become much more important than hounding the Internet for softcore bracketology.

Yes, explaining high marks to my mom has become rather awkward.

I can’t understand it from a woman’s perspective, either. Ten-thousand dollars is a lot of money, especially for college students, but at what cost is it won?

As I alluded to above, beauty is a fairly common trait.

What’s rarer is a strong personality, which shines through the tournament’s participants, despite the brevity of their interviews posted.

For instance, Jennifer, a “West” participant, says that “Steamed cabbage is the grossest thing

I have ever eaten, it’s so slimy.”

Unfortunately, the prize money puts their obvious intelligence, creativity, humor, and outlook in a different light. The interviews now look like desperate pleas for votes, and every picture is in grayscale.

Most importantly, I can’t understand what this means beyond this bright screen in the OC computer lab.

“There is an immoral link between the way women were treated by the oppressive Taliban in Afghanistan and the hateful actions of the al-Qaeda terrorists. Under the Taliban, women in Afghanistan were forbidden to attend schools, to access health care, to work and even to appear in public unless hidden behind the head-to-toe burqas,”  said Hillary Clinton in TIME Magazine, shortly after September 11.

Public condemnation of such human rights violations was common then, as we attacked a supposed threat to American security and patted ourselves on the back for supposedly saving women that few of us will ever know.

Meanwhile, evening news didn’t seem complete without a discussion of what the trials of

Britney Spears meant to society at large.

It was our culture of misogyny at work.

Although it hits us much closer to home than Afghanistan, the problem is more difficult to acknowledge. Most of us may personally know a victim of sexual assault, yet discussion of sticky subjects like “female disrespect” isn’t often heard in mainstream media.

Can you imagine Clinton writing another piece for TIME Magazine, this time decrying “College Girl ’08?”

TIME would make Tila Tequila the new “Person of the Year” just to spite her. Bill O’Reilly would wonder aloud if she’d gotten laid lately.

Ann Coulter would call her out-of-touch: “She doesn’t understand what $10,000 means in today’s economy … but I’ll still vote for her over John McCain!”

I’m expecting a similar response to this piece.

“This is like, my only salvation,” I’m expecting to hear.

“You are so uptight, why don’t you get a life?”

Maintaining high marks and juggling a work schedule apparently leaves OU students too tired for a social conscience.

Our culture of misogyny will likely keep Clinton from the White House solely on account of her gender.

It has no problem with turning Afghanistan into a parking lot because their female population wears burqas, but scoffs at those who’d describe “College Girl ’08” as a human meat market.

But for too many OU students, that’s too much to understand.

The meat market might as well be selling comfort food.

If you’re among those that I anticipate are questioning my social life and sexual history, this column just can’t match a pretty face and $10,000 in cash.

Go ahead and toss it into the fire. You’ll need it to keep from the cold reality.