Wonkette

What do you expect? Nothing's stupider than a gopher.

Is she sad or are gopher farts as rancid as I've always imagined them to be?

Finally! I can laugh at something related to this tragedy and not feel guilty. Thanks guys.

Goldy Gopher: may I introduce you to Snorg Girl? Snorg Girl: Goldy. I'll leave you two alone.

Could have been worse. Could have been the Oklahoma State mascot.

Hey, that gopher is kinda cute. She looks like she's spent a LOT of time "down the hole."

But what's with the large furry creature on the left?

Way Goldy Goph is holding his hands, his smirk may not be the only inappropriate thing about him...

Considering my university's mascot is Donald Duck, I have nothing to say.

@FlownOver: Good point. So you liberal elites can enjoy the joke, OSU's mascot is a gun-totin' cowboy called Pistol Pete.

No personal remarks about Goldy's unfortunate dentition, please.

That's a Gopher grimace of pain.

You wouldn't understand. It's a Gopher thing.

Looks like Goldy was hiding his golden spike. I think he wants to Gopher hole the weeping sorority tart next to him.
And what's with the out-of-focus guy in the middle? Was there an insurance salesman theme party at the dorm?

Seeing that I went to the U of M I had the opportunity to occasionally bump into Goldy the alleged gopher. My keen eye quickly noticed that Goldy's tail is flat! Now I've seen enough cartoons to know that gopher tails are not flat. Beaver tails are flat! And they have big buck teeth too just like Goldy! So I said to Goldy "Hi Mr. Beaver". I got no response. No response means that Goldy is a fuckin' BEAVER. There, I feel better now.

I'm sure I'm going to hell for this, but Kait (the sorority tart who's actually in focus) is completely hot.

Pistol Pete's got to protect the West someway or somehow.

Where's Carl Spackler when you need him?

License to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. Man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit - ever. They're like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that's all she wrote.

That's nothing. Women always cry like that around me.

A nice surreal capstone to a truly god-forsaken news week.

That gopher freaks the fuck out of me.

@Civil Negligence:

I've been waiting for it! You never disappoint, Civil honey.

since no one has done this yet:

Gopher, yes, dude, dude.

The girl is crying because she found out a Badger doesn't fit in a Gopher hole.

I have a degree from that place and I have never, ever understood the Gopher symbology. I mean, some vicious, predatory animal, or shit-face drunk gun-wielding cowboy, OK. Or even the indigenous heathen savages. But a cringing, cowering little rodent you don't even see around here any more? The Gopher's record in Big 10 sports kind of underscores my point. A buckeye tree has more intimidation value.

Thanks for the best laugh I've had all week.

Thank you Wonkette, for teaching us to laugh about love again.

Better keep Mitt Romney away from this situation.

@badbrainbad: Naw, dude, he's a chipmunk. The Learned Sages of Species Illustration have actually been hashing this out for a good long time now, and a near unanimous consensus has been achieved declaring Goldy to be a chipmunk -- although one with species dysphoria issues, apparently.

This goes back to the beginning of the Minnesota/Gopher connection. Early illustrators just couldn't keep their taxonomy straight, and wound up drawing chipmunks every time they tried to come up with a gopher. Although by conveniently labeling them as "gophers" in all the political cartoons, the selfsame illustrators made sure we understood what animal they meant.

But think of it. If they'd kept their p's and q's straight, we coulda been the "Chipmunk State." Damn!

Mascots trying to be respectful is always one of the most unintentionally funny moments. But this one goes above and beyond.