DeWitt Clinton Professor of History Eric Foner expressed his profound sadness when a photo documenting his passionate tryst with Rae Sremmurd member Aaquil “Slim Jxmmi” Brown failed to garner widespread attention on the Internet. The picture depicted a shirtless Foner with a first edition of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” covering his nipples, draped across Brown’s wiry, tattoo-covered chest.
The filtered selfie on Foner’s Instagram, @TooHotForTenure, received a paltry 36 likes and a comment from President Lee Bollinger asserting that Foner looked “hawt.” Foner’s tramp stamp is clearly visible: “Smash Here if You Can Recite Eugene V. Debs,” and he has a twin set of black eyes, which he attributed to a bad fall while attempting to rollerblade through the archives of the Library of Congress.
“I fell in love with Slim Jxmmi the first time I heard ‘No Flex Zone,’” said Foner. “That was at Bacchanal. I liked it very much the next thirty times during the set as well.”
Foner, 73, is a two-time winner of the Bancroft Prize, the award for the most distinguished American History book of the year, and is a globally renowned expert on the U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction. He served as president of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society of American Historians, and has long nursed a desire to seduce a famous hip hop artist and exploit the erotic encounter for social media fame.
Foner explained that he was equally enamored by the rest of Rae Sremmurd’s discography, including hit songs such as “Come Get Her” and “No Type.” He said that lyrics like “You ain’t got no life (Nah) / Cups with the ice and we do this every night” brought to mind his memories of his days as a young historian working to reframe the historiography of Black America in the 1870s. Foner would bounce from club to club in Tribeca, tripping on Qualuudes and hunting for a disco singer to snap lewd Polaroids of back in his tour bus.
“I feel that SremmLife and SremmLife2 speak to the human condition,” said Foner, adjusting his horn-rimmed glasses and gazing fondly at his iPhone photo gallery of him, Slim Jxmmi and an array of Barnard students, New York residents and priceless historical artifacts in sexually charged poses. “Slim Jxxmi is a wonderful man and a very giving lover.”
“Seriously, my Bacchanal was so lit,” said Foner, still swaying slightly the morning after ingesting more than 12 ambiguously alcoholic glasses of jungle juice at Beta House. “I met up with my girls in Alpha Chi, hit the frats, and my friends liked all my drunk statuses. I just thought that hooking up with Slim Jxxmi would be the culmination of a day filled with priceless memories, most of which I have blacked out.”
Aside from not going viral, the distinguished historian has no regrets.
“Some might say Slim Jxmmi is the less hot one. I would tell those people that I’m trying to be famous,” Foner says. “If you can’t shamelessly manipulate another human being with a large Twitter following in your quest for digital self-aggrandizement, why are you even trying to hook up? It’s not like you respect the other person.”
