There are conservative Spectator columnists loved universally by liberals. I'm not one of them, but Jack Kerouac is. Yes, that Kerouac, the free-spirited Beat who introduced Allen Ginsberg and his Columbia roommate, Lucien Carr, to William S. Burroughs and founded the great counter-culture movement of the post-war era. Much to the shock and dismay of his admirers, Kerouac was, in the words of a CNN book review, "a right-wing Republican and an ardent supporter of Senator Joe McCarthy." Looks, it would seem, are deceiving.

A talented athlete, Kerouac attended Columbia on a football scholarship. Any dreams of a professional career were crushed after a debilitating injury his freshman year left him on the sidelines, squabbling with the coach. But with his free time, he did what any good Columbian would do-he wrote for the Spectator. Whether he submitted his articles after sleepless nights of Benzedrine-and-caffeine-filled jaunts, I can't say for sure. What we do know is that Jack wasn't ready for Columbia, and Columbia wasn't ready for Jack. With a few friends and mentors to remember his time here, including the illustrious professor and poet laureate Mark Van Doren, Kerouac dropped out to join the real world.

After a brief stint in the Merchant Marine, a plethora of temporary jobs, and sporadic publishing, Kerouac composed On The Road, the iconic text of the Beat literary movement. After three weeks of tireless, sporadic typing, the manuscript-a block of single-spaced text with no paragraph breaks, written on one continuous scroll-was done. The literati deemed Kerouac's unique brand of stream-of-consciousness authorship novel and innovative and even groundbreaking. In less than a decade, he had become the mouthpiece for a movement that transcended and revitalized the literary world. Throughout his life, however, Kerouac was careful to disassociate himself from proto-hippie "beatniks." Before he succumbed to an early and unfortunate death, the result of chronic alcoholism, his New York Times obituary recalls a man who had "no use for the radical politics that came to preoccupy many of his friends and readers." "I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic," he mused as he directed the interviewer to a picture of Pope Paul VI. "You know who painted that?" Kerouac asked. "Me." Perhaps we've misunderstood him all along.

Try as we might, even the most politically correct generalize and stereotype on matters of politics and personality. We claim to promote diversity and encourage acceptance, but when someone stands up and declares himself or herself a conservative or a Republican, assumptions are made and standards applied. Loaded terms do little to promote effective interpersonal relationships or to establish common measures of respect.

Call it a product of our geography, call it the product of the "culture wars," call it whatever you will, but it's still wrong. Jack Kerouac is proof that no individual is an archetype. Too often we rush to polarize pop culture and personality as we do politics. What follows as a result benefits no one. The conservative who refuses to listen to or watch a particular artist because of his or her political persuasion is just as bad as the liberal who writes off all country music as hick, "red state" music. There are conservatives enamored with Neil Young and liberals who love contemporary country-albeit their hidden shame.

To what couldn't only be considered the shock of my dormmates, my computer regularly shuffles from Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" to Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue." Can you say the same? And no, the answer's not as simple as liberals make the "better music" or write "better books." Even iconic figures of the cultural left transcend these rudimentary and polarizing stereotypes. In the first volume of his autobiography, Chronicles, Bob Dylan cautiously remarks, "My favorite politician was Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who reminded me of Tom Mix, and there wasn't any way to explain that to anybody." Goldwater's politics weren't Dylan's "particular feast of food," but he had a profound respect for the senator and his "country fair politics." Such respect and open-mindedness is sorely lacking today. Not only must we resist typecasting one another by our voter registration or ideological bent, but we must also make an active, individual effort to avoid perpetuating these very stereotypes.