A half dozen short takes...

A series of short takes… not topics I want to spend my usual 1000 or more words on, but worthy of comment. 

1. Students will know my politics. 

A Facebook friend I’ve known for roughly half a century recently posted a meme stating that “If your students know your political affiliation, you have failed as a teacher. Teachers are there to help students think for themselves, not think like you.” The second sentence is true… sort of. The first sentence is utter crap. 

Let’s start with the latter idea: if “think like you” means “agree with your conclusions,” then I wholeheartedly agree. I always want students who will argue, politely but emphatically, with each other or with me. We’ll get nowhere, either in the classroom or in society, if everyone agrees all the time: we would be reduced to choosing policies based on who speaks first rather than on what’s the best idea. 

If, however, “think like you” means that a teacher should model logical thinking, a pursuit of truth, a skepticism about likely partisan sources… well, in that case, I very much do want my students to “think like [I do].” 

But that first sentence is amazing in its over-simplified arrogance. In my current summer-school class, I have two (that I know of) non-binary students. If I respect them enough to use their chosen names instead of the “dead names” that show up on my role sheet, if I refer to them by their chosen pronouns instead of those applicable to someone else with their physical characteristics, those students—and the others—will know my politics. 

If, given the fact that in 1847 over ten shiploads of food a day were exported from Ireland to England, I refer to the mid-1840s in Ireland as “the Great Hunger,” as my Irish friends do, rather than “the Great Famine,” as many of the textbooks would have it, students will know my politics. 

If, in a different class, I make sure to point out that Congressman Joe Starnes famously asked Hallie Flanagan, the head of the Federal Theatre Project, if Marlowe and Euripides were communists, students will know my politics. 

If, in that same class, I suggest that Anatoly Lunacharsky may have had the coolest job title in history—Komisar of Education and Enlightenment—but one of the worst-ever jobs—serving as liaison between Josef Stalin and the Russian arts community—students will know my politics. 

If, in still a different class, I discuss the process of choosing a theatre season and emphasize the importance of having enough good roles for women and for people of color, students will know my politics. 

Most importantly, when I am honest enough to tell students my political opinions so they can factor that information into their decision as to whether or not to agree with my conclusions, rather than pretending to an objectivity that is ultimately impossible to achieve, students will know my politics. If that’s failing as a teacher, so be it. 

2. Taiwan is a country. 

Curmie is old enough to remember when then-President Gerald Ford proclaimed in a debate with Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter that “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.” It’s probable that he misspoke, that he meant to argue that despite the USSR’s military and economic domination, the people of, say, Poland, proudly maintained their national identity. But that’s not what he said, and he was portrayed, not unreasonably, with failing to recognize the political reality of Eastern Europe. Many historians believe that single line cost him the 1976 election. 

A similar moment played out recently involving a considerably less important figure than the President of the United States. This time the offender was wrestler and B-movie actor John Cena. There’s a twist, though, and not merely in the status of the speaker. You see, in a promotional spot for an upcoming movie, Cena had the audacity to call Taiwan a country. Yes, it’s a country, but the fine folks in Beijing—you know, the ones whose lies about the coronavirus exacerbated the pandemic—were sore offended, because despite… you know... reality, Beijing still regards the island as their territory. Absurdly, organizations like the United Nations have allowed them to perpetuate this fraud. 

But whereas American diplomats might need to tread carefully around a vexed topic, there’s nothing to prevent an apolitical celebrity from speaking the truth. Well, there is something: money. Cena wants his movie to sell in mainland China, so his tough guy image melted faster than ice cream in a Texas summer when confronted with angry tweets from Beijing. Cena immediately apologized—in Mandarin, no less—to “China and the Chinese people,” deploring his “mistake,” and groveling rather embarrassingly. 

The good news is that his renunciation of the reality that he himself had described was met with derision from across the political spectrum. When, after all, was the last time Keith Olbermann (who called the apology “shameful”) and Tom Cotton (who declared it “pathetic”) agreed on anything, including that grass is green? The almighty dollar still reigns supreme, even in the communist world, but maybe we’re coming to understand that there might be some circumstances in which it shouldn’t? Baby steps. Baby steps. 

3. Calling out hypocrites is a good thing. 

Curmie is no great fan of President Biden (“lesser of two evils” isn’t high praise), but I do appreciate skill at political gamesmanship, and it doesn’t get much better than pointing out the fact that a goodly number of GOP legislators have been claiming credit for various provisions of the American Rescue Plan, a.k.a. the second pandemic package: the very bill they had voted against. And he read out their names! In a just universe, none would be re-elected; this is, alas, somewhat less than a just universe, but embarrassing the hypocrites can’t be all bad. 

4. Lying with statistics. 

President Biden gets credit for what Curmie just described, but he also gets called out for crass political posturing. Whereas any attempt to reduce hate crimes, especially violence, is a good thing, exaggerating the extent of, in this case, anti-Asian activity is a good way to look silly. So the hype surrounding the need for new anti-hate legislation, much of it coming from the White House, is really so much balloon juice. Left-leaning news sites breathlessly report some 6603 “hate incidents” in the year between March 2020 and March 2021. That figure is drawn from the report of an organization called Stop AAPI Hate. And there are… let’s see… a little over 23,200,000 Asians and Asian-Americans in the US. So 1 in 3514 Asians experienced some kind of bias in that year. Oh, and over 83% of those incidents weren’t crimes: verbal harassment and shunning may be despicable, but they’re not criminal. So let’s amend that number to 1 in over 20,000 who endured violence, civil rights violations, vandalism, etc. 

We also see that “Anti-Asian hates crimes increased by nearly 150%, mostly in N.Y. and L.A.”. That sounds bad. But if we’re going to call out Tucker Carlson for using statistics to deceive, we need to do so here, too. Yes, New York and Los Angeles saw significant increases: from a total of 10 cases in those two cities in 2019 to 43 in 2020. Curmie is having trouble disentangling numbers for the city and county of Los Angeles, and isn’t sure which is being referenced in the increase of 7 to 15 cases there, so let’s just look at New York: 28 cases for a total Asian population of a little under 2,000,000 (apologies that the best source I can find is Wikipedia). The East Asian population is just under 750,000; that’s probably the more relevant figure, but if the case numbers say “Asian,” then perhaps the larger number is indeed more accurate. Even limiting the population figures to just four East Asian nationalities: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, the average East Asian would go for roughly 27 years without experiencing a 1% chance of a race-inspired crime. This is not exactly cause for panic. 

5. You can’t make this stuff up. 

(Alleged) serial sexual predator Kevin Spacey will appear in his first acting role since the proverbial fecal matter interfaced the whirling rotors some four years ago. The role: “a detective investigating a false claim of paedophilia.” Bloody hell.

6. It’s actually OK to produce No Exit.

Students—it’s unclear exactly how many—at Western Washington University sought to cancel the production of Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, claiming it ignores matters of gender and sexuality (among other things).  Curmie is, shall we say, unconvinced.  

I first read about this incident on Ethics Alarms; I e-mailed that site’s proprietor, Jack Marshall, saying I would be responding, but I might be writing more than would qualify as simply a comment.  He suggested I send him my commentary and he would post it as a Guest Post.  I agreed.  So, here’s my post; I do suggest that you read Jack’s earlier post on the subject (and follow the links he includes) to be better able to understand what I’m talking about, since my remarks were intended to be read by people who were already familiar with the basics of the story.