Another Set of Short Takes

1). From Canton, Ohio, the city which houses the Pro Football Hall of Fame, comes this football-related story: McKinley High School head football coach Marcus Wattley and six of his assistant coaches were fired recently for forcing a player to eat pork against his religious beliefs. 

Former Coach Marcus Wattley

On the face of it, this is the only possible outcome of an action that is stunning in its arrogance, cruelty, and prejudice. The player, who has not been named (although his father has been, so it’s not like it’s a secret), is a member of the Hebrew Israeli religious faith, and as such is strictly forbidden from eating pork, pork residue, or apparently even pork substitutes. The boy’s attorney argues that the coaching staff should have known that prior to the events in question, since the player had been present at previous player meals. 

What happened, according to the boy and his representatives, is that he was being punished for missing a voluntary strength and conditioning session. He was ordered in sit in the center of the gym and consume an entire pepperoni pizza; if he didn’t, his teammates would be required to do additional drills and he was threatened with the possibility that he couldn’t stay on the team. 

The school and district ran a “nearly weeklong investigation” into the allegations, including viewing surveillance videos before taking action. The account of precisely what happened is disputed by George Pattakos, Wattley’s attorney, and by five players who supported the coach at the board meeting which led to Wattley’s dismissal. They claim that the player was offered chicken nuggets instead of the pizza, but that he chose to pick off the pepperoni and eat the rest of the pizza. Of course, this would have left the “pork residue” mentioned above. 

They claim, further, that an assistant coach who wanted Wattley’s job had circulated an exaggerated and deceptive description of the events to school officials and the player’s family. Pattakos also accused the board of a “rushed” decision, and claimed the coach “was doing his best to teach an extraordinary athlete an important lesson.” 

Curmie doesn’t know what happened. He doubts Wattley’s description of the events but grants that there might be some validity to it. But should Wattley and his minions have been fired? Absolutely. Even assuming other options were offered, we still have a player subjected to the emotional distress of choosing between being humiliated in front of his teammates or risk being ostracized by them. It’s an old tactic employed by authoritarian jackasses to remind everyone that they’re in charge. As Curmie is wont to say, “if you have to tell me, it ain’t so.” 

But the real problem in Curmie’s mind is in a word that may have slipped past you at first read, Gentle Reader: voluntary. The boy was being punished for skipping a voluntary session. OK, we all know that these allegedly voluntary practices are in fact just as required as the mandatory ones; they’re only called voluntary so the football coach can dominate players’ time throughout the summer and still technically not violate the rules of the school or the athletic conference. 

It’s an absolute scam, and everybody knows it, but no one is willing to say anything because… football. But, and as they say in burlesque it’s a big but, the unwritten rule is that the only punishment a coach can levy against someone who skips one of these sessions is benching him—because who plays and who doesn’t is within the legitimate purview of the coach, even of an unethical one. Wattley overstepped even that line. He’s gone, and should be. 

2). Those of us whose Congresscritter is Loony Louie Gohmert have known this for a long time, but the wider world is now learning that he truly is dumber than dirt. His recent (I was going to say “most recent,” but his stupidity is prolific, and he’s probably moved on, already) escapade was asking a representative of the Department of Agriculture if, and I quote, “there [is] anything that the National Forest Service or BLM can do to change the course of the moon’s orbit or the Earth’s orbit around the sun?” in order to curb climate change. It’s probably worth mentioning that BLM here is the Bureau of Land Management, not the other BLM. 

When Curmie first read this, he thought this had to be Andy Borowitz or the Onion. Nope: there’s video. Of course, this plays to liberal opinion of Gohmert, and we need to be cautious of going too far down that path. And to be fair, there’s a follow-up that suggests that Gohmert might, might have been joking. He reacts to a befuddled response to his earlier question with “Yeah, well, if you figure out a way that you in the Forest Service can make that change, I’d like to know.” 

If Gohmert’s question was sarcasm, then we have discovered the best dead-pan artist since Buster Keaton. But we also have something a little more problematic than simply a single moronic Congresscritter, as it would suggest a strategy to identify all attempts at mitigating climate change are either useless or illusory. Certainly a little conservation, the use of solar or other “green” energies, tax incentives associated with purchasing fuel-efficient vehicles (or disincentives to buy gas-guzzlers), restrictions on air pollutants: all these are to be abandoned. I think I’d rather go with “stupid.” 

3. One of Curmie’s Facebook friends posted a meme recently that suggests it’s an “American History Quiz.” There’s a series of questions with two possible answers: “A. Black lives” and “B. All lives.” Among the questions: “Brought to America on chains at the bottom of ships,” “Counted as 3/5 human in America,” etc. You get the idea. 

Curmiphiles who’ve been following this blog or the Facebook page for any length of time know that one thing that really annoys me is when an otherwise useful point is undercut by intellectual sloppiness or laziness. Let’s leave aside the more complex arguments and look specifically at one of those question prompts: “Enslaved in America for over 400 years.” Um… none of the above is the correct answer. 

Exactly when the first slaves in the New World arrived is unclear, but the earliest date I’ve seen is 1526, although a revolt ended that colony in a matter of months. Other historians would argue that slavery probably followed soon after the first permanent white settlement in 1565. (The 1619 project chooses their eponymous date because it was the first date of slaves in Virginia. Don’t ask me why.) The Emancipation Proclamation was 1863; the end of the Civil War was 1865. 

So… choosing the earliest date for slavery starting and the latest date for slavery ending, and we get (wait for it) 339 years. On Curmie’s planet, 339 is less than 400. You want to say “over 300 years,” fine. “Suffered prejudice,” yep. “Enslaved for over 400 years,” no. And an objective error of that magnitude renders the rest of the argument, which is valid, less persuasive. 

4. <Mumblemumble> years ago, when Curmie was a graduate student at the University of Birmingham in England, he did his banking at the local branch of Lloyd’s Bank. The choice was, to be honest, one of convenience rather than considered choice, as it was located en route between my bed-sit and the university. 

Nadia Begum and Clifford Weedon 

If he could go back in time, he might make a different choice, as the bank fired a branch manager because she helped an elderly, visually impaired customer, open his mail. Yes, Gentle Reader, you read that correctly. She assisted a customer, and the banking conglomerate sacked her for her efforts. 

Surely there’s more to this than that, right? If so, Curmie can’t find it or imagine it. Nadia Begum developed a friendship with Clifford Weedon and helped him out. But that, apparently, is against the rules, which, to be sure, descended from the mountaintop, elbowing Moses and the 10 Commandments out of the way. 

Even in the torrent of negative press Lloyd’s suffered when the BBC told the story, they continued to sniff that “we have a colleague code of responsibility in place to safeguard both our colleagues and customers…. In this instance our standards were not met.” Curmie doesn’t know which they need more: a brain or a box of laxative. 

The good news is that Ms. Begum was headhunted by Octopus Energy, whose CEO specifically wanted “Nadia’s warmth and humanity.” The other good news is that Curmie will never again have to deal with Lloyd’s Bank. 

5. Curmie isn’t sure how this case made it as far as federal court, but at least the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals got it right. Seven years ago, Emma Semler and her friend Jenny Werstler shot up heroin in the bathroom of a West Philadelphia KFC. Werstler, who was celebrating (if that’s the word) her 20th birthday, wanted a second shot, whereupon she overdosed, and died. Semler had fled the scene, leaving her friend to her fate instead of calling for help, so she’s no angel. 

But prosecutors decided that because Semler physically passed Werstler the drugs, she was guilty of “distribution,” which carries a minimum 20-year sentence. Five years after the event, she was convicted of that presumed offense. OK, anyone with an IQ over room temperature knows that law was intended to go after dealers and pushers, not addicts. 

But some crusading DA or ADA wanted to make a name for him/herself, and so the case found its way to the appeals court, which found, quite reasonably, in the words of Judge Jane Richards Roth:

The government would have us believe that if two drug addicts jointly and simultaneously purchase methamphetamine and return home to smoke it together, a ‘distribution’ has occurred each time the addicts pass the pipe back and forth to each other. Such an interpretation diverts punishment from traffickers to addicts, who contribute to the drug trade only as end users and who already suffer disproportionally from its dangerous effects.

Semler, who seems to have cleaned herself up after the death of her friend, was certainly a contributor to Werstler’s demise, but she was hardly a “distributor.” 

Whoever brought these charges and the judge who allowed the case to go forward and even prescribed a harsher sentence than the one required by law for distribution should be fired, disbarred, and probably arrested; every juror who went along with this charade needs to be wupped up ‘side the head with a 2x4. 

6. As it happens, Curmie has a Comment of the Day on Ethics Alarms, this one on the hype surrounding the casting of black actress Jodie Turner-Smith as Anne Boleyn in a new TV mini-series currently airing on the UK’s Channel 5. You can see Jack Marshall’s original post on the subject here.