Stuck in the Middle. With You?

 

Curmie was never a huge fan of the Scottish folk-rock group Stealers Wheel (although he really liked some of Gerry Rafferty’s solo efforts a little later). The band’s biggest hit, “Stuck in the Middle with You,” however, is truly a classic. Curmie hears it not infrequently on the local oldies station and on Spotify. Lyrics like “Trying to make some sense of it all / But I can see that it makes no sense at all” seem to resonate even more now than they did when Curmie was an adolescent over 50 years ago. But the chorus—“Clowns to the left of me / Jokers to the right / Here I am / Stuck in the middle with you”—is what virtually everyone of Curmie’s generation remembers. 

The clowns and jokers were apparently intended to be representative of music industry moguls and hangers-on (hey, if you can’t trust Wikipedia, who can you trust?), but they certainly serve as an apt description of the current practice of censorious asshats at both ends of the political spectrum. Curmie isn’t exactly “in the middle,” but he would be happy to be “with you,” Gentle Reader, in noticing that there are a lot a clowns to our left and jokers to our right. Problems is, they’re a fair bit more insidious than those terms suggest. Curmie’s post from a little over three weeks ago seems to have barely scratched the surface, so here are a few more stories about freedom of expression, presented in the order Curmie became aware of them (not necessarily in actual chronological order). 

At the Smithsonian. Last month, a group of students from Greenville, SC’s Our Lady of the Rosary School visited The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. They wore matching blue beanies, in part to be able to identify each other more readily as they moved around the museum. Thing is, the beanie bore the inscription “Rosary PRO-LIFE.” They had apparently worn the hats while attending pro-life rally shortly before visiting the museum. 

There’s a slight problem there, as kids that age don’t yet have the discernment to make an intelligent personal choice about a controversial issue. They’re little more that props for their parents’ and their school’s ethical/political stance. (Happens all the time from every possible socio-political perspective, of course.) There’s a considerably bigger problem, however, if allegations made by the American Center for Law and Justice, which represents the children’s parents, have any validity. 

The ACLJ claims that museum staff verbally abused the kids and claimed the museum was a “neutral zone” where religious and political messages are forbidden; the kids were thrown out of the museum. ACLJ Executive Director Jordan Sekulow asserts that “The employee who ultimately forced the students to leave the museum was rubbing his hands together in glee as they exited the building.” No, Curmie doesn’t believe that museum employees behave like the villains in 19th-century melodramas, but the museum authorities don’t deny the ejection, and claim to have initiated “immediate training to prevent a re-occurrence of this kind of incident.” 

Sekulow argues that museum staff’s actions constitute “a clear and egregious abuse of the First Amendment, which protects their right to free speech without government interference, and we are ready to take action. A government institution cannot censor an individual's speech, much less speech from the inherently Christian pro-life position.” Wow. The first sentence is absolutely correct; the government, represented by the museum employees, overstepped. Bigtime. The second sentence, including the “much less” business—well, that seems to suggest that Sekulow thinks people who agree with him have more freedom of speech rights than do we mere mortals who disagree with him on a particular issue. Sekulow is a self-righteous ass, but he’s also right that the museum staff behaved outrageously, and that matters more. 

In Lansing, KS. The Laramie Project, a documentary theatre text, i.e., one which is edited rather than written by its creators, had been one of three texts in the curriculum in the high school’s Social Justice Expository Unit in the senior-level English Composition class. The play, produced by the Tectonic Theater project, consists exclusively of “found material”: direct transcripts of interviews, news reports, etc., in the aftermath of the murder of Matthew Shepherd, apparently simply for being gay. 

It appears that the entire unit, which also included Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's essay “We Should All Be Feminists” and the 2016 documentary “13th,” has been scrubbed from the curriculum, despite a committee recommendation that the material remain. That’s because the school board, like so many others, is comprised of members who are lazy, guided more by political affiliation than by any real interest in education, and (probably) stupid. 

The impetus for the removal came from a student’s mother, Kirsten Workman, whose initial objection was that the material was being taught in an English class instead of a history class. Two comments: 1). She’s almost certainly lying. She doesn’t want anything about race or sexual identification taught anywhere. 2). Literature is about something. That may not be true of what one of Curmie’s friends calls “beach novels” (and Curmie likes them as much as the next person does) but higher-end fiction and nonfiction alike have something to say about the world. You can’t read Shakespeare or Dickens or Kafka without thinking about the implications of the worlds they describe… that’s kind of the point. 

Anyway, there were the usual accusations about the right’s current bogeyman, Critical Race Theory, which according to Workman creates students “trained to feel like victims and to be hopeless that they can change social justice or change injustice because we're not teaching them about the tools they have right there at their disposal to make a difference.” Curmie doubts that anything bearing much resemblance to CRT was in fact being taught, but even if it were, the whole point of the theory is that we as a society need to address these issues. Encouraging helplessness couldn’t be further from the reality of the situation. 

Tectonic’s Artistic Director, Moisés Kaufman, has made copies of the script of The Laramie Project available for free to any Lansing student who requests one, and the censorial impulse may indeed have backfired. Seriously, Gentle Reader, when you were an adolescent, which would you have been more likely to read (and Curmie means really read): a class assignment or a free book the grown-ups tell you is too naughty for your consumption? 

Curmie isn’t necessarily predicting this result, but the situation does seem somewhat akin to the political aftermath of the Dobbs ruling. Back in May, Curmie suggested that the “red wave” everyone was predicting would happen in the November elections might not be as overwhelming as the journalistic chattering class would have had us believe. Who was right? 

The Iowa Senate. There are many horrible things about Iowa Senate Bill 1145, which was introduced a couple of weeks ago (it’s in committee hearings now). Most of these, as Peter Greene points out in the article linked above, have to do with mandatory reporting of any students who as much as ponder whether their actual sexual identity matches the plumbing they were born with. Curmie is always uncomfortable with mandatory reporting laws—one of the benefits of retirement is that he is no longer bound by Title 9 restrictions and can exercise judgment on whether or not to report what he strongly suspects to actually be an ill-intentioned rumor. The proposed legislation performs all sorts of gyrations to try to balance the presumed rights of parents against the possibility of child abuse. What it also does, in Greene’s words, is to “[take] a chainsaw to any student hope for privacy.” 

But this is a post about censorship, and that’s a different form of authoritarian bullshit. So, revenons à nos moutons: The bill also prohibits “any program, curriculum, material, test, survey, questionnaire, activity, announcement, promotion, or instruction of any kind relating to gender identity or sexual activity” for grades K-3. Except that it doesn’t, of course. It’s fine to use gender-based pronouns and to talk about mommies and daddies. It’s that icky same-sex parent stuff that they want to outlaw, even if it’s just a recognition of the reality that exists for some of those kids. 

Finally, the bill also seeks to redefine obscenity, with the clear intent of making it easier to censor children’s books (this term serving to describe not merely those ostensibly intended for children, but also those simply in the possession of children). The bill de facto removes the third prong of the Miller test codified by the Burger Court 50 years ago, making an exception only for works of “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value as to minors.” Quoting Greene again: “The very idea that a work with literary, artistic, political or scientific merit could also include a depiction of sex is rejected by this law.” Oh, jolly. 

At Pensacola Christian College. This one is just too predictable. Remember when, a dozen years ago, that Alaska high school wanted to prevent the school’s symphonic jazz choir from performing “Bohemian Rhapsody,” not because of lyrics like “Put a gun against his head. Pulled my trigger; now he’s dead,” but simply because Freddie Mercury was gay? 

Well, apparently one member of the King’s Singers, the internationally-renowned a capella group, is also gay. And some idiot administrator (Curmie apologizes again for the redundancy) decided on forbidding these amazing singers (Curmie has seen them live once and on TV several times) to perform because the school “cannot knowingly give an implied or direct endorsement of anything that violates the Holy Scripture.” Sure. Scripture is actually rather ambiguous on the subject of homosexuality—a lot of Biblical scholars say the injunction so many on the right claim as divine authority for their bigotry is actually just a prohibition against raping male slaves—but it’s pretty clear on stuff like “false witness,” which one suspects is allowed to happen with grim regularity on their campus. 

Curmie would recommend attending a King’s Singers concert to anyone; not so much for attending Pensacola Christian College. But the group was paid, and a religious institution has the legal right to discriminate on the basis of dubious scriptural interpretation. There are worse things… 

Speaking of which: 

The Books of Roald Dahl. Puffin Books, a division of Penguin, has decided to reissue Dahl’s works… with changes to remove that which is “non-inclusive” or “insensitive.” There’s a word for that: censorship. No, not in the legal sense. The publisher has no governmental authority with which to suppress dissent, and apparently the Dahl estate approved the changes, so Puffin has the legal right to bowdlerize the texts, but releasing the revisions under Dahl’s name is problematic at best. For Puffin to call themselves a legitimate publisher raises some pretty significant ethical issues. 

The changes include changes in phrasing, cuts, and even additions. Apparently, there are literally hundreds of alterations, even as the publishers are claiming the changes were “small and carefully considered.” Here are just a few, as cited in the Guardian article linked above:

In The Witches, a paragraph explaining that witches are bald beneath their wigs ends with the new line: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.” [Ew.]

In previous editions of James and the Giant Peach, the Centipede sings: “Aunt Sponge was terrifically fat / And tremendously flabby at that,” and, “Aunt Spiker was thin as a wire / And dry as a bone, only drier.” Both verses have been removed, and in their place are the rhymes: “Aunt Sponge was a nasty old brute / And deserved to be squashed by the fruit,” and, “Aunt Spiker was much of the same / And deserves half of the blame.” [Ugh.]

References to “female” characters have disappeared. Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, once a “most formidable female”, is now a “most formidable woman”. [Sigh.]

Gender-neutral terms have been added in places – where Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Oompa Loompas were “small men”, they are now “small people”. The Cloud-Men in James and the Giant Peach have become Cloud-People. [Oh, FFS]

You can see further examples of Puffin’s inanity here or indeed in any of the other sources linked in this screed. 

If there’s anything good to come out of this travesty, it’s that Puffin is being reviled from the left, right, and non-partisan. On the left, there’s this excoriation on Salon and this from Forward, which, as a Jewish publication, notes Dahl’s undeniable anti-Semitism but concludes, “We have mistaken the art for the artist and lost the specificity that makes his work worthy of new editions. Dahl had many ugly, bigoted views. But, for the most part, they’re not in his books for children.” From the right, there’s similar commentary—from The National Review, Fox News, and The American Spectator. And from non-partisan free speech advocates, there’s PEN America and FIRE. 

Part of the reason for the unanimity of opinion is the fact that Puffin’s decision, coordinated by Inclusive Minds, a UK-based consultancy is dedicated to self-promotion and virtue signaling  “inclusion and accessibility in children’s literature,” is so profoundly inane that no sentient human, irrespective of socio-political biases, could see the changes as anything but an abomination. But Curmie also suspects that both sides see the opportunity to blame the other. The right, obviously, sees the initial impetus as left-wing weenie-ism. The left, meanwhile, views the situation as a multinational corporation looking to squeeze a few more bucks out of prospective readers by issuing “new editions,” which they would have us believe are sufficiently true to the original to be accepted without demur but sufficiently different to require the purchase of the bowdlerized versions. 

Both sides are correct.  Puffin has indeed settled on the perfect storm of the worst impulses of the left and the right. In so doing, they become the villains of the week, and Curmie is quite pleased that they’re currently being hammered from all sides. 

Ultimately, though, Curmie is just trying to make some sense of it all, but he can see it makes no sense at all. Someone should write a song about that.

Wealth and Hubris Just Sort of Go Together

Contrary to the beliefs of some of Curmie’s more conservative acquaintances, he is not, in fact, a socialist (although he’s been accused of worse). His retirement nest egg is tied up in things like stocks and bonds and mutual funds (oh, my!), he believes in personal property, and he advocates for equal opportunity rather than equal outcomes.  

That doesn’t mean, however, that he’s a fan of malignant capitalism.  While the Venn diagram of the extremely rich and the legitimately praiseworthy doesn’t quite look like Little Orphan Annie’s eyes, it’s a hell of a long way from concentric circles. Curmie offers two examples from recent headlines. Both involve corporate entities, but one of those enterprises really boils down to a single person. Let’s start there. 

There do remain a few absolute truths in the world: water is wet, dry ice is cold, and Elon Musk is an asshole. We all know about his narcissism, his hypocrisy, and his unwillingness to take responsibility for the damage he routinely causes. He has demanded that Twitter engineers allow him to bypass the algorithm to make certain his tweets are seen by millions, and he was particularly incensed that Joe Biden’s Super Bowl tweet was seen by more people than his was. Just as a side note, Biden’s was actually kinda cute; Musk’s, now deleted, consisted of three American flags, “Go @Eagles!!!,” and three more flags. Boring is as boring does. 

Oh, and of course a couple weeks back he fired an engineer who had the audacity to tell him the truth instead of what he wanted to hear. Hanging out at the Super Bowl with Rupert Murdoch wasn’t going to do his independent-thinking and anti-media credentials a lot of good, either. Indeed, the difference between Musk and Murdoch is that the latter is at least honest about his belief in unfettered capitalism and his country-club neo-Fascism. 

But alas, Gentle Reader, it gets worse. In one of the most perverse tweets in history, Musk first brags that “Starlink [another of his companies] is the communication backbone of Ukraine, especially at the front lines, where almost all other Internet connectivity has been destroyed,” then tries to defend his unconscionable decision to restrict Ukraine’s ability to use the service to control drones because, get this, “we will not enable escalation of conflict that may lead to WW3.” 

This was in response to a tweet from former astronaut and Navy captain Scott Kelly, who wrote “Defense from a genocidal invasion is not an offensive capability. It’s survival. Innocent lives will be lost.” The rest of us would say “well, duh.” Musk, of course, prefers to spout inanities. Dude, you’re looking into the wrong end of the telescope again. Russia are the invaders, the aggressors, and, frankly, the evil ones. (Curmie saw that look, Gentle Reader: no, not the Russian people, the Russian government.) All Ukraine wants to do is to keep their country, and they’re looking for a way to do that. It’s not Zelenskyy who’s threatening WWIII; it’s the other guy. 

It’s unreasonable, of course, to believe that a wealthy buffoon like Musk would do the right thing, or that he’d refrain from butting in where he had no business (Ukraine’s outgoing ambassador to Germany told him that “F--- off is my very diplomatic reply to you”), but when he’d been (or pretended to be, back when it was more fashionable) a vocal supporter of Ukrainian sovereignty, it might not have been too much to ask that he not actively do the wrong thing. 

Many questions have now been answered, but one remains: who is Elon Musk’s most admired world leader in history—Vladimir Putin… or Neville Chamberlain? 

xxxxx 

The earlier mention of Musk’s Super Bowl tweet and his presence at the game ties in with the other manifestation of corporate arrogance run amok. Curmie refers, of course, to the National Football League. There’s this concept called a “Clean Zone” that the NFL has been pushing for years. This year, this nonsense forbade “temporary signage,” including “Banners (cloth or vinyl), Pennants, Flags, Window paintings, Posters/Flyers, Balloons” in an area of almost two square miles for five weeks, beginning four weeks before the Big Game (you can’t mention the Super Bowl by name, of course, and the NFL actually tried to trademark “Big Game,” too) and extending a week after the game. This latter provision doesn’t make any sense even if corporate greed is somehow a sufficient justification for the restrictions. 

As is often the case, a writer for FIRE provides really good snark: “Sorry parents, but the decorations for your kid’s birthday party will now need the approval of the NFL and the Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee.” Think that’s an exaggeration? Well, the food trucks in Houston in 2017 had the audacity of having the wrong brand of tire. They had to be painted over. Yes, really. This time, though, someone decided to do something about it… more on that in a moment. 

According to an article by Sam Borden and Sara Coello on the ESPN site (linked above), this abuse of wealth and power came as a response to a ploy by another corporate behemoth, Budweiser, in 1999. Apparently Bud was not an official sponsor, but found ways of getting messaging out in the area surrounding the stadium. Jim Steeg, the NFL’s chief goon special events head marketing dude for a long time, whines that “All of a sudden, there were inflatables or signs—they’d buy [parking] lots up and put up things advertising their brands, while your official guys were only getting what was inside the stadium. We had to do something.” 

No, you self-righteous prick, you didn’t. You could have accepted the fact that you can make whatever restrictions you want on properties you control, but neither you nor local city councils can deprive citizens of their first amendment rights just because you can acquire more lucre by doing so. Oh, but the NFL says Clean Zones aren’t just about money: they’re “an important tool in protecting public health, safety and welfare” according to a hosting document for the 2018 Super Bowl in Minneapolis. If you believe that, Gentle Reader, Curmie has an ocean-front property you might be interested in purchasing. It’s in Kansas, but you’re not biased against the Midwest, are you? 

Of course, this isn’t a new phenomenon, or a specifically American one. Curmie wrote about the utter stupidity that surrounded the London Olympics in 2012. The London organizing committee actually hired 286 “enforcement officers” who had no responsibilities other than to protect the interests of corporate sponsors, at the expense of Londoners and out-of-town spectators alike. Curmie is not an expert on British law, but it’s his understanding that there’s no equivalent to the US’s 1st amendment, so what happened there was unconscionable in ethical terms but probably legal. 

Not so, west of the Atlantic. It’s been clear for a long time that the NFL has no scruples and city governments have no spines. This is not news. But there’s a point at which someone has to say enough is enough. That person this year is a man named Bramley Paulin, a property-owner in the affected area. He got the Goldwater Institute involved, and filed suit. 

Quoting the ESPN article here: 

Judge [Brad] Astrowsky, the Phoenix judge, made his views clear: The original Clean Zone ordinance, which gave the NFL or host committee approval power over signage, was “totally antithetical to the principles of limited government” because the host committee is clearly “an entity interested in protecting NFL sponsors and the NFL” as opposed to serving the people of Phoenix.

Astrowsky declared the Clean Zone “unconstitutional,” which of course it has always been, but various other legal challenges have failed to gain traction. 

The city of Phoenix managed to drag out the process enough to all but make the situation moot, however. It wasn’t until the Wednesday before the Super Bowl before Paulin could install signs advertising a company called Max Guard. A few hours later, two men brought a ladder, cleared the fence into Paulin’s property, and removed the signs. They’re caught on tape, but as far as Curmie can ascertain, they’re still at large. 

Curmie, of course, is the embodiment of blissful naïveté, so he would never suggest that the NFL and/or city officials might be implicated in that theft. Were he of a cynical disposition, however, he might suggest that anyone confident of those organizations’ innocence might want to add to that Kansas property noted earlier with a similar one in Iowa. 

Rich people—absurdly rich people, at least—whether as individuals or gathered into an organization or corporation, really think their wealth ought to compensate for their lack of ethics. All it actually does, though, is to aggravate their moral failings.

It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again

 

There is apparently something in the water in St. Paul, MN. How else do we account for the second story in a couple of months involving Islam, calls for the suppression of art, and St. Paul liberal arts colleges? 

You will perhaps recall, Gentle Reader, the brouhaha at Hamline University when art historian Erika López Prater showed a couple of artistic renderings of the prophet Muhammad to her class on global art history. She understood that some Muslim students might object to viewing the images, and gave them fair warning, both in the course syllabus and on class day. 

Still, a student who ignored those warnings, egged on by the advisor to the Muslim Student Association, claimed to have been “blindsided,” and the accusations of Islamophobia popped up faster than zits on prom night. The administration, being the perfect storm of stupidity, laziness, and cowardice, promptly sided with the student without as much as a real investigation, and López Prater was out of a job. 

Ultimately, after nationwide humiliation and a lawsuit filed by López Prater, the university backed down. The faculty, who with one notable exception had earlier cheerfully capitulated to the violation of academic freedom, miraculously became vertebrates apparently overnight and demanded the resignation of the university president. No news on whether that will happen, although Curmie doubts it. 

About a mile and a half from Hamline’s campus is Macalester College, a slightly smaller but considerably more prestigious institution. Curmie actually spent some time on that campus many years ago: the place Curmie was teaching at the time was in the same consortium, and he was one of his college’s representatives at some sort of colloquium held there (Curmie forgets the details). 

Anyway, the college’s Law Warschaw Gallery opened an exhibition of work by Iranian-American artist Taravat Talepasand. Talepasand, to say the least, doesn’t shy away from controversy. She is overtly feminist and calls her art “unapologetic”; the blurb accompanying the exhibition says she “explores the cultural taboos that reflect on gender and political authority.” Judging by what Curmie has seen of her work, both in articles on the exhibition and on her website, that would seem to be a fair description. 

Among the items on display are the neon sign you see pictured above, with the words “Woman, Life, Freedom” written in both Farsi and English—this slogan became a rallying cry of the Kurdish independence movement, widely adopted by women’s groups worldwide to show support for women protesting in Iran. It came to particular prominence in response to the death of Mahsa Amini, who was beaten to death by Iran’s Guidance Patrol (“morality police”) for wearing her hijab “improperly.” 

Other pieces, some of which you can see in the links above and here (note, by the way, the endorsement of Dr. López Prater, who coincidentally is now teaching a course at Macalester), are more overtly provocative. Curmie quotes here from the excellent article in Sahan Journal linked above):

One drawing shows Talepasand’s mother standing with the woman who funded her education. A phallic arch looms behind the women. The descriptive gallery label that accompanies the drawing explains that this arch represents the shadow of male power….

Some of the images are yet more provocative. One graphite and watercolor drawing shows a man beheading two women. An egg tempera painting called “Mohammed Meets Jesus” shows a teddy bear with a Ken doll, an allusion to the Sudanese teddy bear blasphemy case.

And some graphite drawings show the bodies of Muslim women wearing hijabs or niqabs—clothing that is usually meant to preserve modesty. Two drawings, titled Blasphemy X and Blasphemy IX, show a niqab-clad woman pulling up her robe to reveal lingerie underneath. A series of porcelain sculptures show women who are entirely covered with a niqab, except for exposed, exaggerated breasts.

This is an exhibition explicitly designed to ruffle feathers, in other words. It did. In what is, alas, a predictable response, student Ikran Noor heard about the exhibition from a friend and then sought it out—well, sort of. She never went inside, viewing the images in the exhibition catalog. She then pronounced herself “degraded, dehumanized.” Give me a fucking break. If you’re that tender, perhaps a university (or indeed any place requiring adult interaction) isn’t for you. 

Naturally, she plays the victim card: she’s one of the only students at Macalester to wear a hijab, for example. She whines that “At a predominantly white institution, when I’m looking at who’s attending the school, who’s walking into this exhibit, without understanding and nuance, then it’s quite harmful.” And who, pray tell, is “harmed,” and in what way? You didn’t like some of it. Fine. Look away. 

Above all, don’t spew tripe like supporting the cause of Iranian women while simultaneously seeking to have the university take down some of the more explicit pieces. In other words, your argument is that if you agree with the politics of an artwork, it’s fine, but if you don’t, then no one should be able to see it. 

Curmie hopes that some of his former theatre history students will recognize here the foundational philosophy of socialist realism. (For the benefit of everyone else: socialist realism was the literally Stalinist belief that only art that actively supported the Party could be allowed; even non-political art was derided as “formalist,” sometimes resulting in the artist’s receiving a one-way trip to Siberia... or worse.) 

Anyway, the university caved, but less so than might be expected. They shrouded some of the work behind black curtains, installed frosted glass on some gallery windows, and issued a wimpy apology: “We… recognize community impact and understand that pieces in the exhibition have caused harm [there’s that word, again] to members of our Muslim community.” 

Miraculously, however, for an institution as self-consciously international and liberal as Macalester, the line quoted above comes in the context of the announcement that the exhibition would re-open with a few relatively minor changes designed to “prevent unintentional or non-consensual viewing of certain works.” And they added a content warning. 

Naturally, the complaining students believed that the university wasn’t listening to their concerns. Rather, the administration also listened to other Muslim students who staunchly supported Talepasand (as well as to other students, faculty, and staff), and acted about as appropriately as they could under the circumstances, except for the whimpering apology. 

Noor and her supporters, all the while pretending to understand free expression, circulated a petition, citing alleged “targeting and harming an already small community” and “the deep pain felt by many of their students,” urging Macalester to close the exhibition. Even enlisting friends from outside the college, however, they mustered only about 80 signatures. The petition was posted on the door to the gallery, a decision Talepasand called a “violation.” It was, of course. 

When Curmie was an undergrad, all student mailboxes were in the fine arts building, and you’d have to take a pretty circuitous route from most of campus to check your mail without walking past the glass-windowed art gallery. The theatre department’s scene shop, also with windows, was immediately opposite the mailboxes. This was all intentional on the part of the college, of course. 

If Macalester has something like the same phenomenon—that students pretty much can’t avoid looking into the art gallery on their way to do other business—then the frosted glass and construction paper, blocking the view from the outside, make a fair amount of sense; so does the content warning. Offending people for the sake of offending people doesn’t play well in Curmieville. 

It might be worth mentioning here that FIRE is predictably foam-flecked in their assessment, describing Macalester’s resolution of the issue as:

…a rather sinister way to define controversial imagery: not just as something that could offend or upset, but as something that violates an accidental viewer’s consent. It’s a comically bad lesson to teach students that they should expect the words and images they encounter through the course of their lives to be understood as an exercise of their own consent, and not another’s right to free expression. That it’s employed for a show that in part protests the violation of women’s rights is an added layer of absurdity.

This time, Curmie doesn’t agree with FIRE, or at least with this part of their screed. Their argument may be reasonable in legal terms, but it’s just daft in terms of real-world application. Macalester’s actions are simply the equivalent of telling a prospective movie-goer that this film is rated R, and why.

Shutting down even part of the exhibition because someone might be offended is deeply problematic, but requiring a patron simply to have to walk through an unlocked door to see it—a situation de facto demanded by the overwhelming majority of art galleries and museums across the country and around the world—doesn’t strike Curmie as much of a violation of free expression. 

Indeed, since that brief shutdown, Macalester seems to have made good choices in both ethical and political terms. To say they handled their situation better than Hamline handled theirs is rather like saying that NBA centers tend to be taller than jockeys.

The Game Was Good. Not Much Else Was.

This is the sort of image that ought to make
the NFL insist on better field conditions.
It won’t, of course.

It’s the aftermath of Super Sunday, that annual opportunity for the National Football League to demonstrate its obeisance to capitalist overlords with garish and vulgar displays of narcissism and hypocrisy, for advertisers to spend literally millions on commercials that are neither endearing nor humorous, for an over-hyped and over-produced half-time show appreciated by the fans of the artist in question and no one else, and of course for Fox’s attempt to find the worst possible team of broadcasters. 

But wait… that’s not all! (We’ll get to that in a moment. Read on, Gentle Reader.) 

We can’t blame the boring commercials on the NFL, and—to be fair—Curmie missed some because he didn’t watch much of the pre-game slop and a couple of ads he did see were actually good (Amazon’s was both cute and sentimental, with a nice twist at the end; Workday’s was actually funny—“Hi, I’m Ozwald” is good stuff). And the game’s officiating was no worse than usual: a couple of penalties missed, a reversal that shouldn’t have happened… but the call that had Eagles fans (and Fox designated moron analyst Greg Olsen) in a tizzy was actually correct, as even Eagles’ cornerback James Bradberry admitted: “It was a holding. I tugged his jersey. I was hoping they would let it slide.” 

We can’t expect much from the announcers, either. Play-by-play dude Kevin Burkhardt made a number of objective mistakes, but he’s not as awful as Joe Buck was, so there’s that. Olsen is a blowhard, given to stating the obvious as if it were Solomonic wisdom. 

Inexplicably, he got a lot of adulation for his call of a play late in the game. With the Chiefs well into range for a potentially game-winning field goal and a little under two minutes on the clock, KC ran Jerick McKinnon off left tackle. He broke through the front line and could have scored a touchdown had he wanted to do so. But as the Idiot Olsen screamed “He’s got to get down,” he did, staying inbounds and allowing Kansas City to run down the clock so that the Eagles had only a single shot at a Hail Mary after Harrison Butker kicked a chip-shot field goal. 

Sports Illustrated’s Andy Nesbitt gasped that “That is so good. His energy and sense of urgency on that call were exactly what that play needed, and Olsen made a dramatic moment feel dramatic, which is what good announcers do.” All this proves is that Nesbitt is even stupider than Olsen, which is no small hurdle to clear. 

Here’s the thing. First, it wasn’t a dramatic moment at all; making the mundane “feel dramatic” is what people who don’t understand drama do. Second, Olsen trod all over Burkhardt’s call, making the game about himself (he’s trying to be the NFL’s version of Bill Walton or Dick Vitale, either of whom will make Curmie watch a different game, listen on the radio, or hit the mute button). Third, the two announcers had just discussed what the Chief’s strategy should be. Burkhardt even says they “could essentially run it down to the field goal try.” 

Earlier, Olsen argues for not scoring the touchdown, but he doesn’t say why. There are two kinds of people who watch the Super Bowl: those who know something about football and those who don’t but who take advantage of the opportunity to have a party with friends and loved ones. The former group sees the Chiefs’ forgoing the touchdown as a likely if not obvious strategy, so Olsen isn’t telling us anything. The latter might wonder why you wouldn’t want to score a touchdown. The answer—that you’d rather be ahead by 3 with 5 seconds remaining than ahead by 7 with over a minute and a half left and a Pro Bowl quarterback on the other sideline—went unspoken throughout. 

Of course, Fox also felt compelled to show us all the celebrities at the game. Curmie remembers LeBron James and Paul McCartney; there were others. Exactly why anyone should care surpasses Curmie’s feeble ken, but it did serve as a nice reminder that there was virtually no one at the game who wasn’t stinking rich: the average ticket price was close to $8800. Note: because the average fan can buy tickets only on the secondary market, there is no real “face value ticket,” and different distributers offer different deals. But hey, you could get a crappy seat across from the corner of the endzone for a mere $5,308. But if you wanted one of those luxury boxes, that’d run you between $1.5 million and $2 million—they were “in high demand,” after all. Of course, several people can fit into one of those boxes, so it could work out to only $100-200K per person. 

Curmie’s favorite moment was when we got to see Elon Musk sharing a box with Rupert Murdoch. Musk was even looking in the direction of the game, although whether he was paying attention isn’t clear. Fox’s Burkhardt, of course, felt compelled to marvel at the two “brilliant” men; Curmie supposes that the more accurate term, “narcissistic sociopaths,” would be too many syllables. The shot also underscores the fraudulence of Musk’s claim to being independently minded or anti-media, but you already knew that, didn’t you, Gentle Reader? 

Oh, and we mustn’t forget Terry Bradshaw’s bizarre encouragement of hefty Chiefs head coach Andy Reid to “waddle over here” for a post-game interview. Just as many people initially thought Sylvester Stallone was a great actor because he couldn’t possibly be as stolid and inarticulate as Rocky Balboa (he was), lots of us thought Bradshaw had carefully cultivated his good-ol’-boy image, pretending (we thought) to intentionally play into Hollywood Henderson’s great line that Bradshaw “couldn’t spell ‘cat’ if you spotted him ‘c-a-.‘” It turns out, alas, that he really is that stupid. And crass. And mean-spirited. He should get a job writing Super Bowl commercials; most of them appear to have been written by drunken frat boys who think they’re hilarious, which is certainly the persona Bradshaw seems intent on emulating. 

But the most egregious displays were by the NFL itself. We can start with the half-time performance. Curmie is not a fan of Rihanna, which is fine. A lot of friends thought she was wonderful; they are absolutely entitled to that opinion, even if Curmie thought the lengthy performance (which more than doubled the length of the half-time break) was boring and more about announcing the star’s pregnancy than anything else. 

All that, though, is perfectly reasonable. A halftime show Curmie that would really like would no doubt bore younger viewers. Curmie objects, rather, to the hype about how Rihanna didn’t get paid for her performance. Her estimated net worth is about $1.3 billion (yes, “billion,” with a “b”)—no multi-million dollar donations to charity (à la J.K. Rowling) or attempts to influence policy about an issue she knows nothing about (à la Bill Gates or Elon Musk) for her, apparently—so we might suspect that the free publicity will be enough to leave her above the poverty line. 

The point is that everybody else involved in that show had damned well better have been paid: the choreographer, dancers, lighting designer and technicians, sound techs, computer programmers and operators, the engineers who created and built those amazing LED rising platforms and the rigging that made them safe, the techs who got all that machinery on and off the stage in mere minutes. Most if not all of those folks are union workers (see this graphic of the unions involved), so they were appropriately recompensed for their time and expertise. Add in the cost of the equipment, and the total pricetag had to have been in eight figures (yes, Apple paid for some of it). Certainly the NFL could have spent a little less on glitz and made a more generous contribution to the Pat Tillman Foundation if that’s a cause they actually believe in rather than one they think looks good to fans. 

But it’s the pre-game festivities where your particular political and quasi-political philosophies come into play, Gentle Reader. If you lean a little to the left, you no doubt winced at the hijacking of Pat Tillman’s legacy by the very military that killed him: no, not just put him in harm’s way, killed him and strove valiantly to cover up the evidence of having done so. Even the Military Times is raising an eyebrow over the whitewashing of Tillman’s death. 

Tillman, the former Arizona Cardinals safety who turned down a multi-million dollar offer in order to enlist in the army in the aftermath of 9/11, was a legitimate hero. Curmie’s pacifist friends might object to that term, but it is undeniable that he rejected personal wealth in order to follow a path he believed led to the greater good. Of course, he thought he’d be sent to Afghanistan—you know, where the threat was located—but ended up in Iraq, instead. 

Significantly, he regarded the invasion of Iraq as “fucking illegal,” and generally objected to US policy in the area. He was subsequently transferred to Afghanistan, where he was killed by friendly fire; the military then proceeded to burn his uniform and body armor to conceal the truth. 

The Pat Tillman Foundation is an honorable organization, as far as Curmie can determine, and their honorees are worthy recipients. But, as Jay Willis tweeted, “Obviously the Army killing Pat Tillman and covering it up afterwards is the worst thing the U.S. military did to him, but the years they’ve spent rolling out his portrait backed by some inspirational music as a recruiting tool is a surprisingly close second.” 

Of course, all this ties in with the NFL’s simplistic and repellent conflation of patriotism and militarism, exemplified by the now ubiquitous pre-game flyover by fighter jets (your tax dollars at work!). Ah, but if your predilections tilt right-ward, you were no doubt exasperated by the breathy announcement that all of those pilots this time were (gasp!) women. (Who cares?) Curmie is not quite as inured to quotas and virtue-signaling as he would like to be. Or maybe that’s a good thing. 

There was also the treatment of the national anthem as what Jack Marshall has rightfully described as “the opening act,” as it was followed by both “America the Beautiful” (bad enough), and “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which is sometimes referred to as the “black national anthem,” suggesting not inclusion but separatism. Curmie frankly doesn’t care if he ever hears the Star Spangled Banner at a sporting event ever again, but if you’re going to play it, give it the respect it deserves, and that isn’t as the antepenultimate song, the warmup for the finale. 

Ah, but Curmie promised you a “that’s not all” story, didn’t he, Gentle Reader? Here it is: the NFL’s most glaring failure was the condition of the field. SB Nation’s headline that “The playing surface at the 2023 Super Bowl is basically a big Slip ‘N Slide” may be a bit hyperbolic, but it’s not terribly wide of the mark. It was a minor miracle that no one suffered a potentially career-ending injury from the slippery turf. Both teams’ kickers had their plant foot slide out from under them (that’s Eagles kicker Jake Elliott on the second-half kickoff in the photo above); ball-carriers and pass-rushers alike looked like something out of a silent movie comedy as they slid around. And apparently the half-time show made conditions even worse.

The grass itself was bad enough, but where it had been painted over (the NFL just can’t resist hyping itself) was worse: enough so that even the Idiot Olsen worried at game’s end that the easy game-winning field goal attempt might not be so easy, as the kick would come from the painted part of the field, which included virtually everything between the hashmarks from about the 17 to 33 yard-lines… where the overwhelming majority of point-after and field goal attempts take place, of course. 

Eagles defensive end Haason Reddick called it “the worst field [he’d] ever played on.” That, shall we say, is not commentary one wants to hear about the sport’s signature event. It’s important to point out that the Eagles weren’t making excuses—head coach Nick Sirianni said “It’s not like we were playing on the on ice and they were playing on grass.” 

Two additional points need to be made. First, the slipperiness of that turf has been an issue for a long time—time enough to notice and to do something. The Chiefs complained about field conditions when they played the Cardinals back in the season-opener. Injuries to Butker and cornerback Trent McDuffie, the Chiefs’ first-round draft choice, were both attributed to the slippery field. 

Another rather significant game—the NCAA national semi-final between TCU and Michigan—played on that field also featured players for both teams sliding around. Whoever is in charge of that turf needs a good talking-to at the very least. Which brings us to the other big point: there was lots of grandstanding about the grass prior to the game about the new $800,000 turf.

There was a puff piece in England’s Daily Mail, of all places, about 94-year-old groundskeeper George Toma who, we might reasonably surmise, kinda wishes he’d retired last year. And there were self-promoting posts from two different sources—the United States Golf Association (well, actually Golf Digest on the USGA’s behalf), and Oklahoma State University. The latter, at least, is now scrambling to say that their grass was only the underlayer, that it was some other totally different top layer that was the problem. Who knows, they may even be telling the truth, but we sure as hell wouldn’t be hearing about that part if the field had been fit for an early-season 1-A high school game. 

The bottom line is more concerning. Eight years ago, Curmie wrote about the decision to play the Women’s World Cup on artificial turf, suggesting that FIFA a). was being sexist, and b). really couldn’t care less about the health and well-being of the players. The NFL can’t be accused of sexism, and they’ve long since demonstrated their indifference to injuries such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, but this breaks new ground. Football is a rough sport, and injuries are an inevitable part of the game.  What we’re talking about here are acute injuries that could readily be prevented.  What is worse: the NFL not only doesn’t care about players, they don’t even care about the game. 

We should have known that already, but some of us held onto the naïve belief that no one could possibly be that stupid or uncaring. We were wrong. It’s time to admit it.

Stupidity? Cowardice? Over-Reaction? You Decide.

Students protesting what they say was an attempt to
censor their Black History Month program

A couple of days ago, Curmie’s netpal Jack Marshall at Ethics Alarms posted a piece titled (before the colon) “Roshomon Ethics” (well, yes, it should be “Rashomon,” but let he who is without typos cast the first snark). Jack’s point, referencing the classic film by Akira Kurosawa (it was later adapted into a play by Fay and Michael Kanin), was that different people will see the see the same event—in this case the murder of a samurai—fundamentally differently, filtered through their idiosyncratic perspectives and self-interest. That is, the characters are not necessarily lying, although the accounts are mutually exclusive. And the viewer is granted no closure. 

This case is similar, with the one exception being that it’s extremely difficult to believe that someone isn’t lying. The problem is that the points of view we hear represent two of the most mendacious groups imaginable: those who cannot resist the siren song of being perceived as victimized, and high school administrators looking to cover their collective ass in a situation of their own making. 

Neither is to be believed implicitly, but at least this one is at least disjunctive: a white school administrator either did or did not tell the student organizers of a Black History Month program at Hillcrest High School in Tuscaloosa, Alabama to omit events from prior to the 1970s from their presentation because it they would make administrators “uncomfortable,” a lovely irony in that it’s usually the students who make such claims. 

The school denies the allegation. Well, of course they do.  There’s also a charge that black students faced stricter school dress codes and lower academic expectations. The former claim may well be true; the latter certainly is, as it is what Affirmative Action/DEI/”anti-racism” campaigns are all about. 

What is undeniable is that a large group of students (estimated variously at “more than 200” to “about 300”) walked out of classes in protest. The school seems not to have made any attempt to prevent the walkout. Indeed, Hillcrest High School Principal Jeff Hinton said he expected students to protest and asked teachers to “respect their decision” to walk out or remain in class. 

Tuscaloosa County Schools System Director of Student Services Ty Blocker is quoted as saying that “TCSS supports our students in expressing themselves and including all parts of history, such as slavery and the civil rights movement, in their program.” 

So what happened to cause the protest? To hear the school tell it, “It is not true that faculty or staff supervising the program told students that history prior to 1970 could not be included in the program. This is a rumor started by someone not part of the student group creating the program.” The local NAACP President, Lisa Young, proclaims that “there are too many students saying the same thing for it to be untrue.” What passes for logic in this declaration is absolutely stunning in its idiocy… which doesn’t mean the students’ allegations are unfounded, only that rumors’ ability to achieve viral status is hardly an indication of their veracity. 

Curmie has chronicled a good many cases of school administrators doing transcendently stupid things, and he’s undoubtedly missed a lot more than he’s written about. As moronic as this? Well, that’s a pretty high bar for ineptitude, but, alas, it seems more than plausible that someone in a position of educational authority could indeed have said something this dim-witted. 

There are claims, too, that if the as of yet publicly identified administrator did indeed attempt to restrict the chronological breadth of the program, it may have been out of concern how to negotiate with the state’s controversial 2021 resolution that prohibits teaching “social or political ideologies that promote one race or sex above another.” Critical Race Theory is not specifically mentioned, but, as an article on AL.com points out, the legislation came about “during the national fervor over the academic theory.” 

Nor is it coincidental that the bill is worded so vaguely. Using one set of ideological blinders, the mere fact of a Black History Month is problematic; discussions of the fact that someone like Martin Luther King, Jr. not merely existed, but was necessary are particularly so. Teachers, once able to devise their own curricula according to—you know—their professional judgment as to what their students needed to know at a particular point in their academic development, are now looking over their shoulders, unclear where that line between good pedagogy and the impermissible is drawn by politicians who really couldn’t care less about education as long as the newspaper spells their name correctly.

Even if the administrator(s?) spoke from a position of extreme caution rather than actual advocacy, however, if they did indeed say what is alleged, we’ve got a major problem. Obviously, any high school curriculum that skirts around anything that might be regarded as problematic by someone else is born of cowardice rather than pedagogy. Slavery happened. The Tulsa Race Massacre happened. The Civil Rights movement happened. Black life in America did not begin with Beyoncé (or even with B.B. King). 

Is that what happened—a moment of stupidity or pusillanimity, whichever it was? Or was it an over-reaction to the slightest hint of something that could have been actively, perhaps even intentionally, misconstrued? Chances are, we’ll never know for sure.

It appears that there are racial concerns at the school that extend past what was or was not said about the Black History Month program. These may or not be relevant to the situation at hand: if there’s a spirit of distrust, that could lead to misunderstandings, although as noted earlier, this seems like a disjunctive question. Whether the initial contretemps is the fault of the school or not, it appears that at least they’re trying to get to the bottom of what happened, and to try to make the future better than the present. That may be all we can hope for.

Reefer and Madness at Iowa State

Riddle me this, Gentle Reader: 

What should a university do if one of their vehicles is photographed parked outside a legal marijuana dispensary? 

The correct answer, of course, is nothing. 

Guess what the idiot administration (that expression does border on the redundant, doesn’t it?) at Iowa State University did. Ah, you’re a clever one, Gentle Reader: you’ve already sussed that they did something remarkable in its stupidity. 

The van in question was being used by the club lacrosse team on a trip to a game in Colorado. Naturally, the university suspended the team’s right to use university-owned vehicles, because showboating punishing students who’d done nothing wrong violating the 1st amendment protecting the reputation of the university was paramount. 

So, what, exactly, happened? It appears that a group of post-adolescent young men got hungry about lunchtime. (I know, Gentle Reader, this all seems so implausible, but go with me here.) They stopped to eat at a restaurant on their way to the game, but apparently the nearest available parking space, still nearby, was in front of the High Plainz Strains Dispensary, a marijuana dispensary lawfully operating under Colorado state law. Someone anonymously photographed the van and posted the pic to the ISU Barstool Instagram page. 

FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) wants to talk about legalities, as they should. They point to a case from a few years ago in which ISU got sued (by FIRE) and ended up paying nearly a million dollars in damages for rescinding an earlier approval of a t-shirt designed by university’s chapter of NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws). The shirt depicted Cy (short for “Cyclone,” no doubt) the Cardinal, the school’s mascot, and text reading things like “NORML ISU Supports Legalizing Marijuana.” One iteration of the shirt can be seen here; another is here. 

Curmie, not being a lawyer, wonders whether Iowa State would have had a stronger case if they’d centered their defense on the unauthorized use of the school mascot, but the fact is, they lost, perhaps because they’d already approved the shirt before reversing course. Doesn’t matter, of course, expect for the fact that the current kerfuffle is on even shakier ground: a van parked near a legal marijuana dispensary? Seriously? 

Curmie remembers a letter to the editor or editorial published in the school newspaper at a place he used to teach. The point was that tuition was too high, and it must be because faculty were paid too much (guess what… we weren’t). There was an accompanying photograph of a high-end sports car parked near (there’s that word again) campus. Any kind of college-specific identification—a campus parking pass, for example—was conspicuous by its absence. But that leap of the imagination masquerading as analysis was perpetrated by a disgruntled post-adolescent, not by someone who purports to know how to run a university. 

ISU claims that the team somehow violated the university’s apparently divinely-inspired decree which forbids “displaying conduct that is incompatible with the University’s function as an educational institution and the purpose of the Sports Club Program.” That’s a rather vague injunction, very much ripe for abuse. 

FIRE counters by noting that “ISU may not punish students for third-party expression that may embarrass the university,” and that “Even if the club lacrosse team was responsible for taking and posting the photo, ISU still would not have authority to punish these students, as expression that damages the university’s reputation remains protected by the First Amendment.” Oh, and they point out that Iowa State didn’t provide due process. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln… 

Whether the school’s action is legally permissible is for the attorneys to settle. Whether it’s outrageously moronic, whether there is literally no evidence to suggest the lacrosse players did anything even a little problematic, whether it brings more shame to Iowa State than even a photo of the entire team toking up while leaning against the van in their ISU uniforms would have done—these things are clear to anyone who can outthink a banana. 

At one level, Curmie can’t improve on the snark of FIRE’s Perry Fein: “It seems ISU won’t just violate your First Amendment rights if you talk about weed. They’ll do it even if someone randomly mentions you and Ms. Mary Jane in the same social media post.” But Curmie does scratch his head a little, though: back forty-something years ago, when he was a little more aware of the drug culture than he is now, we were already laughing at people who used the term “Mary Jane.” Either it’s made a comeback, or Mr. Fein is very, very old, indeed.

These Hearings Could Be Really Valuable If They Were Run By Competent People

A couple of days ago, lawyer/blogger/public intellectual wannabe Jonathan Turley headlined one of his pieces “Congress is Set to Expose What May be the Largest Censorship System in United States History.” Given that Turley is not prone to hysteria, that deserves a “wow” and a read. 

What he’s talking about is the forthcoming series of hearings to be conducted by the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. 

Curmie saw your eyebrow go up, Gentle Reader. Yes, it’s a bullshit title, and yes, it’s partisan as hell (the January 6 committee wasn’t?). And the members are among the worst political hacks either party has to offer (and that’s saying rather a lot): Jim Jordan, Darrell Issa, Matt Gaetz, Linda Sanchez, Debbie Wasserman Schultz… Curmie can’t decide whether “rogue’s gallery” or “clown car” is the more appropriate term. 

Unfortunately, committee membership notwithstanding, we really do need to get to the bottom of what the hell is going on in decision-making at the major social media platforms, and, more importantly, of the qualitative and quantitative interference by government officials in the suppression of stories that might affect the electoral process. 

It’s enough of a problem that private corporations like Twitter and Meta (i.e., Facebook) can arbitrarily decide what can and can’t be posted on their platforms. Curmie doesn’t use Twitter enough to have run into any problems with them, but Facebook’s inane obeisance to an algorithm that doesn’t work has been a thorn in his side for years, for both my personal account and as Curmie. Some, but by no means all, of Curmie’s frustrations have been referenced on this blog: here, here, and here, for example. 

But what seems to have happened at Twitter in particular is far more troubling than an overzealous algorithm. Let’s be up front about this: a lot of this came to light when Elon Musk bought Twitter and began his campaign to restore free speech, truth, justice, and the American way. As might be expected when anything gets turned over to a wealthy, eminently mediocre, narcissist, not everything went as well as we were assured it will. But, to be fair, some good did come out of Musk’s cleansing of the stables. 

Most of this was the result of Musk’s release of thousands of documents from Twitter, and Matt Taibbi’s reporting, such as the revelation that “Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the [Hunter Biden laptop] story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be ‘unsafe.’ They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g., child pornography.” Indeed, there seems to have been a significant amount of pressure on Twitter from the FBI and even the CIA to quash stories that could work to the benefit of the Biden campaign’s opposition. 

As everyone is no doubt aware, President Trump was “permanently” suspended from the platform (he’s been restored since the Musk takeover); less well known is spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany’s being locked out of her account. Perhaps even more insidious, because less apparent, was the process of “shadowbanning,” in which conservative voices (in this case) weren’t silenced, per se, but their reach was significantly curtailed. Among those shadowbanned: Fox News host Dan Bongino, Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, and Stanford University's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.  No, Curmie doesn’t think they’re worth listening to, but that’s not the point.

By the way, Curmie is well aware that only the government can “censor” someone if we use that term correctly, but it’s difficult to argue with Turley that what happened at Twitter amounted to “censorship by surrogate.” One other thought: the FBI has a grim history of interference in public affairs, going back to the racist tactics of J. Edgar Hoover. Maybe it’s time for a complete overhaul, huh? 

Indeed, it is telling that Curmie, hardly a GOP partisan, found himself relying on sources like Fox News and the Washington Examiner to write this piece. We can reasonably believe that such media outlets aren’t necessarily going to provide unbiased representations of events, but the more left-leaning agencies are deafening in their silence about misbehavior that makes their guys look like the unethical authoritarians that so many of them truly are. 

Of course—equal time and all that—the Trump administration and campaign were also corrupt as hell, and also tried to strongarm Twitter (they just weren’t as successful at it) but that doesn’t excuse the unethical tactics on the other side. Even apart from the distasteful whataboutism in this approach, however, is the saddening fact that the majority of Democrats, or at least of Democratic pols, seem to want to respond with crap like “the First Amendment isn’t absolute.” 

No, of course, it isn’t, but the exceptions are things like treason, slander and incitement, not political difference. California congressman Ro Khanna appears to be the only elected Democrat concerned about stuff like freedom of speech. Expression is protected, even if it’s wrong, even if it’s intentionally wrong. That’s what the 1st Amendment is about, and Curmie agrees that messy is better than repressive. 

If someone gets the facts wrong, then correct the record. Hell, you can even make fun of them for being an idiot, especially for the type who blame Joe Biden for closing schools in 2020 or Barack Obama for 9/11. Slap a statement on the post that the facts are wrong. But shutting down someone’s account? That’s not only unethical, it’s bad political strategy if they find out (and they will) and can play martyr about it. Bad speech is overcome by good speech, not by suppression. 

Curmie does understand that the Twitters and Facebooks of the world have to negotiate a landscape which simultaneously holds them responsible for content posted there and discourages interference. It’s possible that the execs really believe they’re doing us all a service, that if they think someone is lying or making shit up, they should do something. And reducing the spam-and-scam would be really nice, too. But this isn’t the way to do it. 

Anyway, the hearings are happening. If they don’t turn into the demon spawn of a witch-hunt and a poorly-written sitcom, they could be of tremendous value. Chances they’ll turn into the demon spawn of a witch-hunt and a poorly-written sitcom: about 98%.