Authoritarianism and the GOP: One Example

This may or may not be a photo of Ron DeSantis 
responding to a question about how much he cares about
First Amendment guarantees.

This started as a comment, or to be more precise, a comment to a comment to a comment, on a post on Ethics Alarms. Curmie had taken issue with the idea, propounded in the original post, that no Democrat could legitimately call a Republican authoritarian. He was then challenged to support his position. Herewith, that argument, which has grown rather long for a blog post (even for Curmie), let alone for a comment. I’ll post the link to this post rather than clutter that page… and rather than writing a lengthy essay that doesn’t go on my own site. 

First point: let’s drop the nonsense about hearing about Republican authoritarianism “only by those who have no difficulty demanding that others bow to their desires.” I have no tolerance for slimy or authoritarian antics from the left, even if I (generally) agree with their goals. But arguing those shenanigans don’t also happen from the right suggests either willful blindness or mendacity. As I have suggested elsewhere, the tactics and targets are a little different; that’s all. 

Curmie could fill volumes with examples of Republican authoritarianism, but this is going to be long enough as it is; let’s choose one GOP pol and one topic: Ron DeSantis and education. 

We start with the decree a couple of years ago that all faculty and students at state universities must identify their political affiliation. Not only that, the forms were not anonymous. I could see some tortured logic by which tracking aggregate percentages of anonymous student responses might serve to prove “indoctrination” or whatever, but little could be less relevant than the political persuasions of faculty. 

I think in particular of two colleagues at the small midwestern college where I used to teach. A student couldn’t get a major in Political Science without taking at least a couple of courses apiece from the two of them. They were good friends who happened to disagree about which political party best represented the needs and desires of the citizenry. One was the county chair of the Republican party when I was there; the other ran for Congress as a Democrat a couple years after I left. Few students were unaware of their professors’ politics, but left-leaning and right-leaning students alike virtually unanimously sang the praises of both. That’s what is supposed to happen; more importantly, it’s what does happen far more often than not; it doesn’t make headlines because it is in fact so commonplace. 

Furthermore, as I wrote on my own blog, “Diversity of perspective doesn’t require hiring both liberals and conservatives; it requires faculty who know what the hell they’re doing. Curmie has taught plays that are very Catholic, very Jewish, very Buddhist, very Hindu, very atheist; he’s taught plays that advocate for monarchy, for democracy, for socialism, for capitalism, for anarchy. Do I really need to tell you, Gentle Reader, that I’m not an adherent to all of these philosophies?” 

Was this effort by DeSantis useless? Pretty much (but see below). Creepy? Absolutely. Authoritarian? Arguably, but not conclusively. 

So let’s move on to the “Don’t Say Gay” law. No, those words are never used in the bill. But the reality on the ground suggests serial repression. Literally every restriction of freedom of expression purports to be grounded in higher ideals. To some on the left, censorship is legitimized by resisting the spread of racism, homophobia, or sexism; to some on the right, it’s the need to promote American values or to protect children. 

To some degree, there’s validity in all of these points of view: those goals are admirable. There are, of course, places where certain kinds of dissent are inappropriate: think Fred Phelps protesting at military funerals, for example. But there is, and should be, a difference between that which is inappropriate and that which is illegal. 

More to the point: this particular legislation is (intentionally, I believe) so vague that virtually any action could be seen to be in violation. In the area of race, for example, Florida schools, inspired by DeSantis and his acolytes, have removed from school curricula or libraries books about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks, and a film about Ruby Bridges. It was enough that one (count ‘em, one!) mother complained that “It might suggest that white people hate black people.” (Guess what? They did.) Oh, also removed were books about baseball players Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente. Make that make sense. (Yes, some of those books were subsequently restored to the shelves. That hardly legitimizes their initial removal.) 

A Florida teacher recently got into trouble for showing a Disney movie to her class. No one seems to dispute the fact that the actual plot of the film was relevant to what she was teaching. Ah, but the lead character appears to be gay. And according to the (il)logic of many on the right—some of whom have posted on Ethics Alarms—that makes it about sex, and we need to protect kids from the reality that gay people exist that. These folks may indeed truly believe that a romantic relationship between a man and a woman is based on love, but such a union between two men or two women is exclusively about sex. I don’t; indeed, I find it hypocritical at best, abhorrent at worst. 

Plus, of course, there’s the utterly irresponsible and indeed slanderous suggestion that simply recognizing gay people as human is “grooming.” If you’re really concerned about grooming, come back when you’ve cleaned up the Catholic Church. But, more to the immediate point, the words of a popular meme resonate: “Teaching kids about frogs isn’t grooming them to be amphibians.” 

I’d note further that whatever one may think of the propriety of same-sex marriage or the ability for such couples to adopt, one thing is irrefutable: it’s not little Johnny’s fault that he has two dads. Abusing him or even excluding him from the group, which is what denying his lived reality does, is reprehensible. 

But, as they say in the late-night infomercials, wait! That’s not all! It may be a flimsy argument to say you’re protecting kids from fill-in-the-blank bogeyman, but at least it’s an argument. DeSantis, though, wants similar restrictions at the university level, where “protecting children” rings rather hollower as an excuse for censorship. There, the awful scourge on society is Critical Race Theory, which must not even be mentioned in passing.  Seriously? 

Oh, and DeSantis also tried to restrict state university faculty from testifying as expert witnesses in lawsuits or criminal trials. This is the proponent of diversity of opinion? Give me a break. 

Authoritarian? I think unquestionably. 

There is also DeSantis’s attack on tenure. He’s not alone in this pursuit, of course; a fair number of other GOP pols are similarly opposed to what is, after all, nothing more or less than a pledge on the part of a university to respect the academic freedom of faculty who have demonstrated sufficient excellence in teaching, research, and service to merit this consideration. (There are practical benefits to the university, too, of course, but few politicians from either party are either smart or curious enough to know this.) 

By the way, there are a host of reasons for which tenure can be revoked: gross incompetence, moral turpitude, financial exigency resulting in the retrenching of a program, and so on. Two points: 1). the burden of proof now rests with the university: they must prove their claim rather than the professors’ having to prove they should be retained, and 2). a professor’s legal (i.e., not libelous, seditious, violence-inciting, etc.) commentary is never a legitimate reason to revoke tenure. 

But I’m still not done. There was the takeover of New College, including firing trustees and replacing them with DeSantis minions whose first action was to fire the president. DeSantis wanted to turn the school into the “Hillsdale of the South.” Of course, that’s a marketing slogan rather than an actual desire. Indeed, he wants the anti-Hillsdale. Hillsdale is, first of all, a private college, which would mean that DeSantis couldn’t appoint its trustees. And he wants that ability more than Pooh wants honey. 

Hillsdale is also libertarian rather than conservative. Yes, in the current environment, there’s a fair amount of overlap, but if there’s one thing libertarians definitely don’t want, it’s to have a college or university controlled by the governor’s office. It’s pretty clear that DeSantis isn’t interested in diversity of ideas, but rather to have his views and only his views propagated, and he wants the state to underwrite the operation. He’s not yet Joe Stalin, but give him time to grow a mustache and we’ll see… 

The purge at New College is unprecedented to the best of my knowledge. Yes, it’s true that there is a recent trend towards governors’ appointing trustees (regents, councilors, whatever a particular institution calls them) based primarily on political affiliation, but I can recall no instances of firing existing trustees without cause. 

And the new trustees really are indeed nothing more than DeSantis minions. More ominously, they are exercising a level of interference in the day-to-day operation of the college that is also unprecedented. It is exceedingly rare to have any tenure recommendation coming from the school administration overturned—it might happen once or twice a year in the entire country. The case involving Nikole Hannah-Jones and the University of North Carolina made headlines for precisely this reason: that such events occur so infrequently. 

Even then, especially for existing faculty rather than new hires, it’s generally because there is not merely disagreement but profound disagreement among the various levels of input into the decision: department committee, department chair, college committee, dean, provost, president. It is quite rare that the de facto decision is made above the dean level. 

To have the majority of faculty recommended for tenure by the president denied by the trustees is outrageous. I started teaching (and reading The Chronicle of Higher Education) in 1979, and I’ve literally never heard of more than one tenure applicant recommended by the president of a college being denied by the trustees at any single college or university in a single year. New College this year: five. 

Would it be too paranoid to wonder if that collection of political affiliations of faculty mentioned above had some hidden and nefarious intent? Much as I am loath to accuse even an ultra-partisan narcissist like Ron DeSantis of such a thing, I’m afraid I can’t rule out the possibility. 

It’s also important to realize that applying for tenure is almost always a one-time event: you either get it or you get a one-year terminal appointment. Those five professors, then, who demonstrated their legitimate claim to tenure to their colleagues and superiors, are now going to be out of work because a gaggle of political hacks decided that obeisance to Ron DeSantis was more important than the good of the university they were pledged to support. 

As a longtime professor and a free speech advocate, I believe DeSantis’s actions with respect to New College are an abomination. You’re free to disagree with that assessment, Gentle Reader; it is, after all, only an opinion. Perhaps you think he was simply righting a wrong. But to suggest that his power play was anything less than authoritarian means our discussion is over, as I will simply label you incorrigible and move on.

Advocating for Gun Control Is Not an Assault on the Constitution

Most readers here know that Curmie reads Jack Marshall’s Ethics Alarms blog fairly regularly. The motivation has changed a little over the years: Curmie finds himself agreeing with Jack’s positions a lot less since the site has (often) devolved from an ethics orientation into a mouthpiece for Republican politics. But whereas some of his critiques of Democratic chicanery or incompetence are based on little more than partisan demagoguery, many are not, and Curmie would like to fancy himself not naïve to the faults of those with whom he shares (most of) a political weltanschauung. He’s no fan of Joe Biden, but given the alternative… well… 

Still, when the subject is politics (especially guns or abortion), Curmie tends to disengage, largely because he sees both Jack and the overwhelming majority of his readership as incorrigible (as they no doubt see him), not worth arguing with about certain issues. Sometimes, though, there’s the proverbial straw, and we got one of those moments a couple of days ago. 

To wit: a post with the headline “Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT.).” And what egregious violation of good governance had Senator Murphy committed? He had the audacity to suggest that if the Supreme Court continues to deny the government (federal, state, or local) the right to insist on background checks or to control the availability of assault weapons, people aren’t going to like it, and they’re going to regard SCOTUS as even more illegitimate than they do now. 

To be fair, there’s a bit of hyperbole in Murphy’s commentary; curiously, Curmie doubts that he is the first politician ever to exaggerate for effect. But let’s be serious for a moment. Allegations with some apparent legitimacy have recently been leveled against Justices Thomas and Gorsuch (Curmie is unimpressed by what appears to be partisan puffery directed at Chief Justice Roberts). 

There have been calls for Thomas to resign (including from Jack Marshall, to be fair), but there really isn’t a means of policing SCOTUS. They recuse themselves when they feel like it, make overt political statements when they feel like it, push (or transgress) the boundaries of ethics when they feel like it, all with no structure in place to keep them honest. 

Justices serve until they die or just don’t want to continue, there’s no impeachment process, and, of course, they are appointed and confirmed on almost exclusively political grounds. If you believe there’s been a single confirmation hearing in the last 30 years that actually mattered, this is probably not the blog you should be reading, Gentle Reader. Curmie writes for grown-ups. 

Democratic candidates have won the popular vote for President in seven of the last eight elections. But because of pure chance, the arcane Electoral College, and the despicable maneuvering of Mitch McConnell, five of the eight current justices who took office in that period were nominated by Republicans. (Justice Thomas was confirmed prior to the period in question.) Donald Trump recently claimed agency in overturning Roe v. Wade. For once, he told the truth. You can be sure of two things: that there was absolutely a litmus test for prospective nominees on the issue, and that Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett all lied to the Senate (and to the citizenry) about their attitude towards Roe. (N.B., Democratic nominees lie, too, but that’s outside the scope of this essay.) 

So it can certainly be argued that the reputation of SCOTUS has suffered more than a little in recent months. Acknowledging that fact doesn’t seem particularly outrageous. 

The only thing you hunt with this is people.

More to the point: Murphy does not “hate the 2nd amendment” (or if he does, there’s nothing in what he said to prove that). Rather, he believes it has been radically misinterpreted by recent SCOTI (that’s the plural of “SCOTUS,” right?). One might note that free access to AR-15s doesn’t actually appear in the Bill of Rights. (And yes, Curmie does know what the “AR” stands for, and even if he didn’t, if you can’t tell me what USB, NASCAR, and NASDAQ mean, you will kindly STFU about other people’s presumed ignorance.) 

See, the 2nd Amendment has this annoying little phrase, “well-regulated militia,” which the NRA and their minions would prefer didn’t exist, so they pretend it doesn’t. The idea that literally anyone can purchase any weapon they choose is inane. And that’s not just Curmie saying it. Former Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative appointed by President Nixon, did indeed say that the gun lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” 

Elsewhere, he wrote that “The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.” Later in the same article he argues that “surely the Second Amendment does not remotely guarantee every person the constitutional right to have a ‘Saturday Night Special’ or a machine gun without any regulation whatever. There is no support in the Constitution for the argument that federal and state governments are powerless to regulate the purchase of such firearms…” 

Curmie happens to agree with Chief Justice Burger, but at one level that’s not even the point. What is unassailable is that SCOTUS decisions are made by whoever happens to be on the bench at a given moment; they are intended to become precedent-setting, but not immutable, much less sacrosanct. If they were, we’d still be operating under Plessy v. Ferguson and (oh, yeah) Roe v. Wade. And, like it or not, the wisdom of recent SCOTUS rulings on gun control is, at the very least, contestable. 

Curiously enough, many most of the same people who bellow full-throatedly that we cannot question the advisability of adhering chapter and verse to the NRA’s dictates on gun control because it’s “settled law” seem not to have had similar qualms about railing against abortion rights. The stench of their hypocrisy has wafted its way into every crevice of American society. 

Curmie, as you probably know, Gentle Reader, thinks abortion access ought to be legal within some quite broad parameters. On the other hand, he’ll grant that Roe v. Wade was a bad decision. No, there really isn’t anything in the Constitution that guarantees what had been regarded as a right for all of Curmie’s adult life until the Dodds decision. And Curmie ain’t young. But Curmie has never seen an argument from the right that grants that SCOTUS might have been wrong about the Second Amendment but we ought to continue the status quo, anyway. 

Working to overturn an inappropriate interpretation of the Constitution is neither incompetent nor un-American. So let’s drop Constitutionality as an issue in the debate. It’s relevant in terms of what is, but not to what should be. Curmie, as most readers of this blog already know, is a civil libertarian on most (but clearly not all) issues. He’ll argue for freedom of expression not because there’s a First Amendment, but because the society benefits from encountering new or minority ideas… you know, like abolition, women’s suffrage, integration, stuff like that. Oh, and there’s a difference between dissent and sedition. Similarly, he’ll argue for privacy protection not because there’s a Fourth Amendment, but because private lives ought to be private. Sure, he’ll trot out the constitutional argument, too, but it’s not the center-piece of the critique. 

So, let’s assume for a moment that there’s no Second Amendment. What’s the argument in favor of granting a teenager unlimited access to a range of semi-automatic weapons? The upside is that Bubba can get his rocks off shooting up beer cans and feel “safe” from non-existent threats. The downside is a spate of mass killings, far more than any other first-world country must endure. Gun laws work, as has been shown repeatedly in the US and abroad. But a few dead schoolkids or shoppers or country music fans every week or so is a small price to pay for “freedom,” right? Curmie begs to differ. 

“Yeah, but hunters…” Sure, no problem. Any gun that is reasonably used by a hunter is not affected. That means most rifles and shotguns. Not most pistols, and certainly not automatic or even semi-automatic weapons; you don’t need one of them to shoot Bambi. High-end pistols, the kind used in competitions, are similarly exempted. Saturday Night Specials, not so much. Hell, even a proudly Southern rock band like Lynyrd Skynyrd had that figured out nearly a half-century ago. 

“But how are we to defend ourselves against a tyrannical government?” Sorry, that ship has sailed. If the US government wants to take you out, it will. This is why we need to make sure that those in power aren’t tyrant-wannabees. Alas, that description fits most of the biggest names in both parties. (Curmie grants that this would appear to be a flaw in his argument… but read the next paragraph.) 

There are, of course, a host of weapons you don’t have access to, Gentle Reader, unless you’re in some variation on the theme of the military. Curmie doubts that there are too many folks reading this piece who would be in position to buy a nuclear submarine or a tank or a B-1 bomber, but you couldn’t even if you could afford it. Surface-to-air missiles might be a little cheaper, but they’re off limits, too. One of the most common faux arguments from the right is that gun control proponents don’t even know an automatic weapon from a semi-automatic one: “The former are already illegal, you silly libtard.” 

Let me repeat that: there are already restrictions on owning certain kinds of weapons. We’re talking about moving the line, not creating one that didn’t exist. Gun advocates are free to argue that they see more drawbacks than benefits in what Curmie and an overwhelming majority of the American people would call “common-sense gun laws,” but these folks are very much in the minority. Six different gun control measures in a recent Fox News (!) poll received over 75% approval from respondents; over 60% favor banning assault weapons altogether. This is not to say that the majority is always right (actually, Curmie would disagree with a couple of those proposals), but those are astounding numbers for a democratic (small “d”) government to ignore. 

Any argument for a continuation of the status quo needs to be honest, logically consistent, and not solely reliant on a very questionable interpretation of the Second Amendment. Curmie would like to see such a point of view presented by someone… anyone. He fears he’s more likely to have a nice chat with a unicorn.

The World's Most Pressing Issue?

A couple of days ago, this intriguing prompt appeared on the FB page of one of Curmie’s former students: “What do you think is the world’s most pressing issue and why?” Curmie was tagged, but didn’t reply right away, partially because he wanted to craft an appropriate response, partially because he realized that whatever he said would almost certainly be unreasonably long for a Facebook comment, partially because his laptop charger had died, and he didn’t want to drain the battery. 

But now Curmie has a new charger and both the time and space to give this question due consideration. There are, of course, a multitude of possible answers—at the largest scale, there’s global warming (this would have to be #1 because it affects everyone and because the situation continues to get progressively worse), the possibility that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine might evolve into something even worse, the ongoing threat of sectarian terrorism, plus a hot of other issues, of course. 

The likelihood that after the 2024 elections the leader of the free world, whether it’s the current incumbent or his predecessor, will be a bumbling, mentally unstable, octogenarian (yes, Curmie knows, Donald Trump would be “only” 78 on Inauguration Day 2025; go with me here, Gentle Reader) is certainly a cause for some concern. Significantly, as Curmie suggested earlier this year, there’s literally no one in either party to vote for, only a lesser-of-two evils alternative to an even worse candidate. 

Other issues—gun violence, restrictions on 1st amendment rights from both the left and the right, wealth/income inequality, immigration policies, abortion rights, etc.—are more US-specific, but they are, or should be, on the minds of all Americans, and global implications are certainly present if not necessarily paramount. 

But Curmie ultimately decided to distinguish between the general and the specific. Finding solutions to the former is more attitudinal than policy-based. I was already heading in this direction when I read an excellent response from another of my friend’s friends, suggesting that we concentrate on what he calls “empathic thinking.” This idea is at least a first cousin if not a sibling to Curmie’s point of view, but they’re not quite the same. 

Curmie’s first musings on the subject vacillated between distinguishing between short-term and long-term thinking, and between self-serving and altruistic motives. So the temptation was to declare the #1 problem to be a concentration on short-term personal advantage. It is this attitude that leads to “gotcha” journalism, to political demagoguery, and indeed to a wide variety of deceitful practices. 

The best example of this phenomenon that comes to mind at present is the GOP’s labeling of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which is virtually identical to the program instituted by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts, as some sort of extreme left-wing authoritarian plot. (Yes, the actual bill, despite being a net positive, was bloated and all but incomprehensible, but they didn’t know that yet.) But it was more important to Mitch McConnell and his minions to deny President Obama a victory than to work for the betterment of the country. 

McConnell, of course, has raised partisan hackery to dizzying new heights, but there are plenty of pols, pundits, and other self-proclaimed authorities from every point on the political spectrum who practice the same kinds of chicanery; they just aren’t as good at it… or as proud of their own duplicity. 

Ultimately, though, “short-term” and “self-interest” are two problems, not one, aren’t they, Gentle Reader? Putting them together, though useful in philosophical terms, does seem to evade the larger question of a single “pressing issue.” So how do we re-define this contemplation? 

Those who know Curmie personally, or who have read this blog (or its predecessor over on Live Journal… yes, really) for a period of time, will likely know that he is something of a Confucian. As I wrote over a dozen years ago: 

One of the central tenets of Confucian thought is the avoidance of lengthy and complicated rules structures. Every situation is different, and one can never anticipate all the possible permutations. Confucius’s solution is not to try. He advocates placing authority in the hands of a junzi (gentleman) who is sufficiently endowed with both wisdom and ethical sensibility to be able to adjudicate disputes. 

The junzi business may be a little intellectually elitist even for Curmie’s taste, but the recognition that every situation differs at least slightly from every other is of crucial importance, and is too often forgotten. Take a story that has made the news in various permutations repeatedly in recent months: a white police officer kills a black man. There are three basic responses: A). “the cop is a racist,” B). “the cop was doing his job; don’t resist and you have nothing to fear,” C). “tell me more.” Only C is an acceptable answer, but Curmie fears it would place last in the voting. 

There are bad cops, and some are violent racists who hide behind a badge. (There are also bad, violent, cops who aren’t racists.)  Moreover, in some situations killing someone is legitimate. Confucius identifies three possible scenaria, each with a different ethical response. Obviously, one possibility is murder (or manslaughter), which cannot be countenanced. But killing in self-defense is justifiable. Moreover—and here’s where it gets really interesting—Confucius argues that failure to kill in certain circumstances is unethical. He was talking specifically about protecting one’s lord, but it’s just a short step from there to thinking about protecting an innocent victim (or more than one). 

And each of these descriptions is subject to shades of meaning, especially but not exclusively in terms of motive—the cop really did think he was reaching for a taser instead of a handgun, or really did think the toy brandished by the victim was an actual weapon, for example. Perhaps he was attempting simply to disarm an assailant and slipped. There are as many different versions of the story as there are incidents. 

But too many people seek only the opportunity to exercise confirmation bias, attending to the one or two facts which fit the conclusion they’re already 80% of the way to making, and casually neglecting any contradictory or even ameliorating evidence that doesn’t fit the already-constructed paradigm. 

Tell me what you understand of the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and I’ll be pretty likely to identify your politics. At one level, this is unproblematic. At another level, it’s the essence of this argument. 

So what do we call the “pressing issue”? How about “intellectual laziness”? This manifests not only in our impressions of individual stories, but also in our political decision-making, and here Curmie uses the term “political” to refer to all manner of maneuvering for personal advantage, not simply in running for mayor or Congresscritter or whatever. 

Many years ago, Curmie was recruited by the then-current holder of a position of some responsibility in a subgroup of a large professional organization. Being on a nominations committee meant that you were familiar with the goals of the group and cognizant who the rising stars were most likely to be; you’d seen their work and their participation in group activities. Committee membership was an investment of time and knowledge for the betterment of the organization. 

More recently, being on that same committee is advertised to graduate students attending their first conference as a way to more quickly move into their own leadership positions. The committee didn’t call up good people and urge them to run for office; they sat back and waited for self-nominations, effectively making self-promotion the sine qua non of opportunity. Even when no one came forward, the committee did nothing. Intellectual laziness. 

Needless to say, self-promotion is valued over actual competence (let alone excellence) in more places than just the academy. A politician without “name recognition” not only has little chance of success, but is more than likely to be ridiculed by the chattering class for the audacity of merely having good ideas instead sucking up to the right donors and hiring a first-class publicist. Intellectual laziness. 

As a longtime professor, Curmie was already seeing a decline in students’ ability to think over a decade ago. In that same blog piece linked above, Curmie wrote this: 

Needless to say, a lot of students founder a little in my freshman-level classes. They get glassy-eyed stares when I refuse to tell them whether Biff or Willy is the protagonist in Death of a Salesman, mutter about unfairness when receiving less than full credit for a plausible conclusion unsupported by argumentation, panic when I disagree with an opinion expressed by the textbook author or a high school English teacher (who got a C from me in this very class a few years ago). They can't think, in other words. The more cynical among you might suspect that I play devil’s advocate from time to time, just to see if a given student really has the stuff of scholarship. To this accusation, of course, I indignantly respond, “Moi?”. 

Curmie regrets to say that the situation has only deteriorated from there. Indeed, whereas Bob Seger’s “Against the Wind” can be inspirational, the same cannot be said for pissing into the wind, and that feeling of despair became a significant reason why Curmie is now a professor emeritus. 

Part of the cause for this disintegration of the educational system, and hence of the culture, can be traced to politicians’ fetishistic desire for quantification and “accountability.” You’ll note, Gentle Reader, that the latter term is in scare quotes, because the sole consideration of the determination is performance on a standardized test. 

If you’ve followed this blog at all assiduously over the years, you’ll know what Curmie thinks of that idea. If not, you might start here. Short version: as part of an evaluation, such tests are not without some merit, but they measure test-taking strategies (and freedom from testing anxiety) at least as much as they do skill. And they only measure that which can be measured: that is, only things for which there is a single, unassailably correct, answer. 

Curmie used to tell Theatre History classes that if someone tells you they know for certain what Aristotle meant by “catharsis,” you should run, not walk, away from this person. You should similarly avoid those who are unequivocally convinced that Robert Frost is or is not being ironic in closing “The Road Not Taken” with “…and that has made all the difference.” There are countless other examples, of course. 

You are also free to decide that, say, Anton Chekhov was the greatest playwright of the modern age, but you’re going to need to back up that assertion with analysis—with thought. You can’t just fill in the bubble on the Scantron sheet, because there is no “correct” answer. Why is Chekhov better than Ibsen or Lorca or Williams? Responding to that question requires analysis, recognition of alternate possibilities, and actual thought as opposed to memorization. (As an experienced theatre director, Curmie suggests that actors’ ability to learn their lines is not the only criterion by which their success ought to be measured.) 

Does the educational status quo, driven largely by non-educators, encourage intellectual laziness? Unquestionably. Does the political system do so? Of course. Does what passes for journalism do so? You know what Curmie thinks on that score from the way he phrased the question. Does business suppress thought in the name of being a “team player”? You may answer in the negative to this one only if you’ve never heard of Elon Musk. 

Anyway, that’s Curmie’s answer to the question of our most pressing issue as citizens of the world: intellectual laziness. Thanks for your patience and endurance in making it this far, Gentle Reader.

Roald Dahl Can't Catch a Break

Roald Dahl (1916-90)
Suddenly controversial to left and right alike

When last we left Roald Dahl, he was being censored for such crimes against humanity as using “female” as a noun, referencing only male Oompa Loompas, and failing to mention that there are multiple good reasons to wear a wig. These objections, of course, came mostly if not exclusively from the Loony Left. Now the Ridiculous Right wants equal time. 

A couple of hours south of Curmie is Houston’s Main Street Theater, part of whose mission is to create “memorable theatrical experiences for audiences of all ages.” That means, among other things, a three-show season in their Theater for Youth series, which has been active for over four decades. One of this year’s offerings—the one currently playing—is a stage adaptation of James and the Giant Peach, probably Dahl’s best-known book. 

As might be expected, a lot of local schools bring their students to the theatre, and the company provides all manner of services: group rates, study guides in both English and Spanish, etc. Students in Spring Branch, about three hours to the west, were to have attended a recent performance. But you’ve already sussed where this story is going, haven’t you, Gentle Reader? 

Yes, the trip was cancelled, not because that’s a long time to expect little kids to sit in a bus, but because the show was alleged to be age-inappropriate. You see, the 19 roles in the play are performed by only seven actors, and sometimes that means that a male actor plays a female… insect. And that’s drag, and to allow kids to see that, to borrow a line from late, great George Carlin, will curve their spines, grow hair on their hands, and keep our side from winning the war. 

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that one of the actors is also, completely independently, a drag performer. Sigh. 

Anyway, someone under the soubriquet @htxkidsfirst posted this kind of drivel online, and the school district promptly capitulated to yet another bullshit heckler’s veto from the right. Curmie can’t find who actually made the decision—the superintendent? the school board? a collection of principals?—but if he’d done something this spectacularly stupid, he’d want to duck responsibility, too. 

Initially, of course, parents weren’t even told why the cancellation was going to happen. We can only guess that district officials feared the collapse of the telephone system under the weight of dozens of simultaneous phone calls all clustered around expressions like “It’s James and the Giant Peach. Are you fucking insane, or what?”. 

OK, there are two responses to this nonsense. The first, obviously, is that there is no legitimate complaint. As Main Street’s marketing director, Shannon Emerick, points out, this isn’t drag: “Drag is a different art form. There is a whole art form that is drag.” And here is where Curmie goes all professorial (forgive me). There is a difference between “drag” and “in drag.” The former is indeed a very specific performance style. Curmie, like many Spring Branch parents, apparently, would see no harm in having drag seen by little kids, but at least recognizes a weak but extant rationale for the objections. But that’s not what this is. 

The latter term, “in drag,” means simply the portrayal of a character by a performer of the opposite sex. This would include the original performances of literally every Greek tragedy, every play by Shakespeare (a show like As You Like it, in which a male actor played a female character who plays a male character who plays a female character is especially fun in this regard), and every Nō or Kabuki play. The list goes on, but you get the point, Gentle Reader. 

Every English pantomime, many of which feature not only a male actor as the “Dame,” but an attractive young woman as a boy—a character like Jack of beanstalk fame, for example—would also be on the list. And bringing the kids to the local panto is very much a Christmas-season tradition for thousands upon thousands of English families. Curmie has a friend and former student who is one of the best-known Dames in England; he is adamant that what he does is not drag. And he’s right.  (Of course.)

Virtually all performances of Peter Pan are also “in drag” shows: the most famous portrayals of the title character include Nina Boucicault, Maude Adams (not to be confused with two-time “Bond girl” Maud Adams), Mary Martin, and former gymnast Cathy Rigby. 

Plus, of course, dozens of films—the best known of which would have to be “Some Like It Hot,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” and “Tootsie,” but there are many more—would also be on the list. Jack Benny, Jackie Gleason, Milton Berle, Benny Hill, Johnny Depp, Tom Hanks, John Travolta, and a host of others that Curmie can’t remember off the top of his head at the moment, all appeared “in drag.” The earliest performance by Laurence Olivier that Curmie knows about was when Lord Olivier was a teenager at school… and in drag. 

In the other direction, there’s Glenn Close, Barbra Streisand, Julie Andrews, Gwyneth Paltrow, Dame Judith Anderson, Fiona Shaw, Sarah Bernhardt, and, again, many more. 

The allegations of “grooming,” of course, are too inane to even bother to refute. If you want to complain about grooming of kids by men in floor-length gowns, come back when you’ve cleaned up the Catholic Church. 

So the objection is completely unfounded. But, just as Curmie suggested recently that Tommy Tuberville isn’t the problem, neither are the constipated parents who apparently are more interested in promoting a particularly noxious brand of puritanism than in allowing their kids to have a fun day at the theatre. No, responsibility for this foolishness falls squarely on the shoulders of the school administrators for whom stupidity and cowardice are in a death struggle to be their defining characteristic. 

If school officials want to let parents keep their own children from seeing James and the Giant Peach, Curmie is still going to think a little less of them, but it is at least a passable response. But that isn’t what happened here. Curmie refuses to believe that anything approaching a majority, or even a significant minority, of Spring Branch parents are insular, ignorant, and repressive enough to keep their sons and daughters from seeing the play. 

But what’s happening here is that everyone’s kids are prevented from doing so. Curmie considers it bad parenting to unilaterally and arbitrarily decide that one’s own progeny ought to be prevented from reading this book, watching that movie, or attending that play. But it’s understandable, and parents have a legal and indeed ethical right to do so, even if Curmie would do something different. 

Demanding that someone else’s kids be thus restricted, however, is arrogant, narcissistic, and unethical. (Curmie notes an exception for legal authorities.) That’s the point school officials who aren’t auditioning to be the Scarecrow or the Cowardly Lion in the community theatre production of The Wizard of Oz (which would also, no doubt, be boycotted by the yokels) ought to be making: keep your kids home if you want, but we’re going, and we’re going to have a great time. 

But that would require a modicum of common sense or courage, and those attributes are in increasingly short supply among today’s educational administrators. We have ample evidence that the next attack from the pathological do-gooders may come from the left or the right. We can be sure of two things, however: the perpetrators will have no doubts about the righteousness of their actions, and the rest of us must stand ready to defend free expression, access to works of art, and intellectual curiosity. 

Oh… One more thing. We can but hope that in whatever afterlife he inhabits, Roald Dahl is laughing at the idiots on both fringes.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Glories in Its Irrelevance

Warren Zevon: one of several egregious omissions

Readers who know Curmie personally are probably aware that he’s a longtime fan of singer and songwriter Warren Zevon. Curmie even has a forthcoming chapter in a book about him. 

Zevon, who died of mesothelioma nearly two decades ago, was a musician’s musician. A short list of those who played or sang on one of his recordings, or covered one of his songs either in concert or on a recording is pretty much a Who’s Who of late 20th century rock (and rock-adjacent) stars. Limiting the list to just those already in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, either as individual artists or as members of groups, we get: Bill Berry, Jackson Browne, Peter Buck, Lindsey Buckingham, Bob Dylan, Phil Everly, Mick Fleetwood, Glenn Frey, Jerry Garcia, Don Henley, Billy Joel, John McVie, Mike Mills, Graham Nash, Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Joe Walsh, Carl Wilson, and Neil Young… and I’m probably forgetting someone. 

Zevon co-wrote songs with Berry, Browne, Buck, Miles, and with another Hall of Famer, Steve Winwood. Add to that list esteemed musicians like T-Bone Burnett, Jorge Calderón, J.D. Souther, and Waddy Wachtel, gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, celebrated novelists Mitch Albom and Carl Hiassen, and (oh, yeah) Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon. People who have some credentials in the areas of words and/or music seem to think Zevon was pretty good at his job. 

All of this, of course, leads up to saying that the 2023 inductees to the R&R HOF were announced yesterday, and Zevon’s name wasn’t on the list, despite his placing a solid third in the fan voting (seven artists from the 14 nominees were selected), and despite active campaigning for his induction by Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen, and especially Billy Joel and David Letterman, among others. This was the first time Zevon was even nominated, despite having been eligible for many years. 

Part of the reason for that was that Jann Wenner, who headed the Hall for far too long, was (and is) a narcissistic wanker, and he didn’t like Zevon personally. Wenner doesn’t have the direct authoritarian control he once had, but John Sykes, his successor, was a hand-picked minion. In the words of another R&R Hall of Famer, Pete Townsend: meet the new boss; same as the old boss. 

Sykes proclaimed immediately after his selection that his “most important mandate” was to diversify the membership, and that he “recognize[s] that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is no longer about a single genre of music.” This is pretty much all we need to know: he’s an idiot. 

Rock & Roll is a single genre of music, albeit one whose borders are rather ill-defined. But Curmie will state with absolute conviction that Run DMC and Dolly Parton, however deserving of honors they might be, are not R&R musicians. If you want a Popular Music Hall of Fame, call it that. And if we’re talking about Rock & Roll, especially post-Motown, then we’re looking at a largely white male group of artists. That’s just the way it is, the same way the NBA has been dominated by black men. 

Of the new class of inductees, only one—Rage Against the Machine—is unquestionably a rock act. At least two—Missy Elliott and Willie Nelson—are just as clearly not. The others—George Michael, Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow, and the Spinners—are in that space between rock and another genre; Curmie would include the Spinners and that’s it, but at least there’s a case to be made for the others. 

And Sykes gets his wish: only three of the seven inductees from this category are white men. One of them is 90 years old and another at least had the decency to be openly gay. That leaves the interesting case of Rage Against the Machine. They were never terribly popular (they finished 11th in the fan voting) and not really trail-blazers (although they might have tried to cultivate that image). RATM, of course, are also good little socialists, so that sorta makes up for their impudent insistence on being straight white men.  And, of course, they’re sort of metal-ish, allowing the Hall to pretend that there is no impediment to metal groups (you know, actual rock musicians) getting in. 

Of course, try telling that to the fans of Iron Maiden, who finished fourth in the fan voting. Curmie was never much of a headbanger, but Iron Maiden is light years more qualified to be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame than literally any of this year’s actual inductees. 

There’s a lot of speculation as to how Kate Bush got in: Conventional Wisdom is that she rode a wave of new-found popularity from “Running Up That Hill” being featured on “Stranger Things.” So… uh… why’d she finish seventh in the fan voting, behind not one but four acts that didn’t get in? 

The answer, of course, is two-fold. One is that whole “diversity” kick the Hall seems to be on; the fact that she’s even less rock & roll, and no more influential, than Cyndi Lauper (who finished second in the fan voting, first among living artists, by the way) is a mere detail. HoF honchos have wanted Bush in for years, and they finally got their wish. 

The larger issue, of course, is the fact that the “fan ballot” is a cynical marketing ploy, one which Curmie devoutly hopes will work as well for the Rock Hall as the Dylan Mulvaney schtick did for Bud Light. 

We were told that the fans have a significant role in the selection process, and it was pointed out that it is extremely rare that fan favorites didn’t get selected. All five acts on the 2022 fan ballot were inducted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But placing in the top five in fan voting gets you one vote from over 1000 total ballots. It’s a scam. 

We should have known better, especially after the Dave Matthews Band collected over a million votes in winning the fan balloting three years ago. They not only weren’t inducted; they haven’t even been nominated since. Soundgarden has now placed in the top five, thereby being listed on the “fan ballot,” twice; they’re still on the outside looking in. Meanwhile, Missy Elliott was nominated only once, in her first year of eligibility, finished 13th out of 14 nominees in the fan voting, has nothing to do with any reasonable definition of rock and roll, and got in. 

It’s particularly telling that the numbers 3, 4, and 5 vote-getters this time (Zevon, Iron Maiden, and Soundgarden) are unquestionably rockers; none were inducted. The fact that they outpolled Willie Nelson is not an indictment of fan participation; indeed, it’s quite the opposite. The fans, unlike the collection of alleged authorities, actually know what rock and roll is, and voted accordingly. No one would deny that Nelson is the most significant musician to appear on the ballot (one actual voter wrote that “The honor almost diminishes him. It’s like the federal government giving Abraham Lincoln an ‘Employee Of The Month’ award”), but he’s never been a rocker, a fact that never seems to have concerned the official voters, a goodly number of whom appear to have been chosen for their ignorance, their acquiescence to authority, or their lockstep liberalism. 

Let’s use a sports analogy. Athletes like Michael Jordan, Dave DeBuschere, and Bo Jackson all played major league baseball, but whereas their athletic accomplishments have led to Hall of Fame accolades in basketball or football, no one even floats the idea that they deserve entry into the baseball hall of fame…because they didn’t play that sport long enough or well enough to merit that honor. Well, duh. 

Whether the Rock Hall balloting is crooked per se or merely the result of selecting too many idiots as voters, the entire system is a crock. The Hall could reclaim some legitimacy by ensuring that, say, the top two vote-getters among the fans in a given year are guaranteed entry (don’t nominate them if you don’t want them), and that any act that finishes in the top five will at the very least be on the following year’s ballot. They won’t do that, of course, because they are morons, because they don’t actually give a shit about fans, and because they think that being “inclusive” trumps being competent. They are, in other words, a variation on the theme of the Bud Light marketing people, whose cleverness caused an ongoing loss of about 1/6 of their sales revenues. 

If the reaction of the folks on the Warren Zevon (and Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Browne) fan pages on Facebook are an indication, the Hall has miscalculated egregiously. Zevon fans are done. Iron Maiden and Soundgarden fans are done. DMB fans are done. We aren’t heading to Cleveland to spend 40 bucks to gawk at tributes to acts we consider lesser lights. And, barring a miracle, we won’t be suckered into wasting our time on a pointless exercise like having an inconsequential role in the selection process. Fool us once… 

Curmie and Beloved Spouse took a lengthy car trip last weekend, leaving us with plenty of time to talk. We’re both Zevon fans, and we both voted daily (as the rules allowed) throughout the weeks-long voting period. But we also noted the list of other acts who aren’t in the Rock Hall: Emerson, Lake, and Palmer; Steppenwolf; Little Feat; Jethro Tull; Judas Priest; the B-52’s; Thin Lizzy, (and on and on)… The omission of even one of these acts while honoring any of this year’s inductees (with the possible exception of The Spinners) is a travesty. 

Someone on one of the Facebook pages offered the sage advice to regard the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a museum instead of as a honor society. OK, fine. But the Hard Rock Cafe does that with no cover charge, and you can get an overpriced cheeseburger while you’re there. 

Curmie means no disrespect to the artists who did get in this year. They’re all worthy of recognition, just not, in Curmie’s opinion, in this particular venue. (Curmie also notes that “The Wind,” the album that won Zevon a posthumous Grammy as Best Contemporary Folk Album wasn’t actually a contemporary folk album.  The Stupid goes both ways.) 

No, the contempt Curmie feels is all for the entrenched hierarchy at the Hall, from John Sykes on down. Warren Zevon doesn’t need some cheesy imprimatur to be great in the minds of his fans or collaborators. (Nor do Cyndi Lauper, Iron Maiden, or Soundgarden.) And Curmie doesn’t need someone else to tell him what musicians to like, love, or despise. Neither do you, Gentle Reader.