Trump’s Birthday Parade and Stopping the End Run

Yes, this is photoshopped.
But it wouldn’t be funny if it weren’t close to the truth.

Curmie’s father played football in high school.  One of his favorite stories of that time nearly a century ago was about the end of the big rivalry game.  His team was down by four points as time was running out.  They did get the ball back, though, so they weren’t out of the game yet, even if they needed a touchdown and had 80 yards or so to get to the endzone.

That’s when the coach told them to run an end run, with Curmie’s dad and his cousin as the lead blockers, on literally every play until the other team stopped them for less than four yards.  A dozen or so plays later, they scored what turned out to be the winning touchdown with about a minute left on the clock.  If a play works, use it again.

Almost exactly five years ago, on Juneteenth, 2020—we’re talking peak COVID time—President Trump held a rally in Tulsa.  As usual, he crowed about the huge number of ticket requests… but the actual turnout left two thirds of the seats empty.  How did that happen?  Well, it was a combination: utter incompetence by whatever staffers were assigned front-of-house duties, and a bit of fun from Tik-Tok Teens and K-Pop Stans, who apparently ordered hundreds of thousands of free tickets they never had any intention of using. 

Curmie wrote about the story at the time.  Of course, having actually done some house management, Curmie also enumerated several different ways of preventing embarrassing situations like this.  Always the educator, is Curmie.  But Curmie had always been blessed by students who could out-think a kumquat.  Not so, this time.

By now, Gentle Reader, you’ve figured out what this essay is about—the paltry turnout for Trump’s most recent vanity project, that absurd parade—and what those first two paragraphs were about: the TikTok-ers are baaaaaaack, using precisely the same scheme as they’d used in Tulsa.

Curmie doesn’t approve of the subterfuge, but he does chuckle at the apparent inability of Trump to hire anyone whose name isn’t Stormy Daniels who is even remotely competent at their job.  Folks who say they’re from Canada or Australia or wherever claim to have gone online and ordered multiple tickets, some of them under crude or ironic names.  Oops, they couldn’t go.  Some of the confessions may be fake, and one might suspect that inclement weather may have affected turnout to some degree, but there is no question that the parade was not merely costly and boring, but also under-attended. 

Exact numbers for the turnout are impossible, of course, but Barbara Comstock posted that Newsmax, which makes Fox News look like leftist propaganda (that’s Curmie’s description, not hers), estimated about 10,000 attendees; she then added that the parade was “a huge waste of our military $$$ when the world is on fire…”  Curmie tried but failed to confirm Newsmax’s reporting, but Comstock is a former Republican Congresscritter, so she’d be unlikely to misrepresent the right-wing press. 

The place was damned near empty.  Asmodeus Naggoob posted on X that “AOC and Bernie would draw more people with thumb wrestling alone, lol.”  Part of that is, no doubt, attributable to… erm… running the same play until the other guys stop it.

But apparently the organizers’ incompetence stretched well beyond their amply demonstrated inability to learn anything from the Tulsa debacle.  Amanda Moore posted, “The marketing material said the entrance was on 14, but in reality it was on 12 St and you had to go through this pen for two blocks. Everyone who was around to answer questions was an asshole, too. Probably part of the issue!”  There are a host of other comments about poor planning and lack of crowd management.  Starting early to avoid thunderstorms also complicated things: it’s understandable and indeed appropriate in terms of safety, but problematic logistically because apparently some people didn’t make it through the barricades until the parade was over. 

That may have worked out OK for the prospective parade-goers, as the event itself was apparently a world-class snoozefest.  Numerous photos and videos show Trump and most of the people around him nodding off or nearly doing so. 

But let’s get one thing straight about that parade.  No one objects to recognizing the manifold contributions the Army and the other branches of the military have made to this country’s welfare, and having a celebration on the 250^th anniversary of the founding of the Continental Army seems an entirely appropriate time to do so.  We might not approve of everything the military has done, but that is almost never the fault of the troops themselves.  And there are still some vets out there who were on the front lines against actual Nazis: anyone who disrespects them will have Curmie to deal with. 

The ceremonies planned by the Biden administration were pretty much what the occasion called for, but, being pathologically incapable of doing otherwise, Trump turned the event into a vulgar, expensive (estimates just to repair damage to the streets from running tanks over them run to $12,000,000), narcissistic display that was one part cheap theme park and two parts North Korea.  This wasn’t a celebration of the anniversary that happened to fall on Trump’s birthday; it was a birthday celebration of Trump that used a coincidence to pretend it wasn’t really a tacky glorification of Dear Leader.  

It was in recognition of what was about to happen in DC that the day was chosen for the nation-wide “No Kings” protests, which organizers say attracted over 13 million participants.  Curmie is not so naïve that he believes that number without a raised eyebrow, but even the most conservative estimates put the turnout at or near eight figures.  The ratio of protesters to parade-goers is probably somewhere around 1000:1.

Part of that is because the Trump administration couldn’t stop the end run.  In either sense of the term.

Euripides Was a Keen Observer of Life in the Trump Regime

Euripides (480-406 BCE)

Curmie has been thinking about Euripides of late.  He’s spent an entire career as a theatre historian; forgive him, please.  This page attracts a pretty intelligent and well-educated readership, if Curmie does say so himself.  Still, the chances are that few readers of this piece know much about Euripides except that he was the fifth-century BCE Athenian tragedian who wrote Medea.  A handful of you will know The Trojan Women or The Bacchae.  Beyond those three plays, however, if you’re not someone specifically interested in classics or theatre history, you’re likely to be a little out of your element.

That, of course, is fine.  There are plenty of topics about which Curmie has a superficial understanding but you, Gentle Reader, are an authority.  That’s the way complex cultures and economies work.  So please allow Curmie to discuss three of Euripides’ lesser-known plays—Electra, Orestes, and Iphigenia in Aulis—and attempt to relate them to current events. 

All three of these tragedies are about the story of the House of Atreus.  Here are the basics of the story.  Helen (subsequently “of Troy”) was the most beautiful woman in all of Greece, and she attracted more suitors than you could shake the proverbial stick at.  Her father, Tyndareos, the king of Sparta, made the radical determination that rather than arrange a marriage of political convenience for his daughter, he would allow her to choose her own husband.  All of the suitors were required to swear on their honor that should Helen be abducted, they would immediately join forces to return her to the husband she chose.  She chooses Menelaus, from the royal family of Mycenae, over his older brother Agamemnon, the great warrior Achilles, and others.  Agamemnon subsequently marries Helen’s sister, Clytemnestra.  

And we jump ahead a few years, at which time the Trojan prince Paris shows up on the scene and takes Helen back to his homeland; sources differ as to whether Helen was abducted or whether she went voluntarily.  In any case, Agamemnon leads the military operation designed to bring Helen back to Greece and to Menelaus.

On their way to Troy, the expedition stops at the port town of Aulis.  Unfortunately, one of Agamemnon’s men kills a deer that was sacred to the goddess Artemis.  Goddesses don’t take such affronts lightly, and it soon becomes clear that the expedition will be unable to leave Aulis unless Agamemnon sacrifices his own daughter, Iphigenia.  But, Gentle Reader, you’ve already figured out that one way or another Iphigenia is going to end up in Aulis for there to be a play title like that.

After considerable soul-searching and a couple of changes of direction, Agamemnon sends a message to Clytemnestra to bring Iphigenia to Aulis, where she will supposedly marry the heroic Achilles.  When the mother and daughter arrive, they are made aware of the real reason they were summoned, and it isn’t for a wedding.  And then there’s a scene with Achilles.  He’s outraged, of course, but not for any kind of noble or even empathetic reason.  He’s mad because he wasn’t consulted!  He might have gone along with the ruse, you see, but now he is “nothing and nobody in the eyes of the army chiefs.” 

A couple minutes later, he’s afraid of “foolish scandal,” but, perhaps realizing he’s coming as a colossal dickhead (whatever the Greek word for that might be), he produces a bit of braggadocio: “Oh may I die if I mock you in this / And only live if I shall save the girl.”  Needless to say, he’s alive at the end of the play, having capitulated to the demands of the rest of the army.  Iphigenia, of course, is sent to the sacrificial altar.  (There’s a version of the ending by which Iphigenia is miraculously swept away by the gods and replaced by a deer, but that’s likely a later emendation, and even if she indeed saved, it has nothing to do with Achilles.)

Perhaps, Gentle Reader, you might know of, say, a political leader who thinks of nothing but himself while pretending to be a caring and heroic leader, who makes tough guy promises he cannot or will not keep, and who has a tendency to back down when someone calls his bluff.  Hypothetically speaking, of course.  But, as they say in the late-night infomercials, “Wait, that’s not all!”  Between Achilles’ promise to defend Iphigenia and his craven betrayal of her, there’s a choral ode.

The chorus, young women of nearby Calchis, who have been fan-girling over the Greek fleet, especially the hunky Achilles (well, I gotta admit that’s one way the parallel gets more than a little strained) through the earlier parts of the play, have just heard Achilles’ claim that he will defend Iphigenia and “be on watch—like a sentinel.” And their ode?  Well, here’s a sampling: “But you, Iphigenia, upon your head / And on your lovely hair / Will the Argives wreathe a crown / For sacrifice. / You will be brought down from the caves / Like a heifer, red, white, unblemished, / And like a bloody victim / They will slash your throat.” 

Iphigenia is going to die.  Those chorus lasses aren’t buying Achilles’ bullshit.  Sort of like the most recent polling data from Quinnipiac suggests about that other guy, who is underwater in literally every area.  The only difference is that the chorus figured out in minutes what it took middle-of-the-road voters months to realize.  Oh, of course there are the true believers, who, like Iphigenia herself, make excuses for the cowardly pseudo-hero.  Iphigenia willingly sacrifices her life to defeat her nation’s enemies.  Today’s pale imitations are willing to endure financial hardship and loss of liberties because their blustering idol hates the same people they do.

Let’s jump ahead in the story line.  The Greeks do indeed go to Troy, and after a decade of combat, they win through the stratagem of the Trojan horse.  Clytemnestra, meanwhile, has never forgiven Agamemnon for the sacrifice of Iphigenia.  She starts shacking up with Agamemnon’s cousin (and mortal enemy… long story), Aegisthus.  When Agamemnon returns home from Troy, they kill him within minutes of his arrival.

And now we jump ahead again.  Orestes, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra’s young son, has been smuggled out of the palace by a loyal tutor and raised in the household of the king of Phocis.  Electra, Orestes’s sister, was married off to a peasant farmer in Euripides’ Electra (she was held captive in the palace in other versions), presumably so any offspring would be less than noble.  The play is set outside her humble abode.

This turns out to be extremely important.  This is the only story line for which we have complete or nearly complete versions by all three of the great Athenian tragedians.  All three, of course, tell the tale of Orestes and Electra exacting vengeance on Clytemnestra and Aegisthus in their father’s name.  There are differences in detail: which sibling is the protagonist, which of the victims dies first, and so on.  But the setting seems to be the most important difference in Euripides’ play. 

The opening speech is given to the peasant, who assures the audience that he recognizes Electra’s nobility and has therefore not had sex with her despite their marriage.  But Clytemnestra is summoned to attend her daughter while Electra gives birth.  Clytemnestra has hardly been an admirable parent, but tradition demands that she attend the birth of her grandchild.  In other words, she unknowingly places herself in danger by doing the right thing. 

If, Gentle Reader, you’re seeing a parallel to what’s happening today, you’re not alone.  Immigrants are showing up to routine hearings about routine renewals of work permits, or asylum hearings, or even meetings for what they believed would be a final step towards citizenship, only to be arrested by ICE, or DHS, or the SS, or whatever other craven assholes with assault rifles happened to be handy.  They’re doing the right thing, and that is what leads to their detainment.  True, their fate isn’t quite as bad as Clytemnestra’s—not immediately, at least.  But their crimes are a lot less severe, too, and many are getting precisely the same amount of due process that she got: none.

Sure, some of those folks are probably not the best of human beings, but if that “man or bear” meme from last year were re-formulated as “ICE agent or ‘illegal alien,’” Curmie is trusting the latter ten times out of ten.  Be it noted: recent protests against ICE-induced violence, agents’ anonymity, and denial of due process isn’t “in favor of illegal aliens” or some other bullshit, any more than sympathy for Palestinians in Gaza is anti-Semitic, or supporting our most vulnerable populations is communistic (in fact, it’s a helluva lot more Christian than literally anyone in the MAGA crowd).

But revenons à nos moutons: however righteous they might believe their cause to be, Electra and Orestes are, in Euripides’ play, pretty horrible people.  And Clytemnestra, for all her faults, is still the victim here. 

And so we move on through the story line.  In the best-known version of the aftermath of the killings of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, Aeschylus’s Eumenides, Orestes is hounded by the Furies, who view matricide as the worst of all possible crimes.  Ultimately, he is tried in Athens with Apollo as what amounts to his defense attorney.  The vote of the Areopagus is even, but the goddess Athena casts the deciding vote for mercy, while also showing respect for the Furies and urging them to bless the city.

Euripides takes us in a totally different direction in Orestes.  Orestes, his comrade Pylades, and Electra have captured Hermione, Helen’s daughter, and are holding her a sword-point atop a building.  (There’s a lot of other stuff happening, too, but this is the relevant part.)  All three of the captors are pretty well deranged at this point.  Tyndareos and Menelaus threaten the trio, and there’s no way everyone gets out of this alive… until Apollo shows up to make everything all right (including having Orestes marry his cousin Hermione) in the most deus ex machina ending in the history of deus ex machina endings.

Curmie has written about this one before.  Here’s what he said a couple of years ago:

... the deus ex machina (literally!) ending to Euripides’ Orestes has been decried by many critics as faulty dramaturgy because it is so utterly implausible. But was one of the great classical tragedians really that sloppy? Or is it just possible that we’re supposed to notice the awkwardness, that the most famous atheist of his era might just be suggesting that it’s unreasonable to expect the gods to fix our problems, that the best way out of a difficult situation is not to get into it in the first place?

And now we’re at the “I didn’t vote for this” wails of “Latinos for Trump” and similar folks who thought he only hated the people they hated, too.  Actually, you did vote for this.  You voted for a convicted felon, an adjudicated sexual predator, a narcissist who sought to overthrow an election because he didn’t like the result.  He ran on a platform of white male supremacy and Christian nationalism.  These are simply facts.

And let’s dispense with the quibbles: “those prosecutions were politically motivated” (perhaps, but the verdicts weren’t); “there shouldn’t have been 34 different counts” (so being guilty of fewer felonies is OK?); “he wasn’t convicted of rape; it was a civil trial” (seriously, that’s your argument?); “he didn’t incite the January 6 hooligans” (well, he did, but that’s an interpretation; what is objectively true is that he could have prevented it or at least lessened the damage but did nothing).  Yawn.

Unfortunately, too many voters stayed home, or were (justifiably) mad at the Democrats for covering up Biden’s mental infirmity and installing about as bad a candidate as one could imagine, all without the rank and file, or even convention delegates, having any choice in the matter.  Curmie doesn’t completely discount the idea that Elon Musk or his minions hacked voting machines, but it seems unlikely.  In other words, currently disillusioned Trump voters could have stopped this if they’d bothered to pay attention.  On the one hand, they should be applauded for figuring things out, even if it too long.  But it’s difficult to work up too much empathy for the willfully ignorant.

So: TACO could also be an acronym for Today Achilles Chickens Out, and the women of Calchis catch on a lot sooner than today’s ex-MAGAs did.  Clytemnestra would have lived a lot longer had she not—this once, at least—played by the rules.  Apollo isn’t going to show up and solve all our problems; we’ve got to make good decisions early on to prevent disaster.

Euripides nailed it.

Note: Curmie spent over an hour formatting this piece because Blogger kept screwing up.  Getting thr text to justify never really happened without causing a different problem.  If he missed something else, he apologizes.

A Defense of Marjorie Taylor Greene. Sort Of.

 

A big bill that actually is beautiful.
Curmie wouldn’t make you look at MTG, Gentle Reader.

A little over 15 years ago, in one of the first entries on this blog, Curmie wrote this about Sarah Palin: “I think she’s reckless, amoral, self-important, and proud of her own staggering ignorance: and that’s a very nasty combination. She seeks the spotlight more than Jesse Jackson, and she’s not above being incendiary for its own sake. And… this time… she’s being attacked unfairly.”

The specific topic was an ad featuring what appeared to be gunsights on Congressional districts represented by Democrats who voted for the ACA but which the McCain/Palin ticket had carried in the ’08 presidential election.  There was a follow-up tweet with the line “don’t retreat… re-load.”  The usual leftie suspects accused her of inciting violence for using the same kind of rhetoric pols and pundits had employed for decades (at least). 

But the sights were on the districts, not the incumbent politicians.  (It is sad but coincidental that one of the Congresscritters named on the poster was Gabby Giffords, who was indeed shot a few months later by a gunman not exactly playing with a full deck.)  Curmie presented what amounted to a “stopped clock” defense of Palin.

Skip ahead a decade and a half.  The 2020s version of Palin is Marjorie Taylor Greene, she of “Jewish space lasers” fame (yes, Curmie knows that was not a direct quote, but it’s close enough) and who more recently suggested that Pope Francis’s death was an example of “Evil… being defeated by the hand of God.”  Like Palin, she’s shrill, bigoted, desperate for attention, dumber than the proverbial stack of burnt toast, and just generally the kind of person we hope our kids grow up not to be.  But, like Palin 15 years ago, she’s being slammed unfairly.  Well, sort of unfairly.

This all stems from an MTG tweet (or whatever they’re called now) in which she admits that she hadn’t read the section of the “Big, Beautiful Bill” that strips states of their ability to regulate AI, and that she would have voted against the bill had she known of that language.  The stopped clock phenomenon has seldom been so pronounced. 

MTG’s declaration is particularly significant this time around, because if she had actually done so, the House wouldn’t have passed the bill.  (Or an idea so stupid that even MTG recognizes how dumb it is would have been excised… or… well, you get the idea, Gentle Reader.) 

She writes that “We have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years and giving it free rein and tying states’ hands is potentially dangerous.”  (Curmie added that apostrophe, hoping its omission was a typo.)  She’s right, of course.  Curmie searches in vain for anything positive to say about the BBB, but this section is, perhaps, even more odious than the reverse Robin Hood stuff. 

Curmie is no fan of taking money out of the hands of the most vulnerable among us to give a huge tax break to billionaires.  Even the most conservative (in both senses of that term) estimates suggest that even after accounting for perhaps illusory economic growth, we’re talking about a 10-year dynamic deficit increase of 1.72 trillion dollars.  (The CBO says $2.4 trillion.)

But let’s go with the “smaller” number: $1,720,000,000,000.  (That’s a lot of zeroes.)  People struggle to understand how big a number that is.  The median household income in the country in 2024 was $80,020.  Spend that much money every minute of every day, and it will take almost 41 years to get to $1.72 trillion.  And Curmie has yet to see a rationale, even a spurious one, for the obscene tax breaks for people who don’t come close to needing one.

There is literally no excuse for the Republican budget… but at least it’s a budget.  When They Make Me Tsar™, anyone introducing anything into a budget bill that isn’t about budget will be horse-whipped.  If it’s something as awful as capitulating to the techbros or interfering with courts’ ability to hold government officials in contempt, it will also include kneecapping.  (Note: the holding-in-contempt bit isn’t as bad as the leftie commentariat would have us believe—go figure, right?—but it’s bad enough.)

But revenons à nos moutons.  Of course, the lefties pounced on Greene’s confession.  Among those leading the charge was Rep. Eric Swalwell, who responded to Greene’s tweet with the following endearment: “You have one job. To. Read. The. Fucking. Bill.”  You remember Swalwell, don’t you, Gentle Reader?  The partisan hack (yes, the Dems have them, too) who was accused a few years ago of having a romantic/sexual relationship with an alleged Chinese spy? 

Swalwell’s fellow California Democrat Ted Lieu chimed in with “I read the AI provision, that’s one reason I voted no on the GOP’s big, ugly bill. Also, ICYMI, the bill also has the largest cut to healthcare in U.S. history. PRO TIP: It’s helpful to read stuff before voting on it.” 

Damned near every left-leaning pundit joined the party.  Curmie counted five different articles just on HuffPost. (He’s not going to link them; you can get there on your own, Gentle Reader.)   Were they right to try to humiliate MTG?  Yes.  And no.

First off, Curmie has got 20 bucks that says that both Swalwell and Lieu have voted on bills they haven’t read in their entirety, and they probably voted for a bill they didn’t read all the way through.  The distinction here is that if there’s something on page 6 that’s so horrible you couldn’t possibly vote for the bill, you can stop reading, at least until there’s an amendment to cut the offending provision.  But if you’re tempted to vote for a bill, you’ve got to read the whole thing, lest there be something on, say, pages 278-79 (to pick page numbers completely at random, of course) that would make you change your mind.

Second, the BBB is over 1100 pages long.  True, that’s with big fonts and lots of white space, but even someone who reads pretty quickly would still take over a day to read the whole thing with any care.

Third, MTG is being pummeled for doing the right thing.  In this case, it’s admitting a mistake and trying to fix the damage.  But it’s easy to expand that concept into, say, going to a check-in with immigration officials only to be walking into a trap.  Curmie hopes to follow up on this idea in a future post.

Fourth, and this may be the most important point: it’s easy to miss things.  Curmie’s Beloved Spouse works in the financial aid office of a university.  She reports that her professional organization, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, only recently (apparently after the House vote) noticed that the BBB eliminates subsidized student loans, meaning that students would start paying interest on loans the second the ink is dry instead of upon graduation.  The NASFAA folks aren’t incompetent; they just missed it.

This kind of thing happens all the time.  Curmie just finished a draft of an article he hopes to publish in a theatre studies journal.  His argument centers on his belief that in quoting one sentence of an unpublished document, two rightfully well-respected scholars erred in failing to recognize the significance of the succeeding two sentences, thereby leaping to a conclusion unproven by the facts. 

Finally, where were the Democrats and the allegedly leftie press?  Curmie knew that no argument would sway his own spineless and dim-witted Congresscritter from prostrating himself at the feet of Dear Leader, so he relied on news and opinion pieces rather than poring over the bill himself.  He did, however, read dozens of stories about the BBB.  And when did he become aware of this particular obscene provision?  When Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote about it.  Congressman Lieu has indeed been an advocate of regulating AI, but Curmie can find no references to his objections to this part of the BBB until after MTG’s tweet. 

To be fair, there were some articles published prior to the House vote, such as this one from the AP.  But Democratic leaders certainly didn’t make much noise about this provision, and Republicans went out of their way to avoid talking about the bill at all, especially after the evisceration of a few of their number by constituents at town halls.  Was Curmie’s ignorance about the AI proposal until MTG’s reversal excusable?  Perhaps not, but it’s certainly explainable.

If you are reading the blog, Gentle Reader, you are likely to believe that one of the few times Elon Musk has told the truth in this calendar year was in describing the BBB as an “disgusting abomination.” Anyone who voted for the BBB or will do so in the future is at least one, and probably more than one, of the following: an idiot, a sociopath, or a coward.  This person should be removed from office (legally, non-violently) as soon as possible.  That certainly includes Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is perhaps the dimmest bulb in the less-than-brilliant Congressional firmament. 

Yes, she was apparently fine with all the other intentionally cruel, fiscally irresponsible, and authoritarian aspects of the proposed legislation.  She is indeed a strong contender for the less-than-coveted title of America’s Most Embarrassing Legislator (Curmie almost said “Politician,” but the Executive branch has that title sewn up for the near term).  But admitting her error and probably getting one of the worst parts of an overall awful bill cut doesn’t warrant this level of vitriol.

Elon Musk, by ChatGPT, in the Style of Curmie

Curmie has two almost-finished essays that just need another few minutes of work, but he can’t seem to push either of them over the finish line.  So he figured he’d just follow the crowd and, you know, Gentle Reader, cheat.  Well, he’s telling you that he’s cheating, so that makes it a little better, one supposes.

A few days ago, one of Curmie’s friends posted something on Facebook about how much better those AI sites are at, well, virtually everything than they were even a year ago.  He posted something that had been written by AI but read a whole lot like my friend’s voice.  It all made Curmie rather glad he’s re-retired and doesn’t have to try to figure out if students are actually doing the work or just feeding the assignment into a chatbot and waiting 15 seconds.

It also made Curmie curious.  Are these sites as good (or as terrifying, as the case may be) as his friend suggests?  Yes, there are serious problems of ethics and accuracy (AI has a marked tendency to make shit up), but how advanced is the language feature?  Time for a little experiment.  Curmie went to ChatGPT and asked for an essay on Elon Musk in the style of one of his own blog posts: the one on that profoundly insecure group chat about an imminent military mission.  Here’s the result.

Elon Musk: The World’s Richest Troll

Let’s get something straight right off the bat: trying to keep up with Elon Musk’s antics is like trying to staple Jell-O to a ceiling fan. Every time you think you’ve seen peak Musk, he one-ups himself with a half-baked meme, a bizarre business decision, or a tweet (excuse me, X-post) about how humanity will be living on Mars by 2032, despite the fact that he can’t seem to get Teslas to stop spontaneously combusting in mall parking lots.

At this point, one has to wonder: is Musk a genius playing 4D chess while the rest of us are still figuring out checkers, or is he a chaotic tech-bro who stumbled into a fortune and now spends his time cosplaying as a Bond villain with a Twitter account? Curmie (yeah, let’s go ahead and borrow that name—it fits the vibe) leans toward the latter.

We know that Musk bought Twitter for a frankly ridiculous $44 billion—because when you have that kind of cash lying around, why not purchase a dumpster fire and pour gasoline on it? Since then, he’s fired half the staff, alienated advertisers, and rebranded the platform as “X,” a name so meaningless it makes “Meta” sound like a stroke of branding genius. There’s also the small matter of boosting free speech while banning journalists and any account that dares to track his private jet. Free speech for me, but not for thee.

But Musk’s incompetence (or indifference, or megalomania—it’s honestly hard to tell anymore) isn’t confined to social media. There’s SpaceX, which admittedly has done some cool stuff, like launching a car into space for no practical reason whatsoever. And then there’s Tesla, a company so riddled with quality-control issues it’s basically the tech world’s answer to the Ford Pinto, only with autopilot.

Speaking of autopilot: fun fact, it isn’t one. You’d think that minor detail would be clear in the user manual, or at least in the ads, but apparently it’s up to the driver to guess when the car will decide to aim for a median at 80 mph. But hey, it’s electric, so at least you’ll die sustainably.

And let’s not forget Musk’s hobby of making sweeping promises about brain chips, hyperloops, and underground traffic tunnels that totally aren’t going to become a claustrophobic hellscape when someone inevitably breaks down inside one. Curmie remembers the good old days when tech moguls stuck to overpriced software and left the sci-fi megalomania to movies starring Jeff Goldblum.

The thing is, Musk has so thoroughly convinced a segment of the population that he’s the savior of humanity that they’ll gleefully pay for a blue checkmark, defend his honor in Reddit threads, and pretend that Dogecoin isn’t a joke that got out of hand. Meanwhile, the actual adults in the room—engineers, regulators, and people with working frontal lobes—are left to clean up the wreckage of his impulsive decisions.

In the end, whether Elon Musk is a misunderstood visionary or just a rich guy playing SimCity with the global economy is irrelevant. What matters is that he’s driving the bus, it’s on fire, and he’s live-tweeting the whole thing. Buckle up.

Um… wow.  Yes, Curmie would enjoy having a beer with this particular AI manifestation.  But we’re already pretty much in “I’m sorry, Dave.  I’m afraid I can’t do that” territory.  Curmie will, however, continue to write (and think) for himself.  And all future Curmie posts will be written by… Curmie.

In the words of Ionesco’s Bérenger, “Je ne capitule pas.”

Proving the Relevance of "The Crucible"... by Cancelling It

The Offending Scene... we think

Administrators censor high school plays in many different ways.  Sometimes it’s refusal to put a show on the schedule; sometimes it’s butting into the design process; sometimes it’s shutting a production down during tech week or after a single performance; sometimes it’s firing a teacher/director for doing a show the administration had signed off on.  What’s consistent is that the school officials seldom if ever admit they screwed up, even if they do reverse themselves under nationwide or even international ridicule.

There have been, no doubt, dozens of cases over the past few years that Curmie missed… but there are a fair number he’s chronicled here.  In chronological order (in order of Curmie’s posts, not necessarily when stuff happened): Kismet in PA, Legally Blonde in OH, All Shook Up in UT, Almost, Maine in NC and Spamalot in PA, Indecent in FL, The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee in OH, The Addams Family Musical in PA, and Dog Sees God in CA and The Laramie Project in AZ… and now The Crucible in GA.

What’s particularly intriguing about this one is that no one is really sure why the show was cancelled after a single performance.  Or, rather, the only thing we know with any certainty is that someone, almost certainly the school’s administration, is flat-out lying. 

Curmie tends to learn about these incidents through one of three sources, all of whom have written about this one: Howard Sherman, Chris Peterson at the OnStage blog, and Jack Marshall at Ethics Alarms.  (Curmie hasn’t contributed as much as a comment on EA for months since it took a hard turn from its titular ethics orientation to GOP propaganda, but he suspected that Jack might weigh in on this one.) 

Here’s what we know for sure: a production of Arthur Miller’s McCarthyism-inspired play was scheduled for two performances at Fannin County High School in Blue Ridge, Georgia, and was cancelled after opening night.  We know, also, that the original director (a teacher?) was fired/forced to resign a couple of weeks before the show was to open, leaving a high school student in charge.  This much is about as far as we can go without fear of propagating untruths.  Well, there’s one more thing that we’ll get to in a moment, Gentle Reader…

We do have the school’s official statement on the affair.  Officials claim that “after Friday night’s performance of The Crucible, we received several complaints as to an unauthorized change in the script of the play.  Upon investigation, we learned that the performance did not reflect the original script.”  The likelihood that the school’s statement is an outright lie may be a little short of ontological certitude, but it’s pretty damned close.

You will notice, Gentle Reader, that no specifics about the alleged violation are forthcoming.  The students say they didn’t add, delete, or change any words, and there has been no assertion to the contrary by the administration.  That, one suspects, is because such a statement could too easily be shot down.  Better to leave it open-ended and hope the opposition—in this case, the students—admits to something. 

Well, that happened… sort of.  The production did open with a scene of the girls dancing in the woods, enacting a moment that was only narrated in the script.  One might suppose that you could argue that the scene represents a change in the script, but it’s pretty much of a stretch.  It’s only fair to point out that Jack Marshall writes that a director at the American Century Theater (where Marshall was Artistic Director) wanted to do precisely what the Fannin County students did, but was refused by both Dramatists Play Service and Arthur Miller himself.  There’s no reason to doubt this testimony, but professional and amateur contracts are different (Curmie has handled both), and things may be different since Miller’s death 20 years ago. 

Curmie, who directed about 50 educational theatre productions over six different decades, confesses he would never have even considered the possibility that he’d need permission to stage that scene… and he’s asked permission for a lot of trivial changes: changing “God dammit” to just “Dammit” for a production at a church-related college, changing the title of a Greek tragedy to the one we’d been using in publicity for the new season before deciding on a translation that used a less common Anglicization of the title, and so on.

More to the point, perhaps: Curmie has read, taught, and seen The Crucible multiple times, and he wouldn’t have caught the alleged departure from the text, or at least wouldn’t have thought it noteworthy in legal terms.  He might have been skeptical of the aesthetic choice, but that’s a different matter.  And you’re going to tell me that not one, but several, spectators at a high school production in a tiny town in northern Georgia caught that supposed breach of contract and were sufficiently incensed that they called the principal that night?  And that the “investigation” took only a couple of hours?  Curmie detects a distinct whiff of eau de cow pasture.

It’s also important to point out that terms like “as written” in licensing agreements not only need not, but literally cannot mean that literally everything in the staging must be exactly as prescribed.  Acting editions differ from published editions.  The latter version is what the playwright wrote; the former is generally transcribed by the stage manager of the original production.  Thus, for example, a character may be described physically according to what the actor in the Broadway show looked like; Broadway Licensing isn’t going to come after you if the “beautiful blonde” of a script is played by a beautiful redhead (or a beautiful Latina, Asian, or black woman, for that matter) unless there’s something in the script that demands that she be blonde.

Curmie remembers seeing a production of The Crucible performed in the round.  So what?  Well, the opening stage direction in the acting edition says “One emphatic source of light is at the left.”  There is no left or right in arena staging.  Is DPS going to forbid all but proscenium productions?  Of course not; they make their money, and their clients’ money, by getting as many legitimate productions as they can.  Some discretion is mandatory.  (Note also that the opening sequence in the acting edition is considerably more detailed than in the regular published form.)

The situation is aggravated by the fact that, according to Howard Sherman, two different parents contacted Broadway Licensing (now the parent company of Dramatists Play Service), and both were told that the licensing company did not shut the production down and would have been very unlikely to have done so, especially if the opening scene were removed.  You can hear both ends of one of those conversations here.  (We’ll casually avoid talking about the ethics and legalities of recording a phone conversation without the consent of the other person on the line.)

Sherman reports that students were initially told that the second performance was cancelled because of parental complaints that the show was “evil and disgusting and things like that.”  Fannin County is almost too stereotypical a place for this to happen: rural (not many county seats in the country with fewer than 1300 residents), overwhelmingly white (93% white and not Hispanic/Latino), overwhelmingly Christian, especially Protestant (over half the county’s congregations are Southern Baptist); MAGA (Donald Trump got over 82% of the vote in the ’24 election).  It is, in other words, precisely the kind of place where brie-eating, Chablis-sipping, clove-cigarette-smoking elitists (or, indeed, anyone with a little knowledge of the world) would suspect the locals would get their collective skivvies in a twist over a high school production of an American classic.

And then, as if by magic, the complaint changed to a strained argument about production rights.  Oh, by the way, Caden Gerald, who played the leading role of John Proctor, says in a video posted to Facebook that administrators saw the scene in question “every morning that we ran it.”

Curmie finds it difficult to argue with Chris Peterson’s conclusion that the administration “didn’t stop the play to protect a license. They stopped it to quiet the backlash. They threw their students under the bus for the sake of avoiding Facebook drama.” 

Someone is lying.  All the students, their parents, and two customer service reps from DPS… or a chickenshit principal (the usual apologies for redundancy).  That seems like an easy call to Curmie. 

But there’s one more point to make.  Even if the administration is telling the truth, they are still 100% responsible for the fuck-up and for the nation-wide embarrassment wrought upon their school.  Let’s assume for the sake of argument that it was appropriate to fire the original director, and that there are legitimate reasons for not making the details known.  Let’s assume, also, that the students are lying about administrators’ seeing rehearsals, about being told the play was shut down because of content complaints, and about the administration only discovering (as opposed to announcing) the alleged violation two days after cancelling the second night.

It’s still the school’s fault.  It is the responsibility of the school, not of a high school senior, to comply with the licensing agreement.  In the absence of a responsible adult director, the school had an obligation to ensure that someone in a position to speak for the school be able to sign off on the production’s adherence to the licensing agreement.  If someone from the school saw even a single rehearsal, it was that person’s responsibility to ask the simple question, “did you change anything?”  If Caden Gerald is lying, and no one from the administration saw any rehearsals, they bloody well should have.

The Crucible remains in the canon and on stages throughout the country because it speaks to conditions far beyond colonial Massachusetts or even mid-century hysteria about the Red Menace.  It’s about the problems created when people abandon truth and justice in order to pander to the mob.  To say that the actions of Principal Scott Ramsey and his minions in shutting down the production is thus deeply ironic is to err on the side of understatement.

FIRE's Scorecard: 3 Wins, 1 Forfeit

Frequent readers of this blog know that Curmie views himself as more of a civil libertarian than a liberal.  There’s a lot of overlap, of course, especially in an era in which the POTUS is a narcissistic authoritarian.  (Curmie notes, apophasistically, that he didn’t use the word “fascistic” in the previous sentence.)  Curmie has followed FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, since back in the days when the RE in their acronym stood for “Rights in Education.”  He doesn’t always agree with them, but he did recently renew his membership, if that tells you something, Gentle Reader.

We start with the “forfeit” part of the title of this essay.  Whereas it is true that FIRE concerns itself primarily with freedom of speech and assembly, they do proclaim themselves to be champions of religious liberty.  So Curmie finds it interesting (concerning?) that FIRE offered no opinion on the recent SCOTUS case regarding Oklahoma’s attempt to create a specifically Christian charter school.  SCOTUS ultimately upheld, which in this case means “didn’t overturn” a lower court ruling blocking public funding for such an enterprise.  The vote was 4-4, with Justice Barrett (to her credit) recusing herself, and presumably one of the conservatives (probably Roberts, possibly Gorsuch) joining the liberals in supporting the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling.

Ultimately, the case boils down to whether direct funding of religious schools is different from indirect funding, and whether there’s a substantive difference between full and partial funding.  No one seems terribly bothered by students at Brandeis or Baylor or BYU getting Pell Grants, for example.  But completely underwriting the entire cost of a religious school with public funds seems a bridge too far to a lot of folks, Curmie included.

Curmie suspects that FIRE might not agree with him, given their interest in supporting individuals rather than society if the two come into conflict.  That’s okay, but if so, Curmie would like to see their reasoning.  Their silence on this matter does not do them credit.

Moving on to the wins.  (Note: a “win” here is not about a legal victory, but about being on the “right side” in Curmie’s opinion.)

Back in February, the Maine legislature formally censured Representative Laurel Libby for posting on social media about a trans athlete who had won a championship in girls’ track.  The athlete, a minor, was identified by name and school, and there was a photo of the podium in which the faces of other competitors were blurred, presumably to protect their privacy, but the trans athlete’s was not. 

There have been at least three cases in Maine this year in which a trans female (the same one all three times!) secured a podium finish in some sort of athletic competition; Libby has been vocal about at least two of them.  OK, did Libby deserve censure?  Yes: not for the political opinion, but for the manner it was expressed.  Is she a smug, narcissistic, reckless, grand-standing, hypocrite?  Obviously.  Is she a bully, as Anelise Feldman, the second-place finisher in one of those events, would have it?  Yep.  Does she care more about getting publicity for herself than for her cause?  Well, duh.  She’s this year’s Elise Stefanik.  Is she an idiot?  She’s a proud anti-vaxxer, which pretty much tells Curmie all he needs to know.  Is she a bigot?  Quite possibly, although the issue of how trans athletes should be treated is complicated, and reasonable people can disagree about this one.

But, as FIRE pointed out on May 8, there’s a difference of kind, not merely degree, between a censure and denying Libby the right to speak or to vote in the legislature.  Curmie may think that she’s a blight on society, but her constituents deserve representation, even if Curmie thinks they’d have been better off choosing someone else. 

Daniel Ortner’s piece for FIRE also accuses the Democratic majority of “end-running Maine constitutional provisions that say a representative cannot be expelled absent a two-thirds vote or recall election.”  Trouble is, he’s right.  Just because there’s an authoritarian buffoon in the White House and the Republicans in Congress are too stupid, too corrupt, or too craven to stand in his way doesn’t mean the Democrats won’t behave in exactly the same manner if given the opportunity.  Alas.

SCOTUS agreed this week in a convincing if not unanimous 7-2 decision.  The only good news on the ethics front for Democrats is that Justice Kagan agreed with the majority, and that Maine officials immediately acceded to the ruling, unlike a certain portly pettifogger.

The second win for FIRE is kind of a silly case, but it does point to larger issues.  Apparently there are no actual problems anywhere on the campus of the University of California at Irvine: no lack of funding for library books, faculty salaries, or financial aid, no administrators who see their primary job as justifying their existence, no over-emphasis on athletics (Go, Anteaters!) at the expense of… you know, actual education.  Nope, nothing like any of that. 

This is the only rational reason why the university should care about (wait for it) doormats in university housing.  You read the correctly, Gentle Reader: doormats.  The issue, you see, is that one particular doormat had (GASP!) writing on it!  Worse, that writing was “No warrant.  No entry.”  You see, there’s a policy… except that, actually, there isn’t.  More on that in a moment.

FIRE’s Graham Piro was all over this on May 15.  Piro notes that had there been a policy prohibiting doormats altogether (for safety concerns, for example), there would be no problem.  But apparently, it’s the fact that there are words on this particular doormat that’s the problem.

Piro references the university’s Graduate and Family Housing Policies.  Curmie read through all the sections that even might be relevant (he has a masochistic streak sometimes): not a word about doormats, or writing, for that matter. 

But the university does have a prohibition against “all outward‐facing signs, decorations, and expressions in windows/on doors,” “materials, signs, banners, posters, etc. … anywhere within Student Housing,” (no exception for inside apartments, by the way) and “materials… posted on windows, including windows in resident rooms.” This incoherent and redundant slop could only have been created by some administrator in either Student Affairs or Housing.  It does seem to suggest that someone putting up a poster for their next concert on the outside of the door to their apartment, or indeed anywhere in the building, would be in violation. 

That’s OK, though, because the administration cheerfully admits that rather than re-write the policy to make sense, they merely engage in selective enforcement.  Piro writes that “the office probably wouldn’t ask someone to remove a holiday snowflake display but that it has asked ‘people to take down things like Pride flags, country flags, and advertisements for businesses.’”  They place content restrictions on protected speech, in other words.  That’s not a reasonable time, place, and action restriction.  You can see why FIRE’s headline suggests that UC Irvine is “wiping its feet on the Constitution.”

Finally, there’s the Great Harvard Brouhaha, the most recent episode of which was the absurd attempt by Kristi Noem (a.k.a., Gestapo Spice) to de-certify Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program, making it impossible for the university to enroll foreign students, who make up over a quarter of the current student body.  Most of those affected are grad students from over 100 countries.

Noem, of course, is a sociopathic narcissist, but that hardly separates her from the rest of the current administration.  Her allegations—that Harvard was “fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus”—are paranoid delusions.  The demand for “any and all audio or visual footage, in the possession of Harvard University, of any protest activity involving a non-immigrant student on a Harvard University campus in the last five years” is not merely creepy, but unconstitutional.

That’s not just Curmie saying that.  Here’s FIRE’s Legal Director Will Creeley: “The Department’s demand that Harvard produce audio and video footage of all protest activity involving international students over the last five years is gravely alarming. This sweeping fishing expedition reaches protected expression and must be flatly rejected.”

Noem’s other demands—for evidence of foreign students’ actually violating the law, for example—have little relevance to any honest attempt to review Harvard’s operations, but at least that thin veneer of authenticity remains.  Not so for footage of “all protest activity.”  Here’s FIRE’s Nick Perrino in a follow-up article titled “This isn’t just about Harvard”: 

The feds are demanding more than just information involving illegal activity or violations of the student code of conduct. They want footage of “protest activity” — including speech protected by the First Amendment.

And unless those protests involve only international students, American citizens will also find their constitutionally protected speech in the hands of America's national security apparatus.

And how, exactly, is Harvard to know whether that person in the five-year-old video is a). a Harvard student and b). a citizen of another country?  Creeley’s calling this a “sweeping fishing expedition” may just have been a little too kind.

The good news, for the moment, at least, is that Harvard immediately filed a lawsuit, and U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs issued a temporary restraining order.  Travis Gettys’s article on RawStory says that Burroughs “wrote in her order” that “Revoking Harvard’s certification is unlawful many times over…. The government’s effort to punish the University for its refusal to surrender its academic independence and for its perceived viewpoint is a patent violation of the First Amendment.”  

She did not.  That quotation is taken from Harvard’s motion for the TRO, not from Burroughs’s granting of that application, which merely states that in the absence of a TRO, Harvard “will sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hear from all parties.”

This, Gentle Reader, is why a raised eyebrow of skepticism is always your friend, even especially if the site in question generally aligns with your perspective.  Burroughs may actually believe what she’s quoted as saying (we can hope so), but she didn’t say it.  We’ll find out more at the hearing in a few days.

In the meantime, we return to Will Creeley to take us home:

The administration’s demand for a surveillance state at Harvard is anathema to American freedom. 

The administration seems hellbent on employing every means at its disposal — no matter how unlawful or unconstitutional — to retaliate against Harvard and other colleges and universities for speech it doesn’t like. This has to stop…. 

Whatever Harvard’s past failings, core campus rights cannot and will not be secured by surveillance, retaliation, and censorship.

No American should accept the federal government punishing its political opponents by demanding ideological conformity, surveilling and retaliating against protected speech, and violating the First Amendment.

Well done, FIRE.

Curmie promised that this piece would be shorter than the last one.  It is, but it’s still pretty long.  The next one will be less likely to achieve TLDR status.

Four Stories about Libraries

Curmie confesses that he didn’t have libraries and librarians figuring particularly prominently on his Apocalyptic Bingo card.  He should have known better, but to be honest he thought that even the blustering buffoon occupying the White House would show a little restraint.  Of course, 47 is so far round the bend into incoherence that he makes Joe Biden look like Socrates, Cicero, Abraham Lincoln, Patrick Pearse, Winston Churchill, and Martin Luther King Jr. rolled into one.  Curmie may get around to writing about the folks actually calling the shots, but that will come at a later date, if indeed at all.

There are four very different stories involving libraries on Curmie’s mind at the moment.  They all involve some combination of censorship, incompetence, and a particularly noxious blend of racism, sexism, and xenophobia.  Curmie hastens to note that actual librarians are never the bad guys in these scenaria.  At worst, those folks might be too unwilling to risk their livelihoods by refusing to accommodate absurd demands from “superiors.”  At best, they almost literally man the barricades against authoritarian idiots.

Library Story #1: Back in late March, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who turns out to be even less qualified than Curmie believed when his confirmation was still pending, ordered the Naval Academy’s library to eliminate any books that promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion viewpoints.  Some 900 books were “reviewed,” and 400 were indeed removed.

This silliness (or it would be silliness if the effects weren’t so real) is even worse than the crap we’ve seen in schools in Florida, Utah, Kansas, and elsewhere.  At least there, the censorship was at the public school level where there is at least the whiff of validity to the plaintive cries of “think of the children.”  The examples linked above, of course, are just about book bans; there are plenty of other variations on the general theme of what can’t be said in a classroom (a student’s preferred name, for example) or, God forbid, shown on a stage (too many examples to mention).

But there are no little kids at the Naval Academy.  Its library should reflect its status as a respected institution of higher learning.  Every major book on whatever topic, from whatever culture or era, should be there.  Indeed, as the saying goes, “a truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.”  Having a book on a library shelf is not an endorsement of its ideas.  Indeed, it’s vital that we understand the arguments of those with whom we disagree: otherwise, it’s impossible to effectively critique that reasoning.

And that means there should be a copy of The Prince, and Leviathan, and Das Kapital, and (wait for it…) Mein Kampf on those shelves.  And it sure as hell means that there ought to be at least some representation of more recent works by the likes of Robin DiAngelo, Ibram X. Kendi, and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

None of this is to suggest that these books should necessarily be required reading, or that a decision not to buy a particular volume is inherently problematic.  Removing already purchased books for no reason other than the capricious political predilections of a government official, however, is a little too far down the road to the scenario described in a not-so-coincidentally frequently banned book, Fahrenheit 451, for Curmie’s taste.  Book-burners, literal or metaphoric, are never, and Curmie does mean never, the good guys.

Library Story #2: Speaking of book-burners… in April, a man checked out a total of 100 books over two trips to the public library in Beachwood, Ohio.  (That’s a little over a half hour away from the library where Curmie’s sister-in-law worked for over 40 years.)  The books were about black and Jewish history and LGBTQ+ education.  He then apparently burned them all in what he called a “cleansing,” posting a video to the Gab.com social media site, which is described by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism as “an online hub for extremist and conspiratorial content” frequented by “conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, members of militias and influential figures among the alt right.”

That’s disturbing enough, but it appears that the library is powerless to do much until the books are overdue, and even then the punishment may be simply to pay the cost of the books, which is listed at approximately $1700.  That figure seems quite low to Curmie.  Might it be the original cost, or perhaps a “used copy” cost?  It’s difficult to imagine that new replacement copies would cost less than $17 apiece. 

Moreover, whereas the guy had to have a name and address associated with his library card (the library seems to think they can send him a bill), he is “unidentified” according to news reports, and there seems to be little interest on the part of the police to make this a criminal case.  It might be turned over to the city prosecutor for a civil case.

There is some good news coming out of this, though.  There’s a good deal of indignation on the part of the locals.  More importantly, there’s some action.  The Interfaith Group Against Hate [https://www.igahcle.org/] describes itself as “a coalition led by Jewish, Muslim, and Christian congregations in solidarity with community partners united by the belief that we must confront white supremacy and create a society where people of all races and religions thrive together.” 

They’ve promised to collect and donate “1000 new books lifting up Black, Jewish, and LGBTQ+ voices.”  As of this writing, they’re up to 100 and counting.  Rabbi Robert Nosanchuk from Congregation Mishkan Or summed up the group’s response: “Whoever perpetuated the idea that you can burn us out of Cleveland, deport us out of Cleveland and deny our ideas and oppress us and frighten us to the corner… they picked the wrong community!”

And that, Gentle Reader, is how you do that.

Library Story #3: For a primer on how not to do that, we turn to Columbia University.  Columbia has been apparently rudderless for some time, somehow managing to suppress protected speech while simultaneously failing to take action against students (and others) who actually were breaking the law in pro-Palestinian protests dating all the way back to the Hamas attack in October of ’23.

The university leadership, and Curmie uses that term rather loosely, has spent most of this calendar year academic year groveling and capitulating to Trumpian bellicosity.  It has done them precisely zero good.  Worse, they’ve picked up on the recklessness and lack of concern for things like due process that have become the signature characteristic of the 47 regime.

Earlier this month, students at Columbia and its affiliate Barnard College occupied a reading room at the Butler Library as a response to Israel’s acceleration of attacks on Gaza.  This was, apparently, a violation of the university’s “time, place, and manner” restrictions.  Curmie has no opinion on whether those regulations are reasonable; such a consideration is irrelevant to the point to be made here.

Anyway, there were dozens of arrests.  Curmie isn’t going to comment on them, either.  Rather, he’s going to concentrate on the university’s actions, which included suspending a host of students, including at least four student journalists who were merely covering the protest and at least two who were simply studying in a different part of the library.  And that’s not just the affected students who are saying that; Columbia and Barnard de facto admitted as much by lifting those suspensions, all the while threatening the possibility of future sanctions.

Let’s get a couple of things established up front.  1). Criticism of a foreign government is protected speech, and criticism of Israel is not inherently anti-Semitic.  2).  Chanting “from the river to the sea” and similar slogans is not inherently illegal (irrespective of the claims of Trump and Rubio), but doing so in that place at that time (especially during finals!) may well be.  3).  Actual threats, violence, and vandalism are indeed subject to both criminal prosecution and sanctions, such as suspension, imposed by the university; actions have consequences.

The suspensions were effective immediately, meal cards were voided, and students were given 48 hours to vacate campus housing.  Is this an appropriate punishment for students willfully participating in a protest they knew to be a violation of the university’s code of conduct?  Sure.  But.  (Insert tired joke about a “big but” here.)  That’s a reasonable response after due process.  This wasn’t quite as bad as some of ICE’s kidnappings, but the “guilty until proven innocent” (“…and even then we won’t necessarily concede”) attitude is pretty similar.

Most if not all of the readers of this blog have undergone a finals week at a college or university.  Not the least stressful moments in your life, Curmie suspects.  So add to that not merely the threat of suspension, but a suspension per se and expulsion from your dorm room.  How the hell is any student supposed to be able to perform at their best under those circumstances? 

Apparently, the administration promised even those who really did participate in the protest they’d get due process should any disciplinary proceedings be undertaken.  They lied.  (Of course.)  And for at least several of those suspended, the “crime” in question turns out to be… not being able to leave the library when a bunch of people you don’t know block the exit.  Oh, and being brown-skinned and having a name like Samra Roosa, whose tale is told in the story in The Intercept, linked above.  Mustn’t forget that part. 

By the way, if you’re smart enough to get into Columbia or Barnard, you’re unlikely to be an intellectual pushover.  Here’s Ms. Roosa’s statement:

This accusation has caused me significant emotional distress and disrupted my ability to complete my final assignments. As a Muslim woman, I feel that Barnard has repeatedly failed to create a safe and supportive environment for students like myself. It is unacceptable for the College to claim inclusivity while subjecting students of color to racial profiling and false accusations.

This description, unlike those of too many students (and others) who seek victimhood as a substitute for accomplishment, rings true. 

As might be expected, the Trump administration’s task force on antisemitism (there is, of course, no such program to address Islamophobia) praised Columbia president Claire Shipman, despite (because of?) the obvious sloppiness and lack of anything approaching due process.  But, of course, the fact that the majority of the students suspended by Columbia/Barnard probably deserved it doesn’t change the fact that the administration acted too hastily and with little or no concern for the guilt or innocence of the individual students. 

Curmie has to agree with the assessment of Joseph Howley of Columbia’s Classics faculty: “Hasty punishments and violations of due process are exactly what we would expect when we allow our disciplinary and public safety policies to be dictated by political forces that value repression more than our community’s well-being.”

Library Story #4:  A little over a fortnight ago, the White House, to quote the CNN article, “notified Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden that she was removed from her position.”  There was no immediate explanation, but Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (Bullshit Barbie) later responded to a reporter’s question by asserting that “there were quite concerning things she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI, and putting inappropriate books in the library for children.”

Blessed Athena, tell Curmie where to begin!  With the very questionable assertion that the Executive Branch has any damned business making any decisions whatsoever about the Library of Congress without legislative approval?  With the fact that every book published in the country is housed in the Library (provided only that a copy is sent there), so the content is irrelevant?  With the lack of specificity with respect to the “DEI” allegations, which likely wouldn’t stand up to even casual scrutiny?  With the fact that the Library of Congress is a research library, not a lending library, and you have to be over 16 to even get through the door?  This administration can’t even be bothered to make their lies plausible.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries argues the firing is, “a disgrace and the latest in his [Trump’s] ongoing effort to ban books, whitewash American history and turn back the clock.”  That seems a little foam-flecked for Curmie’s taste, but he does strongly suspect that the real reason for Hayden’s dismissal (that’s a photo of her at the top of the page) had a lot to do with her surplus of melanin and X-chromosomes. 

Well, on second thought, not necessarily.  Perhaps she was terminated, as was Shira Perlmutter a couple of days later from her position as the Registrar of Copyrights: because they were impediments to what Congressman Joe Morelle describes as “a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis. It is surely no coincidence [Trump] acted less than a day after [Perlmutter] refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.”

So maybe Trump was acting as a grifter rather than a bigot, which, of course, would make everything all better, right?  Curmie will let you decide, Gentle Reader.

But here, too, there’s some good news.  After appointing his personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, who, needless to say, has literally no relevant experience for the job, as the new Librarian if Congress, 47 then appointed a couple more DOJ minions, Paul Perkins and Brian Nieves.  Perkins was to take over for Perlmutter, Nieves was to be Blanche’s deputy.  But when they showed up to work, they “were not allowed into offices.” Curmie can’t find a follow-up, or even determine if Perkins and Nieves were shown the door by staffers—you know, actual librarians—or by Capitol Police.

This is likely a blip in the seemingly inexorable and not-so-gradual take-over by Demented Don, (F)Elon, and their cabal of billionaire cronies and sycophantic underlings of literally every vestige of independent thought, Constitutional protections, or a meritocracy.  There is not a Republican in Congress with the patriotism, courage, or common decency to stand in Trump’s way when it really matters.  When the closest thing to a principled conservative in DC is Amy Coney Barrett, the future does not look bright. 

The damage that has already been done will take decades to fix, even if the process can start soon after the 2026 elections.  But the American Dream is not dead yet, and for at least one shining moment, the anti-intellectuals, authoritarians, and plutocrats were held at bay.  It’s not a lot, but it’s something.