On the Aftermath of the Budde Homily

Let’s talk about Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s homily last week, or rather the responses to it.  You will recall, Gentle Reader, that she closed her remarks with the following:

Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you. As you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are transgender children in both Republican and Democrat families who fear for their lives.

And the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in our poultry farms and meat-packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shift in hospitals—they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes, and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches, mosques and synagogues, gurdwara, and temples.

Have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. Help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were once strangers in this land.

May God grant us all the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, speak the truth in love, and walk humbly with one another and our God, for the good of all the people of this nation and the world.

Curmie has three other essays partially written, and he acknowledges both that he’s late to this particular party and that he could never be as informed or articulate as Hayden Vaughn or Mark Sandlin or Tom Christofferson.  Rex Huppke’s snark is pretty good, too.  Seriously, please read those posts.  All that said, Curmie wants to follow up on a couple of ideas.

First, obviously, is that Bishop Budde owes no one an apology for suggesting that <checks notes> “Blessed are the merciful” (that’s Matthew 5:7, for those of you keeping score at home).  Nor does her Church.  The closest her critics can come to a rational argument is that she shouldn’t have addressed her closing remarks directly to the newly-installed President Trump. 

To this criticism, Curmie offers the following rebuttal: 1). It is her right, indeed her responsibility, to inject an ethical perspective into the proceedings.  Representing the teachings of the faith the new President purports to believe in doesn’t seem out of line. 2). The ceremony was part of the inauguration festivities.  We know that because Trump was in a church.  (Curmie hasn’t attended a regular church service—as opposed to, say, a wedding—in years, either.  But Curmie isn’t a hypocritical billionaire hawking autographed Bibles, either.) 

But let’s move on to the reactions of three people in particular.  The first, of course, is the POTUS himself.  (That’s an acronym for Petulant Obnoxious Toddler of Unusual Size, right?)  You can read his screed in its entirety here, if you must.  By now, though, you probably know the salient points: that she’s a “so-called bishop,” a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater,” that she was “was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart,” and “the service was a very boring and uninspiring one.”  Yadda yadda yadda.

Actually, of course, she was simply doing her job, suggesting that the most powerful man in the world (but don’t tell Elon that) might show some mercy.  She didn’t say anything political, strictly speaking, at all.  That Trump would take offense at an indirect suggestion that he might pay at least a little attention to one of the central tenets of the religion of which he purports to be a member tells us all we need to know.

But we expect such brattiness from Trump, so it practically doesn’t register.  And, by now, we probably ought to expect even greater inanity from Representative Mike Collins of Georgia, who is primed to give his fellow Georgia Congresscritter Marjorie Taylor Greene a run for her money if she wants to retain her title of Biggest Idiot in American Politics.  This is the same yahoo who claimed that Joe Biden was behind that “assassination attempt” on Trump that Curmie still isn’t convinced was anything but a poorly directed community theatre production.

Now this blithering buffoon has posted that New Jersey-born Bishop Budde “should be added to the deportation list.”  Collins is, of course, too stupid to realize that in his zeal to protect the Tangerine Tribblehead that he’s undercutting what few philosophical underpinnings there are to the ongoing mass deportations (but notably, not from blue states with the exception of notoriously liberal Austin, Texas).  

If you want to claim that people are are “criminals” if they’re in the country illegally, even if they’ve been taxpayers and community leaders for decades or if they arrived as infants and never knew another country, there’s at least a legalistic argument there.  But Collins has shown very clearly that the intent of the MAGA minions isn’t grounded in the law, but in the attempt to get rid of anyone who isn’t willing to say and do whatever the Fat Felon wants.

And finally we move on to Karoline Leavitt, the new White House Designated Liar Press Secretary, who claimed that Budde had “weaponized the pulpit” (unlike, say, Franklin Graham or Jerry Falwell, apparently), that her comments were “egregious,” and that “she should apologize to President Trump for the lies that she told.”  Look, we all understand that whoever is in that job is expected to shill for the boss, and if it takes a little dishonesty to do that, none of us are shocked that we’re fed a line of bull.  This is true of every administration Curmie can remember; Republicans don’t have a monopoly. 

We can also extend to Leavitt at least a modicum of respect for clinging (retroactively) to the legalistic argument outlined above.  Technically, anyone in the country without either citizenship or appropriate other credentials is a “criminal.”  This would include even Dreamer kids, who have done literally nothing “wrong” other than not leaving the only home they have ever known, still as children, and without their parents...  or a passport, for that matter.  (Curmie expresses precisely zero surprise that the DACA policy introduced by the Obama administration has been ruled unlawful by the 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals, which often rules in ways no rational and even marginally empathetic person would do.)

So we can blame a little of Leavitt’s accusation that Budde “lied” on an inelegant phrasing by the latter, but notice that Leavitt objects to Budde’s “lies.”  That’s plural.  Where are the rest?  Are there people in this country right now who are scared?  Hell, yes.  Curmie is a little trepidatious, himself, and he’s a cishet white male American-born citizen.  He does have this awful habit of speaking his mind, however, and that there’s even a remote possibility that he’ll end up in trouble for that is more than a little ominous.

Are there trans kids in both Republican and Democratic households?  Yes; Curmie knows both, personally.  Do “the vast majority” of immigrants, even those without documentation, pay taxes?  Yes.  Are they good neighbors?  Yes.  Do they attend religious services?  At least as much as citizens do.  Are some of them “fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands”?  Yes.  Does the Christian God teach that “that we are to be merciful to the stranger”?  Undeniably.  So… about that plural, Ms. Leavitt…

It is indeed clear that Budde is no fan of Trump.  She wrote in response to Trump’s media stunt standing holding a Bible in front of St. John’s Church after having police and National Guard troops clear the area with flash-bang and tear gas munitions, “Mr. Trump used sacred symbols to cloak himself in the mantle of spiritual authority, while espousing positions antithetical to the Bible that he held in his hands.” Tell us what you really think, Bishop!

By contrast, Budde is pretty accurate when she says “It was a pretty mild sermon.  It certainly wasn’t a fire and brimstone sermon. It was as respectful and as universal as I could, with the exception of making someone who has been entrusted with such enormous influence and power to have mercy on those who are most vulnerable.” 

That seems reasonable enough to Curmie.  He’s now officially a fan.

Trump’s Day One and the Constitution

When you say the quiet part out loud.

No, Curmie didn’t watch a moment of the inauguration live, but he does have access to the interwebs, knows how to read, and (with his glasses on) has quite good vision. 

Curmie thinks that virtually everything in Trump’s agenda is stupid, but not necessarily objectively stupid.  Some parts are at least defensible, i.e., their wisdom or lack of it is a matter of opinion.  Withdrawing from the World Health Organization is one such instance.  Others are just showboating, e.g., “officially” re-naming Denali and the Gulf of Mexico.  This is the kind of bullshit that plays well with the faux patriot MAGAs, at least with those that haven’t yet figured out that the incoming plutocracy cares literally nothing about them.

But on to constitutionality…  There is not, and should not be, any requirement that anyone in this country should have to place a hand on a Bible (or any other book… anyone else having a “Fried Green Tomatoes” moment?) to declare an oath.  The fact that Trump didn’t do so is perfectly legal and does not in any way render the oath less binding (as if the Grifter-in-Chief has the slightest interest in upholding any vow).  It does highlight the phoniness of his pseudo-Christianity, but anyone paying the slightest bit of attention knew long ago that he’s less of a Christian than Curmie, who just listed himself as agnostic on a juror information form.

Mr. Trump is also legally free to pardon whomever he likes.  The Constitution grants far too much power to the President in this regard, but one suspects that the founders couldn’t have imagined that the office would ever be held by so reprehensible a figure.  And, to be fair, President Biden’s wholesale pardons and commutations, including pre-emptive pardons for family members, provides a lot of cover for whatever 47 wants to do.

The President can also create new government offices, like the Department of Government Efficiency.  (True, there are at least three lawsuits already filed against DOGE, but Curmie isn’t optimistic about their chances.)  Yes, the department was created for the primary purpose of siphoning money out of Medicare and Social Security and into tax cuts for billionaires.  No, it’s not a coincidence that despite the presumed need to lower expenditures we’re now talking about planting the American flag on Mars.  Guess what head of DOGE stands to make billions from government contracts to provide the capability to accomplish that largely frivolous goal?  Hey, you got it in one, Gentle Reader!  Well done!

Speaking of the only person in the country more dangerous than Donald Trump, how about that Nazi salute!?!  Let’s be real.  That’s what it was; no one does that accidentally, certainly not twice.  It was purely intentional, a gesture of arrogance by an asshole fully aware that there’s nothing we mere mortals can do about it.  His response was, of course, to blame people who said he was acting like a Nazi just because he was acting like a Nazi.  Trump won’t dump him for stuff like this, only possibly down the road for upstaging Dear Leader Himself.  Musk’s defenders can say all they want about a “Roman salute,” but they’re not fooling anyone with an IQ above room temperature. 

But here’s the thing, Gentle Reader.  This column is about the constitutionality of events, not their advisability.  This isn’t Germany, where that gesture would have had Mr. Musk led away in handcuffs.  We, all of us, including amoral mediocrities with literally no public-spiritedness, are protected by the 1^st Amendment.  He’s got a legal right to make that gesture… and we’ve got a legal right (and an ethical responsibility) to recognize it for what it was, and to say so out loud.

Finally, we come to the one absolutely, no doubt about it, unconstitutional moment.  That would be, of course, to deny birthright citizenship.  The 14^th Amendment couldn’t be more explicit: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States….”  Trump wants to quibble about “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”  He has literally no case, despite his claims to the contrary.  This is just another example of the Manchurian Cantaloupe throwing a little red meat to the MAGA crowd by playing on their prejudices… so they won’t notice how quickly and how thoroughly he’s screwing them in other ways.

And, Trump being Trump, he feels compelled to lie about it: “It’s ridiculous, we’re the only country in the world that does this with birthright, as you know, and it’s just absolutely ridiculous.”  The Hill’s Sarah Fortinsky notes that some 32 other countries, including Canada, Mexico, and 27 of the 32 nations in the Caribbean, Central and South America, have unrestricted birthright citizenship.  News flash: Trump is a lying buffoon.

Curmie is willing to listen to an argument that the Constitution ought not to say what it clearly says.  Illegal immigration is indeed a problem, and there’s some substance to the whole “anchor baby” argument.  Just as conservatives struggle to find a reason to oppose responsible gun control legislation other than the 2^nd Amendment, liberals have the same problem with birthright citizenship.  But the 14^th is even more explicit than the 2^nd (remember that pesky “well-regulated militia” phrase?), and it is sufficient to prevent any “executive order” from taking precedence.

No, Curmie doesn’t much care for the current makeup of SCOTUS, and he wouldn’t trust a couple of them to admit that night tends to be darker than day if the First Felon said otherwise.  But the majority, even the ones Curmie disagrees with most of the time, are at least smart enough to realize that acceding to this particular Trumpian tantrum would destroy the few feeble strands of respect SCOTUS still retains. 

And that, Gentle Reader, is about the best we can hope for over the next four years.

It's January 20, and...

 

By unfortunate coincidence, January 20 falls on a Monday this year, meaning that Inauguration Day and MLK Day happen on the same day.  It would be difficult to find two men more diametrically opposed than Dr. King and Don the Con.

True, there are some similarities—neither is a shining example of marital fidelity, for example—but the differences are extraordinary.  The snarky comparison on the McSweeney’s site serves pretty well to clarify the issue.  Gee, which one of the two said, “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity”?  And which said “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated”?

Dr. King imagined—dreamed of, if you will—a nation and a world in which people will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.  Mr. Trump, if he had the imagination to dream, would envision a paradise in which those with inherited wealth and an utter absence of morality would have carte blanche (to be fair, it’s doubtful he’d know that term) to exploit literally everyone else at whim.

This goes beyond mere political disagreement.  There’s a case for some of Trump’s stated policies.  Curmie doubts he has any intention of implementing any of them, but that’s a different matter.  So is the nomination of a host of particularly unqualified folks—mostly male, overwhelmingly white, all rich—for high-ranking government positions, although that heads a little closer to the point.

Curmie is not so naïve as to believe that any politician of any political stripe will always adhere to high moral and ethical standards when pushing or even exceeding the limits of appropriate behavior is more likely to get them what they want.  Trump is worse than most if not all, but that’s somewhat beside the point.  Significantly, when Biden or Obama or Bush or whoever did that kind of thing, it was to achieve a goal for like-minded individuals.  The rationale was political efficacy, for the good of a philosophy or an approach.

For Trump, it’s purely narcissistic.  He’s interest only in himself and perhaps a few family members and cronies.  The latter will, of course, be cast aside when they are no longer useful.  Curmie isn’t sure whether the best example is from history (say, Danton or Trotsky) or from Trump’s own past (e.g., Mike Pence).  Those nominees mentioned above share one one attribute, and it sure as hell isn’t competence.  Rather, it’s an apparent willingness to yield all authority to the “stable genius” who doesn’t come close to fulfilling either word in that description.

The three headline-making stories from this week—moving the inauguration ceremony indoors, the whole TikTok brouhaha, and whatever the hell was going on with that meme coin business, all underscore the same conclusion: Donald Trump is an egocentric, mendacious, grifter.  We all knew that, course… or at least the overwhelming majority of the people reading these words did.

A fair number of erstwhile Trump supporters who had spent thousands of dollars to attend the inaugural ceremony only to be left literally out in the cold are beginning to learn how expendable they are.  These are folks to whom the few thousand dollars it cost them to fly to DC, get a hotel room, etc., actually means something.  But too bad, so sad, you can’t actually see it live, because there aren’t enough of you I’m all about manliness until I have to demonstrate it it’s almost as cold as it’s been for several other inaugurations in recent memory.

The result, of course, is that Trump surrounds himelf with his cabal of billionaires and a few obeisant lawmakers and no one else.  If he were smart enough to understand symbolism or irony, there’d be a different look.  Or perhaps he just doesn’t care.  Our only hope is that he truly is as incompetent as he appears to be… or that his base realizes that they’ve been played.

The TikTok debacle may also serve to accomplish this potential outcome.  Shutting down that platform was Trump’s idea, of course; he even tried to do so by executive order.  Now he’s positioning himself as the hero of the 1^st Amendment by reversing course and proclaiming that he won’t enforce the law.  Gentle Reader, Curmie has no idea the extent to which TikTok poses a threat.  He suspects that yes, there’s a lot of data mining being provided to the Chinese government, but it’s probably no more intrusive than what Trump minions like Zuckerberg and Musk are doing for our own government’s surveillance.

Here’s the thing: if TikTok posed a threat back when Trump was in office before, it poses a greater threat now that its popularity has expanded significantly.  More users: more intrusions into citizens’ privacy.  Yet the principal argument other than the 1^st Amendment to restoring TikTok is that a lot of people use it. 

Anyone who believes that Donald Trump reversed course out of principle probably believes they’ll soon be getting a huge check from that Nigerian prince, that tariffs are paid by the exporting country, and that the price of eggs is about to plummet. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. sought to raise up those who were treated unfairly, those who were poor, those who had little but hope.  Donald Trump seeks to raise up his fellow plutocrats.  MLK advocated non-violence; DJT told supporters he’d pay their legal bills if they roughed up anyone who didn’t drink the proverbial Kool-Aid (though why anyone would believe that when he’s notorious for not paying his own bills, let alone anyone else’s, is a bit of a mystery).  King sought a world in which no one has to struggle to survive; Trump wants to cut Medicare and Social Security to provide further tax cuts for the already obscenely wealthy.

Today is a day to commemorate a King, not a would-be king.

Why Should Pete Hegseth Not Be Confirmed?

Pete Hegseth looking combative

As a career educator, Curmie offers a couple of hints to help you answer the question posed in the title of this essay. 

Hint #1: It has little if anything to do with politics.  We expect Presidents (and Presidents-elect) to nominate people who agree with them on relevant issues.  Except in extreme cases (an anti-vax wackadoodle and a snake-oil salesman nominated for health-related positions, for example), the fact that a Senator would do things differently is, or at least should be, pretty much irrelevant.

Hint #2: It has little to do with what too many Democrats see as their best strategy, i.e., impugning his character.  He’s a mendacious asshole.  So what?  If the country cared about that stuff, the guy who nominated him wouldn’t have received a single electoral vote.  You and I may care, Gentle Reader, but having a twice-divorced, drunken, philandering, possible rapist in charge of the military seems just fine to a lot of folks.  Besides, all that stuff is out in the open now, so it’s not like some foreign power could use revelations of that behavior in some sort of blackmail attempt, right?

Hint #3: It doesn’t have lot to do with his alleged mismanagement of, and subsequent firing by, two non-profit advocacy groups, Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America.  (You’d think these folks could get a little more imaginative with their titles, wouldn’t you, Gentle Reader?)

OK, one more hint: The reason not to confirm Pete Hegseth is precisely the reason Republicans support him.

I’m sure you’ve got this figured out by now, Gentle Reader.  The reason not to confirm Hegseth is that he is spectacularly unqualified for the job.  It’s not all the negatives; it’s the utter absence of any positives.  There are, no doubt, some hard-core Republicans who would be great at the job.  But they won’t get nominated because they might be under the impression that as, say, career officers at the top ranks of their military branch, they might actually know more about their job than the blustering buffoon in the White House does.  Can’t have that, can we?

Curmie’s disdain for politicians in general has only grown over the past few days.  Senator Kaine can’t think of a better reason to oppose Hegseth than marital infidelity.  Senator Warren did a little better, quoting him directly about his assertions that keeping women out of combat positions was a matter of “standards.”  But, alas, is too often the case (e.g., Representative Stefanik a little over a year ago), this was more an opportunity to show off for the cameras than ask any real questions.  

The grand prize, however, goes to Senator Schmitt, who seems to think that Hegseth’s very lack of qualifications for the job is his greatest credential.  Oh, and yes, Gentle Reader, Schmitt is also the guy who provided some visual aids for his partisan posturing testimony questions… you know, the one decrying lowered standards while misspelling the word “military.”  Standards!

The one breath of hope is that the questioning of Senator Duckworth might be recognized.  Hegseth whiffed on a number of her questions (good summary here), but here’s the sequence that stands out in Curmie’s mind:

Duckworth: Can you name the importance of at least one of the nations in ASEAN, and what type of agreement we have with at least one of those nations?  And how many nations are in ASEAN, by the way?

Hegseth:  I couldn’t tell the exact number [Duckworth talks over him here.  Kinda classless, but…], but I know we have allies in South Korea and Japan, and in Aukus with Australia.  We’re trying to work on submarines with them…

Duckworth: Mr. Hegseth, none of those countries are in ASEAN.

OK, asking how many nations are in ASEAN is a bit of a gotcha question, and Duckworth could certainly be accused of disrespecting the nominee.  Still, knowing who is in ASEAN and what kinds of alliances the US has with even one of them doesn’t seem out of line.  For the record, Gentle Reader, those nations are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. An 11th country, East Timor, is set to join soon.  There’s a good summary of why we, and particularly why a Secretary of Defense, should care, here.

Look, Curmie couldn’t have answered that question, either, and the chances are that neither could you, Gentle Reader.  But we’re not candidates for a high-ranking cabinet position where you need to know that stuff.  If Curmie couldn’t tell you the fundamental difference between Greek and Roman theatre architecture, or describe the signature event that happened at the Slaviansky Bazaar, or identify at least one of the founders of the Group Theatre, he couldn’t call himself a theatre historian. 

Similarly, Mr. Hegseth can also be intelligent, well-educated, and even worldly.  But if he takes three shots at naming an ASEAN country and is wrong every time, he’s not a legitimate candidate to be Secretary of Defense.  Senator Duckworth’s claim that he is “absolutely clueless” may be a bit harsh, but given the responsibilities of the job, it’s not inaccurate.  She describes her own thought process thusly: “Over and over again, he said, ‘Oh, I’m not that experienced, but I'm going to hire people smarter than myself to do this.’  And that the whole day, I was thinking, ‘Then why don't we just hire somebody smarter than you for the job?’”

That seems reasonable.  Curmie is reasonably intelligent and well-educated; he has never cheated on his wife, was never drunk on the job, was never accused of rape.  He’d still be an awful Secretary of Defense.  So would Pete Hegseth, even if all those allegations against him are false.  Literally his only credential is that he is ideologically and temperamentally aligned with the soon-to-be Commander-in-Chief.  At least in the abstract, that’s a good thing, but it isn’t enough.  (For the record, Curmie actually agrees with some of Hegseth’s ideas… not many, but some.)

There are plenty of conservative men and women who have run large operations (not with an annual budget of over $800,000,000,000, but large), who have more than a passing understanding of the way the military operates at the upper levels, who understand international relations at least as well as the average undergraduate political science major.  Pete Hegseth is not among them.

He should not be confirmed, but he probably will be.  That’s because the GOP holds a slight majority in the Senate, and the average Republican pol is more interested in fellating (hopefully only metaphorically) Mr. Trump and thereby avoiding (for the moment) a primary challenge than in actually protecting the country.  Sad, but true.

Curmie, alas, is usually right about such predictions, but he’s not infallible.  He’d dearly love to be wrong this time.

Millsaps Picked the Wrong Alum to Piss Off

 

Dr. James Bowley

Curmie came across this story accidentally: it appeared as suggested content on the YouTube homepage when he was looking for something completely unrelated.  Curmie is no fan of the tracking software and accompanying algorithms, but once in a (great) while something useful comes of them.

So, that YouTube post was on the Esoterica channel, hosted by Dr. Justin Sledge.  Normally, Esoterica “produces content relating to topics such as alchemy, magic, Kabbalah, mysticism, hermetic philosophy, theosophy, the occult and more using the best academic scholarship currently available.”  It’s a popular channel, with nearly 800,000 subscribers.  Curmie currently has precisely zero YouTube subscriptions, but he just might take the plunge on this one.

Dr. Sledge (bio here) is clearly a well-respected scholar, so his condemnation of Millsaps College’s recent actions as “utterly outrageous and a complete betrayal of the kind of values I was taught as a student at Millsaps” carries some weight.  Yes, Sledge is Millsaps alumnus, specifically a former mentee of Dr. James Bowley, who remains on the faculty there.  Well, sort of.  Bowley has been suspended by the college because he sent an email to three (Count ‘em!  Three!) students in the wake of the 2024 Presidential election.

Specifically, administrators say that Dr. Bowley used his “Millsaps email account to share personal opinions with [his] students.”  Of course, professors share personal opinions with students all the time—or they’d damned well better do so!  The phrasing of the memo is further evidence of the fact that the average college or university administrator is incapable of using the English language correctly.  There is no hope for them… unless, of course, they choose to run for POTUS.  (Meow.)

Despite the attempt to frame the issue as using a college account for an unapproved purpose, what really has their skivvies in a twist is the fact that Bowley’s comments were of a political nature: cancelling his Abortion and Religions class on the day after the election to “mourn and process this racist and fascist country.”

Curmie suspects that the administration would have been fine with Bowley’s sending out an email rejoicing with his students at “the defeat of DEI candidate Harris and the return to American values,” or some such rubbish.  This, of course, is only conjecture on Curmie’s part, but he’s pretty confident of this conclusion.

Anyway, let’s look at a couple of facts that seem to be undisputed.  There were only three students in that class, and Bowley claims he “knew them very, very well and.. knew it was not a good day for them to have class.” He says he was “trying to be kind, empathetic, and understanding to a small class of students.”

Anyway, one of those students posted the email on Instagram.  Whether Bowley didn’t know this student as well as he claims or the student is just a naïf who didn’t consider possible repercussions isn’t clear.  What definitely did happen is that a student not in the class saw it and narked to the administration.  Of course they did.

Interim Provost Stephanie Rolph placed Bowley on administrative leave just two days after the email was sent, without any formal hearing.  He was forbidden to go on campus and denied access to his college email account.  This appears to be a clear violation of Bowley’s right to due process.  And this isn’t just Curmie saying this: it’s the lawyers at FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression).  Regular readers of this blog know that Curmie is a FIRE member, and he does urge you, Gentle Reader, to check out the letter sent by Haley Gluhanich, the organization’s Senior Program Officer for Campus Rights Advocacy.

But, you’re a busy person, so here’s the précis: in addition to violating due process, the college violated its own rules, specifically that when  “speaking or writing as a citizen, the teacher is free from institutional censorship or discipline.”  Furthermore, “Bowley’s expression of opinion regarding the election falls squarely within his right to speak as a private citizen on matters of public concern….  Briefly sharing an opinion, including criticism of an election outcome, is not within the scope of faculty members’ responsibilities, and students would not reasonably interpret it as speech on behalf of the institution.”

But (as they say on the late-night infomercials) Wait!  That’s not all!  “Even if Bowley’s speech were to be considered within the scope of his job duties, many U.S. circuit courts have recognized protection for a great deal of faculty expression, including ‘speech related to matters of public concern, whether that speech is germane’ to the class or not….  As the Supreme Court has said, ‘[w]hatever differences may exist about interpretations of the First Amendment, there is practically universal agreement that a major purpose of that Amendment was to protect the free discussion of governmental affairs.’”

We can also add that when the case actually was turned over to a faculty grievance committee (after, but apparently not related to, the FIRE letter), that body recommended that Bowley immediately be reinstated and given a public apology.

Of course, President Frank Neville decided that nation-wide embarrassment was a reasonable enough price to pay in order to put a mere tenured faculty member in his place.  As is too often the case, one administrator makes a stupid decision and everyone up the food chain rallies around to protect the moron at the expense of justice.  Remember the painting of Muhammad incident?  Or the “Game of Thrones” t-shirt idiocy?  Or the “Firefly” poster debacle?  There are others, many others (alas), but those three are the ones that came most immediately to mind.

Curmie searches for mitigation for the college administration’s absurd actions.  Here’s the best he can do.  1). Cancelling class because of election results borders on infantilization of students.  2). Curmie wasn’t happy about the election results, either, but “racist and fascist country” is, as our Francophone friends might say, un peu trop. 3). Using the college email account for such a message may be a technical violation of college policy, one which is violated dozens of times every day, but policy, nonetheless.  Curmie remembers being urged long ago to include a line in his signature that his opinions are his own and he doesn’t speak for the university.  Curmie refused, saying he doesn’t correspond with anyone so stupid they don’t know that.

Notice that there seems to have been no objection to #1, or ostensibly to #2 (although we all know better that to believe that).  Urging Dr. Bowley to dial back the rhetoric in the future might be appropriate; that’s it.  As for #3: “Please don’t do that again” would suffice.  But insecure people in power will always try to throw their weight around.  There is no conceivable way that anything Bowley did would justify even an investigation, let alone any punishment more than a private reprimand.

It may be that the college just wants him gone for some other reason—objecting to some idiotic idea proposed by the provost, for example (Curmie has seen more than his share of those)—and this was the closest thing they could come up with for cover.  Or they’re just authoritarian jackasses with the acuity of a radish.  Your guess is as good as mine, Gentle Reader.

Oh, back to Dr. Sledge for a moment.  He says in his screed on Esoterica that he is “going to make sure that [his] video is the highest ranking, most viewed video for anyone who searches for Millsaps College.  That means that any prospective student, parent, alumni, or donor [knowing wink] will see this video at the top of any internet search for Millsaps.”  Here’s that link again, Gentle Reader, in case you, like Curmie, hope he succeeds in his mission.

Jimmy Carter’s Funeral and the Postmodern World

The photo you see here has been making the rounds of the leftie press of late.  It shows the VIPs—Joe and Jill Biden, Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff, Bill and Hillary Clinton, George and Barbara Bush, Barack Obama, Donald and Melania Trump, Al Gore, and Mike and Karen Pence—as Jimmy Carter’s coffin is carried past them at yesterday’s funeral service.

Why did Curmie specify the leftie press?  Look at Donald Trump.  His hand isn’t on his heart, but it appears to be on what a friend of Curmie described in a Facebook post as “his prodigious gut.”  Mr. Trump is not exactly renowned for his respect for literally anyone outside his inner circle, so the photo seems to play into his pattern of hubristic petulance.  But is that interpretation accurate?  Perhaps, but Curmie has his doubts.

Notice that Mike Pence’s, Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s hands are also a little lower than heart-high.  That suggests at least the possibility that at the instant the photo was taken, Trump was just a little later than the others to raise his hand or a little sooner to lower it.  (We can’t be sure exactly when this still was taken.)  If that’s the case, then Trump falls well short of being sinister in this instance.  Curmie has sought in vain to find video footage that would either confirm or deny his suspicions.

Certainly the leftie press is not above taking a cheap shot (more on that, and why Curmie believes they contributed significantly to Trump’s victory in a later post… probably).  Similarly, Donald Trump is unquestionably the politician least willing to adhere to normative practices of civility.  We’re left, then, with a question of interpretation, and it’s unsurprising that a photograph, something that might have a claim to being called an artwork, is at the center.

In modernist art, the artist would create and then inscribe meaning into the work, and the reader (the term is used in this context to include spectators, auditors, et al.) would ferret it out.  In the postmodern world, however, the roles change.  The artist no longer creates meaning, but rather catalyzes it; meaning is created by the reader, and therefore is different for each receiver.  This can be a function of personality, political perspective, or a host of other variables.

Postmodern artworks often bombard the reader with multiple simultaneous images, enough to prevent the complete reception of all of them, and perhaps even to the de facto exclusion of one or more.  Does it matter, for instance, that several of the people pictured above appear to have their eyes closed?  Perhaps.  And, if so, what does it mean?  The answers to those questions, Gentle Reader, are likely to tell us more about ourselves than about the folks in the photo.

This idea has, of course, appeared in countless works of art, from Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashōmon” to Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer.”  As the latter would have it, “a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”  This, of course, is very much a function of confirmation bias: you despise Trump, so the photo proves that he was being disrespectful to the deceased at a funeral; you distrust the media, so they’re taking an instant in time out of context to further an agenda unrelated to truth-telling.

Curmie, of course, fits into both categories, so he’s particularly intrigued by the mystery.  Yes, he has a working hypothesis, but that’s it.  Curmie suspects that a lot of people—too many by far—will have made up their minds about the photo’s significance almost immediately. 

That tells us a fair amount about why the nation is as fractured as it is.  We (well, not Curmie, but you know what I mean) just elected the most divisive political figure of Curmie’s lifetime.  This recent election was decided more negatively than any other: millions upon millions of voters chose the President-elect based not on who he is, but on who he isn’t.  (A lot of people voted for Kamala Harris using the same logic.)

Someone is going to have to bring our perspectives together for the betterment of the citizenry, not just of “our side.”  It won’t be Donald Trump or J.D. Vance or Chuck Schumer, and it sure as hell won’t be Elon Musk.  Richard Foreman, the auteur and impresario whose recent passing affected Curmie more than he thought it would, is desperately needed right now.  He wouldn’t have made us all see the same thing, but he’d at least have reassured us that it was okay that we didn’t.

There Is No Job 3

 

There are other things to write about today.  There is nothing else to write about today.

For the second time in this brief New Year, one of our greatest cities is under attack.  Last week, it was New Orleans; now it’s Los Angeles.  Curmie isn’t going to pretend that there aren’t other issues, other crises, out there… but right now the fires around Los Angeles are the story.

Curmie has spent little time in that area—roughly 6/100 of 1% of his life—but, of course, he has numerous friends there.  As might be expected from his line of work, Curmie knows colleagues at area universities, former classmates and students, and of course folks in a totally different profession who just happen to be located in that particular urban area instead of in Pittsburgh or Atlanta or wherever.

One of those friends recently posted on Facebook that she and her partner “are safe and evacuated.  EXHAUSTED keeping up with these fires. It’s like WHACK-A-MOLE.”  [Edit: here’s part of a more recent post by a different friend: “Everyone is on edge. No one really feels safe because just when you take a breath, another fire randomly appears. We’re all in shock. We can’t let our guard down. It’s not over.”]  That is the issue here.  Not just the destruction of property, not just loss of life (although that’s obviously the worst part of the ordeal)—the exhaustion, the not knowing, the stress, and the loss.

Naturally, as has been the case with every headline-making tragedy in recent years, the Manchurian Cantaloupe has taken every opportunity to politicize the event, blaming everyone from Governor Gavin Newsom to the firefighters themselves for failing to anticipate a literally unprecedented catastrophe.  Virtually no rain in months, coupled with hurricane force winds… that’s a recipe for disaster if some idiot drops a lit cigarette or whatever (we know the fire started in a residential area, not that unraked forest we heard a lot about last time).  Curmie here antiphrastically avoids using the phrase “climate change.”

And, of course, we heard nothing about how the Republican governors of those states battered by hurricanes this fall should have been better prepared.  No, there was Trump, interfering in the relief effort and suggesting that FEMA workers were the enemy. 

Of course, our less than beloved President-elect has a somewhat less than amicable relationship with the truth.  Curmie rather suspects that if Mr. Trump were to utter an entire paragraph that was both coherent and honest, the result would be something akin to the Wicked Witch of the West being doused with water.  Here’s a rebuttal from Brian Krassenstein, who at least apparently knows more about what’s going on than either Trump or Curmie do:

After millions of views spreading lies about the Palisades firefighters lacking water because of regulations, the boring truth comes late like usual and wont be shared. Here it is: 

1 - Reservoirs and water tanks were at normal levels and completely full before the fire. 

2 - All 114 city water supply tanks were fully stocked pre-fire. 

3 - A 15-hour surge at four times normal demand reduced water pressure. 

4 - High demand at lower elevations slowed refilling tanks at higher elevations. 

5 - This unprecedented fire was fueled by 8 months of no rain and 85 MPH winds. Water is being brought in continuously. 

6 - Even if, like Trump claimed, the protection of the Delta Smelt caused over regulation by California, it's the FEDERAL Endangered Species Act that requires the protection of endangered species like the Delta Smelt and their habitats, not Gavin Newsom or California.

Here's the thing.  Perhaps, perhaps, there is a grain of truth in Trump’s allegations (insert stopped clock analogy here).  Apparently many insurance companies recently (before this situation, but recently) dropped coverage in the area because of the high risks involved.  If they could anticipate disaster, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that state officials should have been able to do so, as well.  Of course, Curmie’s own homeowner’s policy was cancelled a few years ago because… wait for it… there were apparently newly-discovered 30-year-old trees on the property.  (They also sent out an “inspector” who claimed to have found “mildew”; it was dirt.)

Irrespective of the legitimacy of the critique, however, the time for that reflection has not yet arrived.  Job 1: get people to safety.  Job 2: do what we can to protect property—homes, businesses, etc.  As of now, as the title of this piece suggests: There Is No Job 3.   

Curmie was about to say that all he can do, Gentle Reader, is to send good and healing thoughts to those whose lives and property are in danger, and thanks and admiration to the fire-fighters and others who are struggling to limit the damage.  That isn’t quite the case, though.  He can also help a little: here’s a link to make a donation to the cause.  Curmie contributed; you know Donald Trump won’t.  We can’t even get him to STFU.

Three Stories from the OnStageBlog, Part 2: The Professional World

Curmie is finally getting to write the second half of his two-parter on stories from the OnStageBlog.  This one involves the casting of the musical Elf at Broadway at Music Circus in Sacramento.  OnStageBlog’s founder Chris Peterson often gets what Curmie’s grad school mentor would call “foam-flecked,” and his editorial here is no exception.  But he does have a point.  Sort of.

The company came under criticism when they announced the cast list for Elf; although a number of the leads were non-white, the entire chorus (seen above) looks pretty vanilla, i.e., white-passing. Actress (or is she the “social media manager for major hotel brands”?) Victoria Price is one of those who led the charge, pointing to the difference between the Broadway ensemble and the one in Sacramento, and noting that any comments critical of the casting were being deleted.  (Curmie assumes she’s telling the truth about this.)

Tony nominee Amber Imam joined the fray, writing that Price’s criticism of both the casting and the removal of negative comments was “absolutely right.  A show that takes place in NEW YORK CITY cannot… CAN NOT have an ensemble that LOOKS LIKE THIS!!!  Do better.  Have you learned nothing?????”

The company’s CEO Scott Klier issued a response that made the situation much, much worse: “cover-up worse than the crime” worse.  Here’s part of it:

Inclusivity has been and remains my casting and staffing goal for every production.

I fell short of that goal for ELF. There is an uncomfortable truth here: Our industry as a whole has largely failed to attract, train and foster the artists necessary to meet today's demand, and I fear this conversation will continue until it does. It will unfortunately take time. The painful reality of ELF’s casting process was that both the casting submissions and audition attendance revealed few candidates of color and, while those few were undoubtedly talented, they did not meet the dance, music and acting criteria set by our team.

Hoo boy… Claiming inclusivity as a “goal” and then going 0-for-15 at fulfilling it?  Blaming other people while admitting the decision was yours?  Admitting there’s a “demand” and then ignoring it? 

Price responds that the standard for Broadway is surely higher, but they managed to assemble a significantly more diverse cast.  True, but one might also note that the talent base is considerably both wider and deeper in New York than in Sacramento, which is not exactly the first city one thinks of when contemplating the American theatre.

Price then accuses Klier of “writing lies,” and asserts that “we will continue to be here and not just be here, but excelling in everything we do bc (as you basically said in your response) we are expected to be TWICE as good as our white counterparts to even be SEEN.”

Ultimately, she launches into a rather odd commentary, complaining about tokenization.  So having one black ensemble member is somehow a bad thing… even worse than having none, perhaps?  I don’t get it.

So let’s talk about casting decisions.  They’re sometimes extremely complex; other times they’re easy.  There are some shows that require actors of a particular race to play a particular role.  When Curmie directed “Master Harold… and the boys” a few years ago, Hally had to be white, and Sam and Willie had to be black.  Full stop; no discussion.  When he did Trojan Barbie, the male roles had to be played by two blacks, one white, and one Latino; the women’s roles were much more flexible in terms of race.  The majority of roles in most plays, of course, can be played by actors regardless of demographics, with the only considerations being things like blood relatives being of the same race (and that’s only true in realism).

Is casting the actors the director (or producer, or whoever is making the decisions) honestly believes are the best available an ethical strategy?  Of course it is.  Is attempting to employ a cast that represents the time and place in which the play is set reasonable?  Again, of course.  In this approach, it doesn’t matter which actors are white or BIPOC, only that some of the latter are included somewhere.  If you’re going to claim diversity as a goal, then an all-white chorus is probably a bad idea.  The key word here just might be “probably,” however. 

Often—by no means always, but often—there are two actors who are essentially equal.  For his last twenty-something shows, Curmie was always casting at the same time as a colleague, and we were discouraged from casting the same actor twice in a semester.  Unsurprisingly, we’d often want the same actors, leading to negotiations: “you can have Actor X if I can have Actor Y.”  But I remember one time in particular when I said “I need one of these four actors.  You can have whichever three you want, but I get one of the four.”  In this sort of toss-up situation, a director who doesn’t need to accommodate a colleague might reasonably think, “why not make a choice that adds to the diversity of the cast?”  

That said, sometimes one actor is just flat-out better than another in auditions.  A director would be remarkably stupid not to cast that person.  The thing is, there’s no way of knowing whether the actors cast in the Elf ensemble were clearly the best, or whether Klier’s interest in inclusion extends no further than a marketing blurb. 

Is there still some racism in the business?  Of course, there is.  Does Klier have a spotless reputation in terms of providing opportunities for non-white actors?  No.  But is Price’s claim about black actors having to be twice as good to even get noticed a gross exaggeration?  Yes, at least in terms of the industry at large.  And we might reasonably suspect that she’d be less insistent on an authentic depiction of the people who’d be in a particular place at a particular time if a production of Fiddler on the Roof had a couple of black folks in a small town in Tsarist Russia.

Curmie recalls overhearing one actress telling her friends that the reason I hadn’t given her a callback was because she was black.  I called back ten women; three were black.  She didn’t make it four because… wait for it… her audition wasn’t very good.  And, as Curmie wrote a couple of years ago, his “own experience as a director has included both casting BIPOC actors in roles obviously first played by whites and ending up with all white actors when he went into auditions thinking he’d almost certainly get a multi-racial cast. It works out how it works out.”

In other words, the original casting decisions might have been—as opposed to were—inappropriately exclusionary to non-white performers; the fact that there was some diversity in the leads mitigates but does not squelch the criticism with respect to the ensemble.  Some of Price’s arguments were legitimate; others were overblown at best.  Klier’s response to the controversy was sufficiently incompetent that he made matters considerably worse.  It’s rather a mess; Curmie suspects that the one objectively true statement in all of this is Klier’s claim that a reasonable resolution “will unfortunately take time.”

The good news, such as it is, is that the production got a positive review on the Broadway World site.  But there is not a word about the ensemble; indeed the list of principals is said to “round out the incredible cast.”

<Sigh.>

What the Hell Was ESPN Thinking?

There’s a lot of brouhaha at the moment about ESPN’s coverage of yesterday’s Sugar Bowl game in New Orleans, or rather of the pre-game.  The game was postponed for a day in the wake of the horrific events of early New Year’s morning only a few blocks from the Superdome, where the game was played.

So why is the photo for this piece of a baseball game?  Allow me to explain.  Curmie has been a fan of the New York Mets since 1962, the year of the team’s inception.  I can tell you that the biggest home run in Mets history had nothing to do with their World Series championship years of 1969 or 1986.  It was Mike Piazza’s two-run, come-from-behind, homer in the bottom of the 8^th inning in Shea Stadium on September 21, 2001. 

It was the game-winning hit and it came against the best team in the division, the arch-rival Atlanta Braves.  Vastly more importantly, it was during the first major league game to be played in New York after the attacks of 9/11.  And, for the first time in a week and a half, the locals had something to be happy about.  That night, anyone who wasn’t a Braves fan per se (and probably a fair number who were) needed that home run.  Not just Mets fans.  Not just New Yorkers.  Americans.

We’d been told the everything was going to be OK, but we needed more.  David Letterman going back on the air helped, but everything was still somber.  The Bush jokes that would cement the resolve—you don’t joke about the President if your country is in crisis—were to come later.  But first, there was Mike Piazza.  Sometimes, sports matter.

In the winter of 1980, Curmie lived in a small town in rural Kentucky.  He remembers watching the “Miracle on Ice” Olympic hockey game on the TV.  After the incredible upset of the powerhouse Soviet team by a bunch of American college kids, after the most famous line of Al Michaels’s career—“Do you believe in miracles?  Yes!”—there was a lot of noise outside, loud enough to be not merely audible but intrusive in Curmie’s second-floor apartment.

Outside, there was a string of cars with horns blaring; their windows were down (even in Kentucky it can get a little nippy in February), with a bunch of mostly teenagers leaning out and chanting “USA!  USA! USA!”  I’m willing to bet that Curmie was one of fewer than a dozen people in the entire town who’d ever seen a hockey game live, but here were these kids who didn’t know a poke check from a blue line getting excited about the Olympic semi-final.

In the midst of the Iranian hostage situation, with the country only showing the slightest signs of emerging from the energy crisis (is it any wonder the incumbent President was routed in the election a few months later?), we—again, all of us—needed something to grab ahold of, something to suggest that we’d weather the storm.

There have, of course, been other moments that transcended sports: Jesse Owens dominating at the Berlin Olympics in 1936, Joe Louis knocking out Max Schmeling in the first round, Billy Miles appearing from nowhere to win the 10,000m in the Tokyo Olympics, we might even add Spiff Sedrick’s improbable sprint to glory in the women’s rugby 7s in this year’s Olympics.

But this year’s Sugar Bowl was most like that baseball game in September of 2001: what made it special wasn’t who won, or what political statement could be wrangled out of the victory, but the mere fact that the game went on was a sign of determination and perhaps a little bit of defiance.  If you’re a Georgia fan, you’re disappointed that your team lost, but you were reminded before kickoff that there are more important things than football games. 

Well, you were reminded of that fact if you were at the game in person.  You’d have less of that perspective if you… you know… watched on TV.  ESPN, which had exclusive broadcasting rights, cut away from the moment of silence, from the Star-Spangled Banner, and by extension from the “USA!  USA!  USA!” chants at the end of the anthem.  Needless to say, a lot of folks on the political right attributed the obviously intentional omission to anti-American “wokeness.”  (Here’s one example.) Whether the decision was in fact a product of political orientation or garden-variety incompetence may be up for discussion, but this has to rank among the biggest blunders the network has ever committed… yes, even worse than hiring Bill Walton, and that’s saying rather a lot.

Please remember, Gentle Reader, that this is Curmie saying this: the guy who decried the “unrelenting jingoism” of NBC’s Olympic coverage in 2012, and the “ultra-nationalistic bleatings of Peyton Manning” at this year’s opening ceremonies.  Curmie is no fan of pretending that “nationalism” and “patriotism” are synonyms.

Except.

The attack in New Orleans was a body blow to the American psyche.  It didn’t knock us out, but it staggered us for a moment.  (Curmie mentioned last time out that there was a “what if” scenario for him personally on this one.)  There’s a difference between moving forward despite what happened the previous morning and pretending that those events hadn’t occurred.

We, as a nation, need to proceed with as close to a normal routine as is possible.  That’s obviously impossible for those most directly affected, but I was pleased to see that our favorite New Orleans restaurant re-opened last night after closing for New Year’s Day.  And the game went on: with heightened security, but it went on.

Everyone—players, coaches, officials, television crews, concessionaires, fans—who showed up for the game a day after it was scheduled to be played had to have been at least a little apprehensive.  But there they were.  They got a moment to ponder the essential truth that someone who cheers for the other team isn’t the enemy: assholes who intentionally plow into pedestrians are.  Television viewers didn’t get that moment.  And whereas Curmie was unimpressed with the rendering of the national anthem, on this particular occasion he’d have liked to have seen it, especially given the image you see here of New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell.

The crowd’s chanting “USA!  USA!  USA!” at the end was unscripted, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have been anticipated.  ESPN sideline reporter Laura Rutledge was widely and appropriately praised for her reporting of events in New Orleans from the initial attack all the way through the game.  She could have told the bosses what to expect, but perhaps she was fooled into thinking there was a decision-maker with more savvy than a dead flounder.

The chant may have been trite, it may have been was certainly eminently predictable, but it was above all else a communal monodigital salute to those who would attack us.  Ultimately, we’re family.  We can disagree, loudly and stridently, about everything from politics to what team to cheer for, but if you come at any of us just for being us, you’ll have to deal with all of us.  We are bloodied but unbowed.  We are legion.  Messing with us is contra-indicated.

(BTW, don't ask why that one paragraph is formatted differently than all the others.  Blogspot is inscrutable.)