“A Properly Decent Human Being”

 

Curmie can’t speak for everyone, but sometimes, Gentle Reader, he could use a reminder that not all white South Africans are amoral Nazi plutocrats.  The recent passing of the great playwright Athol Fugard was one such reminder, but in a sad way.  It was a special pleasure, therefore, to read that a statue of the late musician and activist Johnny Clegg has now been unveiled in Cape Town as part of a unique and growing exhibition called The Long March to Freedom.

Curmie might as well quote rather than paraphrase Ashleigh Nefdt here:

The Long March to Freedom is a unique and monumental procession of life-size bronze statues, each of which depicts freedom fighters who never gave up the idea of a liberated South Africa. It tells a story of South Africa that spans 350 years; boasting the company of everyone from Khoi leaders who ruled hundreds of years ago, proud Zulu and Xhosa kings and those who led South Africa to light during our fiercest fight for freedom including Nelson and Winnie Mandela, Beyers Naude, Albert Luthuli, OR Tambo and now, Johnny Clegg.

Born in England, Clegg grew up in Johannesburg, where he became fascinated by Zulu culture.  He learned the language and both the musical and dance styles.  His first (by no means his last) arrest for violating apartheid laws came at the age of fifteen.  A year later he met and started to perform with Sipho Mchunu.  Needless to say, a white teenager and a young black man performing together raised more than a few eyebrows in South Africa in 1969.  The fact that they sang in both English and Zulu probably ruffled a few feathers, too.  That didn’t change when the duo expanded into the band Juluka, adding four more musicians: two white, two black.

Juluka faced harassment and censorship both before and after releasing their first album in 1979.  National broadcasters wouldn’t play their music, but they still did shows in churches, private residences, and the like.  And the band toured internationally as well as releasing two platinum and five gold albums.  Juluka disbanded in 1985 when Mchunu retired from music (they’d re-unite briefly in the late ‘90s).

Clegg then founded a new band, Savuka, with Juluka band-mate Dudu Zulu.  The band released four albums and an EP before Dudu Zulu was shot and killed in 1993.  The group’s first album, “Third World Child,” broke international sales records in three European countries, and “Heat, Dust, and Dreams” earned a Grammy nomination.

He went on to a solo career, still with both black and white fellow musicians, although that became less of a big deal after the fall of apartheid in 1993 and the election of Nelson Mandela the following year.  Most of the songs Clegg is known for came from the Juluka or Savuka days, and they figured prominently in his live shows. 

Curmie can’t remember when, exactly, he first encountered Clegg’s music, but it was at least thirty years ago.  He doesn’t own all of Clegg’s CDs, but he does have four of them: one with Juluka and three with Savuka.  Songs like “Scatterlings of Africa,” “Great Heart,” “African Sky Blue,” and “Cruel, Crazy, Beautiful World” have been heard a lot at Chez Curmie and on his Spotify feed.  But it’s “Asimbonanga” that holds special place in Curmie’s heart.

It was that song, about the incarceration of Nelson Mandela (“Asimbonanga” means “we have not seen him”), that Curmie chose as curtain call music for his production of Fugard’s “Master Harold”… and the boys, which Curmie firmly believes is the best show he’s ever directed.  The play has nothing to do with Mandela, but a lot to do with the apartheid system Mandela opposed.  Curmie stands by his choice, and he still can’t listen to that song without getting a little teary-eyed, and if it’s this clip from a 1999 concert, it’s all over.

Curmie thinks Johnny Clegg was an outstanding musician and song-writer.  But that doesn’t get you a statue in the Long Match to Freedom exhibition.  Rather, it was his activism, his perseverance, and his humanity which make him a worthy recipient of that honor.  It’s why he was mentioned alongside the likes of Athol Fugard, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Václav Havel in what became Curmie’s signature lecture, the “Uncle Norb Speech.”  It’s why Curmie’s alma mater awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters in 2012.

The statue shows Clegg not with a guitar in his hands, but in a traditional Zulu dance. His family says he would often perform such dances at home “to ground himself during often heart-breaking and difficult times.”  His son describes “who he was at his core: Zulu culture, music, and dance.”

At the unveiling ceremony, Dali Tambo, the founder of Artists Against Apartheid, highlighted “the fact that he always represented racial harmony, a coming together, a uniting of the people of South Africa.  He was anti-apartheid in that way; he was anti-racist in that way.”  Clegg’s longtime friend Max De Preez said that “Johnny would have reminded us today that the safest, richest, future would be to embrace the people and cultures and music and humanity of our continent.”

De Preez sums up Johnny Clegg: “he was a properly decent human being, and that is the biggest compliment that can be paid to anyone.”  Curmie can’t improve on that description.

 

Signaling Incompetence

Trying to keep up with the latest developments in the recent national security fuck-up for the ages is a bit like trying to drink from a fire hose.  There are new revelations—or suspected revelations, at the very least—appearing at an alarming rate.

What we know at this point is troubling enough.  A host of the people who are charged with defending the country proved themselves to be not merely “not ready for the big leagues” (hey, baseball season is upon us; gotta show some respect), but probably not worthy of sitting on the bench for the high school JV team. 

We know that this collection of absurdly unqualified hacks defied Pentagon regulations and used a commercial product, Signal, to plan an imminent attack on Houthi forces in Yemen.  We know that somehow Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, got added to the group chat by Mike Waltz, the national security advisor (!). 

We know that there was concern, probably more than mere concern, that Russia and perhaps China could hack Signal virtually at will.  So why use it?  The most likely reason is that messages there disappear without a trace after 30 days.  Shades of the self-destructing tapes on the old “Mission: Impossible” series.  Alas, there was no Jim Phelps or Rollin Hand or Cinnamon Carter in this group: just a gaggle of boneheads getting off on causing the deaths of a few dozen people, a couple of whom might even be considered enemies.  Note: the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was not included.  Neither was POTUS.  Is Curmie the only one who thinks that’s odd?

There are other possibilities, of course, but all are ultimately worse than concluding that everyone included in that chat is an idiot.  What if this was a variation on a game of chicken: who can flout the laws and national security the most?  What if they wanted the allegedly top secret discussion to be hacked?  Curmie isn’t saying, as has been alleged, that President Trump and Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard are Russian assets, but as someone (Curmie regrets that he forgets who) wondered, what would they do differently if they were?

Mistakes do happen, so perhaps Mike Waltz is just sloppy, as opposed to utterly incompetent.  Curmie remembers asking a student why he hadn’t sent a required email.  The student responded that he had done so, and included a copy of his message… which had been sent to someone in a totally different part of campus.  Ah, but his name was pretty close to Curmie’s, and the student looked online instead of on the course syllabus for my e-address.  Thing is, though, matters of national security are of somewhat greater importance than asking for an extension on a due date or whatever it was.  And blunders of this magnitude are—or should be—firing offenses, irrespective of circumstances.

There’s one other possibility, and this would also account for why Goldberg was in on the chat: it was a clumsy attempt at a trap.  Bait him into releasing the information before the raid, and now he’s guilty of a serious federal crime.  Of course, Goldberg is neither an idiot nor a felon—a description that doesn’t apply to many of those we assume were the intended participants in that chat—so he waited until the strike was over before releasing his initial story. 

It’s also interesting to note that the various denials that the chat contained classified information work in some ways to Goldberg’s favor.  On the one hand, if that wasn’t classified information, it sure as hell should have been, so Hegseth et al. look like the inept buffoons they are.  But if that information really had been classified, then the government could claim that Goldberg released classified documents: a serious federal offense.  But all the players insist that there was nothing classified there, so they’re the first witnesses for the defense should a prosecution be threatened.

We also know that the chat included all sorts of details about the planned raid: times, places, ordinance, even the name of a covert CIA operative.  We therefore know that at least three of the members of that chat—Secretary of Defense Hegseth, CIA Director John Radcliffe, and Gabbard—have already lied to Congress about what was contained in those communications. 

Oh, and FBI Director Kash Patel wasn’t in on the group chat, but he couldn’t let other people have all the fun, so he lied to Congress, too.  These are facts, not opinions or even interpretations.  Those folks knowingly and intentionally lied, going all in on what turned out to be a losing hand: betting that Goldberg wouldn’t release a transcript. 

Interestingly, if the Trumpsters just acknowledged their mistake, apologized profusely, swore off Signal (and meant it), promised it wouldn’t happen again, etc., Goldberg might just have taken the journalistic win and called it good.  But, as egotistical bullies generally do, they accused him of lying.  So he felt compelled to prove that he wasn’t.  And… boom.

Of course, none of the insiders were quite as ostentatiously mendacious as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (a.k.a. Bullshit Barbie), but it’s her job to lie, and Curmie supposes that it’s ultimately a good thing that she’s so horrible at it that no one with an IQ above room temperature could possibly believe anything she says. 

The best she could come up with was proclaiming that The Atlantic had “admitted” that there weren’t “war plans” in the conversation.  That’s because the headline accompanying the release of some of the transcript referred to “attack plans.”  Seriously, that’s the argument.  When you’re desperate enough, you say some pretty strange things, especially if you’re a not terribly bright spokesperson for a narcissistic administration run by someone given to both delusions and prevarication.

Technically, it’s true that there weren’t “war plans,” as there’s no declaration of war.  There wasn’t for what we all refer to as the Vietnam War, either, but anyone who transmitted plans for a raid on Hanoi over an insecure line would have been court-martialed or worse.  But Curmie digresses.

What matters here is not the fuck-up itself, or, rather, not just the fuck-up itself, but the aftermath.  There is no doubt that literally everyone who participated in that chat prior to the attack (except Goldberg, of course) should be out of a job immediately: Vance impeached, the others fired.  Oh, and for the MAGA folks who are screaming about Hilary Clinton’s private server: yes, she should have been fired, too.  Willfully disobeying rules when lives are at stake: inexcusable.  End of discussion. 

Oh, and also on the probably-should-be-fired list is Katie Arrington, the Deputy Chief Information Officer for Cybersecurity and Chief Information Security Officer at the Department of Defense.  (Good Lord, what a title!)  She is apparently responsible for not merely allowing Signal to be installed on government devices, but insisting on it.  To be fair, it appears that she may have been referring only to unclassified communications: hence the “probably” in the first sentence of this paragraph.  

There have been murmurs, but little more than that, by a handful of Republican pols that perhaps this level of incompetence (or worse) should not go unpunished.  Curmie awaits the chorus of these faux patriots demanding accountability.  He fears there will be a rather long wait.

(You will note, Gentle Reader, that Curmie has not followed his usual practice of providing links in the foregoing commentary.  Instead, he suggests a few suggestions for further reading (he warns you, it’s a rabbit hole): a précis of relevant DoD regulations, Jennifer Griffin of Fox News (!) outlining some of the semantics concerning terms like “war plans” and “classified,” Jeffrey Goldberg saying in a interview that the CIA Director (!) put the name of a covert agent into an insecure chat, a Google Threat Intelligence Group post from February describing Signal as a “high-value target for adversaries seeking to intercept sensitive information,” the NSA policy on the use of Signal, Fred Wellman on Arrington’s role in all this, a report in Der Spiegel that contact data including the mobile phone numbers and even passwords of Waltz, Gabbard, and Hegseth are freely available on the internet, 10-year veteran Andrew Mercado’s take on accountability, and one of the incomparable Heather Cox Richardson’s essays on this whole business.  There’s more, of course, but perhaps you might have a life to lead…)

So... Is Everyone in Fact Welcome in West Ada, Idaho Schools?

Riddle me this, Gentle Reader.  Here are images of two posters.  Here’s #1:

                                

Curmie asks that you pay particular attention to the right side of the poster under the heading “Kind.”  (Curmie apologizes for the reflections showing up in the image, and for the fact that #2 is crooked, but you can clearly see what he wants you to see.)

And here’s #2:

                  

OK.  So.  Poster #1 advocates “welcom[ing] others and embrac[ing] diversity.  Poster #2 says “everyone is welcome here.”  Pretty much the same thing, right?  Apparently not, at least according to the educational power structure in West Ada, Idaho.  (Ada County includes Boise, so its total population is about a half a million people; we are not, as Curmie first assumed, talking about some tiny town somewhere.)

Anyway, revenons à nos moutons.  The difference between the two posters, obviously (insert eye roll here) is that #1 is required in every classroom in the district, and that #2 is forbidden.  Why?  Because the authorities said so, of course.  If you’re looking for a rational reason, you’d better ask someone else, ‘cause Curmie’s got nothin’.

The story goes like this.  Sarah Inama is in her fourth year of teaching World Civilizations at Lewis and Clark Middle School in West Ada.  At least according to reporting by Brian Holmes on a local TV station, Poster #2 has been up in her classroom all along.  But this January the censorial bigots thought control school administration decided they had a problem with it, and insisted she remove it.

It’s a violation of policy, you see.  “In today’s political climate,” it “expresses a personal opinion.”  OK, now, Curmie is a grumpy old fart, and isn’t a fan of cutesy posters, even in a 6^th grade classroom.  But if, in fact, anyone suggests that everyone should not be welcome in a public school classroom, that person should be kept as far as possible away from either students or teachers. 

Saying that everyone is welcome is not, according to the bozos, “content neutral,” but is a “personal opinion.”  You will forgive Curmie, Gentle Reader, if he wonders how welcoming others and embracing diversity is not, therefore, similarly personal.  By the way, no one had complained about those two posters.  The school administration was being pro-actively assholic.  Of course, they presented their inane decision as a means of “protecting” Inama.  If this sounds a little too much like a protection racket to you, you’re not alone.

Ah, but “everyone is welcome here” is not something everyone believes, so that justifies this idiocy.  Curmie notes that not everyone believes the earth is three-dimensional, so having a globe in a world civ classroom would also be problematic.  (Curmie apologizes to the sane people of the West Ada district if he’s given the kakistocracy any ideas.)

Anyway, Inama removed two posters, including #2 above.  The other one, which proclaimed that “in this room, everyone is welcome, important, accepted, respected, encouraged, valued, [and] equal” did it least have each of those words printed on a succession of colors suggestive of the rainbow.  And we know that there’s a subset of conservatives who break out in a rash if someone mentions that famous song Judy Garland sings in “The Wizard of Oz.”  Imana clearly didn’t see a problem with it, but did take it down. 

But after a few days, she emailed her principal and said that the kind of inclusivity suggested by the poster represented “the basis of public education.”  And she put poster #2 back up.  Good for her!  Naturally, the district muckety-mucks then got involved.  Chief Buffoon Academic Officer Marcus Myers quotes a policy proscribing “the advancement of individual beliefs.”  This is the same guy who brags about the relevance of poster #1, by the way.  More on that to come…

Somehow, in what passes for a brain Chez Myers, the Idaho law that requires that teachers “respect the dignity of others, acknowledge the rights of others to express differing opinions,” etc., is somehow violated by a poster that expresses those very thoughts.  To be fair, perhaps Myers isn’t as stupid and hypocritical as he appears: he’s doing the bidding of the board.  So maybe he’s just a coward.

The poster does, of course, highlight different skin colors.  Asked if the “differing view” would therefore be racist, Inama says, 

I can’t even wrap my head around what other ‘differing view’ would be… except for something that’s exclusionary….  This is the one small thing I that I feel like I can do, to speak out against this and stand up for [students], to protect them from being affected by racist sentiments affecting their classroom.

When the TV station reached out to the school district (repeatedly), they got the response that Marcus Myers was “not interested in being interviewed.”  (See above re: cowardice.)  Interestingly, that response also included examples of what is allowed, including, for example, “college or professional sports teams.”  So… if you went to the University of Idaho, it’s fine to festoon your classroom with Vandals gear, and the kid whose parents went to Boise State has to deal with it, but tell that kid she’s welcome… OMG, it’ll cause an attack of the vapors.

Naturally, Myers did agree to an interview with The Ranch Podcast, hosted by Matt Todd.  Quoting from the site here: “The Ranch Podcast is supported by Truth In Media Foundation, a non-profit media organization committed to unbiased, Idaho focused media.”  As frequent readers of this blog already know, one of Curmie’s mantras is “if you have to tell me, it ain’t so.”  “Truth in Media” means opinions are masquerading as facts; “unbiased” means “biased as all hell.” 

The Mediabiasfactcheck site rates Truth in Media as a “questionable source” with “low credibility,” “extreme right” bias, “low” factual reporting, and given to “propaganda, conspiracy, fake news, [and] pseudoscience.”  By the way, Curmie checked on that site’s description of a couple of left-biased sites, which are indeed identified as such. 

In other words, Myers agreed to be interviewed by someone he could feel pretty confident would not ask questions he couldn’t answer without revealing himself to be either an idiot or a bigot (not that bigots aren’t also idiots, but you know what Curmie means, Gentle Reader).  Todd pretty much provides him with escape routes, pretending, for example, that it is somehow obvious to everyone, not just racists, that having different skin colors appear on that poster or to anyone but homophobes that multiple colors (not even anything suggestive of a rainbow) somehow make it less inclusive.  Curmie couldn’t agree more with the first comment on that YouTube page: “The goal of this situation seems to be ‘don't offend the racists in Idaho.’”  Thank you, @kristenfrench4732, for that succinct encapsulation.

Questions any truly unbiased interviewer would ask: How, exactly, is poster #2 different in intent from poster #1?  Why would those same words be acceptable if there were no graphic design and they were simply white print on a black background?  How do you respond to the (by now) tens of thousands if not millions of people who think @kristenfrench4732 nailed it?  If there must be a “curricular tie-in” to literally everything, how is, for example, a poster celebrating the Seattle Seahawks allowed?  (Etc.)

The good news here is that this story got a fair amount of play, and there has been a tangible response.  To be fair to Todd, his interview with Alicia Purdy was considerably better than the one with Myers, largely because she actually had something to say.  For example: “Marcus Myers came and said… this actually coincides with our curriculum regarding positive behavior support.  And so, therefore it is tied to the curriculum.  So it does not violate policy under those constraints…. How is welcoming every student dividing our students?” 

When Todd says the problem wasn’t the verbal message but the graphic, she replies, “having that visual of the different skin tones, including white skin tones, that’s important… those students can see that.  Representation matters…. They [students] see the difference in skin tones, so why are we not addressing that?”  Curmie is not generally in the habit of praising someone for making pretty obvious points, but someone had to say all this, so Purdy gets the credit.

Now, apparently, the district is pivoting to claim that the poster’s use of those different-colored hands “aligns with themes commonly associated with DEI initiatives.”  Bullshit.  They’re desperately but unsuccessfully trying to save face.

In fact, the only way to interpret the district’s actions is to recognize that those folks will cheerfully pay lip service to cheery sayings about embracing diversity, as long as they aren’t reminded that there actually is a diverse population out there.  Those who would banish poster #2 are all about welcoming and equality until they actually have to practice it.  Trouble is, claiming to fix a problem while actually making it worse is both inefficient and evil.  If the acronym DOGE just flitted across your mind, Gentle Reader, that’s entirely on you.  😉

Inama has been told she can leave the poster up until the end of the academic year, and then the powers-that-be will ever-so-graciously help her find a suitable replacement.  Perhaps this brouhaha will indeed last that long, but Curmie suspects (or at least hopes) that the district, facing national and even international humiliation, will quietly capitulate, perhaps with the assurance the Inama won’t go public with an announcement of the reversal.

There’s already been a walkout by Renaissance High School students, including some of Inama’s former students, to protest the district’s actions.  A local t-shirt shop is struggling to keep up with orders for shirts depicting the allegedly controversial image; they’re getting orders from all over the country, and had sold over 8,000 shirts as of last Tuesday.  Tomorrow (i.e., Monday the 24^th) there will be a lot of those shirts worn in the hallways and classrooms of West Ada schools.

The most scathing take-down Curmie has seen, though, appears as an editorial by Marty Trillhaase in the Lewiston Tribune.  He argues that the reason to take down the poster is that “[it’s] blatantly false.  Not everyone is welcome in Idaho.” 

He enumerates all the kinds of people who aren’t welcome in the state: essentially anyone who isn’t a cisgendered straight white male Protestant.  Physicians and union members are similarly unwelcome.  His chilling conclusion is that “When school resumes next fall, Inama and other Idaho teachers might have to replace that sign with what passes for Idaho’s attitude toward anyone who is different — a bus ticket. “

In other words, the real problem with Inama’s poster for the right-wingers in Idaho is that in her classroom, those words ring true.  And, since their entire weltanschauung is based on hatred, they despise her for that.  Curmie, on the other hand, thinks she’s a bad-ass heroine.

Unlighting Old Joe and Seeking the Tao

Curmie comes by his soubriquet honestly.  Most of what he writes about falls under the category “Can you believe this shit?”.  He’s got a half dozen topics he’s thinking about discussing on this blog, including two partially-written essays: all are about incredible stupidity, criminality, or intentional cruelty on the part of politicians, education administrators, lawyers, and similar malefactors.  Today, though, he’s celebrating something good.  Make a note, Gentle Reader, this doesn’t happen very often.

The campus of the University of Birmingham in the UK, where Curmie received his MA forty-something years ago, is in the Edgbaston area of the city.  If you were just plonked down there and didn’t know you were in an industrial city with a population of well over a million people, you might reasonably believe that you were in a suburban environment.  Curmie will describe the relevance of this observation in a moment.

Many college and university campuses have one iconic structure that generations of students will immediately recognize.  Even a photograph will inspire in alumni at least a twinge, if not indeed a wave, of nostalgia.  At Curmie’s undergrad school, Dartmouth College, that building is Baker Library.  When the University of Birmingham razed the library that Curmie had used there, he shrugged.  It was an excellent library, but as a building it was damned ugly (not as ugly as the new one, but that’s another matter). 

But even consider messing with Old Joe, and Curmie’s on the next plane to join the protest.  “Old Joe,” of course, does not refer to our immediate past President, but to the Joseph Chamberlain Memorial Clock Tower.  (Yes, Curmie had to look up its official title.  He may have forgotten it, but frankly it’s more likely he never knew it.  Old Joe was Old Joe.)

It is an impressive edifice; Wikipedia declares it the tallest free-standing clock tower in the world even today, over a century after its construction in the first decade of the twentieth century.  (And, hey, if you can’t trust Wikipedia…)  Back in Curmie’s time in Brum, Old Joe was visible for miles around; apparently that’s still true today.

Photos of Old Joe, one suspects, appear more often in the university’s marketing than those of all the other campus buildings combined.  Old Joe and the University of Birmingham are inseparable.  It’s no surprise, then, that the university wanted to incorporate the clock tower into its celebration of its 125^th anniversary.  There have recently been light shows on Old Joe, as you can see in the photograph above.  But, according to a post on the university’s Facebook page, last night’s show was the last until autumn.

Why?  Because the lights would interfere with the nesting season of the university’s resident peregrine falcons!  See why the fact that the campus may be in a big city but not really urban matters?

Curmie absolutely loves this.  Yes, we’re going to celebrate our anniversary, but we’re not going to mess with our friends to do so.  It is a small gesture, to be sure.  This isn’t going to end the war in Ukraine, solve racism or unemployment, or prevent TFG from destroying the hitherto close relationship between the US and UK. 

But it matters.  It is definition by example of locating ourselves within a larger environment, one where we are defined not only by what we do, but often by what we don’t.  Back in the days when Curmie was teaching Eastern Civilizations, or, more recently, Asian Theatre, he’d show images of Chinese scrolls, many of which were landscapes.  There were people there, but you had to look for them.  (An example is linked here.)  We matter in the universe, but we are not the universe.

In its decision to respect its avian residents, the U of B has taken a small but significant step towards following the Tao.

On the 21st-Century Relevance of the Bottle Riot of 1822

Curmie may have retired from teaching theatre history (probably permanently this time), but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t remember stuff.  He once wrote a conference paper about the “Bottle Riot,” which happened at the Theatre Royal in Dublin in 1822.  So why is he writing about it today?  Have patience, Gentle Reader.  We’ll get there.

Ireland was still under British control then, and there were tensions between the Anglicans in power and the Catholic majority, especially since the former had a long and rather disgusting history of discrimination against the latter.  The Lord Lieutenant (a.k.a., the Viceroy) at the time, Richard Wellesley, tried valiantly to find some common ground, or at least some peace.

The Orange Order was named for William of Orange, who restored Anglican rule to Britain after his defeat of the forces of James II in the Battle of the Boyne in 1693.  The Orangemen had a rather unusual way of celebrating their eponym’s birthday, October 4.  They and their ideological brethren would gather around William’s statue in College Green (i.e., the campus of Trinity College Dublin, which was then a Protestant-only institution) and… wait for it… paint it orange! 

Like the Orange Order’s parades through Catholic communities in Northern Ireland in more recent years during “marching season” (early July, in commemoration of the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne), this exercise was part celebration, part intentional provocation of the Catholic majority.  It did indeed lead to skirmishes between the two factions.

Wellesley therefore forbade that particular observance in 1822.  Protestants in general and the Orange Order in particular didn’t take kindly to that decision, calling Wellesley a “papist sympathizer” amongst other more colorful locutions.

Fast forward a couple of months to late December.  Everyone knew that Wellesley was attending a performance of the classic Oliver Goldsmith comedy, She Stoops to Conquer at the Theatre Royal in Hawkins Street.  A group of still-angry Protestant men got good and drunk at a pub, then found their way to the theatre.  The inebriated insurgents proceeded to disrupt the proceedings: shouting, booing, using noise-makers, and so on.

But then one of liquored-up lads threw an empty bottle in the general direction of the Lord Lieutenant.  It hit a curtain in front of the royal box, tearing a hole “the size of a shilling” in the fabric.  That was the proverbial bridge too far.  The miscreants were pointed out by their fellow spectators and promptly taken into custody.

End of story, right?  Erm… no.  Wellesley’s secretary decided to up the charges from obvious things like creating a public nuisance or vandalism to attempted murder of the Viceroy.  There followed a series of less than ethical posturings on both sides: a grand jury hand-selected by the sheriff (an Orange Order member, himself) refused to indict.  The Crown then proceeded to bypass that pesky requirement and took the case to trial anyway.  (Hey, at least they weren’t sent off to Louisiana without as much as being charged with a crime…).

Anyway… when the case went to trial (this is the relevant part, Gentle Reader), the judge ruled that booing public figures was indeed acceptable behavior.  Even attending the theatre with the sole purpose of doing so was unethical but legal.  Ah, but gathering a group to create a nuisance constituted conspiracy. 

That judge’s ruling became the precedent for numerous other cases involving heckling or booing public figures at events.  OK, so that was the UK two centuries ago.  How is that relevant today in the US?  Well, there was the case of JD Vance and the little missus (that’s how the Veep undoubtedly thinks of her, after all) getting booed at a National Symphony Orchestra concert at the Kennedy Center.  (The photo above is of that concert.)

There are similarities with the Bottle Riot case: a public figure attending an artistic event intending to be seen rather than actually engaging with the performance, preferential seating for the politically powerful, a healthy round of boos from a not insignificant minority of those in attendance, the event in question rendered irrelevant or nearly so by the reaction to the celebrity attendee.  Most importantly, the spectators are extremely unlikely to have planned their response, at least together.  It’s doubtful that many people knew in advance that Vance would be there, although the Secret Service presence would have tipped them off.

There are differences, too, of course.  There was one shout that could have been “kill the Vice” (nothing close to the threats against TFG’s former Veep on January 6, 2021, of course), and sounded more like “kill that light” to Curmie. There are multiple reports of someone shouting that the Trump administration had “ruined this place,” although Curmie can’t find them on the video.  There were no projectiles, the protest did not interrupt the performance, and no one was arrested (apparently, at least). 

Vance is, of course, a total fraud from top to bottom.  He is an intellectual flyweight (that’s four weight classes down from lightweight, in case you were wondering, Gentle Reader) who has no core beliefs other than his own selfish interests, which are completely tied up with being a Trumpian sycophant.  Does he deserve to be booed?  Absolutely.  Is a concert the right venue?  Perhaps not. 

Of course, the right-wing talking heads went apoplectic.  Trump minion Presidential Envoy for Special Missions Richard Grenell, for example, whined that ”The intolerant Left are radicals who can’t even sit in the same room with people that don’t vote like they do. What has happened to today’s Democrats? They are so intolerant.”  <sigh>  Not voting the way I do doesn’t bother Curmie.  Firing people who are good at the valuable thing they do because they didn’t vote the way you wanted them to: now, that’s intolerance.

Right-wing hypocrisy continues to be manifest, and they absolutely should be mocked for it.  They’re fine with chanting “Fuck Joe Biden” (and its oh-so-cleverly coded version, “Let’s go, Brandon”), but the free speech guarantees of the First Amendment, as we all know, apply only to them.  Booing the VP is Un‘merkan. 

Vance’s reception, of course, was prompted in large part by his Lord and Master’s intrusion into the Kennedy Center’s operations, appointing himself as Executive Exalted Poobah Chairman of the Board, with Usha Vance as a board member.  The tipping point seems to have been the Center’s hosting drag shows aimed at kids last year.  The fact that such performances never existed is, of course, of no consequence whatsoever in Trumpistan.

There is absolutely no question that the audience response, individually and collectively, is protected speech.  Still, booing Vance was a little vulgar, something of a cheap shot, and perhaps evidence of a form of herd mentality.  That said, if that smarmy little jackass shows up in these parts, Curmie might just buy a ticket just to join in the boo-bird chorus.  You could too, Gentle Reader.  But remember: we didn’t talk about it beforehand.

Oh, and by the way… none of the Bottle Rioters were convicted.  Just sayin’.

R.I.P., Cortland Standard

An instantly recognized building if you grew up where Curmie did.

Curmie doesn’t know if everyone who has lived in multiple places thinks this way, but when asked where he’s “from,” he generally responds with the city where he went to high school: in his case, Cortland, New York.  There are five (yes, five!) other towns or cities where he’s spent more time than he did in Cortland, and the number of days he’s spent there in the last thirty years or so is in single digits, but it still remains, in his mind, at least, his hometown.

At the risk of sounding like a MAGA, Curmie confesses that the fact that an average of two local newspapers shut down every week in this country hadn’t really made an impression on him until… you know… it directly affected him.  Today is the last day of publication for the Cortland Standard, which has filed for bankruptcy after over 157 years of operation.

We had the paper delivered to our doorstep every day for the time I lived in Cortland.  Virtually everyone referred to it as the “Substandard,” but actually it was quite a good paper, or at least it was a half-century ago.  There was national and international news from agencies like the AP and UPI, as well as coverage of what was happening in Albany.  But mostly, there was local news.

Yes, a lot of the stories were rather quaint.  Curmie’s name (and often, photo) appeared in the Standard’s pages on several occasions for such relatively inconsequential accomplishments as going on a field trip or appearing in the high school play.  But the paper did serve to bring the community together.  Getting your name in the paper was kind of a big deal for adolescents.  (Perhaps it still is?)  It sounds kind of squishy to say that it made us feel like we mattered, but it was true. 

Moreover, in the pre-internet days, the local newspaper was our primary local news source.  The television stations in Syracuse to the north or Binghamton to the south didn’t cover our area unless something really important had happened, and if they did, it would likely be a 90-second segment, offering about as much information as a six column-inch article.

We’d check the Standard to see how the high school basketball team did in that road game.  We’d be looking for something else altogether but come across a story about someone we knew—or the parent, sibling, or child of someone we knew.  It was a big enough city, with a population of about 20,000, that the “everybody knows everybody” line wasn’t literally true, but seldom did a day go by without my knowing personally someone whose name appeared in those pages.

And that doesn’t even count the coverage of local sports.  (Obviously, Curmie knew a lot of the athletes at his high school.)  Predictably, there was a lot more of that than anything else, but actually that makes sense.  There are generally two or three sports going on at the same time of year, and between the high schools and the college, there were local results to report virtually every day.  It wasn’t that the high school choir concert wasn’t covered; but there were fewer such concerts in a year than there were basketball games in a fortnight.

There are, of course, manifold reasons why small-town newspapers are folding.  In their farewell statement (linked above), the paper’s staff identifies the obvious: declining readership and increasing cost.  The former is certainly understandable: the internet and social media certainly lead to a sense of isolation, even as they pretend to do the opposite.  There are more and more texts and IMs and fewer phone calls… and even fewer “let’s go get coffee” moments.

We also come to concentrate on our Facebook friends or those who follow us X or whatever, at the expense of keeping up with those who don’t have as much of an internet presence.  Curmie is as guilty of this anyone else, by the way.  He’s pretty much lost touch with many of his closest high school friends.  Of course, this is not at all intended to suggest that he doesn’t value those who may indeed come to read these words.

The access to free news content on the internet also contributes to the demise of smaller outlets, even if they also operate a website, especially if it’s behind a paywall.  Why pay for national and international news if you can get the same story at no cost?  And now the question becomes: is the local news, about people I’m less and less likely to know or care about, sufficient to warrant the price of a subscription?  (Curmie hasn’t subscribed to the local paper here in Texas for twenty years or thereabouts.)  And, if I’m a businessperson, why should I pay to advertise in a medium with declining reach, particularly, as is likely, if the remaining readers aren’t in my target demographic?

But Curmie also calls your attention, Gentle Reader, to the one specific factor highlighted in the paper’s closing editorial: “increasing costs, including an expected 25% tariff on newsprint.”  Translation: they get their newsprint from Canada, and the Tangerine Toddler is threatening escalating tariffs.  The reasonable rationale for the US to impose tariffs is to protect American businesses from unfair competition.  In the hands of a reckless buffoon, however, the result is pushing at least one business over the edge into bankruptcy.  Such is life in Trumpistan.

This essay isn’t about pointing the finger, however.  It’s just an old man’s reminiscence of a time when communities mattered, when Big Tech didn’t dominate the information landscape, and when the local newspaper was a cherished part of small-town life.

R.I.P., Cortland Standard.  You had a great run, and you will be missed by many, even by those of us who haven’t read you in hard-copy in decades. 

A Few Thoughts about Empathy

Curmie came across the meme you see here a few days ago, and was struck by its timeliness.  For one thing, it provides a stark contrast between the ideology of MAGA and of one of the seminal thinkers of the twentieth century.  If nothing else, there are few if any better representations of what Arendt called “the banality of evil” than the Pompous Plutocrat, or at least his acolytes. 

Musk is no deep thinker; his weltanschauung is founded on little but greed, hypocrisy, and a little warmed-over Nietzsche, who was at least honest enough to state forthrightly that he was in fact arguing against the fundamental principles of both classical and Judeo-Christian thought.

Musk is, in a word, sadistic.  Nothing makes him happier than hurting or humiliating someone who isn’t like him: those who are interested in literally anything but the accumulation of material wealth or political power, those who care about justice or truth or even security, those who think elections are not commodities to be bought and sold.  Unfortunately, Donald Trump, who used to be simply oblivious to the damage to others (or to the country) if it benefited him personally, is now trending towards Muskian malevolence.

But this essay isn’t about Trump or Musk or anyone else in that evil cabal.  It’s about us.  By “us,” here, Curmie is referring to the overwhelming majority of the folks who will read this blog: people who, like Curmie, would vote for the Sauron/Voldemort ticket before they’d vote for the Manchurian Cantaloupe. 

There are some readers, of course, who may have even voted for Trump, seeing him as the lesser of two evils.  Let’s face it, Kamala Harris was, to put it kindly, way over her head, and the unwillingness of those in the know to convince Uncle Joe to step aside when his mental decline became obvious does not speak well of the leadership of the Democratic Party.  Nor does the anointing of Harris as the nominee without any opportunity for the party faithful to have any say at all in the process.

Curmie doubts that many actual MAGAs will find their way here, but they are welcome, and if the have arguments superior to those one would hear from a fourth grader, Curmie would very much like to hear them. 

In the piece linked above, Curmie wrote “Is it likely that a second Trump presidency would destroy the democratic (lower-case ‘d’) principles on which the nation was founded?  ‘Likely,’ no; ‘plausible,’ yes.”  Curmie miscalculated.  Less than two months into this regime, we’re already past “likely” and into “probable”; the hope is to prevent “inevitable.”

It’s not worth attempting to enumerate all the stupid and authoritarian actions undertaken by this administration.  Let’s just say that if it seems to you, Gentle Reader, that every fucking stupid idea Trump yammered about in the campaign has already been put into action and everything actually positive he said he’d do is already a broken promise… well, then you and Curmie are on the same page.

But.  And as they used to say in burlesque houses, it’s a big but.  It used to be that lefties were very much proud of the fact that, unlike the nonsensical proponents of “owning the libs,” we actually cared about everybody.  It is certainly true that a lot of MAGAs share at least some of the lack of empathy embodied in their heroes: they’re all for slashing budget lines that don’t affect them personally.  That said, a lot of them are feeling the pinch now.  They were taken in by a grifter and, unlike some diehards who still think Trump is a hero (and a fair number of GOP pols who know better but pretend not to), they’re regretting their foolishness.

They got suckered.  That happens to everyone.  All of us have voted for someone who turned out to be an idiot, or bought a stock that proceeded to plummet in value, or taken any kind of stance we later wish we hadn’t.  Trump is a skilled and experienced con man, and his romanticized vision of American exceptionalism has its superficial appeal.

It’s true, of course, that those folks bear no little responsibility for the mess we’re in right now.  Still, all the jokes about face-eating leopards and the like are ultimately counter-productive.  Real people, our fellow travelers, are hurting, and they’re openly regretting their past actions.  This part, the realization, should be applauded.  Yes, they made a mistake, but now they’re trying to set things right to the extent that they can.

We ought to be applauding their new awakening, but too many of us aren’t.  Humiliating them because they voted for the wrong candidate and now have come to realize that fact is akin to teasing the fat guy at the gym.  It accomplishes nothing good, and in fact discourages others from also speaking out.  Arrogantly strutting our perceived ethical and intellectual superiority succeeds only in alienating erstwhile Trump supporters.  We come off as assholes.  That’s not to anyone’s benefit.

A variation on the theme can be found in the brouhaha about Slava Ukraini protesters in Cincinnati.  JD Vance tweeted, “Today while walking my 3 year old daughter a group of ‘Slava Ukraini’ protesters followed us around and shouted as my daughter grew increasingly anxious and scared… if you’re chasing a 3-year-old as part of a political protest, you’re a shit person.”

OK, leaving aside the misplaced modifier (Curmie couldn’t resist pointing that out), this is an interesting tweet.  Is it possible that Vance made up the whole bit about his daughter being scared?  Absolutely.  Indeed, the protesters claim otherwise, also saying they happened upon Vance; they weren’t following him.

Vance is, to be sure, dishonest even by politician standards, and certainly not above the Elon Musk technique of using his kid as a human shield, albeit a little less literally.  There is, however, a video of a conversation between Vance and the crowd of protesters.  He is indeed accompanied by his daughter, although we barely see her, and it’s impossible to tell whether she’s upset, although she very well might be.  The audio isn’t always as clear as one might hope, but Vance does say something at the end about his having traded five minutes of conversation in exchange for the crowd’s not shouting at his daughter. 

The chances are pretty good, then, that Vance isn’t completely making up the story.  Yes, he’s a despicable human being, and yes, as a number of leftie talking heads have claimed, three-year-olds in Ukraine experience a lot worse on an ongoing basis than having their fathers yelled at a few times.  But the daughter is an innocent.  She didn’t choose her parents and wasn’t consulted when her dad accepted the VP nomination.  Nor is it her fault her father is a lapdog to a lapdog.  Making her uncomfortable isn’t the worst thing in the world, but neither is it acceptable behavior.

By all means, exercise those First Amendment rights of free assembly and free speech.  Rage against the machine, to coin a phrase.  But don’t glory in the woes of others, even if they voted for someone you despise.  Don’t harass your fellow citizens for being led astray, especially if the reason you can do so is that they are admitting their mistake.  And leave the kids out of it.

We’re better than that.  Or at least we damned sure should be.

The Incompetence Has No Limits

Not a DEI reference

Curmie wrote a while back that he would be writing about the pair of plundering plutocrats only in passing.  Allow him now to clarify.  He’s not, at least for the moment, going to write about the Trusk administration’s policy decisions.  You may take as given, Gentle Reader, that unless you see something specifically to the contrary, Curmie is adamantly opposed to literally anything that pair of mendacious sociopaths do.

He’ll still link to articles on the Facebook and Bluesky pages, and might even offer a bit of terse commentary.  But there’s no need to spend 1000 words or more to say something that other folks have already said, and probably better than Curmie could.  So, what follows here isn’t about whether it’s a good idea to cut support of USAid or medical research, or to eliminate all references to DEI initiatives from government agencies’ websites.  It’s about basic competence.

Indeed, about the best thing American citizens have going for us right now is that Trump, Musk, Hegseth, et al., are so fucking stupid.  Imagine how bad things would be if these bozos weren’t, well, bozos.  Don’t even get Curmie started on the need to shut down major airports in Florida because SpaceX can’t make a rocket that doesn’t blow up.

If you’ve been paying any attention at all, Gentle Reader, you probably know most of the following: that the $50 million of condoms allegedly shipped to Gaza for Hamas to “use in making bombs” were in fact about a tenth that much money in contraceptives (not condoms) sent to the Gaza region of Mozambique, that three of the four examples of “wasteful spending” by USAid weren’t even USAid programs and the other one was mislabeled, that the $8 billion in savings accrued by shutting down one ICE program was in fact only $8 million (and actually less than that), that we didn’t spend millions on making mice transgender but on making them transgenic (altering their genetic structure to better replicate human responses for research into such afflictions as cancer and Alzheimer’s)… and so on.

The most colossal act of stupidity, however, was the attempt to purge DEI references, which you undoubtedly know by now, Gentle Reader, resulted in the pending removal of photos of the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima: the Enola Gay.  Also flagged were references to anyone whose surname happens to be “Gay” (or “Black,” presumably) as well as… you know… anything about the first black person to do this or the first woman to do that.  

Presumably, any accounts of vehicles needing a new transmission (trans mission?) would be even more problematic.  (I know, I know, Gentle Reader, I shouldn’t give them any ideas.  My apologies.)  It is not clear at this point whether these items have been permanently deleted (how Orwellian would that be?) or placed in some sort of archive inaccessible to us mere mortals.

Here’s the thing: mistakes happen, and if you rely on AI or lazy, hubristic techbros, a lot of mistakes will happen.  Musk chucklefucks the problem by cheerfully admitting that sometimes he’ll say something that isn’t true—this after ruining careers and shutting off aid to starving children, of course.  After all, “nobody’s going to bat 1.000.”  Well, if you’re going to take people’s livelihoods away, you pompous accretion of nitrogenous waste, you’d better be pretty damned close to 1.000.  And your batting average isn’t good enough to keep you around as a utility infielder.

The problem isn’t that someone (or, more likely, something) screwed up; it’s that no one stopped the publication of this bullshit without checking it first.  (Insert Allstate commercial here.) 

Back when Curmie was teaching fulltime, one of his departmental responsibilities was to compile the “ineligible list.”  In order to be eligible to participate in theatre productions, a student had to meet certain criteria that were intended to ensure satisfactory progress towards graduation.  Among other requirements, theatre majors needed to meet at least one of these criteria: to have passed all courses taken in the previous semester, or 12 semester hours of credit in that semester, or 24 hours in the previous 12 months.

The problem was that there was no easy way to get the information I needed.  The department’s administrative assistant could run a program that could tell me which majors had passed 11 or fewer hours and how many hours those students attempted.  That narrowed the field of potentially ineligible students down to 20-30% of the total.  From there, I could eliminate students who passed 6 out of 6 hours, or whatever.  And those whose GPA was below 2.0 were on the list irrespective of other criteria.  

But there wasn’t a way to get the total hours of courses passed in the previous 12 months except by looking up each student individually.  And because of a quirk in the system, students taking remedial courses (and a fair number of theatre majors take remedial math) get shortchanged unless you actually look at the transcript.  Remedial courses show up on the printout as attempted hours, but not as successfully completed hours, regardless of the grade, because they don’t count towards graduation.

So I checked a few dozen transcripts every semester, looking for whether the student had passed enough courses earlier in the last year to overcome a one-semester bobble, or had taken courses at another school, or had passed remedial courses, or had a WH (“withheld,” same as an “incomplete” at some places) but had already clinched a passing grade, just not a specific passing grade.  And yes, I’d email the prof to find out.

What I sure as hell didn’t do was to publish, even to my colleagues, the list of names generated by that computer search.  Do the work first, then create an accurate list.  All of this took some time when I would have liked to have really been on vacation, but getting it right was worth the effort.  Having students know where they stood so they could plan their appeal or adjust their schedule because they wouldn’t be doing shows, or whatever: yes, that was important.  But not having the names of students who should have been eligible appear on any sort of even semi-official ineligibility list: that was even more important. 

The foregoing is not to complain about the work I had to do instead of just letting the machines do all the work.  Rather, it was simply a matter of doing what needed to be done to get results that actually comported with departmental policy.  A similar approach would solve a lot of problems in the current DEI purge.  Sure, run your Control-F search… and then check to see if the thousands of hits generated are actually relevant. 

Even—no, make that especially—if you think purging the historical record of all references to DEI is a good idea, you probably don’t want to be a laughing-stock.  This level of incompetence does no one any good… unless, of course, it’s not really incompetence at all, but a strategy to distract our collective attention away from something more sinister in the works.  That’s a possibility, of course, but Curmie doesn’t think that’s the explanation.

Yet, at least.