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Curmie didn’t expect to be doing another “follow-up” post
quite this soon, but there are a couple of new developments of late. He’ll return to new topics soon, but not yet…
Trigger Warnings.
We’re going to take these updates in the order of Curmie’s original post
on the subject. We start, then, with
this piece,
written in May of 2024. Curmie described
the reactions of three of the world’s foremost actors—Sir Ian McKellen, Ralph
Fiennes, and Dame Judi Dench—all of whom disparaged “trigger warnings” in live
theatre events. McKellen called many of
them “ludicrous.”
Curmie managed to miss the news that the University of the
West of England issued 220 warnings about Shakespearean plays, including,
according to the New York Post,
things like “storms, extreme weather and ‘popping of balloons.’” But now there’s another furor surrounding a
Royal Shakespeare Company “content advisory” for First Encounters: Julius Caesar, an adaptation set in a women’s
prison, starring Dame Harriet Walter as Brutus.
If nothing else, the Daily Mail’s headline, “Forget the Ides of March, just beware the 14 trigger warnings of Julius Caesar!” is pretty apt.
Walter hasn’t commented, at least that Curmie has seen, but
two other acclaimed Shakespearean actresses have. Felicity Kendal calls the warnings “patronising”
and “absurd”; Janet Suzman’s word is “mollycoddling.” Quoth Dame Janet, “They should be shouting
out to audiences to come and be shocked and surprised and intrigued and not
creep in nervously.”
Curmie once again notes that there are legitimate reasons
for certain warnings: prospective spectators with certain medical conditions,
for example. Thus, the production’s
flashing lights, which could trigger an epileptic episode, and which are not inherent
in the script, do mean that the company should err on the side of caution. But “characters experiencing grief” in a
version of a Shakespearean tragedy? Say
it ain’t so! Yeah, “patronising” seems
pretty accurate.
It’s unclear exactly how these warnings appear. It’s fine with Curmie if you have to look up
specific concerns on the website. If,
however, those warnings are in any way unavoidable, then the RSC is in fact doing
more harm than good with their nannying.
Walmart Follies.
At the end of the post about the trip Curmie and Beloved Spouse took to Ireland in July, he wrote
about the fact that his old laptop died somewhere in transit. He mentioned the fact that although the
Walmart website said they’d deliver the replacement the day we ordered it, we
subsequently got an email that said it wouldn’t be delivered until the
following week. So, we cancelled the
order… and they sent it anyway.
We got information about how to return it to the local
store. But when Beloved Spouse (whose
Walmart account we used for the order) tried to do that, she encountered no
fewer than three rude and unhelpful people supposedly in the “customer service”
business who informed her that they couldn’t take the laptop back because it
was bought through “Walmart Marketplace.”
Needless to say, there was nothing on the website to indicate that, or
we wouldn’t have bothered with them, given that the Marketplace is, shall we
say, not famous for either competence or integrity. Supervisor Dude made a big deal out of being
“generous” and offering a gift card. Beloved
Spouse demanded a refund of the money we’d spent on the credit card, since it
was Walmart’s fault. Nope, he couldn’t
do that. We’d have to contact
Walmart.com.
With no other choice, she came home and spent an hour and a
half “chatting” online with Walmart customer service. They gave the same line about a third-party
vendor, and said the earlier message to take the laptop to the store was in
error (well, whose fault is that?), but they also said they’d do what needed to
be done to get us our refund; we’d hear back in 24-48 hours. Needless to say, we didn’t.
So, Curmie called Discover.
“Jessica in Illinois” was very helpful, took down a lot of information,
and told me that they’d put a temporary hold on those charges until they could
investigate further. We had 15 calendar
days to provide any documentation we could.
We sent stuff in online within that timeframe, and the status changed to
having been ruled in our favor, but, reasonably enough, allowing the merchant
to respond with their side of the story.
We just put a rather substantial charge on that account and were about to add another, so
it was worth checking to see if there was any resolution to the affair. Under “disputes” is this (unedited) message: “This case
was previously closed in your favor and an adjustment(s) were applied to your
account. The time allowed for the merchant to request additional review of this
decision has expired. As such, We consider this investigation to be complete.” In other words, after trying to take the
laptop back for a refund, we now get the refund without having to return the
computer. Not a bad deal, even taking
into account all the bullshit we (especially Beloved Spouse) had to endure.
Three take-aways, in whatever order you choose: 1). Avoid
anything that even might be Walmart Marketplace. Hell, avoid Walmart altogether if you can. 2). Discover customer service is actually
very good. 3). Fight the bastards if you
have to.
The Kraft/Macklemore/Sheeran Debacle. Curmie wrote about Robert Kraft’s de facto
firing of Macklemore from the Ed Sheeran concerts scheduled for
September 24 and 25 at Gillette Stadium, which Kraft owns. All the other artists—warm-up bands and
Sheeran’s backing group—quit in solidarity.
Sheeran subsequently did a show in Philadelphia alone, and was
apparently going to do the same in Foxboro… and then the nor’easter hit, and
both shows were cancelled. There’s some ironic finality there.
The other follow-up is that country star Zach Bryan set the
all-time attendance record for Gillette Stadium on October 3, attracting 73,538 fans for the second of his
two performances at the venue. More
significantly for the purposes of this essay, however, is that he wore a “Free Palestine”
t-shirt at both shows. Other members of
the band also wore pro-Palestinian garb.
Bryan’s shirt didn’t have the Palestinian flag; instead, there was a
pine tree logo and the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven.”
This links to John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. [Side note: Curmie went over 15 years without mentioning
Locke’s name in a blog post; now it’s appeared twice (the other one is here) in three weeks.] The motto refers to the
right of people to overthrow an oppressive regime, and, complete with the pine
tree logo, was used on flags by colonial sailors in the Revolutionary War. More recently, there’s some linkage to
Christian Nationalism. It’s unclear, in other words, what message
Bryan was attempting to impart.
Bryan’s politics are, he says, libertarian and non-partisan;
he has little use for either major party.
We do know that he’s pro-LGBTQ+ rights and anti-ICE, making him a bit of
an outlier as a country singer, but not as an everyday citizen. Is he advocating for the Palestinian cause
because he believes in it, or because he doesn’t want to be told he can’t? Certainly, whatever else Bryan may be saying,
it’s a direct poke in the eye to Robert Kraft.
A good article in The Jerusalem Post argues that this is a variation on the Streisand Effect, and concludes: “Most
major musicians are not wearing ‘Free Palestine’ shirts. If pressed and feeling
that they are being told not [to], however, it’s possible that more of them
will be.”
Of course, Kraft let the second night happen, despite folks
like Sean Spicer tweeting, “Here’s hoping there is no night 2,” and that second night audience
was even bigger than the night before’s.
Exactly why Kraft didn’t intervene is unclear—did he think it was too
late, or he feared an even more significant Streisand Effect, or he wasn’t
going to shut down the headliner, or Bryan didn’t have any track record of
anti-Semitism, or refunding eight figures worth of tickets would be no fun at
all, or…?
It’s Not about the Hawkeyes. Or, rather, it’s only coincidentally about
the Hawkeyes. There’s no question that Senator
Eric Schmitt made an absolute fool of himself in a botched “gotcha” moment in
which he tried to prove perjury against former Special Counsel Jack Smith. Schmitt had a very flimsy case to begin with,
and then proceeded to have the whole thing collapse on national television when he called
Smith a “dirtbag” for denying that he was in Atlanta the day after Fani Wallis
admitted to her affair with Nathan Wade, as if that somehow proved something
nefarious.
But it turned out that the basketball game Smith attended
that night wasn’t the Golden State Warriors at the Atlanta Hawks, but the Iowa
Hawkeyes (featuring star Caitlin Clark) at the Maryland Terrapins in women’s
hoops.
Three follow-ups: First, Curmie would love to believe that Smith
suspected what Schmitt was attempting, and his obvious befuddlement at the line
of questioning was in fact feigned, thereby giving Schmitt a little more rope
with which to hang himself. He did
attend an Iowa/Maryland game about that time, he thinks… If that’s what happened, Curmie likes him
more than ever. Smith would never admit
it, of course.
Second, the intervention of Senator Klobuchar was timely and
effective. Her suggestion that Schmitt
was confusing the Hawks and the Hawkeyes was plausible, and confirming that
game on that date did blow up the whole interrogation. Thing is, though, it was the assumption that
the only basketball game in a large arena that night was in Atlanta that
caused Schmitt’s self-destruction. Klobuchar’s
analysis was reasonable; it was also wrong.
As Curmie wrote on October 1, “The problem wasn’t the coincidence of “Hawks” and “Hawkeyes”
playing at the same time. It was, rather, the casual sexism of being
unable to understand that a grown man might want to watch a women’s game, even
one that a). featured a player about to break the record for points in a
collegiate career, and b). was within easy driving distance.”
The problem is that not only are the comedians and memesters making that mistake, but Klobuchar herself is taking something of a victory lap (“when you're from the Midwest, the Hawks also mean the Hawkeyes”) for something that turned out to be an irrelevant coincidence. This was after we knew the real story. That’s not cool, Senator.
Finally, Smith’s attendance at the Power to the People Festival last weekend has resulted in two sets of headlines. Those of one political
persuasion love the fact that Dave Grohl (in Maryland, in an Iowa Hawkeyes
t-shirt) dedicated one of the Foo Fighters’ biggest hits, “My Hero,” to “my new
friend Jack,” and got a few thousand fans to sing along. Those of the other perspective are
predictably exercised by the fact that Smith wore a “No Kings” t-shirt to the
event, which also featured a set by Bruce Springsteen. How dare someone who, after a thorough investigation, got multiple indictments
against 45 only to have them dismissed by a Trump appointee exercise his 1st
Amendment rights as a private citizen, after all? <Sigh.>
There you go, Gentle Reader: four updates. We’ll return to normal programming next time out.
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