4 ½ Updates

This one is long, even by Curmie’s standards.  Buckle up.

The four updates Curmie wants to write about today all concern recent news.  We’ll get to them in a moment, but let’s start with the “half an update.”  Curmie wrote “Questions. Curmie’s Got Questions.” three days after the (alleged?) assassination attempt on then-ex-President Trump in Butler, PA, in July of 2024.  He expressed some doubts about the official version of events, asking a series of questions, most of which remain unanswered nearly two years later. 

There’s no question that there were shots fired, that Thomas Michael Crooks fired them, or that rally attendee Corey Comperatore was killed and two other onlookers were wounded.  That’s as far as Curmie would go then, and it’s as far as he’ll go now.  No scenario matches what we know: those events sure as hell look staged, but such a scenario would require active collusion from multiple members of both the FBI and the Secret Service, and that’s asking a bit much.  On the other hand, Trump’s injured ear sure did heal fast and without a scar, there’s no reasonable explanation for why he’d have abandoned his shoes, and this little B-movie excerpt certainly helped his campaign.  Oh, and substitute “incompetence” for “collusion” in the bit about the FBI and Secret Service a couple of sentences back.

More importantly, there really hasn’t been a lot of new information forthcoming, task force recommendations notwithstanding.  Curmie remains skeptical, but is well short of being a full-fledged conspiracy theorist.  What’s the update?  Well, it used to be that those who were most vocal in their insistence that it was all a fraudulent publicity stunt were almost exclusively anti-MAGAs.  Now, that seems to be changing.

Well, sort of.  Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson aren’t exactly the elected spokespeople for the MAGA movement.  To suggest, as one headline does, that “MAGA now thinks Trump’s assassination attempt was actually a hoax” is obviously misleading, and it should come as no surprise that the majority of articles making the claim are on left-leading sites.  Also, of course, it’s not so much that those folks who are changing their minds aren’t really doubting the authenticity of the events at Butler; they’ve just come to realize that Dear Leader doesn’t really care about them, and that his seemingly miraculous escape just might not have been specifically ordained by God Himself.

It’s half an update, in other words.

OK, on to the other stories, in decreasing order of the likelihood that you, Gentle Reader, know about this stuff.  We start, then, with the re-naming of the Kennedy Center.  Back in December, Curmie described it as “Dear Leader’s Latest Vanity Endeavor.”  As you are probably aware, U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper ruled that “the Kennedy Center Board’s decision to rename the Center, along with its decision to affix President Trump’s name to the building’s façade, violate Congress’s unequivocal mandate. As stated at the outset, Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”  As for the board’s vote to close the Center for two years, he writes, “The trustees might have assessed the propriety of closure in a number of prudent ways. This was not one.”  That’s a pretty fair rebuke.

In a follow-up order, Cooper gave the board two weeks to “remove all physical signage on the Kennedy Center building and grounds, including the front portico, that purports to rename the Kennedy Center after President Trump or any other individual besides President Kennedy.” 

Dear Leader’s response was depressingly predictable, displaying a level of unhinged petulance seldom seen in anyone over the age of three.  Standard operating procedure for the Trump administration is two-fold: 1). Go ahead with whatever unauthorized activity floats your boat at a particular moment in time because it’s likely to be irrevocable by the time the rest of the country knows about it (demolition of the East Wing, painting the reflecting pool so it no longer reflects, etc.) and 2). simply disobeying any judicial order they don’t like (e.g., the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case).  Oh, come to think of it, there’s a #3: whine about how abused you are that you’re expected to follow the rules. 

#1 becomes relevant in terms of the shut-down, as the people who’d be scheduling acts for the future have all been sacked, and the Center has been winding down since the announcement (by Trump, without board approval, by the way) in March.  #2 is likely; the board, all but the ex officio members of which are gutless sycophants, is likely to appeal the ruling.  And, of course, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is already equivocating about whether he’ll actually enforce the order.  To be fair, the headline of the Time article linked here—“Trump’s Name Won’t Be Coming off the Kennedy Center Just Yet, Despite Court Order”—is misleading.  Burgum is quite possibly simply anticipating the possibility of an appeal and waiting to see if the order still holds.  Removing the name is at most a two-day operation, after all.

#3, of course, has already happened.  Dear Leader, bratty toddler that he is, hurled abuse at Cooper, and is seemingly washing his tiny hands of the Center.  If he can’t put his name on it, it isn’t important to him.  Well, duh.

We’ll see where this one goes.  One thing is certain: there’s more to come.

Next up: This one got at least a little publicity when it happened.  Last November, Curmie wrote about the case of Larry Bushart.  He’s the retired Tennessee cop who was charged with a felony for posting a meme in the aftermath of the shooting of Charlie Kirk.  Curmie granted that Bushart, a self-described “asshole,” posts a lot of memes, some of them not in the best of taste.  Still, it’s beyond absurd that anyone could believe that the meme constituted any kind of threat, let alone of “mass violence at a school.”  (The meme showed Donald Trump declaring that “we have to get over it” in response to a school shooting at Perry High School in Iowa.  Coincidentally, the local high school in Tennessee is Perry County High School.  Not the same place, and no threat even if it were.)

Curmie noted at the time that FIRE had gotten involved, and that they were assisting Bushart in a lawsuit against the county, the sheriff, and the sheriff’s investigator.  On May 20, FIRE announced an out of court settlement for $835,000.  Frankly, that seems a little low, given that Bushart spent 37 days in jail, lost his post-retirement job, and missed the birth of his grandchild, all over a meme the sheriff now admits he knew was about a different school.  But that’s a sizable enough chunk of change that perhaps, just perhaps, the next idiot cop might pause before so blatantly and stupidly violating someone’s 1st Amendment rights.  At the very least, prosecutors and judges might exercise a little judgment; it might be asking to much to expect small-town cops to do so.

Along similar lines is a more recent case involving the censorship of a composition the Watertown (WI) Wind Ensemble was to have played at their spring concert.  The brouhaha was over a piece dedicated to Marsha P. Johnson, a black trans activist who participated in the Stonewall uprising in 1969, and that was enough to have the pearl-clutchers of the school board forbid playing the piece.  When Curmie wrote about the situation on May 20, there was a concert (actually just that one short song) scheduled for that night at a local church, conducted by the composer, Omar Thomas.  You can see the video of that event here.  There are a lot of speeches, which you’re welcome to watch, of course, but you might like to know that Thomas is introduced shortly before the 58-minute mark, and the band starts at about 1:09:56.

The other part of the story was the involvement of the Minocqua Brewing Company in the person of owner/proprietor Kirk Bangstad.  He’s a controversial figure, to say the least (check out Curmie’s post for some details), and there was some concern that his invitation for the band to play at his establishment (in Madison, 40-ish miles from Watertown) might be longer on self-promotion than on bona fide support for the band.

Curmie wondered at the time, “Is it possible that this whole business is a scam, that there will never be a concert at the Minocqua Brewing Company, or that few if any of the musicians will be high school kids?  Could the tens of thousands of dollars raised for a still not finalized 501(c)3 find their way into Bangstad’s pocket, instead?”  Well… no, there was not a concert at the bar, or even outside in the parking lot, nor was there one Saturday the 23rd.  But there was a concert, the 501(c)3 now does exist, and a fair amount of money seems to have been raised.  Allow Curmie to explain.

We start with the exchanges between Bangstad and band booster club president Jay Sandvick.  NB: these are Bangstad’s recollections, paraphrased.  Are they still accurate?  At least largely, one suspects.  Anyway, there seems to have been an attempt in Watertown to poison the well, whether this resulted from legitimate fears, distrust of Bangstad, or garden variety cowardice.  Interestingly, Sandvick seemed convinced that the antagonism was coming from progressives rather than MAGAs.  If he was right, and Curmie is fully prepared to believe that he was, it just shows that there are idiots at every spot on the political spectrum.

A lot of musicians dropped out, and cancellation of the event seemed very likely.  Luckily (as it happens), the departures were framed as safety issues regarding the parking lot.  That problem was solved by moving the time and place: from Saturday in the bar’s parking lot to the following Thursday at Madison’s Barrymore Theater.  There’s video of that event here.  Speeches start at about the 4:05 mark; the band starts playing at about 20:12.  Be warned: the sound quality of the recording isn’t the best, and there’s some background conversation.

There are two other issues: First off, how many student musicians were there?  Curmie is old enough that anyone younger than 35 looks like a teenager, and even he suspects that the number of actual high-schoolers playing at either event could probably be counted on one hand.  Does that matter?  Well, sort of.  One would have hoped that more of the people directly affected by the censorial machinations of the school board would have participated, but Curmie isn’t going to assign blame, individually or collectively. 

The larger issue is whether the fund-raising event worked.  It did.  As noted in Curmie’s earlier piece, it would be hard to pull off any chicanery in an event so publicly accessible.  Bangstad presented an over-sized check for $82,000; the real check will apparently be for $85,188.12.  A cynic might argue that Bangstad actually collected more than that; that’s possible, one supposes, but Curmie doubts it.  Curmie does take issue with the “check number,” 8647.  First off, that’s just a little too cute.  More importantly, it takes away from the purpose of the event: this isn’t about national politics; it’s about demanding constitutional enforcement at the local level.  These cases continue: it was stupid for an Alaska high school to shut down a performance of “Bohemian Rhapsody” 15 years ago; it’s stupid to shut down a performance of “A Mother of a Revolution” today.  The most important battles are often the most seemingly insignificant ones.  Some hills are worth dying on… metaphorically only, please.

And so we move on to the story that you, Gentle Reader, are least likely to have heard about.  It may, in its own way, be more troubling than any of the others.  A little short of four years ago, Curmie wrote a post titled “Changing Voter Eligibility: Four Really Stupid Ideas.”  Curmie described one of them this way: “whereas this is the worst idea in a contest of plenty horrible ideas, it’s also the only one with a chance of becoming law.”  You see where this is going, don’t you, Gentle Reader?

Back then, the small town of Seaford, Delaware (population about 8,000) changed its charter to allow businesses to vote in local elections.  Quoth the idiot mayor, David Genshaw, “These are folks that have fully invested in their community with the money, with their time, with their sweat. We want them to have a voice if they choose to take it.”  Needless to say, not only is the policy stupid on its face, but Genshaw’s argument is barely coherent.  That doesn’t mean that other towns aren’t going to join in the stupidity, or that courts aren’t going to suck up to where the economic and therefore political power is (Citizens United, anyone?).

One of the other Delaware burgs to join in the fun is Fenwick Island, located about an hour ESE of Seaford.  They, too, decided to let companies vote (apparently they had done so for a long time).  Their mayor,  Natalie Magdeburger, makes Genshaw look positively Solomonic by comparison.  She actually argues that the majority of properties in her town are owned by family or marital trusts, and that therefore “our voting system is just, fair and gives everyone a voice. As a town, we believe that a property owner who pays taxes and is subject to our ordinances should have a say in who represents them on our Town Council.”  By this reasoning, Curmie could have voted in New Hampshire between inheriting his father’s house there in 1999 and selling the property in 2022, despite not having lived there since 1994.  Of course, Curmie is actually a human (and not an obscenely rich one), so he probably couldn’t get away with that nonsense. 

Significantly, if voting franchise is even slightly linked to property ownership, then we’re one step closer to oligarchy, with the next logical step being the disenfranchisement of apartment-dwellers and other renters.  And if your name isn’t on the deed—if, for example, the house is in your spouse’s name, or you’re a college kid living at home—then too bad, so sad.  No, Curmie isn’t predicting this, but despite his comment from 2022, he didn’t think the whole corporations-can-vote scam would stand up to a legal challenge.  But it just did.

The ACLU sued to ensure that voters should necessarily be of the flesh-and-blood variety.  They lost, because Judge Craig Karsnitz would lose a battle of wits with an anvil.  He argues that granting franchise to non-human entities doesn’t dilute the political power of actual residents.  That’s not just counter-intuitive; it’s insane.  The only reason to support the preposterous idea that corporations, LLCs, and trusts ought to have voting rights is precisely to reduce the suasion of actual residents. 

Politics is a zero-sum game in this regard: if we allow X to vote, then the power of not-X is concomitantly reduced.  We can disagree about who should have franchise—whether the voting age should be adjusted, or whether legal immigrants should be allowed to vote in certain types of elections, for example.  And if the mayors of tiny towns in Delaware and the idiots who elected them want to cede power to non-human moneyed interests, presumably with the hope of attracting even more of such entities to a state that already has over twice as many corporations as registered (human) voters, then we can at least find our way to something that looks like a rationale. 

These people are stupid, but they’re not as stupid as the judge who thinks there will be no likelihood of non-human “voters” overturning the will of actual human residents.  Indeed, the only people who cannot vote on behalf of a trust or a corporation or whatever in which they have an interest are those who actually live there, as that, you see, would give them more than one vote.  Curmie would also like to see a corporation show up at a polling place.  Tailgate East12 pretty much nails it: “Corporations cannot vote. A human has to place that vote on behalf of said corporations essential[ly] giving a Delaware voter more than [one] vote or giving an out of state owner of a corporation an illegal vote or giving a foreign owner of a corporation a vote which he or she is not entitled to.”  A group called Demand Justice argues, quite reasonably, that “Corporations aren't people. They don’t have kids in local schools, they don’t drink the water, they can’t be jailed for crimes, and they shouldn’t get a vote.”

It’s also worth noting, as pointed out by Jacob Owens on spotlightdelaware.org,  “there are no limits on the number of artificial non-human entities eligible to vote based on their ownership interest in any single property parcel nor is there a minimum share of a property required to register. That means if several LLCs jointly own a beach home in Fenwick Island, all of the owners can register to vote, regardless of how little a stake.”  Curmie will trust you to understand the implications, Gentle Reader. 

The good news, such as it is, is that a couple of Delaware legislators intend to introduce legislation that would end this inane practice.  Curmie wishes them luck.

So, the count for the 4 1/2 updates: three positive, at least in the short term, one negative, one-half pretty much neutral.

"A Mother of a Revolution," the Streisand Effect, and Good Trouble

Two nights ago there was an end-of-the-school-year band concert by students at Watertown High School in Wisconsin.  That’s hardly headline-making news, of course.  Curmie regrets that he can’t even tell you, Gentle Reader, what selections were played.  That’s because the important part of the story, the part that makes people across the country (including Curmie) pay attention, is what was not played: Omar Thomas’s “A Mother of a Revolution.”

That composition, you see, was dedicated to Marsha P. Johnson, a black trans activist who participated in the Stonewall uprising in 1969.  That is apparently enough for the district’s clown car board of education to forbid the piece from being performed.  They describe Stonewall as “a six-day riot which included the beating of police officers and attempting to burn down a building with human beings trapped inside.”  They leave out the whole “finally had enough of police brutality” part.  Oh, and the “was a seminal event in giving agency to the LGBT community” part, too.  We might color Curmie unsurprised.  

Using the board’s logic, of course, the American Revolution could be characterized as an armed insurrection against the lawfully constituted authority of His Majesty’s government, resulting in the deaths of thousands of loyal British soldiers.  Equally importantly, we know that Johnson was an “agitator” in Stonewall, but it’s unclear exactly what that means.  Moreover, Curmie would suggest that she was a significant figure before and especially after, as well as during, Stonewall.

A couple other factors would seem to be important.  First off, “A Mother of a Revolution” is an instrumental piece.  You can hear it here, performed by the University of North Texas Wind Symphony, if you’re interested.  Whether you like the tune or not, there’s nothing to suggest that there’s anything political in the music per se.  It’s not like they brought in the choir to sing the Internationale or even “Do You Hear the People Sing.” We’re going to get upset by whose memory is being invoked?  Seriously?

More problematically, this whole commedia is very much the product of the process, which is designed primarily as an exercise in prior restraint.  You can do something “controversial,” but only if you get prior approval from parents.  The band director sent out the appropriate forms last fall, got the necessary signatures, and started rehearsals in October.  But here’s the bind: if you don’t send out the notifications, then you’re in violation of the stupid rules.  If you do, then you’re admitting that someone might object, and that honesty will come back to bite you in the ass more often than not.  It’s also worth noting that the board had also signed off on using the piece… until, of course, they didn’t, only a few days before the concert.

As usual in such cases, there were “parental complaints” from unnamed sources.  Band members’ parents had already given consent, so this was some other kids’ parents.  All this presumes that the board is even telling the truth, but a Watertown parent Katie Vanderlinden said at Monday’s board meeting that she was told by the superintendent that “there were zero parental complaints.”  Anyway, the board does what such bodies always do: they capitulated. 

The correct response, of course, would have been to tell those folks who didn’t want to hear the piece not to come.  Usually, a board’s failure to do so is the product of cowardice.  There may have been some of that here, too (there’s no question that they’re avoiding the subject now), but the problem seems to be more that the majority of board members seem to have been elected on a platform of “ending indoctrination in radical curriculum.”  Those, by the way, are the words of an attendee at Monday’s board meeting, not of a board member per se.  The argument is that playing the song encourages violence.  The actual reason Johnson is celebrated, of course, is her demand for acceptance and inclusion, but… whatever.

There’s always a rationale for censorship, and it’s always bullshit.  Whether the board acted out of cowardice, stupidity, or partisanship doesn’t matter.  They earned their nationwide humiliation.

But the story gets better.  News spread to Madison, a little under an hour away, where Kirk Bangstad, the owner of the Minocqua Brewing Company, offered to host the group in his beer garden (the event was later moved outside to the parking lot to accommodate more people) and charge admission, with proceeds to go to the band.  There’s some legalistic stuff, but basically it works out like this.  The band director was not involved in the offer or the planning, so one hopes (at least) that he will suffer no repercussions.  Not all members of the Watertown Wind Symphony will participate, and those who do will do so as individual volunteers.  Those who choose not to play for whatever reason will be replaced by alumni, college kids, guest artists, whoever.  We’ve subsequently been assured that “as of last Saturday, there were enough students who wanted to do it and enough people who could actually play who had volunteered to play it.”

Of course, the school board then insisted that no school-owned instruments could be used for an unsanctioned event.  Bangstad and the leadership of the Band Boosters found a way around that, too, as “Band directors and music stores from around the Midwest immediately sprang to action and loaned the band the instruments they needed to play this concert.”  Aaaaand they’re setting up a 501(c)3 that will be completely separate from the school per se, so the board gets no say in how their money is spent.  Curmie doesn’t have up-to-date figures on how much money has been raised, but as of the middle of Saturday afternoon, it was almost $66,000.  Musical instruments are expensive, but that kind of money would make a good start.

Bangstad says he wanted to create the Streisand Effect, and he did.  The song will now be played twice, as there will also be a performance tonight at Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church in Watertown.  (EDIT: The video of the performance at the church is available here.) The conductor will be the composer, Omar Thomas, who is apparently flying in from Austin, Texas, for the event.  The church’s website lists the rules for attendees (no recording, no posters, that kind of thing) and notes that,

The purpose of this event is to experience a piece of music that has been prepared by and for people who are rooted in our Watertown community. The performers do not desire to be the center of attention, and we are not gathering for a rally or protest. Instead, the musicians’ hope is for an audience to focus on the work they put into A Mother of a Revolution! and for the music to tell its own story.

It’s unclear—to Curmie, at least—whether the percentage of high schoolers playing this evening will be higher than on Saturday.  It’s certainly reasonable that a parent might think that a local church might be a more appropriate venue than a bar 40 miles away for their teenager to play.  Or they might support both or neither.

Traffic has been heavy on the YouTube pages of a host of universities and youth orchestras that have played the piece.  As Curmie writes this, the first comment we come to on the University of Georgia’s Wind Ensemble’s version sort of says it all: “Raise your hand if you're here because you won't be told what not to listen to.” Well said, acdeeiprrt!  Curmie suspects Thomas’s composition been heard by more people in the last few days than ever before.  Good.

It’s worth noting that Bangstad is a controversial figure to say the least.  He’s a rather virulent anti-MAGA, and apparently something of a hothead.  Just in the last few weeks, he’s pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, been interrogated by the FBI and Secret Service for comments about President Trump, and declared his candidacy for governor.  Busy lad!

There have also been allegations that he used funds from a PAC he established to pay his personal expenses.  There’s sufficient smoke, in other words, to suspect there’s a fire around there somewhere.  Is it possible that this whole business is a scam, that there will never be a concert at the Minocqua Brewing Company, or that few if any of the musicians will be high school kids?  Could the tens of thousands of dollars raised for a still not finalized 501(c)3 find their way into Bangstad’s pocket, instead?  Is this the left’s small-scale response to the Trump phone scam, which netted Dear Leader and his family something in the neighborhood of $59 million for a product that may never be made?

Curmie supposes so, but it seems improbable here: not because Bangstad is above reproach, but for two independent other reasons.  First, it’s difficult to imagine that a local church would make promises they can’t keep.  Second, everything is too public.  If there’s no performance in Madison in Saturday, we’ll know.  If none of the musicians are high schoolers, we’ll know.  If the Band Boosters don’t get access to that money, we’ll know… and we’ll know whom to blame. Kirk Bangstad may be all the horrible things his detractors say about him, but he’s not stupid.  Neither are the leaders of the booster group, who’ll be sure that they’re getting all the money they should.

Ultimately, we’ll know something tonight, more on Saturday, and more still a few days after that.  Bangstad said recently that the story here is that “Thousands of people have gotten together to say ‘We won’t stand for censorship.  We won’t stand for bigotry.  And we’re gonna get into some good trouble.”  That part is true, whether Bangstad is on the up and up or not.

Curmie was not in band in high school, but Beloved Spouse was.  And we’re both fans of free expression.  We sent in a few bucks.  Here’s hoping it ends up where we intended.

BTW, Gentle Reader, if you’d like to make a donation, go here and click on “get tickets.”  The event is sold out, but there’s a “donate to the band” option.