Stupid Is As Stupid Does

The great 20th-century philosopher,
Forrest Gump

Curmie comes by his sobriquet honestly, and there are times he just needs to vent against the raging stupidity of humanity in general. So here are a few items prompting Curmie to scream into the void. In no particular order… 

#1. This ad for Bounty. The premise is that the couple has just won the lottery, but in the excitement hubby knocks over his drink (soda? juice?), and it threatens to soil (de-legitimize?) the winning ticket. So it’s important that they have a really good paper towel, you see? 

Erm… no. It doesn’t matter how good your paper towel is if the spill will have done its damage before you can grab a sheet from the roll under the sink (or wherever). You want to protect that lottery ticket? Pick the damned thing up before the liquid can get there! Then you can mop up the spill. Anyone who does otherwise is apparently stupid enough to use the product in question. 

#2. Facebook. Gentle Reader, if you know Curmie personally, you know that he’s the president of a national organization.  In that capacity (and as an admin of the Facebook page), he announced that the deadline for applications for a rather hefty scholarship had been extended for a couple of weeks, and he posted a link to the page on the organization’s website from which the application can be downloaded. 

The next morning, Facebook’s algorithm proved itself even stupider than humans (well, not stupider than the particular humans who programmed it) by proclaiming the post “spam” and threatening dire consequences should Curmie similarly misbehave in the future. Of course, virtually everyone Curmie knows has been thrown into FB jail for alleged but usually imaginary offenses against their Divinely Inspired (i.e., Total Bullshit) “community standards.” 

Like a lot of other folks, Curmie has a history with Facebook, as you can see here and here, for example. My favorite Facebook story, though, had nothing to do with me: it’s the saga of the sexy onions from a year and half ago. Sigh. 

#3. FEMA Follies. FEMA has been an enduring punchline if not always a national embarrassment since Heckuva Job Brownie didn’t do a heckuva job. But most of their failures have been simple incompetence. This one is different: it’s fraud (not theirs, necessarily), and it damned well better be treated as such. After a September storm caused extensive damage in western Alaska, FEMA stepped in to help out. So far, so good, right? 

Alas, no, Gentle Reader. When residents sought out documents in such native languages as Yup’ik or Inupiaq, they encountered some… ahem… “translations” that were, shall we say, less than useful. When Monty Python riffs on horrible translations, it’s at least moderately funny (even if it isn’t one of Curmie’s favorite bits). When it happens in real life, it’s less amusing, and unless you think there’s a legitimate reason to say “Your husband is a polar bear, skinny” in an official government document, we’ve got a problem here. 

Whoever put together the faux translations seems to have used languages that aren’t indigenous to the area, trotted out a decades-old Russian text, and otherwise just fucked around, obviously thinking this whole business was a colossal joke. Those weren’t the exact words of Gary Holton, a University of Hawaii at Manoa linguistics professor and a former director of the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. What he did say was “They clearly just grabbed the words from the document and then just put them in some random order and gave something that looked like Yup’ik but made no sense”; he called the final product a “word salad.” 

FEMA fired Accent on Languages, the company that “translated” the documents. Of course, anything less than a lawsuit and a prosecution for fraud is insufficient. Meanwhile, of course, Jeremy Zidek, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, claims that the mistranslations did not create delays or problems. It is unclear whether Zidek can see Russia from his house. What is undeniable is that if he were Pinocchio, he couldn’t see the end of his nose without a telescope. 

#4. Well, it’s Missouri. What do you expect? Apologies to anyone offended by Curmie’s allowing his inner Kansan to sneak out for a second, there. But seriously, are there no actual problems in the Show-Me State that merit the attention of the legislature? Apparently not, because the male GOP majority has decided that policing their female colleagues’ accoutrement is of paramount importance. (Note: to be fair, this absurdity was introduced by a Republican woman). 

It’s those arms, you see. They’re almost as distracting to the pseud-prude crowd as (gasp!) high school girls’ shoulders. Exactly what problem is allegedly being solved here is not entirely clear. What is, is that state reps Raychel Proudie and Ashley Aune err more on the side of understatement than of hyperbole in declaring this measure “ridiculous.” 

#5. California Capers, Exhibit A. Curmie hasn’t voted for a politician in years; it’s always been lesser-of-two-evils time (or, perhaps more accurately, the evil of two lessers). In other words, the Loony Left is as scary as the Jewish Space Lasers crowd on the right. There are two discrete issues here: what is a sensible, ethical, and pragmatic choice on the one hand, and what is politically efficacious on the other. Needless to say, if an action is so problematic in terms of the former criterion that it offends the sensibilities of any rational person, then there is a price to be paid in terms of the latter. 

There are, in short, a lot of people like Curmie—not in political philosophy, perhaps, but in voting for the candidates of Political Party X simply because they’re not quite as nauseating as those of Political Party Y. Nothing makes the right happier, therefore, than someone on the left not merely doing something the average person would regard as transcendently stupid (because it is), but bragging about it. And if the idiots in question are from California, the right-wing ideologues are in something very much akin to ecstasy. 

Naturally, the Bay Area Woke Folk are happy to oblige. A San Francisco panel has recommended the following for each of its black residents who meet any two of eight criteria in light of “decades of harm they have experienced”: a one-time payment of $5 million (yes, apiece!), plus wiping out all debts associated with educational, personal, credit card and payday loans for black households. Yes, really. The cost would be equal to approximately the city’s total budget for three and a half years… oh, did I mention they’re already running in the red? 

If you’re looking for how actual racists can get elected, look no further, because this proposal, presented with straight faces, apparently, makes anyone even remotely associated with the left look like an utter idiot. Frankly, Curmie resents it. 

Have at least some black SF residents experienced prejudice during their lifetimes? No doubt. To the tune of $5,000,000 apiece? It is remotely possible that a few have, but Curmie would need to see some proof. In fact, because of affirmative action set-asides and similar programs, one could make a case that the average black San Franciscan has already been compensated more than they deserve. 

It’s also telling that other groups who have certainly been the victims of prejudice—there are no doubt some life-long American citizens now living in the city who were interned during WWII simply because of their Japanese descent, for example—go unrecompensed in this proposal. 

There are no words that can adequately express the level of disdain Curmie holds for anyone supporting this ludicrous and almost certainly unconstitutional recommendation. 

#6: California Capers, Exhibit B. If there is one more step past “California” to really float the boat of the right, it’s adding in… “university.” After all, that’s where all those commie pinko weirdos are indoctrinating our precious babies with such seditious ideas as “other people have different experiences and therefore different perspectives.” 

Right on cue, the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work at the University of Southern California has decided not merely to fulfill the right wing’s stereotype of academics, particularly of those in the social sciences, but to surpass in idiocy even that tortured misrepresentation. Wanna guess what word they’ve decided to drop from their active vocabulary? Go on, guess… If you said “field,” Gentle Reader, you’ve either already ready about this story, or you’re wasting your time reading this blog: you should be crafting B-movie plots with diabolical villains named Professor Psychoto and Dr. Deviance. 

Yes, because, you see, “Language can be powerful, and phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign.” The acceptable word is now “practicum,” by the way, a reasonable enough synonym for the meaning of “field” most appropriate to the study of social work… but having little in common with the definition associated with the work undertaken by slaves. 

Look, if you want to argue that people ought to be circumspect about how to employ words with multiple meanings, one of which is offensive, Curmie gets it.  But it takes a contortion of mythic proportions to get to anything actually problematic about “field.” 

Ultimately, Curmie feels compelled to warn you, Gentle Reader, to watch where you step when you walk through that practicum, as there is an incredible amount of bullshit out there.

Stupid Legislation of the Month (and it isn't the debt deal)

No one knows for sure who came up with the maxim that a camel is a horse designed by a committee, but no one doubts its wisdom, either. And the bill to raise the debt ceiling is a particularly ugly camel, at that. It is the product of weeks of partisan posturing, a complete lack of presidential leadership, an uncommonly high level—in both qualitative and quantitative terms—of hypocritical and indeed mendacious declarations by virtually any Republican you can mention (except the really stupid ones who may even believe some of the drivel they spout) and more than a few Democrats.

It really doesn’t do what it says it will do, but manages nonetheless to encapsulate the GOP’s proclivity for extortion and the Democrats’ equally well-developed propensity for cravenness and capitulation. It kicks the overwhelming majority of decisions down the proverbial road a little further, and creates a “super-Congress” of people the rest of us don’t get to vote on who will dither and pontificate for a while longer before coming up with a proposal acceptable to the Koch brothers and Grover Freaking Norquist: the only people in the country who appear to count, anymore. The bill may have needed to be passed, but it’s a terrible horrible no good very bad piece of legislation in about every conceivable way.

Still, for absolute, mind-blowing, glow-in-the-dark stupidity, it pales in comparison to this bill from Missouri, passed a couple of weeks ago but only finding its way into the public consciousness over the last couple of days. The Amy Hestir Student Protection Act is named for a student who was molested by a teacher over three decades ago (!). Ms. Hestir testified a couple years back before the Missouri House Education Committee; needless to say, legislators are incapable of reason when confronted by anecdotal evidence that feeds their prejudices, so we now get a bill which apparently prohibits teachers from being Facebook friends with their students.

I suspect that there are constitutional issues involved here: being a teacher doesn’t mean you give up your right to choose your own friends. But it gets worse. Here’s the exact wording of the part I’m talking about:

Teachers cannot establish, maintain, or use a work-related website unless it is available to school administrators and the child's legal custodian, physical custodian, or legal guardian. Teachers also cannot have a nonwork-related website that allows exclusive access with a current or former student.

OK, a few points. First, it is reasonable to exercise caution, regardless of one’s age or profession, in one’s interactions on social media. My students are older than those in question here. Even so, I won’t initiate a friend request for one of my students (even if I’m confident that the reason the student hasn’t started the process him/herself is oversight rather than choice). I often allow students to see only a limited profile, or block their posts from showing up on my news feed. Even more trepidation is in order when dealing with high schoolers (and younger).

But to say that this law is clumsily written is like saying that Barney Frank isn’t likely to endorse Michele Bachmann for president. First off, it’s ill-conceived in that it targets teachers for no clear reason. I do not doubt that Ms. Hestir was molested by a teacher, and that she suffered considerably from that ordeal. But the creep in question could just as easily have been her church choir director, rec league softball coach, mom’s co-worker or dad’s bowling team buddy... or Dad, himself. But teachers are currently the flavor of the month on the right-wing idiot hit list, so guess who gets the brunt of the stupid rule? (By, the way, shock of shocks, the bill’s sponsor, Senator Jane Cunningham, is the Tea Partier who proposed eviscerating the state’s child-labor laws a few months ago.)

Secondly, it criminalizes not only innocent behavior, but, at least potentially, innocent inertia. It is unclear whether simply being a Facebook friend is forbidden. Cunningham tells CNN not: “The law doesn't prohibit social media contact. If anybody says it does then they have not read the law. It just stops exclusivity, we just want those conversations to be available to the parents and school districts.” I have read the law, and I’m not so sure. The legislation does not, in fact, prohibit employing “exclusive access.” It forbids teachers from having a website that allows such access. Facebook, for example, allows exclusivity through both chat and message features. Of course, what the law actually does is to prevent teachers from having accounts with Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc., altogether. And forget about a personal blog!

That may not be what Ms. Cunningham intended, which means only that she as incompetent at writing as she is at legislating. My guess, however, is that even the mental deficients who run the state of Missouri aren’t really going to try to keep teachers from having a Facebook page. Rather, they will send out the Friend Police to scour the friends lists of students and teachers alike, trampling willy-nilly on 4th as well as 1st Amendment rights, chasing after what is public already. (Note: a student and a teacher can engage in an on-line messaging conversation without being “friends.”)

Teachers know people through other means than their jobs. I have a teenaged niece who is my Facebook friend. If I taught high school instead of college and lived in the same town as her, I’d be fine to continue our Facebook friendship up until the day she enrolled in my class (or perhaps in my school—the law is unclear on this point, as on so many others). But if I forgot to de-friend her, I’d be in violation of the law. It’s not clear what the penalty would be: probably losing my job. Think the regulation wouldn’t be pursued with that level of ardor? Well, people moronic enough to pass or sign a law like this are fully imbecilic enough to demand its enforcement… or, conversely, they were just showboating all along. You choose.

Thirdly, this law wouldn’t work, even if there were a serious problem (“serious” here is intended only in quantitative terms; obviously even a single case is a problem in qualitative terms). The legislation precludes only websites. Are you seriously going to tell me that a pervy teacher isn’t going to figure out that (s)he can still communicate by cell phone, text message, or e-mail? Kids really do know how to delete messages, and the average parent would have no clue how to retrieve them once that happens. This legislation is equivalent to mounting an anti-obesity campaign by outlawing licorice, while leaving unregulated the chocolate-covered marshmallows next to it on the supermarket shelf.

Fourthly, forbidding contact between teachers and “former students” is absurd on its face. I started teaching in 1979, and I’ve still got another decade or more to my career. Even if I were dealing with junior high kids instead of college students, I’d now have “former students” well into their forties. But, as the law is currently written, they’d still be off limits. Nowhere in the bill is there any mention of “minor students” or similar language.

Fifthly, the legislation forbids all manner of positive interactions—not merely the high school teacher who can calm the apprehensions of the former student now experiencing the trauma inherent in the freshman year of college, but also, as pointed out to MSNBC by University of Missouri information services professor Vicki Sauter, specifically professional assistance: “There are social media sites like LinkedIn where a student may want to put together a page for their career and get advice from a teacher. With this law they can’t do that, so I think it’s short sighted.”

Social media also have a positive function during times of crisis. Randy Turner, a teacher at Joplin East Middle School, whose blog piece on the topic is more specific and more eloquent than I can be, describes “the positive effect that teachers and students being Facebook friends had on Joplin Schools’ effort to locate students after the May 22 tornado.”

Finally, there is simply no need for this legislation. Ms. Turner makes this point brilliantly:

The laws are already in place, something Sen. Cunningham never mentions. During the mid 1990s, the state enacted laws which toughened background checks on teachers, expedited the removal of criminal teachers from the classroom, and ensured that their teaching licenses would be revoked.

And those laws have worked. Ironically, the success of that legislation has been used as a weapon against teachers by Sen. Cunningham. Each year as she pushed this legislation, she cited an Associated Press survey which showed Missouri ranked high in the number of teachers whose licenses were revoked for sexual acts with students.

In other words, these people were already being removed from having contact with students and their licenses were being revoked. The law was working. The very success of the law served as ammunition for Sen. Cunningham, since the AP study was comparing Missouri to states that have taken no action to cut down on the minority of teachers who bring shame to the whole profession.

In short, what this bill does is to outlaw positive interactions between teachers and students while doing bupkes to prevent the tiny minority of abusers from continuing their already-criminal ways. It serves as a direct and quite intentional insult to the overwhelming majority of teachers who would no more abuse a child in their care than chew off their own leg. It costs school districts time and, by extension, money, while budgets are being shrunk—and without a whiff of an upside. It reveals a profound lack of understanding of how social media operate, the technology involved, or the adolescent mind-set. Its sponsor is either horrifyingly stupid or outright insane. In other words, it is the quintessence of what passes for “common sense” among the Tea Party crowd.