Three First Amendment Stories

There are just too many things to write about right now.  Curmie doesn’t promise FOC Steve that a piece on the bombing of those Venezuelan boats will happen, but he does intend to get to work on it soon, and that Politico article about the Young Republicans group chat—laden with about every variety of hatred, from misogyny to racism to antisemitism to homophobia and more—seems worthy of comment.

But Curmie can, as is his wont, bundle three different stories that emerged roughly simultaneously under the general heading of Censorial Asshatitude.  One of them is a little more complicated than the other two, which is to say there initially seemed to have been a little mitigation involved... key words: “initially,” “seemed,” and “a little.”  Let’s start there.

Curmie once thought about pursuing his doctorate at Indiana University, and even visited the campus.  He has a lot of friends who got their doctorates there, including one of his best friends from college, two from his first teaching gig, and two from a professional organization.  Oh, and another dear friend taught there for a decade.  Curmie is not by nature a hugger, but all six of these folks get a hug instead of a handshake if he ever sees them in person again.  So whereas he has no direct link to the university, he cares more about what happens there than he might for a similar university elsewhere.

Anyway, IU is trying to move their student newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student, online.  There are legitimate reasons for this, not least of them being a recognition of reality.  Curmie hasn’t read a print newspaper in years, and suspects that you might not have done so either, Gentle Reader.  All the signs suggest that print journalism will be little more than a memory by the time today’s undergraduates are ready to move into leadership positions, if not before.  In a discipline that, unlike the traditional liberal arts, really is intended to be pre-professional, gearing the operation towards an emerging future rather than a sentimentalized past makes a fair amount of sense.

But to say the administration was ham-handed in their execution would be a rather egregious understatement.  The transition to online, occasioned in part by financial concerns, has already begun, as what was once a daily paper had been printed only sporadically of late.  But as the staff was constructing an edition to be published this week, they were told… get this… not to publish any news stories, but to concentrate solely on Homecoming-related material.  A newspaper being forbidden from publishing news is, shall we say, headline-worthy.

The school’s Director of Student Media, Jim Rodenbush, objected to the move, citing the IDS’s charter: “final editorial responsibility for all content rests with the chief student editors or leaders.”  He may or may not have muttered the word “censorship” in the process.  He was, of course, fired for his efforts, because honoring agreements is so passé.  And when the student staff asked why, their entire edition was shut down.

Still, it seemed like the university had at least a whiff of a case: they pay the bills, after all.  But then the other shoe dropped.  The Federation for Individual Rights and Expression released a statement (well, technically a blog piece, but if it shows up on the website, someone in authority approved it) explaining that the real problem was that the student editors thought it worthy of publication that the university ranked 255th out of the 257 colleges and universities included in the latest of FIRE’s free speech rankings.

Apparently incapable of appreciating the irony of violating the 1st Amendment rights of a newspaper that had <checks notes> documented cases of violating 1st Amendment rights, the university administration, in the person of Dean David E. Tolchinsky, made things much, much, worse, both for the IDS and especially for the reputation of the university.  It is unclear whether Tolchinsky is a repressive jackass or simply an amoral toady who decided it was better to fire Rodenbush rather than risk losing his own, no doubt lucrative, gig.  It doesn’t matter.  He has done irreparable harm to both Indiana’s media program and the university as a whole.  He should be shit-canned.  Full stop.

Let’s stick with FIRE and a university, or in this case, a collection of universities.  This week, a federal judge David Alan Ezra issued a preliminary injunction against implementing Texas Senate Bill 2972, which just might be the stupidest piece of legislation ever passed in this state, and that is a very high hurdle, indeed.  It is nothing more or less than an attack on freedom of speech on all public university campuses in the state. 

You probably know, Gentle Reader, that Curmie is now retired from a public university in Texas, so he’s got a stake in this one even if only indirectly.  The bill expressly defines “expressive activity” as “any speech or expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment…” and includes “assemblies, protests, speeches, the distribution of written material, the carrying of signs, and the circulation of petitions.”  It then proceeds to “prohibit” “expressive activities on campus between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m.”  Inviting speakers to campus or using any form of sound amplification or percussive instruments during the last two weeks of a semester is also verboten.  (There goes that orchestra concert…)

Most of the rest of the bill suggests, legitimately, that reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions are appropriate, and that “disrupting the functioning of the institution” cannot be countenanced.  Not so, however, for the items mentioned in Curmie’s previous paragraph.  Those activities are outlawed whether or not they cause even the slightest ripple of disruption.

Curmie has reminded his readers repeatedly that he is not a lawyer… but the folks at FIRE are, and they point out that the bill would allow, even demand, that universities “punish everything from wearing a T-shirt with a message, to writing an op-ed, to playing music — even worship.”  FIRE Senior Attorney Adam Steinbaugh argues that “Texas’ law is so overbroad that any public university student chatting in the dorms past 10 p.m. would have been in violation.”  FIRE’s clients in bringing the suit to challenge the law range from the Fellowship of Christian University Students (FOCUS) at UT-Dallas to the Texas Society of Unconventional Drummers at UT-Austin.

Actually interfering with the functioning of the university, even to the extent of making too much noise in the dorm when others are trying to study or sleep, is one thing, but this stuff is ridiculous.  More significantly, this law begs for selective enforcement.  One can easily imagine that campus police would agree that wearing a MAGA cap on the daily 7:00 a.m. jog should be allowed, but that a “Black Lives Matter” shirt shouldn’t be (or vice versa).  Curmie directed more than one show that didn’t end before 10:00.  Should the last 20 minutes of Carlo Goldoni’s 1746 comedy The Servant of Two Masters be suppressed?  It’s certainly expressive speech, and you could call the audience an “assembly.”

Fact is, we could go on forever listing even a portion of the perfectly reasonable and unobtrusive expression that the bill would prohibit.  Let’s face it, whoever wrote this nonsense, or even voted for it, would come in third in a battle of wits with a tire iron and a dead armadillo.

Certainly it’s a good thing that Judge Ezra blocked the law from going into effect, noting that “The First Amendment does not have a bedtime of 10:00 p.m.”  (Curmie loves that line.)  But whereas an injunction is welcome, that doesn’t mean that the law has actually been overturned.  That is, of course, the consummation devoutly to be wished.  In a perfect world, of course, the court costs involved would be borne not by the state treasury, but shared by every idiot legislator who voted for this manifestly unconstitutional tripe.

But if SB2972 is notable primarily for its stupidity, Pete Hegseth’s latest attempt at controlling press coverage of the Pentagon is considerably more troubling.  The policy would require prior approval from the Pentagon before publishing anything related to their activity, even unclassified information.  As is a running theme through this essay, Curmie turns to FIRE for their take. 

They note an attempt by Trumpian acolytes to frame this censorship as protecting national security.  Hegseth writes: “There is a critical distinction between lawfully requesting information from the government and actively soliciting or encouraging government employees to break the law. The First Amendment does not permit journalists to solicit government employees to violate the law by providing confidential government information.”

The only problem with that statement is: that’s bullshit.  Actually, the First Amendment does permit journalists to do that, as FIRE’s Adam Goldstein writes, “The First Amendment has limited enumerated exceptions, such as speech that is defamatory, speech that would inspire imminent lawless action, and obscenity. ‘Asking a question where the answer might be classified’ isn’t on the list, and reporting on national security matters is protected speech.”

It’s a truism among lawyers (at least the TV versions of lawyers) that you should never ask a question of a witness in a trial unless you already know the answer.  Reporters work differently: they’re trying to ascertain the facts, not to advance a client’s interests.  Here’s Goldstein again: “While a journalist might reasonably infer that the United States is engaging in some activity that falls into the sensitive or classified categories, they don’t have any power to determine what answer they actually receive.”

In other words, perhaps Hegseth should concentrate on finding Pentagon staffers who will STFU if it’s appropriate to do so.  Faced with a question that might lead to divulging classified information, an employee might reasonably respond “no comment” or “I’m not in a position to answer that question.”  Lying shouldn’t be an option; neither should revealing classified, or perhaps even sensitive, information.  That doesn’t seem too difficult to Curmie.  Does it to you, Gentle Reader?

As Goldstein writes, the new policy shifts the blame to the press if some staffer says something they shouldn’t.  It also turns the Pentagon into a propaganda machine, cheerfully censoring anything that might be embarrassing.  Not “classified.”  Not “sensitive.”  Embarrassing.

As is well known by now, reporters from every news agency except OANN (and anyone who gets their news there is by definition beyond hope) turned in their badges and, as seen in the photo above, walked out en masse rather than be subject to absurd and unconstitutional restrictions.  There is, of course, a desperate attempt by the Trumpian minions to frame this as a partisan issue.  Nope.  True, the usual suspects—the AP, CNN, the New York Times, etc.—all refused to submit to the new rules. 

But so did Fox News, Newsmax, the Wall Street Journal, Military Times, The Daily Caller, the Washington Examiner, and the Washington Times.  That’s a pretty healthy list of right-leaning outlets that want their reporters to be journalists rather than propagandists.  Curmie respects these agencies for their integrity on this issue, even if on few others.  It’s harder to do the right thing when “your side” expects you to do otherwise.  So, kudos to them.

None of these three stories has run its course.  IU may or may not find its way back to obeying the Constitution.  A preliminary injunction is not the same as declaring a law unconstitutional.  The elaborate game of chicken at the Pentagon is likely to go on for a while.  These cases, like so many in other areas, show signs of authoritarianism but also signs of resistance, integrity, and hope.  We’ll lose some skirmishes along the way, no doubt.  But these are battles worth fighting, and Curmie (not known for his naïveté) cannot but believe we’ll ultimately emerge battered but triumphant.  We’re the ones who really want to make America great again.  Let’s do that.

Ron DeSantis Wins the Best Impersonation of a George Orwell Novel Award

You won’t be seeing this sight this year.

Those who know Curmie personally know that one of his favorite mantras is “if you have to tell me, it ain’t so.”  This slight tweaking of “actions speak louder than words” or of the difference between commanding and demanding respect tends to be directed at those who claim to care, or sometimes at those who claim to be in control.  If you’re a teacher or a theatre director (two things Curmie knows something about) and you have to tell the students or the actors that you’re in charge, you’re not.

Curmie thought about using that line to address Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s “Freedom Summer” program, but unfortunately the reality is rather more sinister than that, even apart from the co-opting of the name from an actual 1964 civil rights initiative for an exercise in faux patriotic virtue-signaling.  Curmie is therefore pleased to present Governor DeSantis with the Best Impersonation of a George Orwell Novel Award.  You know:  “War Is Peace.  Freedom Is Slavery.  Ignorance Is Strength.”? 

As a key ingredient of the… erm… “freedom” being celebrated in Florida this summer is a directive that the only colors that are permissible to light the state’s bridges from Memorial Day through Labor Day are—you’re way ahead of me here, aren’t you, Gentle Reader?—red, white, and blue.  It is, of course, purely coincidental, as noted in Rex Huppke’s deliciously snarky commentary in USA Today, that this means no rainbow lights for Pride Month, or indeed any yellowish, greenish, or purplish colors for any reason.  And we’re not talking here just about things that would give heart palpitations to bigots conservatives like DeSantis, like orange for National Gun Violence Awareness Day or including green for Juneteenth, which is <checks notes> a national holiday explicitly celebrating actual, literal, freedom. 

But, if, for example, the baseball team from Florida State, Florida, or Miami were to win the College World Series, it’s within the realm of possibility that the folks in Tallahassee, Gainesville, or Coral Gables might want to celebrate by lighting up the local bridges in the school colors, the way New Yorkers light up the Empire State Building if one of the local teams wins the Big Game.  (Or the way people from around the world showed solidarity with Ukraine after the Russian invasion.)  Nope.  Not allowed.  Freedom!

What’s also interesting about this year is that DeSantis now seems eager to embrace his role as authoritarian enforcer of “freedom,” meaning, of course, that Floridians can do what they like as long as Little Ronnie approves.  About this time three years ago, he ran away with his tail between his legs when there was outrage at the Florida Department of Transportation’s decision to turn off the rainbow lights on a Jacksonville bridge.

Then, DeSantis sent forth one of his minions forth to proclaim that “The Governor was most definitely not involved in that decision, and it’s absurd to think otherwise.”  Curmie pauses here to mutter “if you have to tell me, it ain’t so” under his breath.  But although he is a disaster as both a governor and a human being, Ron DeSantis does have one skill: he’s particularly adept at plausible deniability.

Of course, although DeSantis is perhaps only 40% as smart as he thinks he is, he’s not an utter imbecile.  He knows full well that outlawing colored lights on bridges won’t have any appreciable affect.  People will use flags instead of lights, or they’ll light up city hall or the county courthouse.  He’s not going to lose any votes for this little stunt, as anyone who cares about what is represented by, say, rainbow lights for Pride Month wouldn’t have voted for him, anyway.  But he gets to strut for his base and maybe pull in some campaign contributions from wealthy homophobes.  He comes out smelling like a rose… a rose that has been well fertilized with bovine excrement, but a rose nevertheless.

Curmie acknowledges that many of the more ridiculous euphemisms that have degraded the English language over the past few decades have come from the left.  He remembers calling up some mid-level college administrator to ask what the hell “differently abled” was a euphemism for (she wasn’t all that certain, by the way); that was almost 40 years ago.  People who are in this country without the legal right to be here are not “migrants”; convicted felons are not “justice-impacted individuals”; people who are pregnant are still (biologically, at least) women. 

But whereas the Woke phraseology may be the third cousin twice removed from the reality of the situations which are (sort of) being described, at least you can find your way from one term to the other with a road map and a little patience.  Ron DeSantis’s concept of “freedom” is a complete inversion of the term, a misrepresentation on the scale of what used to be known as the “German Democratic Republic,” albeit with fewer and lesser consequences.

Still, for all his authoritarianism and double-speak, DeSantis continues to trail both Greg Abbott and Mitch McConnell in what is shaping up to be an epic struggle for the title of Hypocrite of the Month.  The GOP, of course, cares little if anything about actually solving problems or upholding individual rights (except their own, of course); it just wants to make sure that the country is ruled by those they consider to be the right people… you know, rich het white pseudo-Christian men.  (Actual Christians who want to feed the poor or welcome the stranger need not apply.)

They’d need a little assistance, though.  If Curmie might switch dystopian novels on you, Gentle Reader, the ideal minions would be the equivalent of Brave New World’s Betas: competent enough to serve the interests of the state, but not really capable of independent thought.  In other words, the Republican rank and file, who will continue to elect and re-elect imperious jackasses like Ron DeSantis.

If only the Democrats were much better…

Authoritarianism and the GOP: One Example

This may or may not be a photo of Ron DeSantis 
responding to a question about how much he cares about
First Amendment guarantees.

This started as a comment, or to be more precise, a comment to a comment to a comment, on a post on Ethics Alarms. Curmie had taken issue with the idea, propounded in the original post, that no Democrat could legitimately call a Republican authoritarian. He was then challenged to support his position. Herewith, that argument, which has grown rather long for a blog post (even for Curmie), let alone for a comment. I’ll post the link to this post rather than clutter that page… and rather than writing a lengthy essay that doesn’t go on my own site. 

First point: let’s drop the nonsense about hearing about Republican authoritarianism “only by those who have no difficulty demanding that others bow to their desires.” I have no tolerance for slimy or authoritarian antics from the left, even if I (generally) agree with their goals. But arguing those shenanigans don’t also happen from the right suggests either willful blindness or mendacity. As I have suggested elsewhere, the tactics and targets are a little different; that’s all. 

Curmie could fill volumes with examples of Republican authoritarianism, but this is going to be long enough as it is; let’s choose one GOP pol and one topic: Ron DeSantis and education. 

We start with the decree a couple of years ago that all faculty and students at state universities must identify their political affiliation. Not only that, the forms were not anonymous. I could see some tortured logic by which tracking aggregate percentages of anonymous student responses might serve to prove “indoctrination” or whatever, but little could be less relevant than the political persuasions of faculty. 

I think in particular of two colleagues at the small midwestern college where I used to teach. A student couldn’t get a major in Political Science without taking at least a couple of courses apiece from the two of them. They were good friends who happened to disagree about which political party best represented the needs and desires of the citizenry. One was the county chair of the Republican party when I was there; the other ran for Congress as a Democrat a couple years after I left. Few students were unaware of their professors’ politics, but left-leaning and right-leaning students alike virtually unanimously sang the praises of both. That’s what is supposed to happen; more importantly, it’s what does happen far more often than not; it doesn’t make headlines because it is in fact so commonplace. 

Furthermore, as I wrote on my own blog, “Diversity of perspective doesn’t require hiring both liberals and conservatives; it requires faculty who know what the hell they’re doing. Curmie has taught plays that are very Catholic, very Jewish, very Buddhist, very Hindu, very atheist; he’s taught plays that advocate for monarchy, for democracy, for socialism, for capitalism, for anarchy. Do I really need to tell you, Gentle Reader, that I’m not an adherent to all of these philosophies?” 

Was this effort by DeSantis useless? Pretty much (but see below). Creepy? Absolutely. Authoritarian? Arguably, but not conclusively. 

So let’s move on to the “Don’t Say Gay” law. No, those words are never used in the bill. But the reality on the ground suggests serial repression. Literally every restriction of freedom of expression purports to be grounded in higher ideals. To some on the left, censorship is legitimized by resisting the spread of racism, homophobia, or sexism; to some on the right, it’s the need to promote American values or to protect children. 

To some degree, there’s validity in all of these points of view: those goals are admirable. There are, of course, places where certain kinds of dissent are inappropriate: think Fred Phelps protesting at military funerals, for example. But there is, and should be, a difference between that which is inappropriate and that which is illegal. 

More to the point: this particular legislation is (intentionally, I believe) so vague that virtually any action could be seen to be in violation. In the area of race, for example, Florida schools, inspired by DeSantis and his acolytes, have removed from school curricula or libraries books about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks, and a film about Ruby Bridges. It was enough that one (count ‘em, one!) mother complained that “It might suggest that white people hate black people.” (Guess what? They did.) Oh, also removed were books about baseball players Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente. Make that make sense. (Yes, some of those books were subsequently restored to the shelves. That hardly legitimizes their initial removal.) 

A Florida teacher recently got into trouble for showing a Disney movie to her class. No one seems to dispute the fact that the actual plot of the film was relevant to what she was teaching. Ah, but the lead character appears to be gay. And according to the (il)logic of many on the right—some of whom have posted on Ethics Alarms—that makes it about sex, and we need to protect kids from the reality that gay people exist that. These folks may indeed truly believe that a romantic relationship between a man and a woman is based on love, but such a union between two men or two women is exclusively about sex. I don’t; indeed, I find it hypocritical at best, abhorrent at worst. 

Plus, of course, there’s the utterly irresponsible and indeed slanderous suggestion that simply recognizing gay people as human is “grooming.” If you’re really concerned about grooming, come back when you’ve cleaned up the Catholic Church. But, more to the immediate point, the words of a popular meme resonate: “Teaching kids about frogs isn’t grooming them to be amphibians.” 

I’d note further that whatever one may think of the propriety of same-sex marriage or the ability for such couples to adopt, one thing is irrefutable: it’s not little Johnny’s fault that he has two dads. Abusing him or even excluding him from the group, which is what denying his lived reality does, is reprehensible. 

But, as they say in the late-night infomercials, wait! That’s not all! It may be a flimsy argument to say you’re protecting kids from fill-in-the-blank bogeyman, but at least it’s an argument. DeSantis, though, wants similar restrictions at the university level, where “protecting children” rings rather hollower as an excuse for censorship. There, the awful scourge on society is Critical Race Theory, which must not even be mentioned in passing.  Seriously? 

Oh, and DeSantis also tried to restrict state university faculty from testifying as expert witnesses in lawsuits or criminal trials. This is the proponent of diversity of opinion? Give me a break. 

Authoritarian? I think unquestionably. 

There is also DeSantis’s attack on tenure. He’s not alone in this pursuit, of course; a fair number of other GOP pols are similarly opposed to what is, after all, nothing more or less than a pledge on the part of a university to respect the academic freedom of faculty who have demonstrated sufficient excellence in teaching, research, and service to merit this consideration. (There are practical benefits to the university, too, of course, but few politicians from either party are either smart or curious enough to know this.) 

By the way, there are a host of reasons for which tenure can be revoked: gross incompetence, moral turpitude, financial exigency resulting in the retrenching of a program, and so on. Two points: 1). the burden of proof now rests with the university: they must prove their claim rather than the professors’ having to prove they should be retained, and 2). a professor’s legal (i.e., not libelous, seditious, violence-inciting, etc.) commentary is never a legitimate reason to revoke tenure. 

But I’m still not done. There was the takeover of New College, including firing trustees and replacing them with DeSantis minions whose first action was to fire the president. DeSantis wanted to turn the school into the “Hillsdale of the South.” Of course, that’s a marketing slogan rather than an actual desire. Indeed, he wants the anti-Hillsdale. Hillsdale is, first of all, a private college, which would mean that DeSantis couldn’t appoint its trustees. And he wants that ability more than Pooh wants honey. 

Hillsdale is also libertarian rather than conservative. Yes, in the current environment, there’s a fair amount of overlap, but if there’s one thing libertarians definitely don’t want, it’s to have a college or university controlled by the governor’s office. It’s pretty clear that DeSantis isn’t interested in diversity of ideas, but rather to have his views and only his views propagated, and he wants the state to underwrite the operation. He’s not yet Joe Stalin, but give him time to grow a mustache and we’ll see… 

The purge at New College is unprecedented to the best of my knowledge. Yes, it’s true that there is a recent trend towards governors’ appointing trustees (regents, councilors, whatever a particular institution calls them) based primarily on political affiliation, but I can recall no instances of firing existing trustees without cause. 

And the new trustees really are indeed nothing more than DeSantis minions. More ominously, they are exercising a level of interference in the day-to-day operation of the college that is also unprecedented. It is exceedingly rare to have any tenure recommendation coming from the school administration overturned—it might happen once or twice a year in the entire country. The case involving Nikole Hannah-Jones and the University of North Carolina made headlines for precisely this reason: that such events occur so infrequently. 

Even then, especially for existing faculty rather than new hires, it’s generally because there is not merely disagreement but profound disagreement among the various levels of input into the decision: department committee, department chair, college committee, dean, provost, president. It is quite rare that the de facto decision is made above the dean level. 

To have the majority of faculty recommended for tenure by the president denied by the trustees is outrageous. I started teaching (and reading The Chronicle of Higher Education) in 1979, and I’ve literally never heard of more than one tenure applicant recommended by the president of a college being denied by the trustees at any single college or university in a single year. New College this year: five. 

Would it be too paranoid to wonder if that collection of political affiliations of faculty mentioned above had some hidden and nefarious intent? Much as I am loath to accuse even an ultra-partisan narcissist like Ron DeSantis of such a thing, I’m afraid I can’t rule out the possibility. 

It’s also important to realize that applying for tenure is almost always a one-time event: you either get it or you get a one-year terminal appointment. Those five professors, then, who demonstrated their legitimate claim to tenure to their colleagues and superiors, are now going to be out of work because a gaggle of political hacks decided that obeisance to Ron DeSantis was more important than the good of the university they were pledged to support. 

As a longtime professor and a free speech advocate, I believe DeSantis’s actions with respect to New College are an abomination. You’re free to disagree with that assessment, Gentle Reader; it is, after all, only an opinion. Perhaps you think he was simply righting a wrong. But to suggest that his power play was anything less than authoritarian means our discussion is over, as I will simply label you incorrigible and move on.

Florida Out-Floridas Florida: On the Imminent Demise of Education in the Sunshine State

Four somewhat related stories appeared over the last few days. Curmie has already written about one of them, the saga of a marble statue’s dangly bits causing a Florida principal to be fired. Two other incidents—we’ll get to them in a moment—also in Florida (go figure), of capitulation to heckler vetoes further indicate that legislation like the “Parental Bill of Rights,” which passed the US House a few days ago, is aptly named. 

That’s the good news and the bad news. Curmie is going to assume that the good part is self-evident: that in general terms parents ought to be more aware than they have been of late about school curricula, safety concerns, etc. There are deeply problematic parts, too, of course. Demanding that teachers tell parents if students use different pronouns than they were born with, for example, is creepy at best. 

If those kids can’t be their true selves as they perceive themselves to be at home, then demanding that school officials nark them out has a legitimate chance of placing them in danger. The current law even in Florida (!) allows a school to withhold information if there is a legitimate fear for a child’s safety; the proposed national legislation does not. Having more of a 1950s mindset than Florida is not a good look. 

Curmie stipulates that the urge to use different pronouns than biology would dictate might be a “phase.” So be it; let it play out. But a truly loving home would never demand that children deny their nature. (The trans and gender fluid people Curmie knows have been, by and large, supported by their families, albeit sometimes after a period of confusion and dismay; that doesn’t mean that all such folks are.) 

Ultimately, though, however qualitatively damaging such incidents are, they’re likely to be rare. So it’s really the “parents’ rights” part that has the greatest chance to cause quantitative problems. As Curmie wrote a few days ago, “’Parental rights trump everything else’ is not merely problematic, but chilling. No, they don’t, or at least they damned well shouldn’t. Education is not, cannot be, about serving up whatever pabulum the most insular and doctrinaire parents want. It’s about students, and what is best for them must be the primary objective.” 

If we look at these bills in purely political terms, devoid of ethical or philosophical elements, the situation becomes clearer. Schoolchildren don’t vote and they don’t make campaign contributions. Parents do. And True Believers of every description are going to be more forthcoming with those political contributions than the average citizen will be. Thus, the wackadoodle base has outsized influence. 

The seemingly innocuous provisions of the Parental Bill of Rights actually provide a de facto open invitation for every homophobe, Christian nationalist, racist, or garden variety anti-intellectual within hailing distance to remove any topics of discussion, course materials, library books, or whatever else that might disrupt their myopic and theocratic view of the world. What purports to be an exercise in ideological balance and freedom of expression, therefore, is precisely the opposite. 

To be fair, this isn’t intrinsic to the bill, although we might reasonably suspect that some of its sponsors and supporters were aware of the dark ironies at play. Much of the blame can be placed squarely at the door of local school officials—boards of education, superintendents, principals—who tend to be (how to say this?) invertebratedly inclined. It’s easier to go along with utterly stupid interventions from even the most irresponsible sources than to say “no, this book stays, not only in the library, but in the curriculum.” Standing up to bullies can get you in trouble in places where being the loudest is all that matters. 

One of the cardinal principles of American government has always been, or at least was until recently, the twin concepts of majority rule and respect for the minority. The latter was often more aspirational than reality-based, but at least the concept was out there. But if you happen to be in a disenfranchised minority (if you’re gay or Muslim or—heaven forfend!—trans, for example), that respect is not always perceivable in certain communities even in tiny manifestations. 

Of course, BIPOC people are often at the center of these contretemps. Curmie isn’t going to deny that in some instances the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction (DEI regulations are often contrary to at least two of their three initials, for example), but the two specific cases Curmie mentioned in his introductory paragraph certainly do little to suggest that racism isn’t a major force in the “parental rights” movement. 

The first story is sort of a two-parter. The exact details are a little unclear, in part because there’s contradictory evidence, in part because not all journalists write well. We know, sort of, that some 73 books were returned to the distributor by the Duval County, Florida, school district in December. 

Quoting the online version of Jacksonville Today: “Among the rejected titles are a book about Martin Luther King Jr. intended for fourth graders; a biography of Rosa Parks for second grade classrooms; a first grade Berenstain Bears book about God; and multiple titles including LGBTQ+ characters and families.” Gee, I wonder what the agenda of those censors was. 

Homophobia and variations on the theme are still considered acceptable in some places, but rejecting books about perhaps the two most famous figures in the Civil Rights movement suggests a racial animus that ought to infuriate even the most conservative members of the citizenry. (Curmie grants that they could just be terribly written books, but if that’s your argument, you damned well better make it, and provide some evidence for the allegation.) 

Duval officials claim they didn’t really reject the Rosa Parks book because, you see, they never actually bought it to begin with. It was apparently shipped as a substitution for some other book in the order; anyone who placed an online order for grocery pickup during the pandemic understands this phenomenon. 

What appears pretty clear is that Duval did reject the book after it was delivered (intentionally purchased or not), and Curmie is tempted to wonder how it looks better for Duval that they’re now claiming they had the opportunity to order the book but declined, sight unseen. 

Books about black baseball players Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente, the two greatest rightfielders of Curmie’s youth, were finally approved, but only after a long delay and a national outcry. Nope. Nothing to see here. Keep the line moving. Move along. 

But let’s return to Rosa Parks for a moment. The Grio reports that the publisher Studies Weekly actually tried pandering to Florida’s absurd governmental interference by producing multiple versions of their Rosa Parks story. One version omits race altogether, saying only that “She was told to move to a different seat.” Apparently this was too much even for Florida, but the mere fact that the publisher thought it was worth a try tells us more than a little. 

Let’s face it, Gentle Reader, we all know about Rosa Parks not because she was somehow accidentally in the wrong seat, but because people of her race weren’t allowed to sit where she was sitting. The publisher bears a good share of the blame here, but their cowardice wouldn’t have been necessary, even to them, if the state weren’t run by people whose paranoia is exceeded only by their authoritarianism. Hell, Curmie would settle for grown-ups. 

The last (please, let it be the last!) story in our trio looks a whole lot like the second, except in happened in a different city and about a different medium. This one comes, again, as the result of a single complaint, from a parent in St. Petersburg about the 1998 Disney film (well, technically an episode of “The Wonderful World of Disney”) ”Ruby Bridges,” which had been a staple in Pinellas County classrooms for years. 

Young Ruby, you may recall, Gentle Reader, was the 6-year-old girl who had the grim but significant responsibility of being the black child who integrated New Orleans schools in 1960 (six years after Brown v. Topeka, in other words). The film presents an accurate portrayal of historical events, centering, of course, on the steadfast courage Bridges showed, even as a child, in the face of racial slurs and threats of violence directed against her. 

Ah, but you see, an accurate depiction of those events might lead to the impression that white people hate black people. Or that’s the argument of a paranoid and/or racist idiot named Emily Conklin, who wouldn’t allow her child to watch the film and subsequently lodged a formal complaint. Needless to say, rather than telling Conklin to shut up and sit down, school officials capitulated, at least to the point of banning a program that was shown on network television over 20 years ago from all classrooms at North Shore Elementary until a committee can decide what to do about the situation. 

Now, of course, the school is saying they didn’t actually ban the film (despite considerable evidence that they did): it was a “miscommunication,” you see. If you take that excuse at face value, Gentle Reader, please accept my apologies, but you’re on the wrong page: this blog is for grown-ups. It’s far more likely that they got busted for being craven imbeciles, and now they’re backfilling as fast as they can. 

It’s worth noting at this juncture that Curmie has more than a little sympathy for parents who don’t want their child exposed to truly controversial materials. Curmie wouldn’t put images of Michelangelo’s David, a book about Rosa Parks, or a film about Ruby Bridges on that list, but whatever… None of this, however, grants a lone parent the right to prevent other people’s kids from having access to those media. 

Considerable damage has already been done, of course: damage to the schools’ reputations, to the possibility that good sense might someday prevail in Florida, to the education system in Florida and beyond. That this morass should be the direct result of political initiatives of the GOP—you know, the unintrusive small government, reduced bureaucracy, individual freedoms folks—is darkly ironic but hardly surprising. Duh: they’re hypocrites. 

Curmie isn’t saying the Democrats aren’t, of course. In the words of the image currently used on the cover photo on the Curmudgeon Central Facebook page, “A plague o’ both your houses.” (Note: you’ll have to click on the image to see the quote; Curmie hopes many of you will recognize John McEnery as Mercutio in the Roman Polanski film version of Romeo and Juliet, so you’d know what Curmie was up to without the quote.) 

There are, of course, a few professions that gather as much commentary from people who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about as teaching does—professional athletics comes to mind, acting is up there—but there are literally none which allow a tiny minority of often stupid and almost always ignorant people to have such an outsized influence on the way a profession operates. The subtitle of a recent article in Salon may be a little harsh, but it’s not altogether inaccurate: “Republicans want the dumbest parent at the school to control the curriculum.” 

But no one in the New York Jets hierarchy, for example—not the coach, not the general manager, not the owner—gives a damn that Joe from Poughkeepsie (or Curmie from Texas) thinks that spending potloads of money and talent to get a 39-year-old prima donna as their quarterback is a bad idea. But virtually every board of education or principal will do backflips at the behest of some moron who thinks Michelangelo was a pornographer. 

Curmie has often argued that the only people who know (or care) less about education than boards of trustees and boards of education are state legislators. It appears that US congresscritters felt overlooked in this analysis and wanted to assert their claim. But (with the exception noted above, which is inexcusable), at least some of them might have thought they were doing the right thing instead of paying obeisance to the prescribed talking points. Doubtful, but possible. 

But there’s a reason that all three of the incidents Curmie mentions here are from the same state. Ron DeSantis has been masterful at maintaining plausible deniability (Curmie has a half-written piece about this phenomenon that he may someday finish), but if he’s going to run for President using his intrusions into a space where he doesn’t belong, he needs to be held accountable. Indeed, he’s the scarier of the two front-runners for the GOP nomination. Donald Trump is just as wrong on the issues, just as authoritarian, and even more narcissistic, but at least he’s stupid.