Curmie Doesn't Like ICE Unless It's Cooling His Drink

Thirty-ish years ago, when Curmie was in grad school, he had a paper accepted for a conference in Greece.  It turned out that one of the professors with a courtesy appointment in Theatre (his “home” was African and African-American Studies) was also going, so we planned to travel together, room together to save money, etc.  But our plans were altered by the fact that Curmie’s colleague was a Nigerian citizen.

How is that relevant?  He had a visa for Greece, after all.  (Curmie, being an American, didn’t need one.)  Well, we were scheduled to change planes in Germany.  That’s it: we’d never even leave the international terminal at the airport.  But Nigerians needed a “transit visa” (I think that was the term) to even set foot in the airport.  When we checked in at the airport in Kansas City, it took a little time to convince the airline staffer that all we were doing was changing planes, but everything seemed to have been worked out, and we boarded the plane for the first leg of our trip. 

Then a couple of armed security types showed up to escort Curmie’s companion from the plane.  That was embarrassing for Curmie, let alone for his travel partner, who actually wouldn’t be allowed to land in Germany.  That meant, among other things, that the first leg of his voyage would take him to a different American city than where Curmie was headed.  He could then make a connection through Amsterdam instead of Munich or Frankfurt (Curmie connected through one going to Greece and the other on the return trip; he can’t remember which was which); he’d get to Greece a couple hours after Curmie, but he could at least get there.  The kicker is that the border between Germany and the Netherlands is open: Curmie’s friend could have entered Germany from Amsterdam without as much as having to show his passport if he’d arrived by car or train or bus.

This is the part that’s relevant to this post.  There’s more to the story about the return trip, but that can wait for a future post.  What matters is the idiocy of the rules.  This time, the problem was with German regulations, but let’s just say that those folks don’t have a monopoly on this sort of stuff.  Yesterday happens to be the 10th anniversary of Curmie’s finally getting home at about 3 a.m. with a British exchange student who had been held up by Homeland Security.  You can read about that incident here.  There was another variation on the theme (that Curmie didn’t write about) a few years later.  And, of course, there were the two times Curmie himself got stopped trying to re-enter his own country.  Yeah, there’s a lot of stupid enforcement of stupid rules by stupid (but ever so self-important) people out there.  The Trump administration does not have a monopoly.

None is this attempt to deny the importance of border safety.  True, with the exception of some restrictions on Asian immigrants, prior to the Immigration Act of 1924 (barely a century ago), you entered the US pretty much by walking or driving across the border or landing at the dock in the harbor.  Trans-oceanic flights hadn’t happened yet, but there were passenger flights between Havana and a couple of destinations in Florida.  Still, it’s easy to understand why countries would want to be able to keep foreign bad actors out and to reserve citizenship rights to those who go through appropriate channels.  There are also legitimate national security issues involved: not enough to justify a lot of what’s happening now, but worthy of attention nonetheless.

Curmie has several foreign-born friends who went through the process, and are now US citizens.  A couple of them still have accents associated with their birthplaces; others could just as easily have been born in Omaha.  (And some of Curmie’s born-in-the-USA friends grew up with (legal) immigrant parents, learned a different language (generally Spanish) before English, and still haven’t completely lost the accent.)

What this post is about, then, is not about the legitimacy of ICE as an agency.  For the sake of argument, let’s take that as granted.  This is about conduct.  If ICE really attempted to go after “the worst of the worst,” as their apologists keep asserting, the level of criticism, from Curmie, at least, would be significantly reduced.  It’s tough to make an argument that we wouldn’t be better off without foreign-born murderers, thieves, rapists, and similar purveyors of perfidy, after all.  But in fact ICE is under strict orders not to pursue those violent criminals.  Stephen Miller, who’s really in charge of this show, wants numbers and obviously doesn’t care about anything else, including whether the people being harassed are American citizens, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to detain a grandmother or a hotel maid than a gangbanger who might shoot back.

ICE agents are universally bullies.  Hence the strutting around as if they are answerable to no one.  Hence the masks, which serve the dual purpose of being intimidating and protecting the identities of the real criminals: the agents themselves.  Bullies are all cowards, after all.  There have, of course, been numerous assaults and robberies committed by felons pretending to be ICE, too: if we’re not allowed to know who’s behind that mask (even a badge number), then anyone wearing a mask and carrying a weapon is protected.

Again, if ICE agents actually needed a warrant or even actual probable cause to detain someone; if they were more interested in serving the community by detaining actual illegal aliens rather than in playing demolition derby, crashing into cars for no other reason than that the driver is brown (no, SCOTUS, that isn’t enough, even if you idiots think it is); if they obeyed the law, themselves…  then, it would be a lot harder to argue against their presence.  But they don’t do any of that, and they’ve got the entire administration—Trump, Vance, Noem, Bondi…—ready to lie to protect their little Sturm Abteilung cosplayers.  Not really SA, though, of course: no one would ever use the term “elite” to describe these bozos.

ICE agents have no right to detain anyone who isn’t a legitimate suspect of an immigration-related offense or who isn’t actively interfering with their attempts to do their jobs.  Spraying tear gas or pepper spray into a non-violent crowd exercising their 1st Amendment rights or directly into the face of a protester isn’t acceptable.  Nor is intentionally crashing into someone’s car and dragging them out. (Oops, that was an American citizen.  They’re generally free to go after a few hours without food, water, toilet access, or legal counsel.  Don’t expect an apology, let alone restitution, of course.)  Photographing public ICE actions from a distance is perfectly legal, but don’t tell that to the goons on the ground or the prevaricating pols.  Oh, and giving a speech behind a podium displaying a quotation from a literal Nazi isn’t cool, either.

A decade ago, a career in ICE might have been an ethical course of action.  Anyone in ICE today is by definition an idiot or an asshole… and probably both. 

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Glories in Its Irrelevance

Warren Zevon: one of several egregious omissions

Readers who know Curmie personally are probably aware that he’s a longtime fan of singer and songwriter Warren Zevon. Curmie even has a forthcoming chapter in a book about him. 

Zevon, who died of mesothelioma nearly two decades ago, was a musician’s musician. A short list of those who played or sang on one of his recordings, or covered one of his songs either in concert or on a recording is pretty much a Who’s Who of late 20th century rock (and rock-adjacent) stars. Limiting the list to just those already in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, either as individual artists or as members of groups, we get: Bill Berry, Jackson Browne, Peter Buck, Lindsey Buckingham, Bob Dylan, Phil Everly, Mick Fleetwood, Glenn Frey, Jerry Garcia, Don Henley, Billy Joel, John McVie, Mike Mills, Graham Nash, Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Joe Walsh, Carl Wilson, and Neil Young… and I’m probably forgetting someone. 

Zevon co-wrote songs with Berry, Browne, Buck, Miles, and with another Hall of Famer, Steve Winwood. Add to that list esteemed musicians like T-Bone Burnett, Jorge Calderón, J.D. Souther, and Waddy Wachtel, gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, celebrated novelists Mitch Albom and Carl Hiassen, and (oh, yeah) Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon. People who have some credentials in the areas of words and/or music seem to think Zevon was pretty good at his job. 

All of this, of course, leads up to saying that the 2023 inductees to the R&R HOF were announced yesterday, and Zevon’s name wasn’t on the list, despite his placing a solid third in the fan voting (seven artists from the 14 nominees were selected), and despite active campaigning for his induction by Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen, and especially Billy Joel and David Letterman, among others. This was the first time Zevon was even nominated, despite having been eligible for many years. 

Part of the reason for that was that Jann Wenner, who headed the Hall for far too long, was (and is) a narcissistic wanker, and he didn’t like Zevon personally. Wenner doesn’t have the direct authoritarian control he once had, but John Sykes, his successor, was a hand-picked minion. In the words of another R&R Hall of Famer, Pete Townsend: meet the new boss; same as the old boss. 

Sykes proclaimed immediately after his selection that his “most important mandate” was to diversify the membership, and that he “recognize[s] that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is no longer about a single genre of music.” This is pretty much all we need to know: he’s an idiot. 

Rock & Roll is a single genre of music, albeit one whose borders are rather ill-defined. But Curmie will state with absolute conviction that Run DMC and Dolly Parton, however deserving of honors they might be, are not R&R musicians. If you want a Popular Music Hall of Fame, call it that. And if we’re talking about Rock & Roll, especially post-Motown, then we’re looking at a largely white male group of artists. That’s just the way it is, the same way the NBA has been dominated by black men. 

Of the new class of inductees, only one—Rage Against the Machine—is unquestionably a rock act. At least two—Missy Elliott and Willie Nelson—are just as clearly not. The others—George Michael, Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow, and the Spinners—are in that space between rock and another genre; Curmie would include the Spinners and that’s it, but at least there’s a case to be made for the others. 

And Sykes gets his wish: only three of the seven inductees from this category are white men. One of them is 90 years old and another at least had the decency to be openly gay. That leaves the interesting case of Rage Against the Machine. They were never terribly popular (they finished 11th in the fan voting) and not really trail-blazers (although they might have tried to cultivate that image). RATM, of course, are also good little socialists, so that sorta makes up for their impudent insistence on being straight white men.  And, of course, they’re sort of metal-ish, allowing the Hall to pretend that there is no impediment to metal groups (you know, actual rock musicians) getting in. 

Of course, try telling that to the fans of Iron Maiden, who finished fourth in the fan voting. Curmie was never much of a headbanger, but Iron Maiden is light years more qualified to be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame than literally any of this year’s actual inductees. 

There’s a lot of speculation as to how Kate Bush got in: Conventional Wisdom is that she rode a wave of new-found popularity from “Running Up That Hill” being featured on “Stranger Things.” So… uh… why’d she finish seventh in the fan voting, behind not one but four acts that didn’t get in? 

The answer, of course, is two-fold. One is that whole “diversity” kick the Hall seems to be on; the fact that she’s even less rock & roll, and no more influential, than Cyndi Lauper (who finished second in the fan voting, first among living artists, by the way) is a mere detail. HoF honchos have wanted Bush in for years, and they finally got their wish. 

The larger issue, of course, is the fact that the “fan ballot” is a cynical marketing ploy, one which Curmie devoutly hopes will work as well for the Rock Hall as the Dylan Mulvaney schtick did for Bud Light. 

We were told that the fans have a significant role in the selection process, and it was pointed out that it is extremely rare that fan favorites didn’t get selected. All five acts on the 2022 fan ballot were inducted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But placing in the top five in fan voting gets you one vote from over 1000 total ballots. It’s a scam. 

We should have known better, especially after the Dave Matthews Band collected over a million votes in winning the fan balloting three years ago. They not only weren’t inducted; they haven’t even been nominated since. Soundgarden has now placed in the top five, thereby being listed on the “fan ballot,” twice; they’re still on the outside looking in. Meanwhile, Missy Elliott was nominated only once, in her first year of eligibility, finished 13th out of 14 nominees in the fan voting, has nothing to do with any reasonable definition of rock and roll, and got in. 

It’s particularly telling that the numbers 3, 4, and 5 vote-getters this time (Zevon, Iron Maiden, and Soundgarden) are unquestionably rockers; none were inducted. The fact that they outpolled Willie Nelson is not an indictment of fan participation; indeed, it’s quite the opposite. The fans, unlike the collection of alleged authorities, actually know what rock and roll is, and voted accordingly. No one would deny that Nelson is the most significant musician to appear on the ballot (one actual voter wrote that “The honor almost diminishes him. It’s like the federal government giving Abraham Lincoln an ‘Employee Of The Month’ award”), but he’s never been a rocker, a fact that never seems to have concerned the official voters, a goodly number of whom appear to have been chosen for their ignorance, their acquiescence to authority, or their lockstep liberalism. 

Let’s use a sports analogy. Athletes like Michael Jordan, Dave DeBuschere, and Bo Jackson all played major league baseball, but whereas their athletic accomplishments have led to Hall of Fame accolades in basketball or football, no one even floats the idea that they deserve entry into the baseball hall of fame…because they didn’t play that sport long enough or well enough to merit that honor. Well, duh. 

Whether the Rock Hall balloting is crooked per se or merely the result of selecting too many idiots as voters, the entire system is a crock. The Hall could reclaim some legitimacy by ensuring that, say, the top two vote-getters among the fans in a given year are guaranteed entry (don’t nominate them if you don’t want them), and that any act that finishes in the top five will at the very least be on the following year’s ballot. They won’t do that, of course, because they are morons, because they don’t actually give a shit about fans, and because they think that being “inclusive” trumps being competent. They are, in other words, a variation on the theme of the Bud Light marketing people, whose cleverness caused an ongoing loss of about 1/6 of their sales revenues. 

If the reaction of the folks on the Warren Zevon (and Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Browne) fan pages on Facebook are an indication, the Hall has miscalculated egregiously. Zevon fans are done. Iron Maiden and Soundgarden fans are done. DMB fans are done. We aren’t heading to Cleveland to spend 40 bucks to gawk at tributes to acts we consider lesser lights. And, barring a miracle, we won’t be suckered into wasting our time on a pointless exercise like having an inconsequential role in the selection process. Fool us once… 

Curmie and Beloved Spouse took a lengthy car trip last weekend, leaving us with plenty of time to talk. We’re both Zevon fans, and we both voted daily (as the rules allowed) throughout the weeks-long voting period. But we also noted the list of other acts who aren’t in the Rock Hall: Emerson, Lake, and Palmer; Steppenwolf; Little Feat; Jethro Tull; Judas Priest; the B-52’s; Thin Lizzy, (and on and on)… The omission of even one of these acts while honoring any of this year’s inductees (with the possible exception of The Spinners) is a travesty. 

Someone on one of the Facebook pages offered the sage advice to regard the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a museum instead of as a honor society. OK, fine. But the Hard Rock Cafe does that with no cover charge, and you can get an overpriced cheeseburger while you’re there. 

Curmie means no disrespect to the artists who did get in this year. They’re all worthy of recognition, just not, in Curmie’s opinion, in this particular venue. (Curmie also notes that “The Wind,” the album that won Zevon a posthumous Grammy as Best Contemporary Folk Album wasn’t actually a contemporary folk album.  The Stupid goes both ways.) 

No, the contempt Curmie feels is all for the entrenched hierarchy at the Hall, from John Sykes on down. Warren Zevon doesn’t need some cheesy imprimatur to be great in the minds of his fans or collaborators. (Nor do Cyndi Lauper, Iron Maiden, or Soundgarden.) And Curmie doesn’t need someone else to tell him what musicians to like, love, or despise. Neither do you, Gentle Reader.

Tommy Tuberville Is Not the Problem

Tommy Tuberville and the only thing
he’s qualified to talk about.

Well, okay, Tommy Tuberville is unquestionably a problem, he’s just not the problem. Tuberville is utterly unqualified to serve in the US Senate. His credentials consist of a BS in Physical Education and a successful career as a football coach for some of the shadiest college programs in the country. 

He’s been credibly charged with fraud (he settled out of court), said some pretty racist things, and declared the three branches of the US government to be the “House, the Senate, and Executive.” In that same interview, he said that his father had fought to World War II “to free Europe of Socialism.” Sigh. 

He set up a foundation ostensibly to support veterans, but spent less than 18% of the money on actual charitable causes. Business Insider, hardly a Leninist publication, reported that he had violated the STOCK Act 132 times in a single year. 

In short, he’s every curmudgeon’s definition by example of a partisan hack legislator: proudly ignorant, gloriously unqualified, probably corrupt, and dumber than the proverbial box of rocks. Assigning these traits to him is independent of whether Curmie agrees with him on political issues, which happens extremely rarely (but it does happen). Tuberville came to the Senate because he had the good fortune to run in a deep red state that happened to have a Democratic senator because even Alabamans couldn’t bring themselves to elect a dirtbag like Roy Moore. 

Tuberville also benefited from the endorsement of Donald Trump in the primary run against Jeff Sessions, who had left the Senate to become Trump’s Attorney General, only to run afoul of his puerile and petulant boss for taking the ethical course of recusing himself from an investigation into allegations of Trump’s collusion with Russia. This is the last time you’re likely to see Curmie link ethics and Jeff Sessions in the same sentence, so enjoy it while you can, Gentle Reader. 

Tommy Tuberville is indeed part of the problem. He lowers the intelligence and integrity levels of virtually every room he enters (even the US Senate chamber!), and he’s got a lot more self-importance than competence. Now, of course, he’s single-handedly blocking the process of confirming some 184 military promotions, including the appointment of Shoshana Chatfield as vice admiral and the nation’s military representative to the NATO military committee because he doesn’t like the Pentagon’s new policy allowing leave and reimbursement of some expenses for servicewomen who need to travel to have access to abortions. 

Tuberville says the standoff is “not about abortion. It’s not about the Dobbs decision. This is about a tyrannical executive branch walking all over the United States Senate — and doing our jobs.” When a member of the general public whose strong feelings about X and Y have been widely trumpeted says that their objection to a proposal isn’t based on X or Y, but rather about Z, the chances are about 60% that they’re lying. When a politician does it, that number goes up to about 98%. Robert Byrd did exist, though, so there’s always that 2%. Curmie sincerely doubts that Tuberville occupies that space. 

But, as noted above, whereas Tuberville is certainly a problem, he isn’t the problem. For one thing, there is the seed, at least, to a legitimate objection in there. Curmie doesn’t necessarily disagree with the DoD’s policy, but one could make a case that unwanted pregnancies are the responsibility of the prospective mother, not of the US government and its tax-payers. Exceptions would have to be made for cases of rape, incest, or significant (in terms of severity and/or likelihood) risk to the mother, but Tuberville appears willing to grant those exemptions, at least in terms of recognizing the legal status quo. Whether allowing exceptions in certain circumstances rather than providing carte blanche availability is the best idea is debatable, but it’s not an outrageous position. 

Tuberville may also be right that the executive branch is over-reaching into the prerogatives of the legislature. Curmie is neither a lawyer nor a political scientist; he’s going to avoid taking sides on this one. Calling the Biden administration “tyrannical,” even if they are straying off their own turf, is a little hyperbolic, but that’s just partisan rhetoric, the sort of pol-speak that virtually everyone on both sides of the aisle will engage in when given half an opportunity to do so. 

As for whether delaying these promotions will affect the armed forces’ readiness, well, Curmie thinks that anyone paying attention would say, “probably a little, but not much.” Tuberville has said all along that he’d block all high-level nominees if the Pentagon didn’t back off from its position on abortions. Is he behaving like a bratty toddler? Yes. Is his position particularly ironic given his much-ballyhooed support for the military? Yes. But should the DoD and the Biden administration have seen this coming and made backup plans accordingly? Also yes. Interim appointments are a thing, after all. 

Moreover, Tuberville didn’t elect himself. His seat is very much the product of a puerile President and a doltish electorate. Georgia barely managed to avoid electing a completely unqualified ex-jock; Alabama did not. It has long been the case that name-recognition will too often prevail over all other factors—that’s how we got Trump vs. Clinton, after all—but we’re getting dangerously close to passing from likelihood into virtual certitude in this area. And that, Gentle Reader, is not a good thing. 

More to the point, though, Tuberville is indeed throwing a tantrum over an issue that is, or at least ought to be, irrelevant to the work at hand. Still, the problem isn’t that an ignorant and narcissistic buffoon like Tommy Tuberville is a US Senator: the people of Alabama deserve what they get, even if the rest of us are innocent of that particular transgression. (We Texans have Ted Cruz; we don’t have a lot of room to talk smack.) 

No, the problem is that the US Senate is constructed in such a way that a single yahoo from the Senate minority can grind everything to a halt because of a decision that was made by someone other than any of the 184 servicemen and -women whose lives, incomes, and careers are most directly affected. What the hell kind of system is this? Tuberville is a moron and probably a grifter, and he won election in a state that ranks 45th in percentage of college graduates and 47th in overall education. 

It’s bad enough when some committee chair or party bigwig decides that partisanship ought to trump (see what Curmie did there?) the national interest. Curmie is looking at you, Mitch McConnell. But Tuberville is a first-term senator from a middling-sized state that would elect a potato if it had an R after its name. His party is in the minority in the Senate. He is the quintessence of back-bencherness.  And yet the rest of us get stuck with this pompous jackass’s ability to thwart the stated needs of the military over a fit of pique irrelevant to the qualifications of the nominees. Jolly. 

But that’s the system. Curmie gets really pissed off at moments like this, when everyone just sort of shrugs and says “that’s the way it is.” No. The system is broken. Fucking fix it. 

Tommy Tuberville is an embarrassment to the Senate, to Alabama, and to the country. But he’s not the problem; he’s just the symptom.

What Female Athletes Wear...

It seems we can’t go very long as a culture without someone complaining about how someone else dresses, how long their hair is, or related foolishness.  Most of Curmie’s commentary (at least here) has related to the almost (but not quite) uniformly sexist school dress codes that have forbidden five-year-olds from wearing sun dresses with spaghetti straps, de facto declared clavicles and shoulders erogenous zones, and are so unevenly applied that allegations of selective enforcement border on the obvious.  (Curmie isn’t going to link to all those stories, Gentle Reader, but you’re free to look them up.)

In a variation on the theme, there’s been a fair amount of publicity in the last year or so surrounding what female athletes wear.  There’s Paralympian Olivia Breen, who was told by an official her shorts were too short (this does not seem to have affected her eligibility, however).  There was the brouhaha over the Norwegian beach handball team’s decision to (OMG!) wear shorts instead of bikini bottoms, in defiance of the profoundly sexist edict of the International Handball Federation.  There was the IOC’s inane decision to prevent black women swimmers from wearing “soul caps,” which, if anything, would have created more drag than traditional headgear.  (Curmie actually wrote about this one, here).  Indeed, the fact that the German women’s gymnastics team made headlines for wearing regulation-compliant unitards rather than “traditional” leotards at the Olympics tells us rather a lot.

So here are two more stories about how female athletes choose to dress and the silly responses of people in power.  Both stories involve change.org petitions, although Curmie learned of one of them through other means.

Team members posed in sports bras
for a photo to accompany the change.org petition

Let’s start with the girls track team at Albany (NY) high school.  This may come as a surprise to you, Gentle Reader, but sometimes it gets hot in May.  Not only that, but doing strenuous exercise in that heat makes you feel even hotter.  Thus, some of the girls on the team, noting that the boys team was allowed to practice shirtless, sought to practice in sports bras.  Seems reasonable, yes?  No, of course not, according to school officials.

According to the Albany Times-Union, on May 12, Athletic Director Ashley Chapple asked the girls thus attired to leave practice.  The girls complied, but Jordan Johnson, a sophomore sprinter on the team, posted a petition on change.org to rally support for their cause.  At the Times-Union’s press time on the 17th, the petition had gathered over 2500 online signatures; as Curmie writes this on the 22nd, the petition has over 10,000 signatories (including Curmie’s).  You should feel free to increase that number, of course.

The girls—13 members of a 15-member team, apparently—were subsequently banned from attending a lacrosse game later that day, and suspended the following day for “inappropriate and disrespectful behavior directed toward an administrator,” which, of course was “in no way related to wardrobe.”  Oh, no, of course not.  You may believe this if you choose, Gentle Reader, but Curmie will indeed lower his opinion of your sagacity. 

The Hegemonic Legion of Doom School officials held a meeting on Monday with the girls—parents were forbidden from attending, for reasons you’re no doubt sufficiently worldly to guess, Gentle Reader—and reiterated their position before re-instating 12 team members (what happened to the 13th is unclear).  Of course, the pseudo-educators in charge can’t even keep their story straight.  According to the girls, they were told by Principal Jodi Commerford that they were suspended for not wearing something over their sports bras because there were male coaches present.  What an insult to those coaches that they are presumed not be able to concentrate on their duties because some high school girls were wearing only a little more above the waist than those gents would see at any beach or swimming pool!  (OMG!  Midriffs!)

But if Superintendent Kaweeda G. Adams is to be believed, that’s not true.  So the problem was attending the lacrosse game (why shouldn’t they?)… or maybe something they said at the game?  School authorities say the girls were swearing; they say they weren’t.  The girls wouldn’t be the first to deny doing something they actually did; school officials wouldn’t be the first to lie about students in an attempt to extricate themselves from an embarrassing situation of their own making.  But since the power structure at the school has produced no legitimate rationale for denying the girls access to the lacrosse game to begin with (they aren’t charged with insubordination at their practice, only at the lacrosse game), there are only two possibilities: school officials are lying about the swearing, or they richly deserved it (or both, of course).

The real reason for the suspensions, of course, was that the girls had the audacity to go public with a change.org petition, thereby revealing the school administrators as authoritarian buffoons.

The suspension notices, by the way, state that each girl “poses a continuing danger to persons or property or an ongoing threat of disruption to the academic and athletic process.”  No, Ms. Adams, you’re going to have to look in the mirror to see someone who does that.

Latifa McBryde in action.

The other story pertains to Latifah McBryde.  She’s a Muslim wrestler who, according to the change.org petition, earned a place on the US team to compete at the Pan-Am Games in Mexico in July.  The problem is that for religious reasons, she “dresses in modest clothes and a hijab.”  Ah, but the stupid rules require a singlet.

Here’s the description of “A Wrestling Fan,” who started the change.org petition:

What do people in the wrestling room wear most often to practice? It’s not a singlet. What are high school wrestlers now allowed to wear in competition? Hint - also not a singlet. What does the Iranian Muslim women’s wrestling team wear? … Not a singlet! Latifah wears the same thing that the Iranian women’s wrestling team wears - knee-length pants strongly secured to spandex leggings, a long sleeve shirt also strongly secured at the waist and wrists, and a tightly secured headscarf sewed directly onto a rashguard.

Once again, as in the case of the “soul cap,” wearing what McBryde wants to wear is, if anything, a competitive disadvantage, so there ought to be no problem.  This, however, would be based on the apparently hasty assumption that the hierarchy of United World Wrestling can out-think a dead flounder.  USA Wrestling doesn’t seem to be much help, either.

If the NCAA—not known for either imparting justice or exhibiting intelligence—can ensure that a basketball team from Brigham Young University doesn’t have to compete on a Sunday in the NCAA tournament, then UWW and USAW can remove their phalangeal digits from their rectal cavities and find a way to allow McBryde to compete without violating her religious standards. 

In these two incidents, we see all-too-familiar patterns: blaming girls for being distracting (and concomitantly blaming boys/men for being so easily distracted), school officials believing their actions to be above reproach and their fecal matter odor-free, intransigent requirements imposed by sports authorities based on “the way it’s always been” without recognizing even the possibility of legitimate exceptions to the rule.

Curmie’s natural impulse is to look for guidance from Confucius, who has been referenced with approbation numerous times in this blog.  Alas, this time, Curmie is drawn instead to the wise words of a beloved former student: “People are stupid, y’all.”

Boys' Bedrooms Are Not School Property

This is either a still from Woody Allen’s “Love and Death”
or a training course for school administrators.
Curmie isn't sure which.

Curmie returns to a topic that was once—and may yet be again—one of the centerpieces of this blog: utterly insane decisions by people running schools. Curmie opens by adapting Mark Twain’s famous line about Congresscritters to the current situation: “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a school principal. But I repeat myself.” Alas, there are more than one of these cases, in different locales. 

The earliest incident Curmie can find occurred in June at Seneca Elementary School in Baltimore County, MD. Well, not exactly at that school, and that’s rather the point. Courtney Lancaster’s son Jackson, you see, was attending school virtually because of the pandemic. 

 

So he was set up in his bedroom with his webcam on for a GoogleMeet class, and a couple of teachers and the officious parent of another student took a screenshot which showed “guns” mounted on the wall behind the 11-year-old 5th grader. They contacted the school safety officer, who brought in the principal, who called the police. 

Be it noted: no one suggested the boy was threatening anyone, or even that he was paying the slightest bit of attention to the alleged “weapons.” And this is the boy’s bedroom we’re talking about; he wasn’t on anything approaching school property, much as a lot of school systems might think they are the masters of the realm. 

Anyway, Officer Thomas shows up on the doorstep and asks to search boy’s bedroom. Ms. Lancaster, who knows there’s nothing to hide, allows the search despite the lack of a warrant. It takes the cop virtually no time to ascertain that the alleged arsenal consists of a couple BB guns, an airsoft gun, and some toys. Bodycam footage shows his reaction: “Ma’am, I definitely apologize for bothering you. I had more than you when I was a kid.” Lancaster says the officers “commended [Jackson] also on his respect and understanding of the BB guns.” 

 

Not surprisingly, however, Lancaster, a Navy veteran who might reasonably be expected to demand and indeed implement gun safety on her premises, wanted to know why the principal didn’t call her instead of 911. Side note: Ms. Lancaster was told it was the safety officer who called the police, and school documents show that, as well. On the audio recording of the 911 call, however, the caller identifies himself as “Jason Feiler… the principal at Seneca Elementary School.” In other words, the school is already lying. 

 

The school, predictably, tried avoidance, and when that didn’t work, opted for moronic pomposity. “The safety of students and staff is our chief concern, whether we are meeting in classrooms or via continuity of learning.” And apparently school officials are asserting that having a BB gun hung on the wall of a 5th grade boy’s room is the equivalent of bringing a weapon to school. Um… no, it isn’t. 

 

Lancaster reasonably wonders “So, what are the parameters? Where are the lines drawn? If my son is sitting at the kitchen island next to a butcher block, does that constitute a weapon? It's not allowed at school, right? So, would my home then be searched because he’s sitting next to a butcher block? I feel like parents need to be made aware of what the implications are, what the expectations are.” Curmie would amend this to read “Parents need to be reassured that blithering buffoons like the not-so-brainy brain trust at Seneca Elementary School will never again be allowed within the same zip code as an educational establishment.” 

 

There’s a lawsuit pending, and the school is being intransigent and mendacious. No news there. But, as they say in the late-night infomercials, that’s not all. Not to be outdone in hubristic cretiny, the Jefferson Parish (LA) School system has not one, but two, such cases. Indeed, the reason there’s still discussion going on (and why Curmie can talk about it in something resembling the present tense) is that the school board refused, only a couple of weeks ago, to remove from school records the charges against 9-year-old Ka’Mauri Harrison. 

 

So we’ll start with the Harrison case. Again, this was a BB gun in a private residence, neither a weapon per se nor on anything any rational person would believe is school property. Young Ka’Mauri explains what happened: “My brother walked in the room and tripped over the BB gun and I put it on the side of me.” Those of us with IQs above room temperature (Celsius) understand that the fact that a little of the butt of a BB gun showing up in a virtual environment represents literally no threat to anyone. But we don’t work for Jefferson Parish schools, where common sense is apparently outlawed. 

 

Ka’Mauri was immediately suspended and threatened with expulsion because he… get this… “possesses weapons prohibited under federal law.” Again, the legislation the district tries desperately to invoke to cover for their absurd over-reaction bans certain kinds of weapons on school property. The fact that a BB gun does look a little like an actual gun gun apparently qualifies it as a “facsimile,” so it would in fact be outlawed on school grounds. A little boy’s bedroom is not a schoolroom, even if it has been called into duty to function as such during a health and safety emergency. Sometimes ontology trumps phenomenology. This is one of those times. Stated otherwise, as has appeared on Twitter (Curmie can’t seem to find who said it first), “if this child brought a gun to school, then by the same logic, his teacher is hanging out in students’ bedrooms.”

 

The Harrison family’s admirable response to these shenanigans is two-fold: to seek to restore Ka’Mauri’s good name by appealing the decision, suing, and, importantly, lobbying for a state law to protect the rights of students in cases such as this. The Ka’Mauri Harrison Act was passed unanimously by both houses of the Louisiana legislature and signed into law. Gentle Reader, you would not have found your way to this page without the ability to figure this out for yourself, but in the interest of thoroughness, allow Curmie to point out that any legislation that passes unanimously is pretty uncontroversial—there’s always a Rand Paul or Sheila Jackson Lee ready to object on faux principle otherwise. 

 

Add to that the support of both the NRA and the ACLU, and it’s pretty clear that the only people who thought the bill was a bad idea were the Jefferson Parish education brass. To top things off, after the school board petulantly upheld Ka’Mauri’s suspension (after it had already been served, of course), state Solicitor General Elizabeth Murrill called the decision “a travesty.” “They ignored their own policy. They just don't seem to learn.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement, that. 

Finally, also in Jefferson Parish but in a different school, there’s the case of 11-year-old Tomie Brown, also suspended, also threatened with expulsion, also charged with violating federal weapons regulations, also guilty of nothing more than having a BB gun in his own bedroom. 

 

Oh, and by the way: the teacher admits he never saw the alleged weapon. So we have are forced to rely on the testimony of a bunch of other 9-year-olds, who exclaimed “he’s got a gun!” Curmie wonders how that… erm… evidence would be treated in a real trial, not to be confused with the kangaroo court that passes for a review process in Jefferson Parish. Tomie’s father, Tim, notes that “I … never received any type of documents or rules that they considered my home their property while he was doing a virtual class.” Well, of course not: they consider themselves immune from the kind of common sense dictates required of mere mortals. Mr. Brown also says “If my son had done something wrong, the school system would’ve been the second in line to punish him.” Curmie believes him. 

 

None of this is surprising, but it is shocking. For years, school systems have been falsely claiming authority over any action any of their students take at any time in any place. Curmie doubts that a couple of lawsuits will reverse the trend, but it’s a place to start.  Curmie believes in what his leftie friends refer to as “common sense gun laws”: registration, background checks, making military grade weapons unavailable to the general public, stuff like that.  But he would prefer not to be associated with the Dithering Ideologues (good band name, no?).

There’s requiring training for a potentially lethal weapon and there’s prohibiting boys from having BB guns.  There’s protecting a school’s students and teachers, and there’s claiming dominion over students’ bedrooms for literally no increase in safety for anyone.  If you can’t understand those distinctions, Curmie would rather you take your hand-wringing elsewhere.

 

Curmie closes with a bit of nostalgia. Some 45 years ago, Curmie had a small part in a semi-pro theatre production of Robert E. Sherwood’s play Idiot’s Delight. As it happens, our show t-shirts arrived on a day off from both rehearsal and performance, and coincidentally also when the then-current Woody Allen film “Love and Death” was playing at the local cinema... so, many of the company went to see the movie.  It features a brief scene of a “village idiots convention.” About a dozen of us, wearing our show shirts which featured the emblem displayed behind the “bar” in our production and the single word “Idiot’s,” rose as one to applaud. Now, why would all this remind Curmie of that memory from oh so long ago? Hmmm….

Dress Codes and Potential Curmie Nominees

Curmie is WAAAAAAYYY behind on his writing, but we’re going to try to play catch-up in the waning days of 2015 so the most deserving of Curmie contenders get their fair shot at that coveted title.

Over the summer, Curmie wrote about stupid dress codes associated with high school proms, and promised a second post about stupid dress codes not associated with prom. Here it is, with six examples that happened to have crossed Curmie’s vision over the past few months. The frightening thing is that there is little doubt that we’re only scratching the surface of this inanity; there are no doubt dozens if not hundreds of idiot administrators enforcing moronic dress codes all over the country. These are just the ones that got written up in a place Curmie happened to see them.

We’re going to take these a little out of chronological order in order to start with the one story that isn’t about double standards for girls and boys, and to conclude with Curmie’s choice for the Ontologically Stupidest Dress Code in the History of Ontologically Stupid Dress Codes. It will almost surely get a Curmie nomination; one or two of the others might, too, and you, Gentle Reader, will get to vote for your… erm… favorite.

Gay O.K. is not O.K.

We start, then, at Faubion Middle School in McKinney, TX, where two 7th-grade students were sent home and a dozen or so others were forced to change clothes or cover up t-shirts that read “Gay O.K.” The students say they were showing support for a classmate who had come out as gay and was being bullied. The school, of course, did nothing about the bullying allegations because, well, Texas.

The students say they were confronted by administrators as soon as they arrived at school, but according to Sammy Heiman, who designed the shirts, “we were doing perfectly fine until lunch. And then … [the administration] called us all out, all the people wearing them, called us out of the cafeteria. And people started getting rowdy because they knew what was going on. They were making us take off the shirts.”

I need hardly mention, Gentle Reader, that there was nothing in the school’s dress code that prohibited a political statement of this kind: the district instead relied on a clause reading “any disruptive or distractive mode of clothing or appearance that adversely impacts the educational process is not permitted.” This is, of course, as Curmie has pointed out before (in a very similar case in Ohio three years ago), administrative code for “there’s nothing illegal, unethical, or immoral about what you’re doing, but we don’t like it and we’re going to forbid it because we can.”

By the way, the dress code seems to have been changed over the summer to a more draconian version that outlaws basically everything, including “items that display… slogans, or language that is provocative.” (“Provocative” is another useful word to hide behind for censorious asshats who seek to deny 1st amendment rights.) Nothing like a little ex post facto cover-up to brighten all our days, after all.

Of course, we were subjected to the utterly disingenuous response of the school’s designated talking head, one Cody Cunningham, who self-righteously proclaimed that the school’s “primary obligation is to ensure a safe and productive learning environment.” OK. How is safety an issue here, except by means of a heckler’s veto, and if you were all that interested in productivity and lack of distraction, maybe you shouldn’t have initiated the confrontation? And forgive Curmie the suspicion that if the t-shirts had called President Obama a tyrant, suddenly your hypocritical administration would have been all about free speech.

Anyway, we move on to four—count ‘em, four—instances in which high school girls were subjected to idiotic rules with even more idiotic enforcement for dressing, well, completely appropriately according to any rational standards.

This dress is too short?

We start, then, in Dayton, Idaho, where senior Evette Raye was suspended with only a half hour left in her high school career for wearing a dress that violated West Side High’s dress code. If this incident falls a little short of a Curmie nomination, it will be because the dress really was shorter than the allowable limit. The rule is certainly stupid and probably sexist, but it is at least the rule. And the insubordination charge may actually be legitimate in that manifest defiance of stupid rules administered by puritanical jackasses is still insubordinate.

If the kerfuffle garners a Curmie nod, it will be because of the ham-handed treatment of Ms. Reay by a boatload of school officials. A teacher, Legrand Leavitt, chose the last 30 minutes of a student’s high school experience to be a dick strut his authority enforce the dress code; the school violated their own policy in suspending Ms. Reay: their handbook reads “If a student is inappropriately dressed, he/she will be required to call home to arrange for appropriate clothing, or the school will provide a t-shirt, sweatshirt or sweatpants to be worn that day.” The school didn’t offer to make any such accommodations, nor would they allow Reay’s mother to bring something else for her to wear. (By the time she could have gotten there, the school day—and year—would have been over, and then petty little morons like Leavitt and Principal Tyler Telford wouldn’t have had the chance to feel self-important.)

Shoulders!  Think of the children!

And so we move on to Fort Myers, Florida, where junior Cameron Boland had the audacity to wear a spaghetti-strap sundress to deliver a victory speech after being elected historian for her county’s National Honor Society chapters. Yes, really. A sundress. In Florida. In May. OMG, shoulders! Blindfold the young ‘uns: we can’t have them subjected to this lasciviousness!

As usual, the dress code is a grammatical and syntactical nightmare as well as a sexist manifesto, essentially blaming girls for boys’ distractedness. (Curmie does like the injunction against “tub tops,” though.) To be fair, spaghetti straps are indeed forbidden. In school. This is an extracurricular activity, and the event was held at another school. It’s reasonable to suggest (though obviously not certain) that Ms. Boland really didn’t know she was breaking any rules. Technically, of course, she was, and she should have known that if she didn’t. But it is beyond question that she didn’t violate any rational standards of decency.

Once again, the manner of enforcement of what is already a stupid rule is the real problem. First off, the voters in the election in question were presumably students, so the district’s over-riding of the results translates into a usurpation of students’ (honor students’), authority. And notice that the speech was allowed to happen. You can’t stand by and watch what Pompous Twatwaffle of the Year School Board Vice Chairman Steven Teuber, in a predictably ungrammatical and boorish screed in the local newspaper (so much for FERPA, right?) calls “a flagrant violation” of the rules, and then decide 45 minutes later that the results of a free and fair election must be overturned. Cameron Boland may or may not be a trouble-maker and a provocateur. But two things are eminently clear: The NHS advisors who made the initial call are buffoons or hypocrites or both. And Steven Teuber is an ass, and apparently a creepy one, at that. Sending a Facebook friend request to a 17-year-old girl you’ve never met? Ewwwww.

Apparently cooler heads have prevailed, and Ms. Boland has been duly installed as co-historian of the county’s NHS chapters. The “co-“ part is a compromise position enacted by Superintendent Nancy Graham, who, unlike Mr. Teuber, seems to have an intellect superior to that of a pile of rotting leaves.

OMG, this girl has a collarbone.

Next up in our tour around the country: Woodford County High School in Kentucky. Because if you thought shoulders were over-stimulating, you should look at (Curmie blushes to even type the word)… collarbones. Once again, there is technically a violation at play here: yes, the dress code says that necklines can’t extend below the collarbone. Well, actually, it was written by the usual pack of illiterate butt-scratchers, so what it really says is that the shirt can’t do so—that really would cause some distraction! But we know what the censorious asshats meant. They meant that Stephanie Hughes was in violation for the outfit you see here. Curmie, who is not a collarbone fetishist, honestly couldn’t figure out what the problem was until he read the article.

The dress code had been the subject of no little debate before this year, largely because of a Youtube video created by a student named Maggie Sunseri. In it, girls describe how virtually all of them have been found in violation of the dress code at one time or another. They complain that even if the majority of teachers have no problem with a student’s apparel, “one person can call it inappropriate and make us miss class.” Curmie didn’t watch the whole thing, but was caught by this thoughtful response, obviously to a question about why there is a dress code at all: “…to give everyone a good learning environment, but honestly, it distracts from it. If you’re worried about, hey, am I going to get caught for dress code today because I couldn’t find a shirt that I could wear that was in dress code, “am I going to get caught for dress code today,” not “what’s the lesson on today.” Curmie suspects that the girls in question probably could indeed have found such a shirt… but also notes that the dress code applies almost exclusively to girls, and thereby privileges the “good learning environment” for boys—wouldn’t want them to be led astray by those collarbones, after all--at the expense of fostering such an environment for girls. “It sends a message to boys that’s it’s all girls’ fault,” says another girl. Precisely.

And, of course, we also get the platitudes from the principal about getting students “college and career ready” and similar bovine feces. As one of the girls points out, “college doesn’t have a dress code, so it’s not really preparing us for college.” Curmie can attest to the validity of that point. But the other thing is… sometimes someone wears something inappropriate once or twice, and then they don’t anymore. These things tend to sort themselves out if you let them.

The good news is that Ms. Hughes and her mom, Stacie Dunn, seem little interested in suffering fools, so when Stephanie was busted for clavicular revelation, not only was a social media campaign born; it went viral... and by “viral” I mean 46,000+ shares. Curmie heard about it at the time, for example, even if he’s only writing about it now. Ultimately, the mobilization of dozens of students and parents (and a healthy dollop of international embarrassment) proved sufficient: the new standard (to be implemented in January, apparently) is still written by someone who shouldn’t have been let out of 6th grade, let alone a college-level Freshman Comp course. But it says that necklines can now extend 2 ¼” below the base of the collarbone—a not unreasonable criterion. If only the powers that be had listened years ago.

Not really a violation at all, but we’ll pretend it is.

Finally… well, finally before the grand finale… there’s this from Huntsville, Alabama’s Grissom High School, where Josefina Thompson was punished for wearing leggings, despite the fact that her outfit seemed to be acceptable under a provision that “Students may wear yoga pants, tights, leggings, or jeggings as long as they are used as an undergarment covered by shorts, skirts, or dresses that are at least no higher than three inches above the bend of the back of the knee.” Is the problem that she was wearing a sweatshirt instead of a dress over the leggings? Curmie doubts it.

Rather, it’s all about that “distracting” thing. Ms. Thompson, by the way, was stopped not by a teacher or administrator, but by a security officer, whose business ought, in any sane universe, to be, well, security, and not to interpret the dress code. This isn’t Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle, where a comely young woman’s backside is determined by the drunken but just (or just but drunken, depending on your point of view) judge Azdak to be a deadly weapon. This is an average high school girl whose choice of apparel would be acceptable to any rational being even if the sweatshirt was too short, which it doesn’t appear to be.

Like Stephanie Hughes, Ms. Thompson has a mom who cuts to the central argument in a hurry. In a Facebook post, shared over 2000 times (!), Deanna Wolf writes:

Huntsville City Schools, I would like to ask a question. What are you teaching our children about their bodies and their minds? My daughter was not allowed to go to class, and was held in ILC for an entire class period because she wore this outfit to school. She would have been held even longer had someone not been able to bring her more “appropriate” clothing. I would like someone to please explain to me how this is justified. Why single a student out, put her in a locked room and inhibit her learning because of one faculty member’s INTERPRETATION of her clothing? It boils down to the claim that girls’ “revealing” clothing is a distraction to male students. That the mere idea of a girl even HAVING a derriere (or, heaven forbid, shoulders) is so scandalous that we must stop everything and hide her away. I am sick to death of the public shaming of the female form. You are telling girls that their bodies are to be hidden, and that boys cannot control their minds if they see the basic female figure. It’s disgusting and it belittles both sexes. Not to mention that this whole situation clearly states that a girl’s education has less importance than a boy’s education, and that her right to said education is secondary to providing a distraction free learning environment for the opposite sex. Your misguided attempt at disciplining my child has only succeeded in giving an example of the skewed gender bias perpetuated by society. The lesson she learned today was NOT that her clothes were inappropriate, but rather that the behavior of the school was inappropriate. It’s asinine things like this which push more and more parents to homeschool their children.

Yes. What she said.

Curmie is also, by the way, particularly impressed (notice he didn’t say “positively”) with Keith Ward, communications director for the system, who tried valiantly to convince us that “the dress code applies to everyone.” This is an all too common avoidance of responsibility, akin to “no, it isn’t sexist to tax tampons; men who buy them have to pay the tax, too.” Ward also professed ignorance as to whether students are allowed to, say, wear cheerleading uniforms to class. Way to know your job, there, Keith. For the record, cheerleaders in Curmie’s high school days were required to wear their uniforms to class on game days, skirts in general were shorter then, and we all managed to survive and even get diplomas. Either the adolescent libido or the inanity of school administrators has increased exponentially in the intervening years. Curmie’s money is on the latter.

And so we move on to the incident Curmie regards as the most ridiculous of them all… Drumroll. A couple hours down the road from Curmie is the Cypress-Fairbanks School District in greater Houston. Cy-Fair, as it is commonly known, is a well-respected school system; at least three of Curmie’s former students teach there (or did). But it is also home to a certain Curmie contender.

The perp and the offending dress.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

Here’s the story. Parent Jef Rouner wondered why his daughter was wearing a shirt over the sundress she wore to school. Was she cold? “No… I had to change because spaghetti straps are against the rules.” Rouner’s daughter has also had to change into jeans despite the fact that her dress went all the way to the floor. Did Curmie mention that she’s five, and we’re talking about kindergarten, here?

In Rouner’s words:

Five. You get me? She's five. Cut her hair and put her next to a boy with no shirt on and she is fundamentally identical. I guess you could argue that a boy would not be allowed to wear a shirt with spaghetti straps either, but the day they sell anything like that in the boys section of a Target I will happily withdraw my objections.

Yes, there is a specific injunction against spaghetti straps (Rouner rightly notes that there is nary a male-specific rule in the list, but plenty of female-specific ones), but surely any rational person would link that prohibition to the writers’ palpable terror of breasts and cleavage, right? Well, apparently not. Because… she’s five, remember?

Rouner again:

Make no mistake; every school dress code that is not a set uniform is about policing girls and girls alone. The only time I've ever seen it go the other way around was when I was fighting the battle for my long hair throughout middle and high school. That was last century, but I had a friend go through the same thing with Needville ISD less than a decade ago with her son. And why? Because long hair belongs on girls. There's literally no other possible reason to force a boy to cut his hair if he doesn't want to.

Let’s hear it for parents worthy of the name. But stupid, senseless, draconian, body-shaming, sexist, and otherwise despicable dress codes can teach only two things, both of them bad: patriarchic bullshit or contempt for legitimate laws. The perpetrators are probably so insensate that they fail to realize the harm they cause. But we must not look away. We must not be silent. We must not fail.