What, Indeed, Is in a Name?

A couple of days ago, one of Curmie’s friends posted link to a Facebook page, which in turn showed a guest essay by Bud (né Howard) Herron. Here’s the link to the original source, The Tribune in Seymour, IN, so you don’t have to mess with Facebook if you don’t want to. 

Herron is reacting to a new law in Indiana (there’s one in DeSantistan Florida, too, of course, and probably elsewhere) that prohibits teachers from addressing students by their chosen names, even, apparently, by a shortened version of their “real” first name, without a signed permission slip from their parents. 

This is all in the name of “parental rights,” a charming euphemism for removing rights from students and teachers and transferring that power to the state. Curmie is so old that he remembers when conservatives were in opposed to governmental interference in personal matters. This, of course, was when they didn’t control the statehouse, and therefore wailed incessantly about stuff like mandatory inoculations against measles or mentioning the fact that slavery was once a thing in a large swath this country. 

The laws in question, of course, are a paean to cis-gendering at the expense of individual liberty. What passes for the argument suggests that insisting on parental control over what a child can be called will somehow preserve that kid’s retention in the ranks of the cis-gendered. It won’t, of course; it will only add another layer of stress to a young citizen trying to figure things out. 

And Ron (who, being an adult, can be called “Ron” without a note from his Mom) DeSantis’s claim that this effort will eliminate the need for pronouns is nothing short of daft. A few months ago, Curmie compared the two frontrunners (or at least they were then) for the Republican nomination thus: “Donald Trump is just as wrong [as DeSantis] on the issues, just as authoritarian, and even more narcissistic, but at least he’s stupid.” Curmie hereby apologizes to Mr. Trump, who does not, in fact, have a monopoly on stupidity. 

For the moment, let’s leave aside issues that involve physical actions: hormonal injections, surgery, etc. These areas are more contentious, and an argument that a 10-year-old isn’t mature enough to make that kind of decision, even with parental consent, carries a good deal of validity. Calling someone who used to be Bobby “Bobbi,” though, is a lot less permanent. 

That said, if young Dana (to pick one of more than a few names that could refer to a boy or a girl) wants to be Daniel or Danielle, and the parents object… THEY’RE THE PROBLEM. Curmie shudders to contemplate the fate of children who cannot trust their parents to support them as they work through questions of identity. And now, the state wants to take away their sanctuary: adults who see them as they believe themselves to be instead of what the parents want them to be. 

Curmie happens to have a nephew who used to be his niece. He remembers going to dinner with the family, and cringing as this young man, then in his mid-20s, was consistently dead-named not only by idiot cousins who thought this was all a joke, but by his own father. If, while he was still in high school, he’d sought consent to go by his chosen name, a standard non-gender-specific nickname for his middle name, it probably would have been denied. To what end? 

This is the principal reason to oppose legislation like this: it’s cruel, and it denies reality. There are other arguments against this inanity, of course. 

Even the authoritarian pols who support this restriction on personal liberty are smart enough to avoid mentioning the real reason for their action. They therefore insist on consent for any name other than the full first name. So young James needs parental approval to be called Jimmy, and then needs another form to shorten that to Jim, a variation on a theme that is quite common, especially among boys, generally around the tween years. It’s unclear whether teachers could still call him Jimmy after the change, so a simple slip-up could conceivably be a fire-able offense (or worse). 

There are, of course, a host of names that do not automatically signal a specific gender. Curmie mentioned Dana, above. Let’s see… Curmie has also known both male and female versions of folks named Ashley (Curmie once had two Ashleys with the same surname in the same class: one male, one female), Austin, Avery, Beau, Beverly, Carson, Chandler, Christian, Cleo, Cory, Dominique, Jan, Jody, Kelly, Kim, Lauren, Lee, Lynn, Ryan, Stacy, Taylor, Tyler, Whitney. There are probably others that have slipped Curmie’s mind. Notice, Gentle Reader, that many of these names conjure up a specific gender identity… which might very well be incorrect in a specific instance. 

These are just the ones that are spelled the same and pronounced the same: alternatives would be things like Angel in English or Spanish pronunciations, or Jordan/Jordyn. Then there are the standard diminutive nicknames: Alex, Andy, Chris, Mel, Mickey, Pat, Sam, Terry… that list goes on forever. Finally, there are the names that may seem to be a nickname but aren’t: Curmie has known a Betsy (not Elizabeth) and a Billy (not William, not even Bill), for example. 

What this boils down to is that the rule is fundamentally unenforceable, meaning that it will inevitably be applied capriciously to punish a teacher who calls Donald “Don,” not really for that infraction, but for suggesting that no, maybe segregation wasn’t all that great an idea. Meanwhile, a more obeisant teacher in the next class continues to use a different Don’s deadname without repercussions. 

And there are a lot of people who go by their middle names, or initials, or like Mr. Herron, by Bud or Butch or Bubba, to choose three examples from the same part of the alphabet. 

The imposition of stupid rules won’t work, not merely because the requirements are so unwieldy, but because even self-righteous politicians can’t come up with a way to stifle the speech of children. Stephen wants to be called Stephanie; the teacher can’t do that without a permission slip, but classmates Johnny, Suzy, and all the rest are free to do so, and quite likely will. (This also, of course, increases the likelihood that a teacher might call a child the name they just heard another student use.) 

There’s also the potential for embarrassment. Kids giggle and make fun. So woe betide Quint (he’s actually Hollingsworth V) or Bud, whose real name is Cantwell or something. The teacher can’t call him Bud because the parents forgot to sign the form? Really? Back when Curmie was teaching, he’d call role on the first day by reading the last name aloud and asking the student what they wanted to be called. Then he’d write it down so he’d get it right in the future. Simple, yes? Of course, Curmie was dealing with a slightly older clientele, but extending this rather rudimentary level of respect to an adolescent seems pretty damned reasonable. 

Pronunciation can also be an issue. Curmie once had a young man named Sumarliði in his class. Care to take a stab at the correct pronunciation of that one, Gentle Reader? The student in question was kind enough to supply a more pronounceable (to Americans) name we could call him instead. But if he were a current high school exchange student in Indiana or Florida, he couldn’t do that without parental permission, leading to embarrassment for all concerned as every American teacher butchered his name. 

At one level, the unenforceability of this legislation matters. At another, it doesn’t. The driving force of this movement is—hat-tip to Stevie (or should I say “Stephanie”?) Nicks—hauntingly familiar. The GOP, or at least its political leadership, is all about the rights of the “unborn,” coining phrases about “fetal heartbeat” when there’s no heart to beat and the transition from embryo to fetus hasn’t happened yet. 

But once those kids are born, they belong to the state: they’ll will be sheltered from realities like the fact that racial prejudice currently exists, or even that it ever did. They’ll miss out on experiencing art, literature, or theatre if one loudmouthed parent in the school district doesn’t like exposing their child to ideas that might challenge their dogma, so no student can have that access. And the ability to define yourself, to forge your own path, the erstwhile central tenets of the American Dream: forget it. 

Curmie is no fan of the Democratic Party or its leadership, but when the alternative is this…

Athletes Are Both the Most Pampered and Most Abused Students; Both Situations Are Getting Worse

The first part of the title above ought to be self-evident. Far too many universities operate as sports franchises with a few academic courses offered on the side. This, despite the fact that most athletic departments lose money despite TV revenue, ticket sales, etc. 

Even average (by intercollegiate standards) athletes are likely to get a full ride: tuition and fees, room and board.  And that’s not counting NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals which often run well over $100,000 a year for even average players in a major sport at a Division I school. High-end programs in football and basketball get bowl games or in-season (or pre-season) trips to tournaments in exotic locales. The best student physicist at the school might get travel money to a conference in Pittsburgh or something like that, but there’s not going to be a lot of hanging out on the beach on someone else’s dime, much less a tuition waiver and a six-figure income. 

NIL also means that at least some elite athletes in football and basketball are shopping their services to the highest bidder. Every time a star player enters the transfer portal and moves to a different university, the accusations pour forth from the new school’s competitors that they’re “buying players.” Some of those allegations are simply sour grapes; many (most?) aren’t. Of course, the practice has existed under the table for decades, but NIL has certainly exacerbated the problem. 

Then, there are the tutors, the luxurious housing, and other forms of special treatment. A goodly number of athletes, of course, wouldn’t be accepted at Duke or Stanford, or even at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople (extra credit if you get that reference, Gentle Reader), if they didn’t have a jump-shot or some equivalent skill in another sport. 

Bolenciecwcz, the dim-witted football star of James Thurber’s “University Days” (1933) who finally is able to name a mode of transportation after professor and fellow students alike prompt him to say “train,” is a satirical construction, of course, but satire works only if there is the ring of truth. And I suspect the scandal at the University of North Carolina a few years back is more likely the tip of the iceberg than an anomaly. 

Curmie has had a number of students in his classes who actually were the “scholar-athletes” the NCAA pretends anyone with an athletic “scholarship” is. There was the multi-year all-conference tennis player who was also a fine student (in her second language!) and an excellent actress (she got a graduate degree and now works for one of the country’s leading regional theatres), the middle-distance runner who missed the Olympic team by a fraction of a second and did quite well in Curmie’s non-major class, the starting safety on the football team who asked for permission to miss class because he would be interviewing with one of the nation’s top med schools (he got in). 

But there are plenty of examples in the other direction, as well. There was the basketball player who couldn’t write a coherent paragraph about literally anything. There was the football player who complained about his grade in an acting course because he had nothing in common with the character I’d given him in a scene; the character was complaining to his professor about his grade. (Sigh.) Another football player whispered disgusting sexual advances to one of the women in an acting class when I was working with other students. (He came to regret that.) 

My… erm… “favorite,” though, was the star football player who missed about a half dozen more classes than department policy allowed. There were three hour-exams in the course: he got a D on one and failed the other two. He didn’t write either of the required short papers, and he got something like a 31 on the final exam. He subsequently showed up at my office, position coach in tow, to protest his failing grade because one (yes, just one) of his absences should have been excused. His excuse: he was in court… being convicted of an E felony. (Sigh.) 

All that said, it would be easy to make a case that athletes, especially those in sports other than football and basketball, are the most exploited students on campus. Unless, like LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne, what you’re selling is that you look great in a bikini or a miniskirt, you’re not going to get as good an NIL deal as the backup quarterback does. Plus, most sports require that you’ll play more than a dozen or so games; baseball and softball, for example, generally have about 50 games in a regular season. That means, among other things, more road games, and that means more travel, more time out of class, etc. 

The situation is exacerbated enormously by conference re-alignments. Back in the Dark Ages when Curmie was in college, conferences were aligned geographically: schools in the Atlantic Coast Conference were located (wait for it) along the Atlantic coast, the Southeastern Conference was in the southeast, and so on. The Big 10 was in the northern Midwest, and the Big 8 was a little further south and a little further west. 

Rivalries usually centered on proximity: Pittsburgh against West Virginia, Washington against Washington State, Oklahoma against Oklahoma State, and so on. Some rivalries were sport-specific, like Syracuse against Georgetown in basketball. As of about a year from now, none of those pairs of teams will be in the same conference. At the most personal level, this may be the greatest cost of the wholesale shuffling of conferences. Those intense rivalries are part of the fabric of intercollegiate sports. Their prospective demise saddens me. 

Schools moving from conference to conference is nothing new, of course; I can’t think of any conference other than the Ivy League that hasn’t changed at least somewhat in the time since I was an undergrad. But the last couple of years, especially the last few weeks, have been insane. Last year Oklahoma and Texas, two really big names in college athletics, announced they were leaving the Big 12 for the SEC; fans feared for the future of the former conference, which was now down to eight schools. The league responded by adding four new teams to get back to being the Big 12. 

But a few weeks ago UCLA and USC, the two biggest names in the Pac 12, announced that they’ll be joining the Big 10 starting next fall. And then the floodgates opened. The Big 10 and Big 12 have cannibalized the Pac 12, which as of now will be down to four schools come next fall, and one would have to believe that those programs are currently considering their options. And the SEC has its eyes on the two highest profile programs in the ACC (at least in football), Clemson and Florida State. Note that the long-term excellence of Duke and North Carolina in basketball is borderline irrelevant. Nary a women’s team matters in the slightest in this calculus. 

All of this is about one sport, football, and one thing, money. This is aggravated by the fact that universities in general seem incapable of understanding that both income and expenses matter. If it’s a famous faculty member whose presence attracts a handful of tuition-paying new students a year: “look at all the money we’re spending on this guy!” If, on the other hand, it’s going to increase travel costs for sports teams by literally millions of dollars, it’s “look at this spiffy TV deal.” 

So now we turn to the University of Missouri’s head football coach, Eli Drinkwitz (that’s him in the photo), who notes that all of these decisions seem to ignore other sports than his own. He wonders aloud, “did we count the cost for the student-athletes involved in this decision?” The answer to his semi-rhetorical question is “OF COURSE NOT.” 

One of Curmie’s mantras is “if you have to tell me, it ain’t so.” And the NCAA sure does tell us a lot about how much they care about “scholar-athletes.” Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention knows it’s all what my mom would call “balloon juice” (I might opt instead for a term suggesting bovine fecal matter). The NCAA has never, ever, cared about anything but itself, its self-image, and its power. Students? Fans? Who? Alas, too many universities are following their lead. 

Drinkwitz cites three really significant facts. First, an inevitable result of conference realignment is lack of sleep for the athletes, the number one cause of mental health issues. He mentions baseball and softball: “They travel commercial. They get done playing at 4:00, they gotta get to the airport, they come back, it’s 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, they gotta go to class? I mean, did we ask any of them?” 

He also points to tweets (Curmie is still going to call them that) that the reason a number of students chose their school is so their parents didn’t have to travel to see them on the road. Asks Drinkwitz, “Did we ask them if they wanted to travel from the east coast to the west coast?” Again, OF COURSE NOT. He doesn’t mention other students at their university, but that’s part of the deal, too. You just might want to see your best friend or significant other play their sport. 

Back when there were, you know, ten teams in the Big 10, the greatest distance between two conference teams was 644 miles. Next year, it will be 2686 miles, over 2000 miles more. When there was a Big 8, the longest distance between schools was 747 miles. It will soon be 2320 miles; make that 3125 if, as rumored, Oregon State also joins the Big 12. Having driven a round-trip from Texas to New Hampshire last summer (a mere 1742 miles, one-way), Curmie can attest that 2000+ miles seems like a rather long commute. 

And it’s not just the big conferences. The university where I taught for a couple of decades joined a new conference recently. It’s now 2379 miles to one of our new conference foes… in an FCS (1-AA) league. This is insane. 

Someone on social media noted also that these huge distances will make it more difficult to recruit athletes in sports other than football and (maybe) basketball. Who wants to play softball for UCLA if you’re going to have to travel to New Jersey to play Rutgers? Maybe Long Beach or San Diego State start looking more attractive. Good. 

Finally, Drinkwitz points out that the athletes most directly responsible for giving the universities the ability to get those multi-million-dollar TV contracts don’t share in the profits.  They have restrictions placed on them; “the adults in the room” can do as they please.

There is one advantage to conference re-alignment, of course. Because the University of Missouri left the Big 12 for the SEC a few years ago, they are no longer the arch-rival of my beloved Kansas Jayhawks (I got my PhD at KU). I am therefore no longer duty-bound to despise all things Mizzou, and can, if I might borrow Jack Marshall’s term, declare Eli Drinkwitz an Ethics Hero.

This essay was first published in the Curmie’s Conjectures series of guest posts on Ethics Alarms.  Some minor stylistic changes have been made here, but the argument is unchanged.  As with earlier posts of this type, there are likely to be more comments there than here.  So head there... or don’t... as you will, Gentle Reader.

Overdue Comments on the WGA and SAG/AFTRA Strikes

What’s not to love about this guy?

Given Curmie’s long-time profession, it will come as no surprise to you, Gentle Reader, that he knows a fair number of people who are currently involved in the WGA [Writers Guild of America] and SAG/AFTRA [Screen Actors Guild/ American Federation of Television and Radio Actors] strikes. Nor will it come as a shock that all of them—and Curmie, too, of course—are on the same side of the issue. 

Not so curiously, Curmie knows nary a studio exec, so you may feel free to assert that he hears only one side of the dispute. Curmie would even agree with you if he thought the studios actually had an argument other than greed, hubris, and a particularly insidious form of predation. 

Curmie has seen a fair bit of sniping about the strikes from two predictable sources: news outlets which (ever so coincidentally, of course) are owned by the same folks who own the studios, and the kind of blinkered conservative who really thinks executives ought to be paid a zillion or so times as much as the people actually doing the work. 

The former generally takes the form of “look at all these innocent people affected by the strike,” to which the most reasonable response (other than “up yours”) is “then get the AMPTP [the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers] to negotiate, instead of literally saying (privately) “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.” 

The other variation on the theme is to blame the unions who are trying to negotiate instead of the fatcats who aren’t: hence, for example, the New York Times headline, “Emmy Awards Will Be Postponed Because of Actors’ and Writers’ Strikes.” Yeah, it’s all their fault, right? We might also add that the short-term suffering of non-actors affected by the strike (makeup artists, caterers, wardrobe rental companies, etc., etc., etc.) may lessen if and when the strike is resolved, but much of the damage will become permanent if the most obscene of the AMPTP’s proposals is enacted. That would be the belief that background actors ought to be paid a single day’s wage for the rights to use their image in perpetuity without consent or remuneration. As soon as some studio exec agrees to submit to that arrangement (and their daily wage is a helluva lot more than that of a background actors), we can talk. 

It is not difficult to imagine that those images could be used for all manner of purposes for which the real person thus portrayed wouldn’t want to be associated, even with remuneration. And we don’t appear to be talking just about the films per se, either. For example, Curmie has a friend and former student who happens to be quite a beautiful young woman in a real-people-look-like-this way. She’s not a professional model, but she’s made a little money from appearing in print ads, at least one for a national corporation. But if the AMPTP have their way, they, not she, would control the rights to her image if she’d ever appeared as a background actor. 

Another of Curmie’s friends and former students, also a beautiful young woman, appeared in several episodes of a network TV show. Her character had a name but no lines, meaning she was “background.” She damned well ought to own the exclusive rights to her own image. 

Jack Marshall may be right that “SAG-AFTRA is whistling past the metaphorical graveyard.” Well, in the long term, at least. But this proposal from a cabal of amoral goons betrays the simple truth that AI is not yet at the point at which it can create realistic human images from thin air: it still needs a model, or you can be assured that the AMPTP would eliminate background actors altogether. In the short term, background actors are a necessary part of the process, and the AMPTP knows it. 

Of course, the other AMPTP (and minions) tactic is to remind us that the best-paid actors make eight-figure salaries for every film. That’s true, of course, and some of them aren’t terribly proficient thespians. But (and as the say in burlesque, it’s a big but), having the name of Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, or Brad Pitt (yes, the list is mostly men, but that’s a rant for another day) attached to a movie actually sells tickets. So would a handful of big-name directors—Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay, Peter Jackson, et al.. But Curmie has to meet anyone who says something like, “ooh, that movie was produced by a studio headed by David Zaslav [salary a little over $39 million a year]. I’ve gotta see it!!!” 

The overwhelming majority of SAG/AFTRA actors, of course, aren’t even close to bringing in pots of money. [Note: Curmie is about to quote a series of statistics pulled from social media posts. He hasn’t verified their accuracy, but he knows enough about the industry to know that these figures are completely plausible. Still, you have been warned, Gentle Reader.] 98% of SAG members make less than $65,000 a year. 87% don’t even make the $26,470 a year to get insurance through the union. Meanwhile, execs at studios you’ve never heard of are pulling in eight-figure salaries. 

Residual checks are absurdly low. Jana Schmieding recently posted that she receives 3 cents every quarter for her appearance in six episodes of “Reservation Dogs.” Oh, but she was a lead in “Rutherford Falls,” appearing in all 18 episodes. For that, she raked in $33.15 a quarter. That makes… $132.72 a year for unlimited worldwide streams for the 24 episodes of the two shows. Surely she can retire on that, right? 

Other actors have shared similar stories: Kamil McFadden posted his residual payments—including some negative numbers (!?!); The problem here is that streaming wasn’t as big a thing when the last contract was negotiated. But, partially as a result of COVID, a number of movies are bypassing movie theaters altogether, and corporations like Netflix are now producing their own material. So compensation plans based almost exclusively on literal butts in seats are outdated. The studios know that, of course, but they like making huge profits—Netflix has a market cap of over $190 billion (yes, with a “b”); surpassing Disney’s paltry $157 billion. And, of course, they don’t want to share any of that lucre with mere actors… or writers. They know it’s unfair; they know it’s unethical. But they think they can get away with it. 

You can check out the SAG/AFTRA proposals here. In addition to the items noted above: Per diems haven’t increased in over two decades, and payments are habitually late. Payments for dry cleaning when performers need to provide their own clothing for a role are inadequate. The AMPTP rejected anything that even resembles revenue sharing. And on and on. 

To be fair, some of the union’s proposals are a bit over the top, some of their characterizations of the AMPTP’s positions are less than entirely accurate (assuming the AMPTP’s public proclamations and private negotiating positions actually align), and some of the counter-proposals seem pretty reasonable. 

But it’s rather a tell when the studios keep changing their standard of measurement from dollars to percentages and back, according to which makes their side look less absurd. For example, hefty percentage increases in residuals for SVOD (Subscription Video on Demand, e.g., Netflix or Amazon) performances don’t mean much: 122% of bupkes is still bupkes. There are plenty of other variations on this theme, of course. Curmie won’t bother to enumerate them all. 

Of course, the real clue to what’s going on and who’s to blame comes in the fact that a considerably smaller studio, A24, is able to meet SAG/AFTRA’s conditions, and therefore received a waiver. One of their recent films was “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” You may have heard of it, Gentle Reader. It received Oscars for Best Picture, Original Screenplay, Directing, Leading Actress, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, and Editing, plus four other Oscar nominations and a raftload of other awards and nominations. That ain’t bad. 

Among the actors whose A24 projects can move forward because of the SAG/AFTRA waiver: Anne Hathaway, Paul Rudd, Matthew McConaughey, Sigourney Weaver, and Rebel Wilson. There are some folks there whose work people would pay to see! 

Let’s put this in the terms of The Horror Guru: “I want you let it sink in that A24, the smaller company that makes and distributes low budget independent films, is able to adhere to SAG-AFTRA'S terms while the big studios making the top 10 grossing films of the year are acting like they can't afford it.” Funny, that, innit? 

The WGA strike is framed a little differently, but the basics are the same: multi-millionaire execs thinking that people actually doing the work shouldn’t be able to pay the rent. The writers do a little better than the actors, in part because there are fewer of them, but an average income of $69,510 doesn’t go all that far if you’re living in Los Angeles, where the cost of living is over 44% higher than the national average. 

There are a number of areas of contention here: “minimum fees, royalties, staffing requirements, and even the use of artificial intelligence in script production.” Of course, the sniping here comes from conservative talking heads who couldn’t write a two-minute skit with the proverbial gun at their heads. “AI could do better,” quoth they. Here’s the thing: yes, there’s some bad writing out there. But there’s also some really good writing, and AI basically translates as the celebration of mediocrity, the literary equivalent of paint by numbers. It can re-create the same-old same-old really well; creativity is beyond its capability. 

In the realm of “if this isn’t true, it should be” comes a social media post which says that ChatGPT was asked which job could be more readily replaced by AI: screenwriter or corporate CEO. The verdict: the latter, of course.

As a CEO, much of the decision-making process is based on data analysis, risk assessment, and resource allocation, which are areas where AI is particularly effective. AI can process large amounts of data quickly and accurately, identify patterns and trends, and provide insights that can help inform strategic decision-making….

AI may be able to analyze data on successful screenplays and provide insights into what elements are more popular, but ultimately, the creative process of writing a compelling screenplay relies on human intuition and emotion. In conclusion, while AI can assist with some aspects of both roles, it is more likely to be better suited for tasks related to a corporate CEO than screenwriting.

Meanwhile, Netflix is advertising positions with high six-figure salaries for AI gurus, and at least a dozen A-listers have kicked in a million dollars or more apiece to fund SAG/AFTRA’s Emergency Financial Assistance Program. 

The battle lines are being drawn, and both sides seem firmly entrenched. Not all of the unions’ demands are reasonable (that’s why there are negotiations), but it is clear that they’re the good guys in this skirmish. And the stakes are extremely high. 

Especially on the issue of AI, Curmie finds it difficult to argue with the nightmare (doomsday?) scenario outlined by Justine Bateman. As a WGA and Directors Guild member, former SAG board member, and a coder with a degree from UCLA in computer science and digital media management, she offers a level of expertise and experience Curmie doesn’t come close to matching. So when she says “I believe this is the last time any labor action will be effective in our business. If we don't make strong rules now, they simply won't notice if we strike in three years, because at that point, they won't need us,” we—all of us—damned well better pay attention. 

Commerce and art are often at odds, now as much as ever. One of the things Curmie is most grateful for as respects his year in England in the late ‘70s was exposure to the Tom Robinson Band, which never made much of a ripple west of the Atlantic. Two of their songs come to mind. “Power in the Darkness” opens with “Power in the darkness / Frightening lies from the other side / Power in the darkness / Stand up and fight for your rights.” 

Even more relevant, perhaps, is this sequence from “Better Decide Which Side You’re On”: “You better decide which side you're on / This ship goes down before too long / If Left is right then Right is Wrong / You better decide which side you’re on.” 

Those songs, of course, had nothing to do with labor actions in a different country taking place some 45 years later. Or did they? Art has always opened doors to understanding far beyond its immediate context. It’s time to decide which side we’re on.

“Strong Independent Woman Singing”

Curmie is once again distracted from his growing backlog of things he’s promised himself and others to write about. This time, it’s to remember Sinéad O’Connor, one of the truly great artists of our time, who was taken from us far too young (age 56) a few days ago. That also was the age at which another of Curmie’s musical heroes, Warren Zevon, died. The difference is that whereas Curmie was several years younger than Zevon, he's over a decade older than O’Connor. It hurts more to hear about the passing of someone younger than oneself. 

The encomia are coming fast and furious now, and Morrissey, for once, is correct in condemning the hypocrisy of the music industry magnates and media moguls who are suddenly mourning the loss of someone they had long shunned for the unforgiveable sin of nonconformity. She was a remarkably beautiful woman, but not only didn’t exploit that fact but actively undercut the sex kitten image by shaving her head and appearing in t-shirt and ripped jeans rather than the flowing locks and cute (short) dresses the record company execs tried to foist on her. 

One of the things that struck Curmie in the aftermath of her death was the diversity of songs posted on Facebook by friends over the past few days. Of course, “Nothing Compares 2 U” shows up a lot; it was her biggest hit, after all. But there’s also a magnificent rendering of Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” from the Broadway hit Evita (a song which has a fair amount of relevance to her own life), the Irish folk song “The Foggy Dew” about the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916, and the contemporary social commentary of “Black Boys on Mopeds.” If it could be sung, she could sing it. Well. 

There were lots of others, too, of course: the autobiographical “Daddy I’m Fine” (which provides the title for this essay), straight-ahead rock-and-roll (with an edge) like “Mandinka,” traditional folksongs like “He Moved through the Fair,” 20th century chestnuts like “I Want to Be Loved by You” (yeah, she out-Marilyns Marilyn) and “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered,” and ballads of love gone wrong like “Troy” and “Last Day of Our Acquaintance.” She sings with the backing of big bands, of traditional Irish folk groups, of rock combos. Her rendition of “Irish Ways and Irish Laws” is a capella; it doesn’t matter who, if anyone, is with her: she dominates. 

Hers was one of those voices that was instantly recognizable. She could slide seemingly effortlessly from breathy romanticizing to a visceral roar; she could be almost unbelievably vulnerable and terrifyingly defiant… sometimes at the same time. There has never been, and will never be, a voice quite like hers. 

But “voice,” of course, has two meanings. One, having to do with pitch and timbre and the like, was cheerfully exploited by record companies and concert venues. The other meaning has to do with giving a voice to those who, metaphorically at least, go unheard. It was a problem that she wanted to be taken seriously for her artistry. That she often wrote and performed songs that followed in the tradition of protest songs from both sides of the Atlantic could be (barely) tolerated. Saying out loud instead of discreetly hinting that women can be interested in sex as well as romance no doubt bothered the industry execs, but at least she was selling records. 

It was not as a singer/songwriter, however, but as a woman, as a victim of child abuse, as an Irish citizen, that she took on the powerful elites by openly defending the Irish Republican Army, pulling out of a scheduled appearance on Saturday Night Live because the episode was to be hosted by the misogynistic Andrew Dice Clay, and withdrawing from the Grammy Awards because of their preference for popular success over actual artistry. None of this did her career any good, except with a few hard-core fans. 

But finally appearing on SNL and tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II, declaring him “the real enemy” for his placing the interests of the Church above those of innocent children was widely condemned by the likes of Joe Pesci, Frank Sinatra, and even fans at a Bob Dylan concert. Her career was never the same again, although she did record a few more albums after a layoff of several years. 

That was a moment of considerable courage, perhaps of recklessness. What the pundits have gradually and belatedly admitted is that she was absolutely right. No, maybe the Pope wasn’t, perhaps, the embodiment of evil per se, but the Church hierarchy was unquestionably responsible for a disproportionate share of child abuse, shuffling predatory priests from parish to parish while protecting them from civil authorities. It is now, alas, a little late to say “oops.” 

Curmie admits to being somewhat complicit in all this, to the extent of not being a devotee when he could (should?) have been. He was not a fan of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” which remains one of his least favorite songs in her discography. (Curmie notes with a rueful smile that she might approve of his refusal to conflate economics with art.)  In any case, he had heard few if any of her other songs when that SNL incident occurred. He became a fan only in retrospect, hearing her first on Irish folk songs, then searching out her other work, both as an artist and as a social commentator… and sometimes at the intersection of the two, as in her advocacy for hip-hop and reggae. 

None of us—not Sinéad O’Connor, nor Curmie, nor you, Gentle Reader—can avoid making mistakes. But we can acknowledge and correct them. Let’s do that, and call attention to the force of nature known as Sinéad O’Connor. She had a voice—in both senses of the term—for the ages. We can disagree with some of her positions, but not with her willingness to speak her truth, consequences be damned. She suffered far more than anyone ought to have to endure, throughout a life bookended by an abusive mother and a son’s suicide, with worldwide fame supplanted by worldwide humiliation and rejection in between. 

Watching her perform on video, especially live, is always an experience. When we get a long shot, we often see a small woman with slumped shoulders, almost apologetically stepping up to the microphone. Then we hear that voice, and the shoulders roll back, and we’re on alert: this woman is anything but frail. The camera zooms in and we see those glorious flashing dark eyes. You can’t look at them without the certainty of the truth being shared with us; her truth, at least. We cannot not listen. 

Sinéad was a mass of contradictions, as only geniuses can be. She is gone now. She was mortal, after all. No. She was mortal. She is immortal. Or at least we can damned well hope so.

Jason Aldean and the Three Possibilities

The list of things Curmie has started to write about, or started the research to write about, without ever finishing the job keeps growing. Add the WGA and SAG/AFTRA strikes to that compilation. He’ll get back to them if they remain relevant. But for now, let’s talk about the Jason Aldean “Try That in a Small Town” kerfuffle. You can find the song on YouTube or Spotify. Curmie won’t provide links, though, because he doesn’t want to be directly responsible for even one more hit. Curmie listened; call it taking one for the team. 

Needless to say, Gentle Reader, Curmie is not an aficionado of country music. In fact, his personal vision of hell includes a soundtrack of trite faux patriotic lyrics and twangy vocals. If you’d asked him a few days ago who Jason Aldean is, he’d probably have been more likely to guess that he’s a minor league infielder included in some trade package for a star player than a country singer. But Aldean is apparently rather a big deal: Billboard lists him at #7 on the country charts for 2022, ahead of a handful of people Curmie’s actually heard of, and he has ten platinum albums. 

Be it noted, Gentle Reader, that if you’re a fan of country music in general or Jason Aldean in particular, that’s fine, as long as you don’t make Curmie listen. (He similarly promises not to foist his musical tastes on you, except, perhaps, via a link you can choose not to click.) But Curmie does believe he knows something of small town life, having lived in towns or cities of fewer than 85,000 people for over 66 years (and in places under 35,000 folks for 58+ years), as opposed to Aldean’s [checks notes] literally never. 

Curmie is amused but unoffended by Aldean’s inauthenticity. Yes, an earlier song of his, “Rearview Town” paints a very different picture of small towns. No, Aldean has never actually lived in one. But Bruce Springsteen has sorta passed his sell-by date as a voice of the working class, too. And Curmie is still a fan. Songs don’t have to be about personal experience. 

It’s also worth noting that “Try That in a Small Town” was actually written by the quartet of Kelley Lovelace, Neil Thrasher, Tully Kennedy, and Kurt Allison, not by Aldean. Still, it’s Aldean at the center of the controversy, so we’ll continue as if this is all his doing, even though he’s just singing someone else’s lyrics. In other words, Gentle Reader, please mentally insert “…and the songwriters” after Aldean’s name in the ensuing discussion. If you’d similarly change the verbs to match their newly plural subjects, that would be appreciated, too. 

The song starts by describing behavior which we’d all agree is both reprehensible and illegal: sucker punching someone, carjacking an old lady, robbing a liquor store. But then things start getting a little more divisive: “cuss[ing] out a cop” and “stomp[ing] on” or “light[ing] up the flag” may not be activities Curmie would recommend, but they’ve been consistently reaffirmed as protected speech. 

The response: “Well, try that in a small town / See how far ya make it down the road / Around here, we take care of our own / You cross that line, it won’t take long / For you to find out, I recommend you don’t / Try that in a small town.” Whoa. Stop right there. “See how far you make it down the road”? Really? The appropriate response to the exercise of First Amendment protected speech you disagree with is to chase someone down, and prevent them, presumably by force, from going down the road? 

Here it’s worth pointing out that, especially given the immediate reference to “a gun that my granddad gave me,” that we’re not talking about being “shunned” or “unpopular,” however much Jack Marshall of Ethics Alarms might try that spin in a comment on his post on the subject. (Today’s apophasis is that we’ll let the Tin Foil Hat paranoia of “they say one day they’re gonna round up” go without comment for now.) 

What’s being advocated here is not adopting a music hall French accent and declaring you fart in someone’s general direction. No, this is absolutely and literally a paean to vigilantism. The fact that it doesn’t rise to the level of a “true threat” in legal terms means only that the song shouldn’t be censored, which, of course, is different from whether a private enterprise like Country Music Television decides to broadcast the video or not. 

This invocation of violence then continues with a reference to a small town being “Full of good ol’ boys, raised up right / If you’re looking for a fight.” Curmie finds it difficult, given the preceding verses, to think the fight in question is anything but literal. This is what “raised up right” means? Jolly. 

Of course, it’s the video, even more than the song, that is really drawing fire from the left. There are scenes of rioting that suggest we’re looking at the BLM-inspired violence of a couple of years ago. A fair share isn’t, of course; Rolling Stone reports that a lot of the imagery comes from stock footage of demonstrations in Toronto and Montreal. Go figure, right? 

Plus, of course, the backdrop for the shots of Aldean himself is the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, which seems to be literally the source of light in the video. Oh yeah, it’s also the site of the lynching of Henry Choate in 1927 and of the Columbia race riot of 1946. Charming. 

So all of this raises the question of just what the hell is going on. It strikes Curmie that there are three possible explanations. The first is that Aldean really is a racist, and that Curmie’s friend who suggested that the reason the song is called “Try That in a Small Town” is that “’Try That in a Sundown Town’ wouldn’t have the same ring to it” might be on to something. The possibility that a MAGAmaniac who dressed his kids in t-shirts reading “Hidin’ from Biden” might be evincing the predilections of a small but demonstrable contingent of that red-capped horde cannot be discarded out of hand. 

The carefully manipulated video, the racial implications of the distinction between urban and rural, and the choice of backdrop all could reasonably be perceived to point in that direction. Curmie is insufficiently attuned to dog whistles of that particular variety to have a strong opinion, and he refuses to engage in the kind of straw man arguments he sees all too often online. Curmie doesn’t like it when some ultrapartisan conservative decides what progressives think, and he declines to do the same thing in reverse. So… is Aldean’s song (or the video) racist? Perhaps, but Curmie would take some more convincing, and isn’t going to label someone he’s never met without more evidence than this. 

The second alternative is that Aldean is a garden-variety idiot. (All racists are idiots; not all idiots are racists.) Were this to be the case, he’d be unaware of the symbolism of the setting and of the overtones associated with the distinction between the urban and the rural (or semi-rural). He’d honestly believe that not mentioning race per se in the lyrics would mean the song wouldn’t be interpreted as being about race. 

He’d still view vigilantes as people “raised up right,” and threats of violence as appropriate responses to those whose politics are different from one’s own. But thuggery against people who see the world a little differently than you isn’t the same as doing so because their melanin count is higher than yours, right? 

The third possibility is the most intriguing. No one is going to call Jason Aldean an intellectual giant, but, as Mitch McConnell has proved, being smart and being shrewd aren’t the same thing. So what if the brouhaha, the removal of the song from CMT, the defiant stand at a concert in Cincinnati (in front of a lot of fans, none of whom appear to be more darkly complected than Curmie)… what if it was all a set-up? “One high-level exec” told Mikael Woods of the Los Angeles Times “Aldean is irrelevant today — a sideshow all the way.” And what is the current hubbub if not a sideshow? 

Curmie has argued for years that not all seemingly bad work (or bad results) ought necessarily to be read that way. To choose an example from Curmie’s field: the deus ex machina (literally!) ending to Euripides’ Orestes has been decried by many critics as faulty dramaturgy because it is so utterly implausible. But was one of the great classical tragedians really that sloppy? Or is it just possible that we’re supposed to notice the awkwardness, that the most famous atheist of his era might just be suggesting that it’s unreasonable to expect the gods to fix our problems, that the best way out of a difficult situation is not to get into it in the first place? 

Similarly, might Aldean or his handlers have anticipated that CMT pulling the song was the best possible outcome in a world of YouTube and Spotify? That he’d have every Republican talking head or Presidential candidate singing his praises? That morons like “Veteran Biker” would claim that Aldean “may be on the Mount Rushmore of country music”? (As above, you can search out the link if you choose, but there’s no question about the coded messages and dog whistles in this one.) 

Might they have guessed that people like Curmie, who’d never heard of Aldean, now know who he is, and even listened (once) to the song? That the song would rocket up the charts as an immediate response to the controversy? That even otherwise intelligent people would valiantly attempt to defend the song’s message as opposed to simply his right to sing it? 

Did Aldean dangle the song and the video out there, hoping (not without cause) the leftie press would rise to the bait like a Kardashian who’s spotted a camera? Is Aldean that cunning? Are his handlers? Did Aldean’s people actually leak the bit about the Maury County Courthouse? Maybe. After all, a boycott of something you weren’t going to buy anyway doesn’t carry much of a threat, and appealing to the base has its advantages. 

What Curmie knows for sure is that actual small towns are both better and worse than Aldean’s fantasized imaginings. That the same Constitution that allows Aldean to sing “Try That in a Small Town” also allows Curmie to call it violence-excusing crap. And that if Aldean ever actually ventured into the actual small town Curmie calls home, Curmie sure as hell wouldn’t go to his concert… but he also wouldn’t get a bunch of friends together to beat him up. Or even threaten to.

Confucius and the Fourth Circuit

Twentysomething years ago, a few months after completing my PhD, I got a phone call from my mentor in Asian theatre, who, upon learning my job search wasn’t going as well as I might have hoped, asked if I wanted to teach a couple sections of the university’s Eastern Civilizations course. I asked if I was really qualified to teach such a course. His response: “You know something, and you can read.”

 

Based largely on his recommendation, I got an interview for the position. I made no attempt to conceal my ignorance of a lot of what I’d be teaching. But the department had struggled with grad students who had lost control of their classrooms, and I’d taught full-time for ten years before entering the doctoral program; I got the job. The head of the Eastern Civ program closed the interview with “There are some books in my office you’ll want to read before you start.” I knew something, and I could read. 

That’s relevant to my consideration of the recent ruling of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Porter v. Board of Trustees of North Carolina State University, in which a tenured faculty member claimed to have been punished for arguing against certain initiatives undertaken by his department. I’m no lawyer, so there’s some legalese I’m not so sure about, and I have no interest in chasing down all the precedents cited by either the majority or the dissent to see if they really say what these judges say they say. But I know something and I can read. 

More to the point, one of the texts I taught in that Eastern Civ course was Confucius’s Analects, which I had to get to know a lot better than I did previously in order to teach it to someone else. One of the central tenets of Confucian thought was his argument against having too many laws, as no one could possibly predict all the various special circumstances surrounding every dispute. Context matters; timing matters; motives matter. Confucius’s solution was to turn everything over to a wise counselor (like him) who would weigh all the relevant elements on a case by case basis. That’s not the way our justice system works, nor would it be practical, but it’s easy to see its appeal… in theory, at least. 

Significantly, Confucius’s reservations about laws’ inability to anticipate all the possible combinations of circumstances are the first cousin if not the sibling of what Jack Marshall of Ethics Alarms calls the “ethics incompleteness principle,” which asserts that there “are always anomalies on the periphery of every normative system, no matter how sound or well articulated.” 

An extension of this is that what is lawful and what is just are related but inevitably not identical concepts. The problem is magnified when it’s not just the law, but previous court decisions, that are ambiguous. Where, for example, does the First Amendment’s guarantee of free expression leave off and an employer’s desire for a congenial and (generally speaking) united workplace begin? Does it matter if the employer is a government agency? If it’s a university? If the alleged miscreant has tenure? If the place is just a little awkward as opposed to a war zone? Is academic freedom a relevant concern? The answer to the first question appears to be “well, it depends”; all of the seemingly disjunctive questions would appear to be best answered by “sort of.” 

The basic facts are these: Stephen Porter teaches statistics in the Department of Leadership, Policy and Adult & Higher Education at North Carolina State University. He claims to have been punished—not fired, exactly, but ostracized and placed in a situation which could likely result in his position being retrenched—for being outspoken about what he perceived to be an abandonment of “rigorous methodological analysis in favor of results-driven work aimed at furthering a highly dogmatic view of ‘diversity,’ ‘equity,’ and ‘inclusion.’” 

Porter says that three moments between 2016 and 2018 are at the center of his claim. The first came in the spring of 2016, when he objected to the addition of a question about diversity on student evaluation forms because he believed the question to be insufficiently researched. 

The second occasion was two years later, when he sent an email to departmental colleagues linking to an article in Inside Higher Ed which criticized a departmental search led by Alyssa Rockenbach. Porter appended the comment, “Did you all see this? … This kind of publicity will make sure we rocket to number 1 in the rankings. Keep up the good work, Alyssa!” 

In a subsequent meeting with Penny Pasque, then the department chair, Porter argued that Rockenbach had “cut corners” in vetting a candidate “out of a desire to hire a Black scholar whose work focused on racial issues.” (That candidate, by the way, had been fired from his previous position for financial misconduct.) 

That fall, Porter published a brief blog piece entitled “ASHE Has Become a Woke Joke.” His commentary concluded, “I prefer conferences where 1) the attendees and presenters are smarter than me and 2) I constantly learn new things. That’s why I stopped attending ASHE several years ago and switched to AEFP.” [ASHE is the Association for the Study of Higher Education; AEFP is the Association for Education Finance and Policy.] 

Finally, that fall, the department considered hiring a new faculty member. Pasque changed what was originally scheduled as a meeting of the HEPA (the Higher Education Program Area) faculty to discuss the candidate, and, with only a small number of faculty present in a virtual meeting, proposed that Porter leave HEPA. 

Feeling ambushed, Porter responded, “Give me a fucking break, folks. I was the one who said [the potential hire] should come. And now I’m the bad guy because I don’t want to leave Higher Ed for a non-existent program area.” This, of course, led to further tensions, including a reprimand for his language. Things escalated from there, and Porter was involuntarily removed from HEPA and de facto prevented from having advisees because of “lack of collegiality” and complaints from graduate students (that would be a grand total of two of the sixty grad students, by the way). 

Porter claimed his comments were protected speech, and that the university violated his First Amendment rights; he sued the university and several individuals. The university saw things otherwise. The Fourth Circuit, by a vote of 2-1, agreed with the university. Unsurprisingly, for different and predictable reasons, both FIRE (who had filed an amicus brief on Porter’s behalf) and Jonathan Turley disagreed. 

Here’s where my “knowing something” becomes relevant. Curmie has no opinion about whether the relevant precedent is Pickering v. Board of Education or Garcetti v. Ceballos, but he does know how universities operate. Let’s start with a couple of points that clearly work against Porter. 

First, the chances that he’s an asshole as opposed to merely someone whose political stances the administration doesn’t like is quite high. He says his response to that student evaluation question was “was amicable in tone, although perhaps embarrassing” to the person presenting the proposal. That’s clearly a subjective, self-serving, and retrospective view (not discounting the possibility that it’s also accurate). 

And sending a taunting email to a colleague who has been embarrassed in a national publication, especially when the anonymous source for the article is quite likely to be Porter himself, is more than a little unprofessional. Copying the rest of the department only aggravates the situation. 

Secondly, Porter’s blog post did indeed damage the reputation of the university, even if he has a point, since it led to a rebuttal from the president of an important professional organization in the field in her keynote address. The old adage of “don’t shit where you eat” is advice Porter does not seem to have taken to heart. 

And it’s pretty clear that Porter did little to mend the fences with his departmental colleagues when warned that failure to do so would have repercussions. 

But there are considerations in the other direction, too. (If there are lawyers reading this and Curmie is screwing up the legal arguments, please correct him.) First off, being a curmudgeon is (I trust, given my sobriquet) not illegal, and comments remain protected speech except in specific instances—sedition, incitement, slander, etc. (There’s another exception we’ll come to in a moment.) 

The fact that Porter is a tenured faculty member at a state university carries three (count ‘em, three!) protections. 1). Whereas most businesses have the authority to sanction employee speech (“you can say what you want, you just can’t do so and work for us”), there’s a specific exemption for university faculty, at least in certain circumstances. 2). Private enterprises, including universities, have at least some authority to maintain their own rules, provided they are clearly stated and equitably enforced, but state universities do not have this freedom. 3). Tenure brings with it the full degree of academic freedom, which has come to include the ability to criticize the decisions of their administration. 

The majority decision rests, apparently, on two foundations. One is that the presumed lack of chronological propinquity between the blog post and the department chair’s response, and between Porter’s outburst in the meeting and his removal from HEPA indicates that the latter is not a direct result of the former. Here’s where quoting Dr. Porter directly (from a different context) seems the appropriate rejoinder: “Give me a fucking break, folks!” Of course it was retaliation. The court’s argument that the time lapse means anything suggests an ignorance of both the way universities operate and, indeed, of human nature. (It also doesn’t speak well for Porter’s legal team.) 

The other argument is that Porter was speaking as an employee, and is therefore not entitled to the First Amendment protections he would have as a private citizen. (This is why Elon Musk had the legal right to fire that engineer who told him the truth instead of what he wanted to hear.) Indeed, Porter supposedly said he was “just doing [his] job” in questioning the student evaluation proposal. If nothing else, this comment elicited one of my all-time favorite lines in judicial decisions: in his dissent, Judge Julius N. Richardson writes, “Superman deflects praise by saying that he’s ‘just doing his job,’ even though the citizens of Metropolis never cut him a paycheck.” 

In fact, that episode could be interpreted either way. Yes, Porter was acting as an employee in one sense, but as a statistician with a particular interest in this kind of survey, he was employing his particular skills. Does this qualify as his “research,” which would make his speech protected? I’m gonna call this one a wash. 

The blog post would seem to meet the requirements of protected speech: it’s written as a private citizen, expressing an opinion on an area of public interest. (I’m interested, and I have no connections, positive or negative, to the organization in question.) Still, the blog does identify Porter as a faculty member at North Carolina State… or at least it does now; I presume it did when the essay was posted. Does that mean he was functioning as an employee? I don’t think so, but one could make the case. 

Finally, there’s the business about the new hire and the ensuing brouhaha. Here, there’s no question that Porter was uncivil, but he was certainly provoked. Curmie is pretty certain he never told colleagues to “give me a fucking break,” but substituting “damned” for “fucking” would increase the likelihood he’s uttered that sentence fairly significantly. 

Yes, Porter was “uncollegial” at that moment, but Curmie offers the following in response. We’re talking about a one instance (or perhaps two or three, if we include the other incidents) over the period of several years. This does not a pattern make. (Yes, there may have been other incidents that didn’t make it to the court case.) 

Collegiality is, of course, a good thing in general terms, and it is essential to some degree in some disciplines: in my field, theatre, for instance, if the director and designers can’t get along, it will indeed affect the work product of the institution. But even here, there’s no need to like each other, just to work collaboratively. I don’t know enough about what people in a Leadership, Policy and Adult & Higher Education department do, but from an outsider’s perspective, it doesn’t seem like any high degree of collegiality would be a sine qua non. Moreover, whereas collegiality is sometimes, probably too often, a consideration as to whether someone gets a promotion, Curmie has never seen it used in what amounts to a demotion. 

Finally, and most importantly, there’s an increasingly ominous trend to use “uncollegial” to mean “insufficiently obeisant.” Disagreements are at the center of the academic project. Similarly, the most valuable comments on, for example, Ethics Alarms, aren’t the ones that say “You’re absolutely right, Jack”; they’re the variations on “yeah, but…” or even “I disagree because…” There are some issues on which we’ll never agree, but hearing an articulate rationale for an opinion with which we disagree is how we learn, and that, Gentle Reader, is a good thing. 

When Curmie started his career, the concept of “shared governance” was alive and well. It’s now on life support, in danger of flat-lining in the very near future. Administrators are increasingly overpaid relative to faculty, increasingly autocratic, increasingly dismissive of anyone who questions their latest harebrained scheme. And Trustees/Regents/whatever at state universities listen only to the governor who appointed them or, occasionally, to high-ranking administrators; students, faculty, staff, and alumni are ignored… unless, of course, they happen to be rich. 

So, where does this leave us in this case? It ought to be self-evident that legal decisions ought to be based on the law, but here the law doesn’t really clarify things very much, as so much depends on definitions that are neither clear nor fixed. But now is when we listen to Confucius and search out the most just solution. 

It’s possible that stronger legal case is that of the university.  But it’s clear to me, at least, that Dr. Porter is the more aggrieved party. I wouldn’t necessarily relish having him as a colleague, but from my perspective the Fourth Circuit got this one wrong. Of course, Curmie was an opinionated professor who occasionally had the audacity to say out loud that not all decisions emanating from administrators’ offices were divinely inspired, so perhaps he’s not the most unbiased source.

This piece was written as the third installment of “Curmie’s Conjectures” on the Ethics Alarms blog.  I have made a couple of minor stylistic changes and corrected a typo or two here, but the argument remains the same.  As with earlier such posts, there is much more likely to be discussion there than here; you are welcome to head there... or not.

Changing Voter Eligibility: Four Really Stupid Ideas

Pondering who can vote and who can’t hasn’t occupied a lot of space or time in Curmie’s mind for several years. Yes, there was the brouhaha about absentee ballots during COVID, but that wasn’t about who could vote, but how. And there are the usual plaints from Democrats about voter suppression and from Republicans about ineligible (e.g., non-citizen) voters. But the former requires a very liberal (see what Curmie did there?) definition of “suppression,” and the latter arguments are presented with a dearth of actual evidence. 

And, of course, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the MAGA minions in aftermath of the last presidential election. But even if those protestations had merit (which they didn’t), they were centered on allegations of manipulation, not of who had the legal right to cast a ballot. 

But just in the last week or so, Curmie has seen four proposed changes to the process, all remarkable in their stupidity. (A couple have been around longer, but Curmie only recently learned of their existence.) Curmie can’t quite decide which order to put them in, but has decided to arrange them in what he currently, as he writes this, considers increasing levels of lunacy. (His ordering by the time you read this, Gentle Reader, may well have changed, and you should certainly feel free to shuffle the order at will.) 

We start, then, with an idea that seems to be gaining at least a little momentum among Democrats and teenagers. The Democrat-controlled Vermont legislature recently overrode the Republican governor’s veto, thereby allowing 16-year-olds to vote in municipal elections and indeed to hold office if elected. The rationale, such as it is, is to keep the youngsters politically involved. The veto seems to have been grounded in the potential confusion about the state’s definition of adulthood. No, the reason to oppose this is that it’s a stupid idea. 

The fact that this nonsense has any traction at all—in cities in several states, as it happens—can be chalked up to the perhaps mistaken belief among Democrats that teenagers are more likely to agree with them on such issues as gun control and abortion. But even if we grant the Dems’ dubious claim to ethics on this one, there are two objections. First, those issues aren’t the ones being decided at the local level—for there to be any benefit to progressive causes, those 16-year-old voters would have to become more engaged 18-year-old voters than they would otherwise be. Curmie doubts there’d be much change. 

More to the point, there are a lot of changes between the ages of 16 and 18, not simply in terms of brain development (although that, too). At 16, teens are staying in their parents’ house, and are more than likely to simply mirror their parents’ politics. Kent State made Curmie suspicious of Republicans, but it never occurred to him to vote for a Democrat until he was away at college. 

Oh, by the way, there is even an attempt at a constitutional amendment. This may or may not be necessary, as the 26th Amendment guarantees voting privileges to 18-year-olds, but doesn’t prohibit suffrage to younger citizens. Curmie is no lawyer, but if Maine and Nebraska can treat electoral votes differently than every other state, maybe voting rights could be different in Vermont or California or wherever? (Or perhaps not.) Anyway, it’s a non-starter, so it doesn’t matter much. 

Speaking of non-starters, let’s move on to two ideas that would definitely require constitutional amendments that are about as likely to happen as Curmie becoming starting power forward in the NBA. First up is an informal endorsement by Elon Musk of some Twitter yahoo’s idea that suffrage ought to be restricted to parents, since “The childless have little stake in the future.” A year or so ago, he proclaimed that “A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far,” when of course the precise opposite is far more likely to be true. Musk didn’t need to own Twitter yet to be a doofus. 

Fact is, even a narcissistic prat like Musk has seldom said anything so stupid. Naturally, he thinks he’s being profound, whereas he’s proven repeatedly that when he’s not in the position to exploit other people’s expertise, he’s… well… a buffoon. He couldn’t care less about the future, except perhaps for his own multiple progeny. Curmie, on the other hand, is childless, but is a life-long educator, and dozens of his former students are also educators. Which of us has better credentials in terms of caring about the future of the species in general? 

But stop me if you’ve heard this before: there’s this arrogant twatwaffle who has a raft-load of stupid ideas, but he thinks we shouldn’t recognize that fact because he’s rich. No, not him… that’s what the last two paragraphs were about. This one is Vivek Ramaswamy, longshot contender for the GOP nomination in 2024. He’s a Randian amoral egomaniac and full-fledged wackadoodle who seems think that being even more authoritarian than Trump or DeSantis is the way to go… although it’s difficult to tell if he’s thinking more about the nation or his own campaign strategy. 

Ramaswamy’s proposal to raise the voting age to 25 with an exception for those who have served for six months in the military or could pass the test foreign nationals must take to become citizens shares more than one essential quality with the Democratic attempt to lower the voting age. This one definitely requires a constitutional amendment (which won’t happen), and if anything is even more cynical than the Dems’ plan. We suspect, but don’t know, how 16-year-olds would vote; in the 2020 election, the 18-24 year old vote went to Democrats by 25 points. Whyever would a hardcore Republican, candidate or not, want to raise the voting age? 

Each of these ideas scores in the upper reaches of what can be measured by the stupidometer. What could possibly surpass them? Well, this: Seaford, Delaware, has changed its charter to allow businesses to vote in local elections. Apparently the outsized influence those corporations already exert in a state with more than twice as many incorporated businesses as citizens just isn’t enough. 

David Genshaw, the mayor of this small town of 8,000 residents, may just be the most moronic officeholder in the country, and Curmie need hardly tell you, Gentle Reader, that there is plenty of competition for that apparently coveted title. Quoth Genshaw, “These are folks that have fully invested in their community with the money, with their time, with their sweat. We want them to have a voice if they choose to take it.” Only about 100 more people voted in the most recent city election than there are corporations registered on Seaford. The low turnout is reasonable because, let’s face it, most of what is decided at that level is rather insignificant, and there’s little difference between candidates. 

Both of these statements are changed significantly if artificial entities that don’t even have a physical presence in the town are able to vote. It’s bad enough that absentee landlords can vote on some issues; this is beyond absurd. First off, those “folks” haven’t done a damned thing to “[invest] in their community”; they are (and this is not a criticism of them) simply looking out for the proverbial #1. 

More importantly, corporations aren’t people, irrespective of what SCOTUS might think… which brings us to another reason why this is the cleanup hitter in this list. Whereas it is extremely unlikely that Delaware’s Democratically controlled state legislature will sign off on Seaford’s folly, which they’d need to do—Curmie need hardly tell you that this proposal is being advanced by Republicans—it’s certainly plausible some asshat might sue, that the case would find its way to SCOTUS, and that a far more conservative court even than the one in the Citizen’s United case (damn, was that really over 13 years ago?) would rule in favor of corporations, actual citizens be damned. 

So, whereas this is the worst idea in a contest of plenty horrible ideas, it’s also the only one with a chance of becoming law. Curmie is not amused.