Independence Day and the Notion of Pride

We can do better than this.

Curmie has posted here not infrequently on the 4th of July, usually with some commentary on the significance of Independence Day.  One of his personal favorites of the genre comes from 2020, when he riffed on the opening sequence of the Aaron Sorkin series “The Newsroom.”  Our hero, Will McEvoy (Jeff Daniels) is on a three-person panel in some sort of academic setting.  They are asked by “Jenny,” a sophomore at whatever university is hosting the event, to “say what makes America the greatest country in the world.” 

After the other two panelists respond with slogans—“diversity and opportunity” and “freedom and freedom, so let’s keep it that way”—McEvoy responds, “The New York Jets.”  Even a Jets fan like Curmie laughed at the absurdity of that one.  (At least back when that show was filmed, the Jets didn’t completely suck, which they have for most of Curmie’s adult life.) After another evasion, the camera cuts to a woman near the back of the auditorium.  We don’t know who she is yet, but it’s MacKenzie McHale, McEvoy’s ex-girlfriend and soon to be his new executive producer.  She holds up a sign that says, “It’s not.”  She then flips the sign over and writes something else: “But it can be.”

There are 11 seconds of silence, at least in terms of diegetic sound.  There’s another roundabout response, and the moderator demands “a human moment.”  The camera cuts back to McHale, holding the “It’s not” sign.  A moment later, McEvoy blurts out, “It’s not the greatest country in the world, professor.  That’s my answer.”  The follow-up goes on for three minutes.  You can check out the link above or read the transcript, but there are two things Curmie wants to highlight.  There’s the litany of rankings, addressed to “sorority girl”:

... there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re seventh in literacy, twenty-seventh in math, twenty-second in science, forty-ninth in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number four in labor force, and number four in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies.

There are a couple of exaggerations in there, but no more than in the average political speech.  More importantly, this isn’t an indictment of America, simply a warning about allowing patriotism to morph into jingoism and what might now be called hallucinatory rhetoric.  

The other thing to point out is that the sign is both an insistence on truth and a symbol of hope.  “But it can be” is a rallying cry, a call to arms (in the metaphorical sense, at least).  

At the risk of sounding like a Monty Python routine, Curmie adds a third point: in the opening moments of a left-leaning series that aired during the Obama administration, the central character yearns for the days when “We sure used to be” the greatest country in the world.  True, the litany of attributes—“We waged wars on poverty, not poor people,” for example—bespeaks a liberal mindset.  But the desire to return to the glories of the past sure sounds a lot like a desire to “Make America Great Again.”

How sadly ironic, then, that the slogan is most associated with an octogenarian toddler with no impulse control, a pathological inability to accept responsibility for his own actions, and a track record that includes stealing from a charity, sexual assault, and wholesale financial shenanigans ranging from garden variety grift to de facto selling pardons to people who really are “the worst of the worst.”  All the things that any normal President from either party would have orchestrated for the country’s 250th anniversary celebration are gone, replaced by ultra-partisan posturing and a level of ego-centrism that would make Narcissus himself blush. 

Plus, of course, there’s the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, the paving over of the Rose Garden, the vulgar and frankly embarrassing UFC extravaganza that destroyed even more of the White House lawn, the totally botched reflecting pool project, that ridiculous “state fair” farce… Curmie would go on, but he’s trying to keep this essay shorter than the Mahābhārata.

None of what Curmie is discussing here comes under the heading of actual policy decisions.  Curmie has disagreed with virtually everything this POTUS has done, but he had plenty of reservations about the policies of a lot of 47’s predecessors, too.  Curmie grants, however, that all of those guys were at least trying to do the best thing for the country, however much he would have preferred a different approach.  Not so, Dear Leader.  He has never cared about anyone or anything but himself and perhaps a small circle of sycophantic admirers or fellow billionaire hucksters.  If saying any of this makes Curmie “deranged,” then so fucking be it. 

Curmie is angry that a celebration he’d been looking forward to—let’s face it, I’m not going to be around for #300—has been derailed by the hubristic and incompetent machinations of the worst President in the history of the country.  Yes, angry.  Curmie is not a nationalist, but he does think he qualifies as a patriot.  Having spent at least three months in each of three other countries, he’s still going to consider himself lucky to be from the US.  That would be, of course the real US, the one that countless World Cup fans have encountered to their amazement: the place where foreigners are welcomed by the overwhelming majority of the locals; where neighbors help each other out; where the question isn’t whether to give to charities, but to which ones. 

This is not the America inhabited by Donald Trump or Stephen Miller or Mike Johnson.  But it’s where most of us live, irrespective of where (or if) we worship, who our favorite basketball team is, or even who we voted for last time out.  There are those who want to take that America away from us, and they think they have defeated us, or soon will.  Curmie responds (with a tip of the hat to Johnny Carson): Not so fast, Semiquincentennial-Breath.  We are not our government.  The real America is out there, embodied in people like Major Jason Watson, like Leen Hijaz, like the citizens of Curmie’s much-beloved former hometown of Lawrence, Kansas, whose embrace of the Algerian World Cup team using their city as a home base made international headlines.

But that takes us to another point.  Curmie is proud of Lawrence, not because of the notoriety, but because they, my former neighbors, did something right.  Curmie was legitimately sad that Algerian team lost their elimination round game on the west coast Thursday night.  He may not be in Lawrence anymore, but Les Fennecs were his team, too (after the US). 

That notion of pride is intriguing, however.  Another video clip came across Curmie’s path this week.  It was of the late, great, George Carlin talking about, among other things, his problem with the slogan “proud to be an American.”  He suggests that “pride should be reserved for something you achieve or attain on your own, not something that happens by accident of birth…. You wouldn’t say I’m proud to be 5’11”.  I’m proud to have a predisposition for colon cancer…. If you’re happy with it, that’s fine: put that on your car.”

Speaking of pride: the first Pride events happened in the early 1970s, but Curmie wasn’t aware of them, or especially of their designation as “Pride” until later: after, in fact, the release of the Tom Robinson Band’s “Power in the Darkness” LP, which featured a song called “Sing If You’re Glad to Be Gay.”  Chances are, you’ve never heard it, Gentle Reader, because the TRB never had much influence west of the Atlantic; Curmie was working on his Master’s in England when the song came out in 1978.  Whether the TRB consciously rejected the notion of “pride,” or whether they’d never heard it (as Curmie hadn’t at the time), the result was to center on being “glad” or “happy” rather than “proud” of one’s sexual orientation, which of course is another of those accidents of birth that Carlin was talking about.

Pride in one’s own accomplishments is perfectly reasonable, of course, at least in moderation.  That extends, in Curmie’s world, to pride in the achievements of his former students, because in some small way he helped prepare them for that success.  And there is the crux.  George Carlin notwithstanding, pride in the good things that one’s nation has done makes some sense.  (So too, of course, is embarrassment at its transgressions.)  Indeed, taking pride in literally anyone’s honest attainments makes some sense; we’re all fellow travelers here, after all.  But that emotion is usually only a variation on happiness.  Curmie is happy the Knicks won the NBA title this year, but he’s not proud of them except to the extent that they manifested admirable qualities along the way: teamwork, refusal to give up, etc.  A player who simply has a good jump shot: cause for celebration, but not for pride.

For pride to truly manifest, however, there needs to be a personal connection.  Curmie is proud of the two former students who are off to grad school in the fall, but their perhaps equally qualified friends who never took my classes, not so much.  It would be nice to actually be proud to be an American.  The solution is obvious, and it isn’t capitulation.  We, all of us, need to become personally invested in creating a nation worthy of our pride.  That will take resolve, work, perhaps even sacrifice.  But we must, we can, we will, do this.  Roll up your sleeves, Gentle Reader.  We’ve got work to do.

Contemplating Trump v. Barbara

 

This was intended to be the first of a handful of topics for Curmie to discuss with a paragraph or two devoted to each story.  It kinda took on a life of its own: enough to be a stand-alone piece.  Curmie will (or perhaps won’t) write about those other issues in due course.  Anyway…

The SCOTUS ruling on birthright citizenship was both welcome and disturbing.  It is troubling that the court even looked at Dear Leader’s strained argument; that the decision was less than unanimous is unconscionable.  Of course, Alito and Thomas are nothing if not corrupt partisan hacks; Curmie expected better from Gorsuch, though.  (Kavanaugh’s partial dissent is at least pretty much coherent even if Curmie disagrees with his conclusions; that’s the highest praise Curmie has ever given Kavanaugh, btw.)  The 14th Amendment is strikingly clear: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” 

The pseudo-Christian right offers objections: that somehow babies born to mothers in the country temporarily or illegally are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US, and that the world has changed since 1868.  The first argument is patently absurd (the fact that Folarin Balogun, the leading US goal-scorer in this year’s World Cup, was born to such a “temporary” resident makes Curmie smirk a little).  The second claim is both self-evident and irrelevant to the Trump v. Barbara judgment.  Well, there’s a third argument that we’ll get to in a moment. 

We’ll leave aside Trump’s own rhetoric, both the nationalist/racist stuff about protecting American values and the outright lies about being the only country in the world to have birthright citizenship, and move on to the real issues.

The 14th Amendment, written in the wake of the horrific Dred Scott decision, was intended primarily to ensure the rights of newly-freed slaves and their descendants.  The “subject to the jurisdiction” business was clarified in US v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898.  Basing their decision largely on English common law, the court declared the only exceptions to be “children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory,” and “Indians not taxed.”  In the absence of a renunciation of American citizenship or the declaration of loyalty to some other nation, everyone else born in the US is a citizen thereof.  It’s time for Curmie to repeat that he’s not a lawyer, but all this seems pretty straightforward, and indeed every subsequent case has been decided on similar grounds.

To be fair, the left’s sniping that Marco Rubio and three of Trump’s children would be denied citizenship by Trump’s policy is a cheap shot.  Executive Order 14160 specifically states that “Nothing in this order shall be construed to affect the entitlement of other individuals, including children of lawful permanent residents, to obtain documentation of their United States citizenship.”  Granted, too, it’s certainly possible for one SCOTUS to overturn the ruling of an earlier version.  US v. Ark is itself a good example.  In more recent times, Brown v. Topeka overturned Plessy v. Ferguson; the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade.  So it’s possible for this SCOTUS to reverse some or all of the US v. Ark findings.  But the Constitution itself cannot be overturned by SCOTUS, only by amendment or a Constitutional Convention. 

It’s interesting, too, that opponents of birthright citizenship want to quibble over a phrase in the 14th Amendment, but a lot of those same people pretend that a much stronger case about the 2nd doesn’t exist.  Curmie thinks the right to bears arms, as described in that amendment, seems to exist primarily to support “a well-regulated militia.”  There’s obviously room for debate here, and there’s no conceivable way the fledgling government of the late 18th century would have attempted to take guns away from hunters or westward explorers and settlers.  But there’s a lot stronger constitutional authority for some form of gun control than for denying birthright citizenship.  (Curmie also notes here, as he’s done before, that personal ownership of some weapons is indeed illegal.  We’re not talking about drawing a line that’s never existed; it’s about possibly moving one that’s already there.)

Considerations of the 2nd Amendment and the debate over gun control also lead us inexorably to the argument that… wait for it… times have changed.  Weaponry is a lot different now than in was in the late 18th century.  The revolver as we now think of it wasn’t invented until 45 years after the Bill of Rights was ratified.  The enclosed cartridge didn’t come along for another 18 years (a little longer than that for an American-made version).  Even in all those Old West movies set in the late 19th century, where the good guy and the bad guy both carried a pair of six-shooters, you get 12 shots and then have to re-load, one bullet at a time.  That’s a far cry from what a currently completely legal semi-automatic rifle can do today.  “Things have changed” arguments are either legitimate or they’re not.  Both sides want to be able to use that argument themselves but deny it to the opposition.

As is perhaps inevitable, the concept of “original intent” appears in this debate.  It is certainly true that the 14th Amendment was in many ways a rebuttal to Dred Scott, but, Justice Thomas’s argument to the contrary notwithstanding, it was not only that, and Supreme Courts have ruled accordingly on several occasions over the last century and a half.  One of the more interesting, not to be confused with intelligent, arguments against the SCOTUS decision comes from Texas Racist-in-Chief Governor Greg Abbott.  He calls the 6-3 decision “a missed opportunity,” “a powerful magnet for illegal immigration,” “an absurdity that was never contemplated by our Constitution nor agreed to by the American people.” 

He’s even partially correct: the idea that children born to people in the country illegally should be granted citizenship would indeed have been alien to the framers of the Constitution or the 14th Amendment.  That’s because the concept of someone being in the country illegally didn’t exist.  It wasn’t until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that there was anything approaching closed national borders.  That’s 14 years after the ratification of the 14th Amendment.

The other part of Abbott’s plaint, that unrestricted birthright citizenship encourages illegal immigration, is not without its merits.  “Anchor babies” do exist; a little over a quarter of a million babies are born each year to parents in the country illegally.  Curmie completely understands the impulse to end the current practice.  But the point is this: that’s irrelevant to the SCOTUS decision.  It is not the job of the Supreme Court to opt for what they consider to be the “best” option, but to consider only the constitutionality of a law or an action.  Thus, Curmie can be a supporter of abortion rights and still think Roe v. Wade was a bad decision.  There are plenty of “the ends justify the means” folks out there.  Most politicians on either side of the aisle fit that paradigm.  Curmie does not.

It may indeed be the case that the country would be better off if Trump’s Executive Order were allowed to stand.  What matters is that the Constitution won’t allow it.  Governor Abbott and his ideological kinfolk are free to attempt to amend the Constitution; the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th, after all.  Yes, that will take time and effort; just ask the proponents of the Equal Rights Amendment, which may or may not be the 28th Amendment. 

But the avenue is there, and it seems more reasonable than allowing a mentally incompetent jackass who happens to be President to ignore what the Constitution says and unilaterally decide the matter based on nothing but his own xenophobia.  Of course, being a narcissistic idiot, Dear Leader is now calling on Congress to pass a law eliminating birthright citizenship.  Uh, Donny Boy, it would still be unconstitutional if Congress did do so.  But wasting time and money on a frivolous and arguably racist crusade sure does play to the base, and it’s a lot easier than actually governing.

La la, how the life goes on.

A Tale of Three Knicks Fans

 

OG Anunoby with the tip-in that changed everything.

At the age at which one develops a lifelong relationship with a sports team, generally around age 8 or 10, Curmie lived about an hour and a half north of New York City (the local community theatre was called “90 Miles Off Broadway”), so for six decades or so his teams have been the Mets, Jets, Knicks, and Rangers.  The big wins, alas, have been rather rare.  In the last 53 years, those teams have combined for one World Series championship, one Stanley Cup, no Super Bowl appearances (let alone titles), and now, finally,  one NBA title.  Three titles in 212 chances… <sigh>.  But hey, that’s better than 2 for 211.

Who is the most famous Knicks fan?  Well, Spike Lee is probably the most famous for being a Knicks fan.  The most famous people who are also Knicks fans are Donald Trump, who grew up in Queens, and Taylor Swift, who became a Knicks fan in the early 2010s through a friendship with Amar’e Stoudemire, the Knicks’ star power forward (and one of Curmie’s favorite players) at the time.  Curmie has no reason to believe that either of them are anything but true Knicks fans.  (Things may get a little complicated for Swift, as Travis Kelce is a Cavs fan... but Curmie has been married to a Cavs fan for 44 years, so it can be done!)  The sportscaster/talking head who most wears his Knicks fandom on his sleeve is ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith.  It’s Smith, Trump, and Curmie himself who are the title characters of this piece, although it’s only fair to mention Lee and especially Swift for their celebrations after that crazy Game 4.

Curmie has seen hundreds of Knicks games on TV, but he’s never been inside Madison Square Garden.  That doesn’t make him less of a fan, any more than the thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers who, to quote Mayor Zohran Mamdani, “have watched… on televisions in the windows of electronics stores, and from projectors balanced on fire escapes,… alone in [their] apartments,… [or] shoulder to shoulder in bars where the signal flickers.” 

This is not to say that the Mariska Hartigays, Timothée Chalamets, and Ben Stillers of the world aren’t true fans.  But the folks who don’t have the resources to plonk down a few thousand dollars to watch a single game live instead of on TV, the ones who had to work that night because they’ve got a family to feed, the ones who were jumping up and down and screaming in the streets blocks or even miles from MSG, or in Kennedy airport, or in watering holes throughout the metropolitan area: these people aren’t necessarily more loyal, but it’s a good bet this victory meant more to them because they needed it more.

It’s definitely fair to say that it’s a lot more fun to watch your team win than to see them lose.  Repeatedly.  Comprehensively.  Curmie confesses that he didn’t watch the end of Game 4.  He would have if either team could have clinched, or if had been a close game at the time, but the worst that could happen from his perspective was a 2-2 series tie.  That looked pretty likely with the Spurs up 27 when Curmie called it a night, having watched his team find a way to lose both games and series momentum far too many times.  Curmie had seen this movie before, or at least thought he had.

Yes, he remembers Willis Reed’s entrance into MSG in Game 7 of the 1970 championship game, and Walt Frazier’s 36 points and 19 assists in that game.  He remembers Allen Houston’s runner from the lane to beat Miami in 1999.  But he also remembers Charles Smith not getting a foul call (he was fouled, dammit!) in 1993, and Reggie Miller scoring 8 points against us in less than 9 seconds in 1995.  And those were the not-awful Knicks teams.  There were plenty of really bad ones; they’ve lost about 100 more games than they’ve won since ’73.

After that miraculous comeback in Game 4, though, Curmie wasn’t going to miss any of Game 5.  With the Knicks down 16 in the first half, seemingly unable to throw the ball in the ocean from the shore, he turned to Beloved Spouse and said something like “If this team hadn’t come back from more than this several times just in the playoffs, I’d turn the game off.  But we’re going to see what happens.”  The Knicks, in fact, had trailed by double digits in every game in the finals, and indeed finished the series having spent more time down by ten or more than leading by any margin.  What happened, of course, was that the Knicks got yet another comeback victory, thereby clinching the championship, four games to one.

So Curmie was really happy.  He’d remained a loyal supporter, but perhaps wasn’t as enthusiastic as he might have been in the past.  Guys named Jalen Brunson and OG Anunoby and a few of their friends cured that.  He’ll watch more closely next year.

But let’s move on to the other two title characters, Stephen A. Smith and Donald Trump, linked together by their comments about each other.  When word got out that Trump intended to attend Game 3, Smith went off, saying “If it causes the New York Knicks to lose tonight, I’m blaming him.  I’m blaming the President of the United States.  I’mma stay on that.  And damn it, I hope the G.O.P. lose votes because of it if we lose tonight.”  There’s more, but you get the idea, Gentle Reader.  And… um… wow.

OK, so Curmie once described SAS as an “insufferable blowhard,” and he’s not seen anything of late to alter that impression.  But did ol’ Stephen A have a point?  Well, maybe.  Sort of.  It is certainly true that Trump’s appearance disrupted the dynamic.  Fans had to go through TSA-like security and arrive much earlier than necessary (possibly having to take time off of work to do so).  It’s a reasonable surmise that they were generally in foul rather than celebratory humor when they finally entered MSG. 

Local bars, restaurants, etc., that were counting on increased customer traffic got none.  Even people who couldn’t care less about the game were inconvenienced by cordoning off a “several block radius” around the Garden.  That would certainly include Penn Station, and depending on the precise meaning of “several,” perhaps a chunk of the theatre district.  Plus, of course, it is simply a statement of fact that Dear Leader does whatever he can to make literally everything about himself, even if he ends up being heartily booed in the process.  Was Trump’s attendance “selfish [and] narcissistic,” as Smith said in the lead-up to the game.  Well, sure, but when has DJT ever been otherwise?  It’s important to note that Smith goes out of his way to say he’s being apolitical and concerned more about traffic congestion and similar issues.  Could be…

Did Trump’s presence change the feel of Game 3 and ultimately carry over into Game 4?  Marginally, yes.  Did he cause the Knicks to lose?  Let’s just say that Curmie hopes that SAS was being facetious, and it does appear that way in his post-game comments.  

DJT actually wasn’t lying about being a Knicks fan.  Did he go to Game 3 because he could?  Sure, but so did a host of celebs whose presence seems not to have bothered much of anyone.  And he was apparently invited by Knicks owner James Dolan.  Did he then proceed to fall asleep at the game?  The video evidence isn’t conclusive, but it does suggest as much.  Dolan says otherwise, but Curmie notes that the video suggests that Dolan seems to be nodding off, too, so his claims of talking to Trump throughout the game are at best open for debate.  And anyone who says that Dear Leader is “a great guy” is not someone Curmie is going to believe uncritically.

Of course, Trump was asked about Smith’s comments and responded by saying, “I think he’s a nice guy, but you need a certain aptitude to run for President [Smith is apparently contemplating a run].  You need a high IQ; I’m not sure that Stephen has that.  I don’t think he does, actually.”  There is, to be sure, no little irony in the fact that it’s Donald Trump making that allegation.

The headlines proclaimed that Smith subsequently “doubled down” on blaming Trump for the Game 3 loss, but whereas he seemed in earnest before the game, the context of his remarks after the loss suggests that it was all in fun.  Curmie knows something of that phenomenon.  In the 20 years he taught at his most recent university, he directed a Mainstage production at some point in the academic year 17 times; there were no named storms in the area any of those years.  He dramaturged once; there was a tropical storm.  He sat out completely twice: Hurricanes Rita and Ike.  Curmie didn’t claim to control the weather, but he made it clear he wasn’t denying it, either.  Anyone who really thinks all this was anything but coincidence is too stupid to be reading this blog, but it was a bit of fun for Curmie and his friends, colleagues, and students.

So, Trump is still a narcissist and Smith is still a blowhard, but perhaps not quite as bad as usual.  Knicks fandom is a Big Tent.  But if we have to keep these two, we damned well better be able to claim Tay-Tay and Mariska.

The Problem with Political Contributions

Curmie did something last week that seems to have been sort of stupid: he contributed some money to a couple of charities and a couple of political candidates.

All four recipients texted Curmie shortly after receiving the funds.  Three of the four, including both politicians, coupled their thanks with a plea for more money.  Yes, in the same text.  Those of you who know Curmie personally will understand that these solicitations make it less rather than more likely that he will make further contributions, at least in the short term.  Curmie already makes it a practice to ignore calls from places identified only as “non-profit.” 

The two politicians in question are Gina Hinojosa and James Talarico who, respectively, are running for Governor and Senator in Texas.  Curmie doesn’t usually send money to political campaigns, but these two are different in two or three ways.  First and most importantly, Curmie really likes these two.  He supports them not merely because they’re running against loathsome opposition, but because he actually likes their priorities.  Secondly, they’ve actually got a chance to win.  Even in Texas, GOP incompetence and corruption are wearing thin. 

Finally, their opponents are as heinous as it’s possible to be without being part of the Trump administration; this is especially true after Ken Paxton—you know, Gentle Reader, the guy impeached by his own party for bribery and misuse of public funds (before getting let off the hook by the Senate), the guy who worked out a deal for a rich SOB who admitted to repeatedly raping a young boy… yeah, that guy—won the GOP nomination for Senate over incumbent John Cornyn, who is merely a rather dim-witted party hack rather than being outright evil.

The problem is that Curmie has been inundated with texts—he’s lost count overall, but he’s willing to bet he’s sent “stop” to “unsubscribe” (he never subscribed, of course) more times in the last week than the total number of texts he’d sent for the entire calendar year.  Yes, literally.  (To be fair, Curmie doesn’t text that often.)  There are three varieties of suppliants.  First, there are the candidates themselves.  It doesn’t matter that you’re asking “humbly”; the inevitable inference is that you’re a lot more interested in Curmie’s financial contribution than in his support per se.  And it makes you look desperate.  So do repeated requests from the same campaign even after the voter had opted out of receiving more texts.

Then there are the appeals from the state and federal Democratic Party bureaucracy and one from the Congressional Black Caucus (Curmie might be getting the exact title wrong).  Curmie gets it; if he’s supporting both Hinojosa and Talarico, he would probably rather see the Dems rather than the GOP in power, and it’s not too much of an over-simplification to suggest that greater representation by black voters would, in general, help the Democrats.  But there’s a reason he thinks of himself more as an anti-Republican than a Democrat.  “We’re awful, be we’re not as corrupt, mendacious, or fascistic as those guys” isn’t a rallying cry that a lot of people are going to get behind.   

Finally, though, there are the appeals from candidates in other states.  When Curmie started writing this piece, he’d received three such texts.  It’s now ten: two for Governor, four for Senate, four for House.  There will, no doubt, be more.  Here’s the thing: Curmie considers it unethical to interfere in an election in which he has no franchise.  He might prefer Labour to the Tories in the UK, but he’s not going to send them money.  And he’s not going to write a check (metaphorically, of course, Curmie isn’t that old) to someone in New York or South Carolina or wherever.

Yeah, yeah, everybody does it, and the billionaires sure do get generous when it comes to buying supporting lackeys minions candidates.  That doesn’t make it reasonable, though… or rather it doesn’t seem so to Curmie.  If you want to send a contribution to Mark Kelly or Jon Ossoff or whoever, go for it, Gentle Reader, and Curmie won’t think less of you for doing so.  It’s certainly true that one of these races could conceivably tip the balance of power in one of the houses of Congress, and who gets control will indeed affect us all.  But Curmie will refrain.  If he makes any more political contributions this season, they’ll be to Talarico, Hinojosa, or maybe someone running for the Texas legislature from his district.

More problematically, Curmie is now less likely to participate in the electoral process in this way.  If sending a candidate a contribution opens a donor up to what amounts to harassment from every other campaign for someone with the same general political perspective, then a lot of folks, Curmie included, will think twice before making that same mistake again.  And that tilts the scales even more towards the billionaires and their PACs. 

<Sigh.>

Streisand Effect Redux: Clayton (NC) High School

Leen Hijaz giving her speech

Last week, Curmie wrote about Jonas Hole, who gave the salutatorian address at his graduation ceremony at D’Iberville High School in Biloxi despite being misgendered by his principal.  This time, the student graduation speaker to make national headlines is Leen Hijaz, who wasn’t allowed to finish her valedictory speech at Clayton (NC) High School, outside Raleigh. 

Well, that’s not quite accurate.  First off, it was technically a “welcome speech” as opposed to a valedictory address per se.  Curmie isn’t sure why that matters, but perhaps it does.  Secondly, it appears that she was able to finish the part of her remarks that had been pre-approved by the administration.  It was only the add-on at the end that caused controversy.  You will no doubt be shocked to learn, Gentle Reader, that Ms. Hijaz is not the first-ever adolescent to disobey the strictures of authority. 

Anyway, school principal Melissa Moore Hubbard stomps onto the stage and pushes Hijaz away from the podium, allegedly threatening not merely to withhold her diploma, but to deny her graduation.  And what heinous invocation of Satan himself did Hijaz utter?  Well, this:

Before I leave the stage, there is one more thing I have to say.  Every single person here has a voice, and we are privileged to have the freedom to use it when so many people around the world are struggling and suffering to be heard.  Whether it’s the millions suffering in Palestine, Sudan, Congo, Afghanistan and so many other countries around the world, or the families being torn apart by ICE, these are not distant issues. They are happening right now as I speak. My point is, we’re not given a voice to stay silent.

(She does repeat a couple of phrases; she explained in a TikTok post the next day that the principal had been yelling at her, causing her to “stutter.”)

You will note, Gentle Reader, that her words were a description of reality.  Are the young adults of the near future going to face a world in which the crises she describes are all too present?  Yes.  Are we, as Americans, however much we might feel constrained by this or that censorial asshat, “privileged” in terms of financial stability, educational opportunities, and constitutional guarantees of free expression, when compared to the inhabitants of much of the rest of the world?  Yes.  Is it appropriate for those with the ability to use their voices for the sake of the common good for them to do so?  Yes.  Are there millions of people in those specified locations (and many others) who are “struggling and suffering”?  Yes.  Are there families being torn apart by ICE?  Yes.

Hijaz argues that “Nothing [she] said was political; it was pure awareness.”  Curmie agrees.  There is no condemnation of Israel for events in Palestine, no insistence that the US intervene to stop the Ebola outbreak in Congo, and so on.  Yes, the line about ICE comes rather close to a comment on that agency’s cowardice, intentional cruelty, and perfidious over-reach, but those descriptors are Curmie’s, not hers.  She may (likely does) agree with Curmie, but all she said was an objective truth.

For her deviation from what we suspect was the pabulum of the approved script, she was shunned by the powers-that-be, or at least so she claims.  The superintendent and several other bigwigs put their hands in their pockets rather than shake her hand when the apparently-not-actual-diplomas were distributed.  Her friend who gave her a hug onstage was similarly told that her diploma would be withheld.  As if denying the high school valedictorian (who graduated a year early, by the way) a piece of paper matters in the least, right?  

Curmie is pretty sure he hasn’t seen his high school diploma in decades, although it might be in one of those boxes he salvaged in 2022 after selling what had been his father’s house.  It’s the transcript that matters, and we’re talking about a valedictorian here; she’s planning to attend the University of North Carolina, and it’s a pretty fair bet she’ll get her degree.  (The school now says she did get her diploma; we trust her friend did, too.)

What’s on display here is the puerile petulance of an all-too-prevalent strain of high school administrators: those whose self-importance completely outshadows any actual competence they might once have had.  Even threatening to withhold a diploma is an act of petulance, a last gasp of self-entitled relevance, and, as someone pointed out on Reddit, an excellent way of turning a minor incident into embarrassing headlines on a national scale.  And that sure did seem like a lot of applause from the audience when Hijaz went off-script.  Maybe reading the room would be a good thing. 

OK.  Let’s grant that deviating from the approved script broke the rules, but in this case, even though it was intentional, was the equivalent of going 57 in a 45 when you’re the only one on the road, not of stealing the car.  Talk to her privately after the event, express displeasure, and move on.  But something Hijaz said on TikTok really stood out: “Obviously, if I said what I was going to say at the end of my speech, if I submitted it to the school, they would have disapproved it immediately, because of how racist they are.”  The first part of that sentence is rather predictable.  Whether it’s true, Curmie can’t say, but young Leen seems a bright lass, and she knows the environment better than we do. 

But attributing Hubbard’s over-reaction to racism seems a bit much.  Curmie has no doubt that Hijaz faced actual racism at multiple points in her academic life.  When she references “all of the stuff that I personally have experienced as a Muslim Arab girl going to school here in Johnston County,” Curmie gets it.  But whether this particular incident in linked to racism is another matter.  As Curmie has said repeatedly for a very long time, all racism is stupid, bur not all stupidity is racist. 

Curmie suspects that if Suzy Creamcheese (bonus points if you catch the Frank Zappa reference, Gentle Reader) had the audacity to stray from the censored pre-approved script to actually say something in a graduation speech, Hubbard’s reaction would have been the same.  It may also be worth noting that whereas Hijaz claims she lives in “a very white area,” US News and World Report lists the minority population at 61%, so there may be some questions of perception here.  (To be fair, she also says “we do have a lot of diversity, still.”)  It’s also important that Hijaz’s comments about racism come after the graduation ceremony.  They are controversial in and of themselves; those tacked on to the end of her speech were not.  You know what was problematic?  The three (Christian) prayers at a public school event.

What Hijaz definitely did not do was to “make it all about [her]self,” as she claims Hubbard accused her of doing.  There are two variations on the theme of irony at play here.  One is the radical misinterpretation of an attempt to represent in some small way the millions of people who, through no fault of their own, are de facto silenced by their circumstances: the exact opposite of her intentions.  The other, of course, is censoring comments about how people ought to be free of censorship.  <Sigh.>

Finally, of course, there’s the Streisand Effect.  As suggested above, the Reddit post about the incident shows two things: overwhelming support for Hijaz rather than Hubbard, and frequent mentions of the simple fact that no one outside the immediate audience would have paid the slightest attention were it not for the attempt to silence a student, a valedictorian, at her own graduation.  Leen Hijaz’s actions are not above reproach, but she’s unquestionably the more sympathetic figure in this episode.  Forward-Bank8412’s comment on Reddit reads, “Streisand this shit, internet!!”  Curmie is just doing his part…

4 ½ Updates

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

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

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

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

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

It’s half an update, in other words.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Jonas Hole's Salutatory Address

Jonas Hole in his Junior ROTC uniform

Three of Curmie’s last four blog posts touched on issues related to the trans community—what can be taught in university classrooms, the fact that a trans actor was cast in a major motion picture, and that a piece of instrumental music honors a trans activist from decades ago.  The fourth essay was about graduation ceremonies.  And now… <drum roll>… both topics at once.  Curmie promises he’ll find a different kind of topic soon.

Actually, the graduation speech by Jonas Hole, the salutatorian at D’Iberville High School in Biloxi, isn’t the whole story, although it’s how Curmie found out about the case.  Jonas, who identifies as transmasculine, was introduced by the school’s principal, Cheryl Broadus.  Broadus used Jonas’s deadname and described him as an “outstanding young lady.”  Unsurprisingly, Broadus has not responded to multiple requests for comment. 

What is particularly disturbing here is that this is obviously an attempt, not merely to be a bigoted asshole, but to strut about it.  It would certainly be easy enough to avoid gendered descriptions: “Our next speaker is the class salutatorian, who has accomplished a great deal both in the classroom and elsewhere.  Our records show the name as Makayla Hole, but many of you will no doubt recognize this outstanding young scholar as Jonas Hole.” 

See how easy that was?  It notes the reality that students—and that who this event ought to be all about, after all—will know this person as Jonas, without either endorsing or condemning the name change.  Reality is a thing, after all.  Curmie would have been more affirmative, but no one asked him, and it’s only fair to admit that Broadus has to deal with what might reasonably be assumed to be a less than entirely liberal community, and alienating those folks might be contra-indicated.  

She (Curmie uses the feminine pronoun because that’s how she presents herself; he hasn’t checked her genitalia) didn’t have to join with the neanderthals, however, and in Curmie’s mind that makes her unfit for her position, which above all else ought to be to prioritize respect for her students.

The speech itself was recorded by a mom in the audience who posted it as a reel on Facebook.  It’s not exactly the highest fidelity in history, and there’s more than a little background noise, but it’s what we’ve got, and it isn’t horrible.  Jonas differs from the Kinks’ Lola, who walks like a woman and talks like a man.  Jonas talks like a woman; whether he walks like a man isn’t clear from the video, but he certainly looks like one (see the photo above).

The speech is a little rushed.  Whether this is a function of nerves (reasonable enough under the circumstances) or perhaps a time limit isn’t clear.  What is absolutely evident, however, is that there’s actual content here.  Enjoy it while you can, Gentle Reader, as election season is heating up, and we’re not likely to hear much of anything in our news feeds but slogans and misrepresentations for the next few months.

The video doesn’t show the very opening of the speech, but according to the article in Mississippi Today linked above he “first introduced himself with his former name, then added, ‘a lot of you know me as Jonas.’”  Nice little knife twist, that.  The speech starts with the recollection of “trying to blend in” and “wanting people to like me” as a freshman. Curmie doesn’t remember a lot about that time in his life, but he does remember that.  “Whether you know it or not, you probably did, too,” says Hole.  Yep.  And it didn’t work for Curmie, either.  (Different circumstances; same phenomenon.)

After a couple of shoutouts, we get to the real stuff:

Throughout high school, I eventually gathered the courage to advocate self-expression for myself and others.  Despite my own self-acceptance, others judged me without understanding me.  I became my labels, and it felt as if my achievements, hardships, personality, all became irrelevant for the sole fact that I present myself differently. 

However, I hold no grudge against those who were so quick to criticize me….  As I’ve matured to accept myself for who I am, I want to encourage all of you to do the same. Express yourself as individuals and resist the temptation to just be a follower. We as a community can be so much stronger by living our lives truthfully and without fear of what someone else may or may not think.  

(Note: the quote in The Advocate renders that last word as “be.”  It’s unclear in the recording; both words work in context.)

He even slipped in a Bible verse, Romans 15:7 (NIL) “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.”  Touché, kid!

OK, yeah, the whole thing was a little self-centered, and the homily wasn’t actually the most original advice Curmie has ever heard.  That said, the speech was polite and gracious, and Hole is in an ideal position to connect his own lived history with wider issues.  It’s not the “mic drop” that some LGBTQ+ advocates claim it is, but it’s honest and articulate: not bad for a three-and-a-half-minute speech by a teenager.

Unfortunately, misgendering Jonas at graduation appears to be the tip of the iceberg.  He was not only deadnamed in a post on the school’s Facebook page, but there is at least speculation that his image was digitally altered to make him appear more feminine.  The incipient mustache on Jonas’s upper lip is certainly more evident in the photo you see at the top of the page than in the school’s photo, but that wasn’t necessarily intentional.  And Curmie does admit to being a little confused by the suggestion that Jonas was “outed” by that post—surely virtually everyone knew the story. 

Erasure, of course, is a different thing.  Curmie doesn’t understand the phenomenon as viscerally as he would if he himself were trans, but he has seen the expression on the faces of trans friends and family who were deadnamed by people who knew better. 

Perhaps even more significantly, a half dozen students at the school found out their pictures had been excised from the yearbook only when the books were distributed.  Is that “dehumanizing,” as Jensen Luke Matar, the director of the statewide Transgender Resources, Advocacy, Networking and Services (TRANS) Program, would have it?  Perhaps not, but cruelty and stupidity are in a death struggle to be the defining characteristic of that little ploy.  In a just universe, whoever made that decision would be pilloried (literally).

The transition from adolescence to post-adolescence isn’t easy for anyone, let alone someone whose gender identity isn’t what some people think is “normal.”  Throw in the end of high school, where you got to see your friends every day, and things get tougher still.  Now you’re a lot more on your own than you’ve ever been.  That’s great in some ways, but it’s also damned scary.  And now some so-called educator wants to deny your reality.  Bloody fucking hell.