Biden Is Feeling the Heat over Afghanistan. And He Should Be.

Not the photo any of us wanted to see.
But it was pretty predictable.

First off, the situation in Afghanistan is a debacle of enormous magnitude.  Those who would excuse the incompetence of the decision-makers by saying that the withdrawal was overdue are simultaneously correct and disingenuous.  The US’s presence in Afghanistan had been a money pit for decades, and the twin evils of mission creep and presumed allies who were the perfect combination of fecklessness and corruption long since ensured that there would be no “successful” outcome to the mission. 

But it wasn’t the fact of the retreat or even its timing that’s at issue: it’s the utter lack of planning, the carelessness with respect to the lives of non-military personnel (both American and Afghani), and the stench of mendacity emanating from every official source from the President on down that makes the right wing outraged.  Many critics, of course, blather about how stupid we all were to elect Joe Biden.  Curmie would agree, except for one thing: the alternative was Donald Trump.

Curmie has noted earlier that “Joe Biden won the election not by being a strong leader, an intellectual, or even a fundamentally honest candidate: he’s none of those things. His entire candidacy was based on a single issue: he was Not Trump.”  Curmie voted for him on that basis, and would do so again, given the only other plausible choice.  Curmie has voted against Trump twice, both times “for” a candidate he despised a little less than he did the venal buffoon whose disastrous presidency we recently endured.  (Side note: Curmie would have supported the 1988 version of Joe Biden, just as he might well have supported the 2000 version of John McCain.  But timing matters.)

Did Curmie suspect that Biden would show less managerial acumen than the average freshman who’s assistant stage managed a production Curmie directed?  Let’s just say it wasn’t a surprise.  Right wing talking heads now bluster about how we should have known that Biden would sell out our allies and compromise American assets (both personnel and equipment), allowing them to fall into the hands of unfriendlies if not outright enemies.  These people casually forget, of course, that Biden’s predecessor had already done precisely the same thing with respect to Syria and the Kurds.

So we’re left with a choice between someone who might do something colossally stupid in central or western Asia and someone who had already done so.  To be fair, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was handled with even less finesse than the departure from Syria.  On the other hand, there’s a case to be made that the betrayal of allies was even worse in ethical terms in the latter case.  In both instances, the defense of the action was that the action had to be taken because continued presence could not be justified. In both cases, this argument was demonstrably true… and demonstrably insufficient.

The one difference other than minor matters of scale between the two withdrawals is in the response from politicians.  Even leading Republicans criticized Trump’s maneuvers, but Democrats are trying to see if obfuscatory rhetoric will work to protect Biden from the opprobrium he deserves.

Or does he?  Please note, in advance, that this argument applies equally well to Trump in 2019 and Biden in 2021.  Yes, we all know about “the buck stops here” and similar political adages, whether or not they were in fact applied by their presumed adherents.  But the fact is that the details of these operations weren’t, directly at least, under the auspices of the Commander-in-Chief.  

Curmie freely admits that he doesn’t know much about how these things work, but it’s unlikely that Biden (or Trump) micromanaged the withdrawals.  It’s difficult to believe that the President (either one) was much concerned with whether X came before or after Y.  Those guys just said, “We want out by such-and-such a date.  Make it happen.”  It’s the military who seems to have fucked things up royally in both cases.  All the Presidents did was try to take a little heat off the generals.  Whereas this might seem out of character, especially for Trump, it’s pretty much what happened.

It doesn’t help that no American President for the last 40 years has had a clue what to do with Afghanistan, a virtually medieval nation with literally nothing to offer except the real estate standby of location, location, location.  A pretty good case could be made that every President in that period has changed course and has managed only to bungle things worse than his predecessor. 

So whereas Biden may really be guilty only of inheriting an insoluble situation and trusting in a military establishment that let him (and all of us) down, the fact that he’s getting hammered for it is perfectly reasonable.  In the world of politics, the person in power gets the credit if things go right and the blame if things go wrong, end of story.  And that leaves President Biden in a big hole and all he knows to do is keep digging.  

The Nirvana Baby Still Chases the Dollar

Is it just Curmie, or does it seem to you, Gentle Reader, that there’s some kind of rule that to truly reach the heights of rock and roll immortality, you’ve got to release at least one controversial album cover? 

There was The Who’s “Who’s Next,” featuring an image which seemed to suggest the band-mates had just urinated against a concrete piling.  The Rolling Stones’ “Sticky Fingers” showed a crotch shot of a man in tight jeans, complete with a little bulge suggesting an erection and, in the initial release, a working zipper that revealed underwear-like fabric underneath.  Supergroup Blind Faith stayed together for only a single eponymous album, which features a topless pubescent girl on the cover.  

Led Zeppelin’s cover art for “Houses of the Holy” shows naked children climbing a hillside of basalt rocks.  (A post about Facebook’s censorship of this image a couple of years ago—a decision they quickly reversed after public uproar—came around on my feed just last week.)  Even the good-guy Beatles’ “Yesterday and Today” shows the Fab Four posing with slabs of meat and broken doll parts (not to mention the photo of fully nude John and Yoko on the cover of their “Two Virgins.”)

The album cover in question.

Nirvana wasn’t yet at the summit when they released “Nevermind” in 1991.  (Curmie may not include them in the pantheon now, but that’s only because he never really got into the grunge sound.)  The record is significant in numerous ways.  It was their first with drummer Dave Grohl, subsequently the driving force of the Foo Fighters.  It featured at least two songs, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Lithium,” which are legitimately regarded as classics (whether or not an individual listener likes them).  And there was that album cover.

After attempts to find a photo that was neither too graphic nor subject to a steep royalty the producers didn’t want to pay, the band hired a photographer and sent him out to local swimming pools.  The photographer had a friend whom he knew had a baby boy. According to the boy’s father, “[He] calls us up and was like, ‘Hey Rick, wanna make 200 bucks and throw your kid in the drink?’  I was like, 'What’s up?' And he’s like, ‘Well, I’m shooting kids all this week, why don’t you meet me at the Rose Bowl, throw your kid in the drink?’”

And so was born the now famous shot of Spencer Elden, then aged four months, in the water.  Eldren is naked, and his penis is visible.  Add a little computer magic, and the shot now shows the baby apparently swimming after a dollar bill with a fishhook attached; fishing line leads out of frame to the top of the picture.  The symbolism isn’t hard to comprehend.

Elden has become a minor celebrity in the ensuing 30 years.  He reportedly has “Nevermind” tattooed on his chest, has developed a cottage industry signing copies of the record, and has posed for underwater photos on several anniversaries of the album’s release.  All involved swim trunks, although he told the New York Post that he wanted to do the 25^th anniversary shot naked.

A few examples of how assiduously
Mr. Elden has avoided the horrors of
his infancy.

Needless to say, Elden has been an active participant in this process.  Ah, but now, at age 30, he’s suing the band members and anyone else he can think of for “extreme and permanent emotional distress with physical manifestations,” plus loss of education, wages, and “enjoyment of life.” He claims his parents never signed a release for the photo, and accuses virtually anyone he could think of—the band, the producers, the record company, and everyone who ever bought a copy of the record—of dealing in child pornography. 

OK, I made up that last part.  But let’s look at those arguments point by point.

“Extreme and permanent emotional distress.”  This is the guy who pronounced his notoriety as “kinda cool,” and who would be unknown if he hadn’t decided to publicize his own identity as the “Nirvana baby.”

“Physical manifestations.”  Name them.  Next.

“Loss of education.”  He is now a student at the Art Center School of Design in Pasadena; it’s unclear whether he is a grad student or an undergrad.  What is clear is that just tuition (not counting incidentals like food and lodging) there is at least $47,000 a year for undergrads, and more for grad students.  Somehow, the loss of education argument seems a little strained.

Wages:  How does that work?  Is he truly arguing that someone wouldn’t hire him because of something that occurred when he was four months old?  He’s worth a half a million dollars, by the way.  Curmie has a fair number of 30-year-old former students, college grads (and good ones) who would be willing to undergo such financial suffering.

“Enjoyment of life.”  Apparently exploiting one’s own purely accidental celebrity status just isn’t as much fun as it used to be.

Parents never signed release: assuming this to be true, then the time to deal with this was 30 years ago, and the people to do it were his parents.  But to imagine that a professional photographer and an established record label wouldn’t have the necessary paperwork in hand before proceeding with the cover design rather strains credulity.

Child pornography.  Two responses. 

Response #1: Bullshit.  Shyster lawyer Maggie Mabie, Elden’s mouthpiece, argues that “The focal point of the image is the minor’s genitalia.”  This statement can have two equally possible explanations: 1). Mabie is lying.  2).  She’s really, really creepy.  Curmie must have seen that image a dozen times before even noticing the boy’s penis.  The focal point, of course, is what appears to be the stretch towards the dollar bill.  As even a relatively dim bulb like Chris Cuomo points out,

I don’t ever remember anybody ever writing or anything being out there in society about this image as a sexualized or pornographic image.  I always thought that it was a suggestion of how right out of the womb, people are just grabbing for money and doing anything they can. I thought it was more about capitalism than it was sexuality.

That, Chris, is because the image is not sexualized, and only an attention-seeking jerk or his utterly irresponsible lawyer could see it otherwise.

Response #2: if this is true now, it was true 30 years ago.  Why the wait?  Could it be that the average music consumer today wasn’t even born when Kurt Cobain died, and that the demand for Nirvana memorabilia has dwindled accordingly?  Could it be that this is one last desperate effort to exploit a situation Elden did not create?

Many Curmiphiles will know that Curmie often seeks a parallel between life and art.  This time it’s Betsuyaku Minori’s The Elephant that provides the latter.  The central character in that is a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing.  He survives by posing shirtless, showing off his keloid scars and allowing himself to be photographed—for a price—by and with tourists.  But the scars fade over time, and even when covered in baby oil they don’t shine the way they used to.  So it would appear to be with 30-year-old baby pictures, even famous ones.

Finally, there’s Elden’s other lawyer, James Marsh, who opines that anyone who thinks he’s an unethical hack who demeans the experiences of people who really did experience some form of abuse is indulging in “idol worship when it comes to famous people, bands and places.”  Marsh is almost as disingenuous as Mabie, and even more pompous.  It would be a stretch to say that Curmie has any particular positive feelings towards the defendants in the case.  He couldn’t care less if they’re famous, and recognizes that to most of them $150,000 borders on pocket change.  But he also knows a money-grabbing hypocrite when he sees one.  Elden is a jerk.  His lawyers are worse.

None of this changes the ethical quagmire that surrounds the use of the picture to begin with.  It, and at least the Led Zeppelin and Blind Faith examples noted above, are problematic, not because they are necessarily sexualized (although you could make a pretty good case in regards to the latter), but because those photos are now eternal, and the subject of them was in no position to give consent.  If you want to argue the laws ought to be configured differently to better protect minors from exploitation (in whatever form), Curmie’s ready to at least listen.  

But to bring a lawsuit that most experts agree has little if any chance of success, some 30 years after the fact… yeah, when you describe yourself as “being a total little bitch about this,” Curmie can’t help but agree.  And Ms. Mabie and Mr. Marsh are walking lawyer jokes.

When "Not Guilty" Shows the Defendant is REALLY Guilty

Curmie is way behind on writing. Let’s start his return with a story that received far too little attention when it broke a couple of weeks ago. The NCAA announced a slap on the wrist penalty for Baylor University’s athletics programs after a years-long investigation into allegations that “Baylor shielded football student-athletes from the school’s disciplinary processes and did not report allegations of misconduct by football student-athletes” over a period of several years in the early 2010s. 

Despite finding the university’s “failings” to be “egregious,” the NCAA handed down a series of rather mild sanctions, the most serious of which is four years of probation.  (Let’s face it: a $5000 fine isn’t going to make a very big dent in Baylor's annual budget of about $800 million.)

How we ought to react to this announcement depends very much on where we focus our attention. The NCAA has long been a contender for the world’s most corrupt and incompetent sports organization, vying with the IOC and FIFA for that dubious distinction. (The International Handball Federation may have achieved a fair amount of well-deserved derision for their monumentally sexist insistence that female competitors wear bikini bottoms instead of shorts, but really, who cares about beach handball, which is virtually unknown in the US and isn’t even an Olympic sport?) 

So for the NCAA, with a reputation for over-reaching to dizzying degrees, to admit that they can’t punish Baylor without being able to point to a specific NCAA rule the university broke is something of a breakthrough. True, it took them years to come to this decision, but… baby steps… baby steps. Still, the rationale behind the decision is more than a little chilling. Here’s the key section of the report:

The panel found that those instances of non-reporting did not constitute impermissible benefits to football student-athletes because of a campus-wide culture of nonreporting. That culture was driven by the school’s broader failure to prioritize Title IX implementation, creating an environment in which faculty and staff did not know and/or understand their obligations to report allegations of sexual or interpersonal violence. Because the culture of non-reporting was not limited to cases involving student-athletes, the panel could not find that these instances resulted in impermissible benefits. (emphasis added)

In other words, the university escapes significant penalties for failing to report incidents of sexual violence by football players because they also couldn’t be bothered to report similar cases in which the perpetrators were non-athletes. 

To be sure, there are those who would disagree with the assessment that football players weren’t treated differently than other students would have been. A lawsuit alleged that no fewer than 52 rapes were committed over a six-year period by Baylor football players. That’s a lot. It doesn’t mean they all happened, of course, but it's a pretty damning statistic.  Another suit filed by a former volleyball player who claims to have been drugged and gang-raped by football players alleges that the Baylor program was such that “football players became increasingly emboldened, knowing that they could break the law, code of conduct, and general standards of human decency with no repercussions.” That comment, too, seems to me to be pretty specifically about football players.  (That suit, in case you were wondering, Gentle Reader, was settled out of court with no details released; the unidentified young woman transferred to another school.)  

In this case, by the way, the police, who ought to be the ones investigating the allegations, weren’t even notified. It is reasonable to argue universities not ought to be involved in investigating and reporting serious crimes at all, but Title IX demands that they do so, and the law is the law. But because the university argues it violated federal law on a consistent, across-the-board basis, they cannot be punished by the NCAA for violating the statute as respects felonious jocks, who according to this logic received no special treatment. 

This means, of course, that Baylor will be able to receive millions of dollars in television rights, post-season payouts for bowl games, etc., because they were even worse than previously imagined, creating a truly horrific culture in which not just pampered athletes but the entire student population is insulated against the repercussions of their actions. 

Art Briles: $15 million buyout 
for being an unethical ass

Curmie sees little evidence of contrition on the part of the university. True, they got rid of football coach Art Briles (they also paid him over $15 million as severance, hardly an agreement designed to teach him lesson in ethics!), athletic director Ian McCaw, and university president Ken Starr (yes, that Ken Starr). There were many pious proclamations, stopping just short of clichés about a new sheriff in town. And a couple (but far from even most) of the culprits were indeed brought to trial and convicted. But it’s difficult to believe that more than the names have changed; the culture simply ran (and runs) too deep. 

Baylor was found not guilty of the most serious offenses. They should be far more ashamed of the strategy employed to get that result than of any guilty verdict.  Should be...