Cynthia Erivo Does What “Security” Doesn’t

Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo arrive at the
“Yellow Carpet” in Singapore

Curmie is behind, to say the least, in pretty much all things Pop Culture, and frankly isn’t much concerned about that failing.  Maybe it’s the “re-retiring,” this time almost certainly permanently; maybe it’s achieving septuagenarian status.  Whatever the reason, a fair number of big deal movies, for example, have gone unwatched.  Many, perhaps most, will stay that way: things Curmie should see are becoming increasingly replaced by things he wants to see.  Some few, however, are in the “someday” pile, films Curmie fully intends to see… eventually.

“Wicked” is in that category, and one suspects that its soon-to-be-released sequel will be, as well.  Curmie knows the basic story-line and that the two leads, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, are excellent singers; apparently, they’re both at least competent actors, too.  The films will be worth a look, even if musicals aren’t Curmie’s usual fare.

The pair of “Wicked” movies have also generated a fair amount of press for something that ought not to be particularly newsworthy: Erivo and Grande are actually close friends in real life.  Go figure, huh?  But that friendship really came to the forefront today in Singapore.  More on that in a moment.

Ariana Grande was already an established star in 2017 when Curmie became aware of her in a more substantial way than simply noting her fame.  On May 22 of that year, a suicide bomber killed 23 people (including himself) and injured over 200 (not counting about another 800 or more who were subsequently treated for psychological trauma) as people were leaving Grande’s concert in Manchester, England.  Victims included concert-goers and parents who were waiting to pick up their children from the event.  We heard about it here in the States, of course, but as it happens, Curmie arrived in London on university business a couple days later, and the coverage was unsurprisingly more extensive there.  Grande’s tweet after the bombing, “From the bottom of my heart, i am so so sorry. i don't have words,” became, at the time, the most-liked tweet in the platform’s history.  Yeah, that’s fine, but it’s really only what would be expected.

Understandably shaken, and indeed suffering from PTSD, Grande cancelled part of her tour and flew home to Florida.  No one could criticize her for that.  It’s what comes next that matters.  Only a couple of days after the bombing, she announced a benefit concert.  Such events take time to organize.  Or, at least, that’s the Conventional Wisdom.  Not this time.  The One Love Manchester concert was held in Manchester at the Old Trafford Cricket Grounds less than a fortnight after the bombing, and included appearances by a host of well-known performers, including Grande herself, Justin Bieber, Coldplay, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, Pharrell Williams, Usher, Take That, the Black-Eyed Peas, and Liam Gallagher, among others.  A host of others appeared on video: U2, Paul McCartney, Demi Lovato, Jennifer Hudson, Twenty One Pilots, Dua Lipa, David Beckham, members of both the Manchester City and Manchester United football teams, and more.

The capacity 50,000 tickets were sold out in less than 20 minutes; fans who had attended the May 22 concert could apply to attend free of charge.   Manchester’s public transportation system offered free service to and from Old Trafford, and Uber said fares for fans travelling to or from the event would be donated to charity.  The event was streamed live to 50 countries, and the We Love Manchester Emergency Fund raised more than $23 million; not all of this was a direct result of the concert, but the lion’s share was.  And this doesn’t count the estimated £19 million raised by the British Red Cross during and in the immediate aftermath of One Love Manchester.  Oh, and Grande also donated proceeds from her singles “One Last Time” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” not so coincidentally the two songs that closed the benefit concert.

Here’s Dee Lockett, writing in New York’s Vulture section:

Less than two weeks after the attack, and with only a few days to privately process and mourn, Ariana returned to Manchester with an entire benefit concert she coordinated. ... She called in every favor, pulling in famous friends like Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber to show up for the grieving city. After meeting with a parent of one of the victims, Grande said she shifted the tone of the show from somber to celebratory because she understood that it was what her fans needed. ...

All night, Ariana performed without breaking, but that was when she had others by her side. ... When it was just her alone with her fans for her finale cover of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” the floodgates opened. In what will likely go down as one of the defining moments of her career, she paused the song, looked out to her audience, which was already sobbing along with her, then resumed the music to nail yet another impossible note.

Yeah, Ariana Grande is Good People.

You know who else is?  Cynthia Erivo.  As the stars were arriving on the yellow (as in Yellow Brick Road) carpet for the Singapore premiere of “Wicked: For Good,” a young man leaped over the barrier, charged towards Grande, grabbed her and pulled her towards him.  We know who it was and what he looks like (he’s done this kind of shit before, most recently at a Katy Perry concert), but he’s seeking publicity for himself and Curmie will be damned if he’s responsible for even one person knowing his name.  This guy will be referred to here, now and forevermore, as Assclown Boy.

Remember, Grande still suffers from PTSD, so this assault had to be especially disturbing.  Plus, of course, she might weigh as much as 100 pounds after a big meal; she’s going to be pretty easily overwhelmed physically.  She was quite apparently shaken by the incident.  The so-called security team failed utterly.  Cynthia Erivo did not.  Responding both sooner and with considerably more urgency than the folks whose job it was to protect the stars, Erivo went Full Mama Bear, no doubt at some risk to herself, immediately interposing herself between Assclown Boy and Grande, pushing him away and screaming at him.  He’s lucky the security team did belatedly arrive on the scene, or ritual disembowelment might have been on the day’s agenda.  Fucking with Ariana when Cynthia is around is extremely contra-indicated.  (Michelle Yeoh gets credit, too, but it was Erivo who really took charge.)

No one can solve every problem or prevent every bad thing from happening.  And it’s easy to be empathetic if it doesn’t cost us anything more than a few hollow words.  What’s harder and far more admirable is to recognize what can be done and to do it.  Female singers don’t have a monopoly on this stuff, but a lot of them sure do seem to be good at it: Dolly Parton.  Taylor Swift.  Ariana Grande.  And now Cynthia Erivo.  Whether we’re fans of their music or not, we need to recognize that the world is a better place for their presence in it.

Not to Be a Wet Blanket, But...

As you might suspect, Gentle Reader, Curmie sees a lot of material from leftie sources—The Other 98%, Occupy Democrats, Robert Reich, and so on.  There’s a general sense of gloating there about the results of Tuesday’s elections.  And there’s a lot of scurrying around on the right, looking for someone to blame.

True, the headlines suggest a pretty clean sweep for Democrats: the mayoral race in New York, the governorship in New Jersey, all of the most significant races in Virginia, the ballot initiative in California to counter Texas’s gerrymandering.  Comments on various posts suggest success in other places, as well: flipping the county council here, turning a GOP supermajority into a simple majority there, etc.  And there don’t seem to be a lot of stories about Republican gains.  The Trump administration is apparently being recognized for the cruel, incompetent, and otherwise embarrassing regime it is, and down ballot Republicans are paying the price.  Good.

So there is indeed some cause for celebration, but Curmie thinks a lot of the pundits on both sides are over-reacting.  Those two gubernatorial races resulted in Democrats succeeding other Democrats into office.  And is it really a surprise that that Californians tend to be liberals, or that Zohran Mamdani won against the likes of Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa?  The only question was whether he’d get a clear majority in a three-way race.  (He did, at least apparently.)  Yes, those were legitimately the biggest stories, but it’s rather like being amazed that the Dodgers made it to the post-season again.

Trump may be indulging in yet another narcissistic fantasy in believing that the fact that his name wasn’t on the ballot was a contributing factor in Republican losses, but he does have a point that the shutdown hurt the GOP at the polls, because voters rightly blamed it on Trump, Johnson, et al., despite their obviously desperate spinning that it was all the Democrats’ fault.  Had Johnson kept his members in D.C. and even pretended to negotiate in good faith, it wouldn’t have been quite as obvious that it was all a ploy to delay seating Adelita Grijalva, thereby protecting a certain someone from confirming our suspicions about those Epstein documents.  Luckily (?) Johnson is nearly as stupid as he is mendacious.

But.

A couple of those Dems elected in Virginia, for example, appear to be pretty horrible folks; if and when they screw up (again), the “throw the bastards out” cries will be coming from the other direction.  Donald Trump is indeed petulant and immoral enough to impose punishments on New York for electing Mamdani, thereby making it more likely that he won’t fulfill some of his promises.  Of course, hoping an elected leader fails is a trait Republicans often accuse Democrats of exhibiting; it is, of course, projection of their own outspoken desires.  (Does the name Mitch McConnell mean anything to you, Gentle Reader?) 

California’s fighting-fire-with-fire gerrymandering initiative, albeit designed specifically to go into force only if Texas and other states go forward with their corrupt and self-serving practices, is also ethically suspect.  The phrasing may be a bit cliché, but Curmie really does believe that citizens should choose their legislators, not the other way around.

But what really got Curmie musing on election results was the list of constitutional amendments on the ballot here in his adopted state of Texas.  There were 17 of them (!), all of which passed, most of them comfortably.  Curmie voted against about half of them.  You can probably guess which ones: those that were obviously designed as handouts to wealthy folks, those that sure did seem like not so thinly veiled racism or transphobia, those that were variations on the theme of outlawing Sharia Law (forbidding things that had literally no chance of happening, anyway). 

Sure, Curmie’s property taxes are likely to go down (or at least not go up as much), and the funding for dementia research might well help Curmie directly.  Both his father and paternal grandfather had Parkinson’s.  (Curmie is OK and several years older than his dad was when he first started showing symptoms.  This could all change, of course.)  That’s good news from a selfish perspective.  But few if any of even the good proposals require a constitutional amendment; legislation ought to handle it. 

Those who voted against the ERA a couple of decades ago because they believed it superfluous—those guarantees of equality were already part of federal law, just not the Constitution, they claimed—are suddenly eager to make every protection for the ultra-wealthy constitutionally protected.  There was never, to the best of Curmie’s knowledge, any real attempt to impose state taxes on inheritance, capital gains, or securities transactions.  Curmie might think a couple of them would be a good idea, but they would have zero chance of ever being enacted in this state. 

Moreover, one of the cardinal attributes of the US Constitution is its brevity.  Texas’s version is a little over 12 times as long.  And it does seem that the state legislature could spend their time on important issues facing the state instead of worrying about, for example, whether non-citizens could vote.

Important to note here is the fact that non-citizens already can’t vote.  It’s illegal in national elections, and you can’t register to vote in Texas unless you’re a citizen.  Enshrining this amendment in the state constitution is an exercise in masturbation.  But it’s not simply the hollow sloganeering-as-policy that’s disturbing.  Several states allow legally resident non-citizens to vote in local elections.  This, frankly, makes sense.  Their kids are going to those public schools; they ought to have a voice in who’s on the school board.  But any chance to be xenophobic is one to be relished by too many Texans.  Or, rather, to give them the benefit of the doubt, they are swayed by simplistic slogans rather than by thoughtful consideration.

And that is the problem.  It’s not that a Republican-controlled legislature wants to flaunt its prejudices and its subservience to the ultra-wealthy—remember that literally every Republican Congresscritter voted against a proposal to raise the marginal tax rate by 2.5% on people making more than a billion dollars a year.  You read that right, Gentle Reader, “billion,” with a “b.”  The median family income in the US for 2024 was $83,730.  Such a family would take a little over 11,943 years (!) to get to a billion.  Curmie kinda thinks most folks could handle paying 39.5% on taxable income over $1,000,000,000.  Remember, that’s just on the taxable (post-deductions) part and just on the part that exceeds a billion, not on the whole amount.

No, GOP pols’ ritual fellation of the billionaire class is a problem, but not the problem.  We can expect no better from them individually, and certainly not collectively.  The problem is that citizens here in Texas, and one suspects elsewhere as well, not merely let them get away with such behavior, but actually endorse it.  They probably would be as outraged as the rest of us if they actually thought about things.  But they don’t, and the Fox Newses of the world will make sure they don’t.  Until that changes, the slide toward xenophobia and plutocracy will continue unabated.

Sometimes Curmie considers Eeyore an optimist.

Harvard, Grade Inflation, and the Very Special Snowflakes

A recent article in the Harvard Crimson has generated substantially more buzz on the national scale than is common for college newspaper fare.  That’s because of its subject, a 25-page report authored by Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh regarding rampant grade inflation at the university.  “Our grading,” she writes, “no longer performs its primary functions and is undermining our academic mission.”

Certainly the rapid and apparently inexorable rise in average GPA scores threatens to make grades obsolete, if we haven’t reached that stage already.  There has been a lot written about the situation over, well, about as long as Curmie has been paying attention, which is to say when he started his own collegiate career over a half-century ago.  There are manifold causes of the phenomenon: from a political attempt to help men retain their student deferments in the Vietnam era to an over-reliance on student course evaluations for decisions about merit pay, retention, and tenure to concerns about student well-being during COVID. 

Increased emphasis in secondary schools on standardized testing and the accompanying teach-to-the-test mentality also contributes, as students arrive at college having memorized a few names, dates, and formulas, but without having developed the thinking skills required for advanced study in any academic discipline, especially those in which personal interpretation is foregrounded.  Curmie has often said he doesn’t care whether you think Sam or Hally is the protagonist in “Master Harold”… and the boys; he cares about the thought process that gets you there.  (And it had better be more than simply parroting what some teacher told you.)

There’s a good article on the gradeinflation.com website that looks into both the statistics and the causes.  Curmie encourages you to at least glance through it, Gentle Reader.  But keep in mind that the information included there is over a decade old, and things have gotten far worse, especially but not exclusively during COVID.

How bad is it?  Well, there are literally dozens of articles out there, examining a lot of universities, but let’s stick with Harvard, where the problem seems to be worse than anywhere else.  (Curmie devoutly hopes this is true, because if any university’s grading integrity is more compromised than this, Curmie will run screaming into the night, never to be seen again.)  Over half of the grades at Harvard are now an “A,” and from what Curmie can decipher, that means an “A” as opposed to “A-range,” which would include A-minuses.  And get this: the cutoff for summa cum laude status is now 3.989, meaning that a single B-plus or a pair of A-minuses bars a Harvard student from getting summa.  Ah, but there a few fewer 4.0s in the most recent class than in the previous year’s; this is being touted as a sign of progress.  Sigh.

Ultimately, of course, whereas there are a lot of excuses reasons for grade inflation, they all ultimately boil down to the same thing: the faculty.  According to Claybaugh, “Nearly all faculty expressed serious concern… They perceive there to be a misalignment between the grades awarded and the quality of student work.”  Well, they could always… you know… give grades that corrected that “misalignment.”  True, there are pressures to keep passing out “A” grades like candy on Hallowe’en, especially in an era in which students are perceived as consumers rather than clients.  But grades are a professor’s responsibility, and a university that truly cares about the integrity of the process would encourage faculty to be a little more conscientious, not merely in words but in actions.

All of this (except a couple of specifics) has been a standard topic of conversation for a long time.  Curmie has written about it several times, most recently in a discussion of course evaluations, and he’s had dozens of conversations with colleagues from around the campus and around the country.  There’s one proposal from the Harvard administration he wants to talk about in a moment, but first, let’s look at Harvard students’ reaction to the suggestion that perhaps not all of them are the best in the class.

When Curmie started college many years ago, part of the orientation process was telling us (repeatedly!) that over 90% of us were in the top 10% of our high school classes, and that it was mathematically impossible for us all to do so in college, but being in the middle of a class at an Ivy League school was nothing to be ashamed of.  Our parents all got a letter with the same information.  One suspects that Harvard does roughly the same thing with their freshmen.

Ah, but the weeping and wailing from Cambridge drowned out the sounds of the jets at Logan Airport.  A follow-up piece in the Harvard Crimson described the horrors associated with requiring better than average work if you want to get an A.  One student described the report as “soul-crushing”: “The whole entire day, I was crying.  I skipped classes on Monday, and I was just sobbing in bed because I felt like I try so hard in my classes, and my grades aren’t even the best.”  Another worried about her ongoing ability to “enjoy [her] classes.”  A lacrosse player whined that “it’s not really accounting for what we have to do on a day to day basis, and how many hours we’re putting into our team, our bodies, and then also school.”

Way to play to the stereotype, guys!  Nothing says “snowflake” louder than this drivel.  You might end up with a 3.8 instead of a 4.0?  And that crushes your soul?  Get a damned life.  The chances are, of course, that these students never really had to work very hard in high school to get the grades that would get them admitted to an Ivy League school.  (Curmie didn’t.)  And the competition is tougher now. 

You don’t, or at least shouldn’t, go to Harvard for the extracurriculars; you go to get a Harvard-level education.  And prioritizing academics, at least somewhat, is, well, mandatory.  When Curmie started at Dartmouth, the cutoff for induction into the Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society was 3.4.  Curmie figured he could write and edit for the college newspaper, help out at the Forensic Union (i.e., the debate team), work on shows essentially non-stop, play intramural sports, etc., as long as he kept that GPA.  (They changed the standard for ΦΒΚ in his junior (?) year, so Curmie didn’t end up getting in, but he shifted his attention to being magna cum laude, and achieved that goal.)  You can do things other than study and still get decent grades.

The whole “I killed myself all throughout high school to try and get into this school” argument (yeah, that’s a quote, too), suggesting that the work should be easier now, is beyond stupid.  It’s the equivalent of an all-conference high school basketball player complaining about not being all-conference in college although he averages 2 points a game, can’t guard anyone his own size, and has more turnovers than assists. 

One argument seems, superficially, to have some validity: if Harvard gets tougher on grades and equivalent universities don’t, it places Harvard students at a competitive disadvantage.  Ultimately, however, this line of reasoning really isn’t very persuasive at all.  A Harvard degree means something—perhaps less than it once did, but still something—but good grades there are now meaningless from an institution where an A- GPA is below average.

Curmie is reminded of a piece he wrote 15 years ago about the efforts by Loyola Law School to help its students be competitive, namely by simply raising GPAs by a third of a letter grade across the board, including instituting a new de facto A++ grade.  Yes, really.  But the thing is, the little ploy got a lot of attention, thereby diminishing the prestige of a Loyola degree and doing little to actually help students.  Here’s what Curmie wrote:

When I was applying to PhD programs, I was looking at one school that said something like “generally, we require a 3.5 GPA in your undergraduate work.” My undergrad GPA was 3.46 or something like that; it was considerably better in my major, but I didn’t meet the stated criteria. Still, there was that word “generally” in their statement. So I called them up. Their response, paraphrased, was “You have a 3.46 from Dartmouth? Of course we’re interested in you!” That’s what Loyola students used to have going for them: the reputation that a Loyola grad, relative to alums from a different school, was better than his/her GPA. Now the entire place is—or at least ought to be—a laughing stock. Oh, what a brave new world.

Harvard didn’t learn that lesson, apparently.  And, especially in light of the New York Times article a few weeks ago, the world knows just how little a good grade from Harvard now means.

There’s one more item to discuss before we get to the putain de stupide.  One of the arguments in favor of, shall we say, excessive grade generosity is that “For the past decade or so, the College has been exhorting faculty to remember that some students arrive less prepared for college than others.”  If a particular student needs remedial work in a single subject area, that’s understandable.  For example, Curmie had plenty of advisees who could handle all of the university’s general education requirements… except math.

The same phenomenon works in the opposite direction, as well, of course.  Years ago, Curmie taught a variation on the theme of English Composition at Cornell University when he was a grad student there.  One of his students was, from all accounts, a brilliant physicist.  But, curiously enough, he didn’t write as well in his third language (he was Korean; his second language was Chinese) as did the native English speakers in the College of Arts and Sciences at an Ivy League university.

Accommodating that student to the extent of dragging him kicking and screaming to a passing grade is one thing; giving him an A for barely passable work would have been something else.  More recently, Curmie has had a handful of students whose native language is Spanish.  All of them were learning English even as they were also learning Play Analysis.  All of them passed; all of them deserved to pass, without needing any accommodations, because they did the work, and their ideas were good even if they sometimes struggled with writing in their second language.  One, in particular, went on to become a star pupil in subsequent courses and got a Master’s degree from a quite reputable university. 

But if a student is “less prepared” across the board, that person shouldn’t be at Harvard.  One suspects, and you can be certain that the right-wing press will be asserting this, that we’re talking about what could be called DEI admissions.  There are certainly advantages to a diverse student body, but it does no one—not the student, not the other students, not the university, not the nation—any good to admit someone who just can’t cut it.  To this extent, the Trump administration has a point.

Ah, but it’s time for the grand finale.  You may recall, Gentle Reader, that Curmie described the part of the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education that demands that universities return tuition money to students who drop out in their first semester as “a contender for the stupidest fucking idea in the history of stupid fucking ideas.”  Curmie spoke too soon, as there is now a new leader in the clubhouse, a proposal so blazingly inane it could only come from a university administrator, and probably one at Harvard.

Get this: one of the proposals, apparently initiated by Claybaugh and sent to a faculty committee for discussion, is to allow a limited number of A+ grades (Harvard’s best grade at present is an A), thereby “distinguishing the very best students.”  You can’t make this shit up, Gentle Reader.  The way to fight grade inflation is to further inflate grades.  Curmie might have thought that a better course of action to curb grade inflation might be to give students whose work is very good but not exemplary an A- or (God forbid!) perhaps even a B.  Curmie clearly was never cut out for administration, at least at Harvard.

Harvard has brought this on itself.  There are other universities that are, no doubt, almost as bad, but this stuff surpasses credulity.  The pampered little snowflakes who make up at least a good share of the student body should be scorned, but they’re still post-adolescents and might be salvageable.  The administration and faculty, however, are beyond hope of redemption.

On Regretting the Loss of Thoughtful Disagreement

One of the saddest things about the current administration is that it has forced once-principled and intelligent conservatives to start spouting total nonsense.  Most of this comes as obeisance to an unstable and vengeful leader… more on that a little later.

One change is a new obsession with disjunctive thinking: every question must be answered with “black” or “white.”  There is no allowance for grey, or (especially) for qualifiers.  For example, Curmie recently saw an argument centered on whether someone supported deporting people who are in the country illegally.  Naturally, the only acceptable answer was “yes” according the racists and other right-wing zealots. 

Curmie won’t speak for all liberals, some of whom might indeed say “no” to that question, but his response is “yes, if…”  If they are indeed undocumented (remember that there were American citizens sent to “Alligator Alcatraz”), if they don’t have green cards and work permits, if they aren’t already in the process of applying for asylum and/or citizenship, if they’re afforded due process, then there’s no objection here. 

Well, actually, that’s not quite true.  Curmie would still disapprove of deporting those who have lived here for decades, contributed to their communities and to American culture, and have no criminal convictions.  Unless aggravated in some way (returning after being deported, for example), simply being in the country illegally is a Class C misdemeanor, the equivalent of a speeding ticket.  Perhaps it shouldn’t be that way, but it is.  Several states have a statute of limitations of under ten years for rape, but there’s none for a C misdemeanor?  Curmie would ask you to make it make sense, Gentle Reader, but he’d rather not subject you to that level of mental gymnastics.

Nor does agreement that some undocumented people should indeed be deported mean that ICE ought to be able to randomly tackle and detain anyone who looks or sounds Hispanic, which they’re doing with grim regularity.  And let’s drop the bullshit about how such-and-such a suspect “attacked” officers who were “just doing their duty.”  If that were true, then there would be video footage of the attack, but Curmie has literally never seen anyone do that except in obvious self-defense.  (Oops, I stand corrected: there was that guy who tossed a sandwich at a CPB agent.  A grand jury appropriately refused to indict him for a felony.)  

There is, however, plenty of footage of ICE agents tackling elderly citizens (!) without cause, shooting a pepper ball directly into the face of a minister who was <checks notes> praying, dragging a woman (a citizen) out of her car after they rammed it for the apparent crime of DWL (Driving While Latina), and so on.  Oh, and (of course), they lied about what happened.  Oh, and this just in: tear-gassing little kids in Hallowe’en costumes.

Sometimes, but only sometimes, ICE might be able to cobble together a complaint for resisting arrest.  Attacking them?  Nope.  They’re bullies and therefore cowards (hence the masks), and they’ll cheerfully lie to continue their cosplay as actual law enforcement.  The idea that these assholes have immunity from arrest and prosecution, as Reichsmarschall Stephen Miller proclaims, should send a shiver up the spine of every American; the fact that it doesn’t is truly horrifying.

It’s unlikely that Curmie will be attacked by masked men with high-end weaponry but without identification, a warrant, or probable cause.  His ancestors (well, most of them), after all, were from places like England, Wales, Ireland, and the Netherlands instead of Africa, the Middle East, or one of those places where they speak (gasp!) Romance languages.  But should it happen, you can bet that he’ll do what he can to defend himself.  He’ll lose the fight, of course, but he does know how to fight dirty, and with luck there might be someone other than just Curmie who regrets the encounter.

Another variation on the theme is what Curmie calls Trump Derangement Derangement (TDD).  This manifests as an unwillingness to recognize that some of the criticisms of Dear Ruler are not merely plausible but in fact objectively correct.  Did he lie about “not interfering” with the East Wing for the Epstein Ballroom vanity project over-priced boondoggle bunker upgrade corporate bribe White House renovations?  Yes.  Full stop.  Oh, but… you see… he broke the law avoided going through the normal planning process for such projects because doing that would have held up the project for so long it might not have even been completed during his presidency.  Curmie thinks that if the new ballroom is such a good idea, whoever 48 turns out to be would cheerfully complete the process for the good of the country.

Did the Manchurian Cantaloupe scuttle a 2024 bi-partisan bill to address the problems associated with the southern border because he’d rather have a campaign issue than a solution?  Yes, and it’s GOP legislators, not (just) Curmie who say so.  Less certain, but still more than plausible, is the argument that the settlement between Israel and Hamas is virtually identical to one proposed by Biden and subsequently rejected by Netanyahu because he wanted Trump to get the credit.  (Trump deserves at least some credit either way, of course, but quite likely not as much as he’s claiming for himself.)

Indeed, ignoring laws, even SCOTUS rulings, that Dear Leader considers inconvenient is standard procedure for this administration, and with both houses of Congress dominated by GOP boot-lickers, he’s likely to continue getting away with it, even on those rare occasions when this SCOTUS actually decides to uphold the Constitution.

One of the more interesting variations on TDD is the assertion that people don’t dislike Trump’s policies; they dislike him.  Well, it’s true that Curmie dislikes him.  He tends not to have a particularly high opinion of rapists, grifters, embezzlers, pathological liars, and those with so high an opinion of themselves that Narcissus had to call a press conference to say, “Hey, c’mon, I’m not as bad as that.  Don’t compare me to that guy.”  As for the other part, Curmie won’t pretend to speak for everyone to the left of Tommy Tuberville, but he very much dislikes virtually every policy of this administration.

A few examples: pretending to be targeting the “worst of the worst” when the majority of those detained have no criminal record; allowing incompetent idiots like Hegseth, Patel, and Kennedy to keep their jobs (appointing them to begin with was bad enough); cutting funding to about every program designed to help everyday people—the FAA, CDC, FEMA, NOAA, SNAP, ACA, Medicaid, medical research, research grants to universities, etc.—while lining the pockets of his fellow billionaires; turning Elon Musk’s unvetted minions loose on the private records of every American; using the military against our own citizens; sinking foreign-owned fishing vessels in international waters based on speculation (at best); abrogating this country’s responsibility to defend Ukraine (part of the deal for them to abandon nuclear weapons) because Uncle Vladimir said to… There’s more, of course, but this paragraph is long enough already.

There’s also the problem of exaggeration.  No, Bernie Sanders is not a communist just because he thinks that poor people ought to be able to afford food and shelter.  But at one level, this is the same kind of enflamed rhetoric that characterizes a lot of political speech… as Curmie demonstrated above in referring to the abominable Stephen Miller.

A more complex problem because it requires a projection of long-term vs. short-term effectiveness comes in economic policy.  Raising tariffs, for example, may seem like a good idea in the near term, but there are several inevitable results.  Some things just can’t be created here: think coffee, for example.  Also, if the price of some imported product goes up 10%, US competitors will cheerfully raise their prices by 5% and still get a greater market share.  In both cases, prices go up.  And, of course, other countries are likely to impose their own retaliatory tariffs, making it harder to export American goods, especially agricultural products.  Ask soybean farmers what they think of these policies.  Or, in a variation on the theme, talk to cattle farmers who hear the guy they voted for suggesting a significant increase in importing Argentinian beef.

Similarly, cutting ACA subsidies doesn’t hurt just those directly affected.  Those folks can’t afford health care, so they don’t get it.  They show up at work with communicable diseases.  Small-town hospitals go out of business.  Doctors charge the rest of us more to make up for lost patients.  How is any of this good news?

We could also, of course, address the internal contradictions in so many policy decisions.  Let’s take that Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, for example.  It insists on a de facto quota system based on ideology, but is radically opposed to DEI, i.e., diversity, equity and inclusion.  It demands that international students open their social media accounts to governmental snooping. 

It pretends to support free speech, but seeks to punish universities which allow protests against what some students perceive as Israeli genocide.  The key word in the previous sentence is “allow.”  A university need not encourage such protests, merely allow them in the spirit of First Amendment principles and that “broad spectrum of ideological viewpoints” the Compact purports to endorse to run afoul of this administration’s attempts at controlling what can be discussed on university campuses.  Curmie could go on, but he hopes the point has been made. 

There was a time, not that long ago, when genuine, honest, debate could happen, when it was possible to see the point of view of someone whose stance on abortion or gun control, for example, was different from one’s own.  There’s a limit to that viewpoint, however.  The Republican Party is now completely subservient to the petulance and vindictiveness of a delirious despot-wannabe, and they’ll say or do anything to prove their allegiance to him. 

Either that, or they truly believe that Americans ought not to have access to disaster relief if they happen to live in a “blue state,” that there’s not a problem with reverse Robin Hood policies designed to steal from the poor to give to the rich, that protecting a pedophile is more important than representing the people, that health insurance premiums increasing by over $50 a day (!) is quite all right…  Again, there’s more, but we’ll leave it at that.

The idiocy and intentional cruelty of those policies is transparent to anyone who can out-think a rutabaga, but debating those issues is an exercise in futility because the first tenet of MAGA-dom is never to admit anything.  The rhetoric on either side doesn’t matter; policy does.  There’s plenty to distrust on both sides of the political aisle, but mud-slinging isn’t the answer.  (Yes, Curmie is aware of the irony of this statement appearing in this essay.)  The truth always seeks to be free.  It will find its way out.  In the meantime: resist by whatever (legal and ethical) means necessary… and ultimately vote the bastards out.

Reading between the Lines of the Censorship of "Between the Lines"

Curmie isn’t sure whether the classic rock lyrics du jour should come from Stevie Nicks or Whitesnake, but it’s clear that the situation is hauntingly familiar and yes, here I go again.

The topic is yet another idiot public school administrator shutting down a high school theatre production because he appears to have neither the brains nor the spine of the average earthworm.  This one involves the suppression of the musical Between the Lines at Mississinewa High School in Gas City, Indiana, a fortnight before the scheduled opening.

Curmie got his first teaching gig at a small church-related college in the Bible Belt.  His predecessor had been fired (or pressured to resign) in part, at least, for staging a play that someone considered objectionable.  Curmie is reliably informed that the people presumed to have been so horribly offended by the show enjoyed it immensely while actually in the theatre, then put on their public faces and were utterly horrified that actresses were briefly seen in undergarments.  Censors are often hypocrites.

All of Curmie’s choices for productions at that school were reviewed by a committee prior to contracting for production rights.  Those meetings were brief, and Curmie got the distinct impression that they were intended to protect him rather than to limit him: a couple of tenured faculty signed off on Curmie’s choices (they always approved whatever Curmie proposed), and they appeared ready to take the heat should anything arise.  (It’s also true that Curmie’s predecessor allegedly did some things that might have legitimately merited dismissal, and this kerfuffle may have been a way for the college to save face.)

Why mention this here?  Because, if you’re even tempted to censor theatre productions, establishing such a committee or some other form of review before a season is finalized was what should have happened at Mississinewa High, and what Superintendent Jeremy Fewell has proclaimed will happen in the future.  (Insert reference to shutting barn doors here.)  Curmie has made this point repeatedly in the past: no high school theatre teacher is authorized to spend the hundreds or (more likely) thousands of dollars to pay for royalties and script rentals for a musical.  Those checks are authorized by an administrator—a principal or superintendent.  One might reasonably suggest that competent people would know what they’re buying.  These folks, Fewell and Principal Rachel Roesch, don’t pass that test, and those who suffer for their sloth are the high school students involved in the production.  Nothing to see here; move along.

The foregoing, of course, is based on the presumption that there is something in the script, even as bowdlerized, that merits censorship.  This is, of course, a risky proposition at best.  The point here is that even if there was something problematic about the script, the time to make that point is before you’ve spent thousands of dollars on scripts, royalties, costumes, sets, publicity, etc. (it’s possible the leasing agency might refund the royalties, but not the script and score rentals), and before staff and students have spent thousands of person-hours in rehearsals and the tech shops.  If you’re going to be a censorial asshat, at least be timely about it.

Curmie doesn’t know the show, so it’s possible that Fewell might have had a point had he raised concerns months ago.  Curmie doubts it, but it’s possible.  Still, what seems to be emerging in commentary from the students’ parents is that references to sexuality and alcohol use are being used as cover for the real problem: one of the characters is (GASP!) non-binary.  Curmie can’t improve on the commentary of Jodi Picoult, who wrote the book on which the musical is based:

Received this devastating news yesterday while I was literally in the West End at the premiere of another musical I wrote - The Book Thief - which is all about censorship and fascism.  The irony was not lost on me. This Indiana school already was granted permission through licensing to make changes to the script, but a single parent still complained about the existence of a non-binary character (whose gender orientation is not even explicitly mentioned) and the superintendent cancelled the show after kids had put in hundreds of hours of rehearsals. Censorship in America has spilled from books into theater. When one person decides for others what is appropriate, we have lost freedom of expression. Worst - this show is NOT explicit. It’s been performed by hundreds of school groups. The message it offers: Live the story you want if it’s not the story you’re in. Perhaps this objecting parent can explain to me what, exactly, is so wrong about that?

One trusts that Ms. Picoult is not really waiting for an answer to that question, as the parent in question will almost assuredly remain cravenly anonymous.  That’s how the system works, after all.  One loud-mouthed parent (or in some cases not even a parent) and a spineless administrator is all it takes.  Curmie has written about this phenomenon several times.  Here’s most of one paragraph from one of those instances. 

As a class, these people [school administrators] are far more fond of rules than of thinking, and their one unifying characteristic is risk aversion on steroids: a single dissenting voice (from anyone other than a student or teacher, of course) sends them scurrying for cover like cockroaches when the lights come on. They’re also, of course, the very people who at least de facto approved that show when scripts and royalties were ordered, and in many cases insisted on being consulted on the choice of show… then, they are shocked!, to an extent that hitherto only Claude Rains in “Casablanca” had ever been shocked, that a character is wearing a short skirt or drinking a fake martini or says he has two dads.  

...or doesn’t conform to someone’s idea of what gender identity ought to look like.  It’s fine to have Nazis in The Sound of Music or gang members in West Side Story.  It’s even acceptable to have an actress play the title role in Peter Pan or for Luther Billis to cross-dress in South Pacific.  That’s because there’s no attempt to suggest that what is being presented on stage is in any way reflective of reality: Peter is a magical character; Billis isn’t trying to convince anyone he’s really female.  But suggest that a young character, especially (OMG!) one who is treated sympathetically, might be… you know… <whispers> non-binary, and the pearls will never have been clutched quite so hard.

Adults who object to a particular play have an easy recourse: not buying a ticket.  Parents can pull their own children from the show.  It’s not fair to the kids, who have put in dozens if not hundreds of hours of work, but parents are entitled to act like parents.  They can even try to convince their friends not to attend.  Preventing other people from seeing the show, or other kids from participating in it, is a different matter, and the problems had damned well better be objectively egregious.  Curmie’s betting that isn’t the case here.

There is a special kind of narcissism that accompanies these censorial outbursts.  Curmie has mentioned several times that sometimes he just isn’t the target audience: not for Dog Sees God, not for Taylor Swift, for example.  And you know what?  That’s just fine.  Not a lot of people are big fans of Václav Havel or Warren Zevon, but Curmie is.  You do you, Gentle Reader, and let me do me.  Different strokes for different folks, and all that.  But to the censorial mindset, one’s personal tastes, interests, and value systems ought to be imposed on everyone, and those who disagree are attempting to infect America’s youth with their poisonous ideologies.  Curmie calls bullshit on that, and suspects that you wouldn’t be here, Gentle Reader, if you didn’t agree with him.

The censorship here isn’t about protecting kids from growing up too fast.  Curmie isn’t telling you anything you don’t already know in suggesting that high schoolers have already been exposed to sex and alcohol and both the allures and the dangers of both.  Curmie knew some non-binary schoolmates when he was in high school fifty-something years ago, but he didn’t “knowingly know” them; that is, today’s kids can be more open about their identities now.  Curmie thinks that’s a good thing.  What he knows (as opposed to merely thinks) is that non-binary people exist.  Denying that basic fact is not merely bigoted; it is an attack on reality itself.

We can hope that the students involved in the production of Between the Lines will be able to mount their show independently of the school, as those kids at Santa Rosa High did with Dog Sees God.  But sometimes those arrangements can’t be made, and Curmie isn’t blaming the students or their directors a bit if the show just doesn’t happen now.  Idiots like Jeremy Fewell have a lot to answer for, either way.

Three First Amendment Stories

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Credit Where It’s Due: President Trump

The convoy of released Israeli hostages
heads toward Jerusalem

To say that Curmie has been unimpressed with the Trump presidency is to err more on the side of understatement than of hyperbole.  47 has proven to be even worse than 45.  With the exception of a more robust stock market (where most of Curmie’s retirement nest egg resides) than was expected after the various silly tariffs were applied, removed, and re-applied willy-willy, Curmie can’t think of a single thing this administration has done that benefits the population at large.

There’s the authoritarianism; the reverse Robin Hood economic policies; the assaults on the 1^st, 4^th, 5^th, and 14^th Amendments; the appointments of incompetent (we hope they’re only that) loyalists to head government agencies; the multiple violations of US and international law; and of course the delirious ramblings of a POTUS who now claims that President Biden (who wasn’t in office yet) ordered 274 FBI agents to infiltrate the crowd on January 6.

Trump’s non-stop stream of commentary generally comes in one of three flavors: dementia, narcissism, and lies.  The idea that he would be telling the truth about anything he claimed to have accomplished was contrary to all expectations.  Curmie explicitly doubted Dear Leader’s claim that he had negotiated an agreement between Israel and Hamas that would lead to the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. 

But whether the appropriate analog is the boy who cried wolf or a stopped clock (Curmie leans towards the former), that boast turns out to have been true, as all living hostages have been released (Curmie wasn’t going to write about this until it actually happened), and there’s a plan in place to return the remains of those who perished in captivity.

This is all good news, of course, and President Trump deserves a healthy share of the credit, not least for convincing Hamas that he was sufficiently personally invested in the deal that he would be willing and able to force Prime Minister Netanyahu to adhere to his promises.  That’s a substantial risk for Hamas, especially since only a few weeks ago Trump was talking about pretty much annihilating the West Bank and rebuilding it as a high-end resort destination.

Of course, two things should be noted.  First, whereas Curmie meant (and still means) what he said in that earlier post linked above, that if Trump could “indeed get buy-in from both Likud and Hamas, that would be a major achievement,” what has happened today is little more than a cease-fire and a prisoner exchange, with vague promises about the future that deliberately avoid the thorniest issues—a two-state solution, for example.  There will be pressure for Hamas to disarm and perhaps even to relinquish control in Gaza.  The extent to which Hamas will be receptive to those demands remains to be seen.  There is, to be sure, a long and difficult road ahead.

And let Curmie emphasize the notion of prisoner exchange: as part of the agreement, Israel released nearly 2000 (!) Palestinians rounded up in Gaza, the overwhelming majority of whom were held without trial.  (That sounds to Curmie rather like being a hostage.)  One of those released, Kamal Abu Shanab, a member of Fatah (N.B., not Hamas), claims he underwent an “indescribable journey of suffering — hunger, unfair treatment, oppression, torture and curses — more than anything you could imagine,” and that he lost 139 pounds while in captivity.  Curmie isn’t naïve enough to believe everything he’s told, but he’s also not ready to dismiss those claims out of hand.  More to the point, Curmie was blissfully unaware of the sheer number of such detainees; perhaps you were, too, Gentle Reader.  It certainly says something about American journalism that we didn’t hear more about this part of the equation.

The other point to be made here is that President Trump was not alone in bringing about this agreement.  Leaders from Norway, Italy, Egypt, Türkiye, and Qatar were certainly involved; one suspects that others were, as well.  Nor should we forget that whereas recent events represent significant progress, the release of 20 living Israeli hostages pales in comparison to the vastly greater number released in deals brokered by President Biden and others.  This is the final but not largest chapter of this part of the tale.

Further pressure was no doubt applied by the flotilla of relief vessels which attempted to run the Israeli blockage and deliver food and medicine to Gaza.  The fact that Greta Thunberg was one of those detained (and, she says, abused) by Israeli forces moved the story into higher priority for the international press.

The prospects aren’t great for a lasting settlement.  There is too much animosity, too much destruction, too much history, to be overly optimistic.  More significantly, the remaining issues—the political future of the West Bank, the degree to which Hamas disarms, deciding who bears the cost of rebuilding Gaza into a habitable locale—are even more daunting than achieving what has come to pass in the last few days.

But there is, at least and at last, a little hope.  The resolve of all concerned will be tested, and to say there are a lot of bumps in the road ahead is self-evident.  But we’re in a better place than we were a fortnight ago, and—against Curmie’s expectations—Donald Trump is a major reason, if not the major reason, why that’s true.  If he’d stop whining about how he deserves a Nobel Prize for largely illusory accomplishments, he might even deserve one for an actual success. 

He’s still an awful President, but credit where it’s due.