Reacting to the Reactions about Charlie Kirk's Assassination

A few quotations from the Dear Departed

Curmie was going to write about the assassination of Charlie Kirk as part of a larger discussion about the rule of law, also discussing things like the attack on that Venezuelan boat, the co-opting of the National Guard to <checks notes> spread mulch and pick up trash, and the absurd SCOTUS ruling allowing ICE and DHS to forgo anything in the same area code as obeying Fourth Amendment protections, enabling those assholes to engage in practices that far exceed mere racial profiling and would be called unconstitutional by anyone except a political hack supporting authoritarianism.

That essay may yet be written, but the response to the killing of Kirk has taken on a life of its own, both among the yammering politicians and the complacent media.  We haven’t seen this level of coverage since the murder of another loathsome rich guy, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson… and most of that was about how Luigi Mangione, the (technically still “alleged”) killer is a rather handsome young man.

Noteworthy in the previous paragraph is the fact that the intervening attacks on Minnesota legislators and their spouses, leaving two people and a family dog dead and two other people seriously injured, received far less coverage: some, but nowhere near as much.  Those murders were, of course, clearly politically motivated, and we knew that early on.  The relative lack of coverage is attributable at least in part to the fact that the victims weren’t obscenely wealthy.  However liberal the media are alleged to be, the fact is they’re all controlled by the uber-rich, and those folks think wealth translates into importance… and that killing a rich dude is far worse than killing a poor one.

Please note, Gentle Reader, that Curmie is in no way endorsing any of these murders.  He is not “celebrating” the death of Kirk, although he does believe the world to be a better place without his racism, misogyny, trans- and homophobia, Christian nationalism, mendacity, and general assholitude.  Well, at least until and unless the right-wing ideologues are successful in their attempt to make Kirk into a “moderate” and therefore even more of a martyr.  He was neither, of course.  His sole attribute was his ability to sell every conceivable variety of hatred as if it were a heavenly elixir.

Curmie and Beloved Spouse are fans of murder mysteries, and we not infrequently watch a film or a TV show in which the victim is a truly horrible person, thereby providing potential motives for a number of suspects.  When this occurs, one of us (usually Curmie) sometimes adopts an exaggerated Texas drawl and proclaims that the deceased “wanted killin.’”  But we’re well aware of the fictiveness of what we’re watching.  Real life is different, and no one, not even Charlie Kirk, deserves to be shot in cold blood.  There may be little in the way of mourning at Chez Curmie, but there is precisely zero celebration.

It now appears that the suspected shooter, Tyler Robinson, did have a political, or at least quasi-political, motive.  He disagreed with Kirk on some issues.  But no one knew that when the invective started to fly.  To be fair, it was a reasonable guess, but it didn’t at the time come close to a certainty.  Moreover, although Robinson is said to have become more political of late, he is not registered with a political party and has not voted recently.  He seems to have grown up around guns, and he comes from a Republican family.  [EDIT: It now appears that Robinson may have thought Kirk was insufficiently right-wing for Robinson’s taste.  Yes, the shooting could have been political, but not in the way it was described by Trump, et al.  Go figure, right?]

Curmie has long decried the media’s prioritization of getting the story first over getting it right.  One example was that attack at a cinema in Aurora, CO; another was the (perhaps staged) attempt in Butler, PA, about which Curmie suggested that the motive may never be known, but “perhaps there’s a latter-day Jodie Foster to impress out there somewhere.”  And, of course, DJT has always been quick to blame someone unlike himself, evidence be damned: witness his screed on New Year’s Day against “criminals coming in” when the New Orleans terrorist actually turned out to be a Texas-born Army vet.

Let’s take as given that Robinson was the shooter and that the reason for the attack was that he objected to Kirk’s politics.  That rationale would have been a reasonable, even probable, surmise before Robinson’s apprehension.  But it was certainly insufficient to claim as fact.  There was the possibility of a “false flag,” of an internal division in the right-wing power structure (Kirk had been accused of insufficient obeisance to Dear Leader, after all), or the gunman had some other motive altogether.  Curmie even saw a post that suggested that since it would take military-style training to be able to shoot that accurately, and since the military is comprised mostly of conservatives… well, you get the point, Gentle Reader.  Yes, that’s a rather strained argument, but until this morning it was at least possibly accurate.

Of course, the vituperation started emanating from the White House long before any real information became known.  Donald Trump, in his usual reckless manner, bypassed any attempt at national unity and blithely accused the “radical left political violence,” and deplored “demonizing those with whom you disagree.”  A more ironic and hypocritical utterance has seldom if ever occurred in all of human history.  Demonizing political opponents is, of course, Trump’s stock in trade, to the extent that when someone else does it, we’re surprised he doesn’t sue them for copyright infringement.

Of course, all this hand-wringing and pearl-clutching casually ignores the attacks on Paul Pelosi, Josh Shapiro, and Melissa Hortman, and the kidnapping plot aimed at Gretchen Whitmer.  But it’s only those on the left we need to worry about, correct?  What utter bullshit!  True, we expect this kind of crap from the usual suspects: Trump, Vance, Miller, Musk, Loomer, Mace, et al.  They are uniformly devoid of actual ideas (or at least good ones) and have nothing but rage and self-righteous hypocrisy to offer.  But it is terrifying that even once reasonable conservatives are buying into this nonsense.  (There’s a reason Curmie abandoned Ethics Alarms, for example.)

Name a nationally-known Democrat—Obama, Biden, Harris, Newsom, Whitmer, Ocasio-Cortez, Mamdani, the list goes on and on—and you’ll find a message of sorrow, empathy, and sometimes outrage about the murder of Charlie Kirk.  Of course, some of them may have been pro forma or even insincere, but Curmie’s challenge on his Facebook page remains: name a prominent Republican who offered similar sentiments over the death of Melissa Hortman, who was an actual legislator as opposed to a talking head. 

One more thing crossed Curmie’s mind when he woke up in the middle of the night.  A little over 50 years ago, Curmie was a freshman in college, taking a course called “Political Ideals.”  One of the key differences identified in that course was the tendency of conservatives to think in terms of the individual and liberals to think of groups with something in common (race, gender, economic class, etc.).  It’s an over-simplification, but it isn’t, or at least wasn’t, inaccurate.

But when it comes to these attacks on politicians or quasi-politicians, those characterizations no longer hold.  There is little if any attempt by liberals to blame all conservatives for the deaths of Hortman or the torching of Shapiro’s home, but all of a sudden all liberals are responsible for Kirk’s death.  There are even insane, and yes, Curmie does mean that term literally, rantings from the likes of Congresscritter Clay Higgins, who wants to violate the First Amendment and censor both individuals and corporations because some people think Charlie Kirk wasn’t all that great a guy, after all. 

We’re already seeing a variation on the theme, as the list of people—teachers, state university administrators, restaurant employees, writers, coaches, even firefighters— fired or suspended for what clearly should be protected speech is long and growing.  FIRE, which Curmie criticized only yesterday, is actually all over this one: here’s a list of literally dozens of incidents, already (!).  This is, as FIRE’s headline rightly points out, the embodiment of “cancel culture”: you know, Gentle Reader, that horrible plague the right always complains about… except, of course, when they’re the ones doing it.

But we aren’t talking about the jobs report, or Russia attacking Poland on Trump’s watch, or the Epstein files, so at least there’s that.

There are problems here, and the solutions aren’t easy.  The political right will cheerfully abandon the 1st and 4th Amendments to bolster the 2nd, but the kind of gun control labelled by liberals as “common sense” wouldn’t have saved Charlie Kirk, at least if, as seems likely, Tyler Robinson was indeed the perpetrator.  He had no record of mental illness or criminality, and the weapon was neither a handgun nor a semi-automatic rifle. 

It is sadly ironic that one of Charlie Kirk’s most famous lines was “I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”  But even calling attention to that quote is seen by some of the more fragile snowflakes of the right as a firing offense.  Yet another reason Curmie is glad he’s retired.

Note: one particularly unfortunate outcome here is that the Tyler Robinson Foundation, named for a different young man, will probably take a hit because of this because, in the words of a beloved former student, “people are stupid, y’all.”  The TRF is a charity offering support to families dealing with pediatric cancer.  Seems like a great cause, especially if you’re also a fan of the band Imagine Dragons, who have been involved with the foundation since its inception. Maybe send them a few bucks if you’ve got some to spare, Gentle Reader?

If it seems too [bad] to be true...

I was reminded recently of the Tawana Brawley case by Jack Marshall’s rightfully indignant response to Al Sharpton’s being hired by MSNBC. (Don’t get me started on that one.) It appears to me we’ve got another variation on the theme: a young African-American woman making false charges about race and generating far more heat than light.

One way or another, there’s something very wrong going on in McGehee, Arkansas. Courthouse News Service reports that Kymberly Wimberly (please, God, someone tell me she goes by “Kym” or “K-Dub” or something) received only a single B in her career at McGehee Secondary School while taking AP courses and similar academically-oriented fare. That academic record gave her the highest grade-point average in her school. She claims she should have been declared the school’s sole valedictorian, and alleges in lawsuit filed in federal court that the reason she wasn’t declared as such was because she is African-American.

When I first saw this story, I linked it on the Curmudgeon Central Facebook page, exclaiming, “Are you freaking kidding me?!?!?”. I admit it: I was drawn in by the headlines. But even at the time, there was that voice in the back of my head saying the story seemed too much. Really? Someone would prevent a young black woman from being valedictorian based on race? And (in effect) say so? It just seemed like there was something we weren’t seeing. Because, as I said in a comment, “This just COULDN'T be true... could it?”. If it seems too good (or too bad) to be true, it probably is.

Certainly the case has generated a lot of coverage in both the MSM and the blogosphere. There has been little real reporting, mostly just righteous dudgeon at the horrible abuse suffered by this young woman—a mother, no less (there’s even one commentator who suggests that it’s because she’s a mother… and black… that she’s the victim here). What’s clear here is the danger—and we’re all susceptible to it—of thinking we know the pertinent information of a dispute after hearing only half of the facts.

There’s a lot of circumstantial and hearsay evidence, much of it from her mom, who is a “certified media specialist” (whatever the hell that is) at the school. According to the suit, “school administrators and personnel treated two other white students as heir apparent to the valedictorian and salutatorian spots.” The mother was told by a counselor that Kymberly would be valedictorian. But, according to the lawsuit, although Ms. Wimberly had the best grades, “other school personnel expressed concern that [her] status as valedictorian might cause ‘a big mess.’” (It’s not clear what was meant by these alleged remarks: it’s possible that it was telling Ms. Wimberly prematurely that created the problem.)

As it happens, Principal Darrell Thompson decided to name co-valedictorians, the other one (coincidentally?) being white. Whether, as he claims in a CNN story on the case, he would have made the same decision had the roles been reversed is, of course, the crux of the controversy. The suit declares explicitly that he would not have done so. Superintendent Thomas Gathen (who is African-American himself, but, in the words of the suit, “serves at the pleasure of the predominantly Caucasian School Board”) claims, and I bet you’re shocked by this, “This is strictly an academic issue and a policy issue, not a racial issue.”

There is a policy, invoked by Thompson and subsequently supported by Gathen, that “If two or more students take the same or equivalent course work and receive the same grades of ‘A,’ a student with a greater number of courses will not be penalized.” To say that the policy is poorly written is to err rather more on the side of understatement than of hyperbole. But what I think it means is this: taking an extra course and getting a B won’t hurt you in your attempt to be valedictorian, assuming you have as many A’s as your competitor. Apparently, this clause became relevant this year.

CNN reports that “Gathen said [that] Wimberly’s co-valedictorian had half a credit more than Wimberly and the difference in the students’ GPAs was .03 or .05.” (He doesn’t know which?) A half credit isn’t a lot of difference, and no one disputes that Wimberly was taking difficult courses. But the difference of a couple hundredths of a point isn’t much, either.

Wimberly and her mother claim that the school has long discriminated against its African-American students. CNN, again: “‘Black students are meant to stay in regular course levels and mostly play sports,’ Wimberly said. ‘That’s what we’re good at that that’s what we should stick to—that’s the mentality of McGehee.’” This allegation may be true, but the evidence adduced to demonstrate the purported pattern is, I must say, pretty shaky. There hasn’t been a black valedictorian in a generation, although nearly half of the school’s students are African-American. That’s enough to make one raise an eyebrow. But really, that’s all there is.

Wimberly was the only African-American in the AP English class… of seven students. Apparently the phrase “statistically insignificant” is not part of the plaintiff’s active vocabulary. Reuters says there are 340 students in grades 9-12, so the graduating class would be about 80, figuring senior classes tend to be a little smaller than freshman classes because of dropouts. It’s a small school, but that’s still enough to give the lie to the allegation in the lawsuit that “Caucasian students had to almost opt out of being assigned to the honor’s [sic.] track.” Assuming graduating classes have roughly the same demographic profile as the widely-reported 54% white statistic, and figuring 80 graduates a year, that means 43 white students per graduating class: therefore, fewer than 14% took the AP English class, barely over 9% took AP biology. Color me unimpressed with the whole “almost opt out” line of argument.

It might also be worth pointing out that the whole reason there’s an issue here is that Ms. Wimberly got very good grades, suggesting that she was not the victim of any kind of discrimination in that regard. Oh, and she told Reuters she graduated with a 4.0, although she did have that one B. That makes her either a liar or a lot worse at math than she’d like to let on. She did, no doubt, come very close to a 4.0… just as the other student did come very close to her GPA.

More significantly, what has she lost? Exclusivity. She can still claim to have been valedictorian, still put it on her résumé, still brag about it if she wants (it’s unclear whether she does want to, but her mother sure as hell does). All she can’t say is that she was the only valedictorian at her high school. And seriously, who does that, anyway? One of the local high schools in this area named six co-valedictorians a couple years ago.

As it happens, my old high school had a controversy about who was going to be valedictorian three years after I graduated. I know with that precision because one of the principal players in the case was my best friend’s brother, who appeared to be heading for valedictorian status until another student transferred in and, on the basis of less than a year’s grades, was declared valedictorian over students who had been in the system all along. Fair? Not really. But not really unfair, either. That young woman had a right to be (or to attempt to be) valedictorian somewhere. It wasn’t her fault her father got a new job. So the presumptive valedictorian became salutatorian, and the presumptive salutatorian was dropped to third position. And you know what? It wasn’t the end of the world. (Maybe “co-valedictorians” would have been a good solution, actually.)

To be sure, McGehee Secondary School didn’t cover itself with glory, either. Ann Stobaugh, the guidance counselor who told her co-worker, Molly Bratton (Wimberly’s mother), that Wimberly would be valedictorian acted unprofessionally: that announcement, clearly, should come from the principal. If Stobaugh had shut up about information that a). wasn’t final and b). wasn’t hers to disseminate, there would probably have been no problem.

The idea that someone would be prevented from addressing the school board because she filled out a form for “public comments” instead of for “public participation” is beyond stupid—and I have little trouble believing that allegation. Further investigation may lend substantiation to claims of racial bias at that school. But frankly, I doubt it.

It’s pretty clear that Mr. Thompson didn’t do a very good job of explaining his reasoning: indeed, his claim of responsibility for the decision is itself problematic, as the policy remains objective, even if arcane. It would appear that Thompson corrected an error: the other student not only could, but—according to the school handbook—had to be named co-valedictorian. There doesn’t appear to have been a “decision” other than to follow policy. It may be a dumb rule, but it’s not outrageous or discriminatory. Not enforcing it would be grounds for a lawsuit. (Thompson does get points for accepting responsibility, however, even if he did so clumsily.)

Absent more proof than they offer, it is manifest that Ms. Wimberly, Ms. Bratton, and lawyer John W. Walker seek victimhood. In doing so, they show themselves to be boorish, petty, selfish, grand-standing whiners, willing to sacrifice the reputation of education professionals for the sake of notoriety and a few dollars. Worse, they help to de-legitimize the claims those who really are the victims of racism. Such people do exist, and it is they, not Ms. Wimberly, who have lost something in this “big mess.”