Another Set of Short Takes

1). From Canton, Ohio, the city which houses the Pro Football Hall of Fame, comes this football-related story: McKinley High School head football coach Marcus Wattley and six of his assistant coaches were fired recently for forcing a player to eat pork against his religious beliefs. 

Former Coach Marcus Wattley

On the face of it, this is the only possible outcome of an action that is stunning in its arrogance, cruelty, and prejudice. The player, who has not been named (although his father has been, so it’s not like it’s a secret), is a member of the Hebrew Israeli religious faith, and as such is strictly forbidden from eating pork, pork residue, or apparently even pork substitutes. The boy’s attorney argues that the coaching staff should have known that prior to the events in question, since the player had been present at previous player meals. 

What happened, according to the boy and his representatives, is that he was being punished for missing a voluntary strength and conditioning session. He was ordered in sit in the center of the gym and consume an entire pepperoni pizza; if he didn’t, his teammates would be required to do additional drills and he was threatened with the possibility that he couldn’t stay on the team. 

The school and district ran a “nearly weeklong investigation” into the allegations, including viewing surveillance videos before taking action. The account of precisely what happened is disputed by George Pattakos, Wattley’s attorney, and by five players who supported the coach at the board meeting which led to Wattley’s dismissal. They claim that the player was offered chicken nuggets instead of the pizza, but that he chose to pick off the pepperoni and eat the rest of the pizza. Of course, this would have left the “pork residue” mentioned above. 

They claim, further, that an assistant coach who wanted Wattley’s job had circulated an exaggerated and deceptive description of the events to school officials and the player’s family. Pattakos also accused the board of a “rushed” decision, and claimed the coach “was doing his best to teach an extraordinary athlete an important lesson.” 

Curmie doesn’t know what happened. He doubts Wattley’s description of the events but grants that there might be some validity to it. But should Wattley and his minions have been fired? Absolutely. Even assuming other options were offered, we still have a player subjected to the emotional distress of choosing between being humiliated in front of his teammates or risk being ostracized by them. It’s an old tactic employed by authoritarian jackasses to remind everyone that they’re in charge. As Curmie is wont to say, “if you have to tell me, it ain’t so.” 

But the real problem in Curmie’s mind is in a word that may have slipped past you at first read, Gentle Reader: voluntary. The boy was being punished for skipping a voluntary session. OK, we all know that these allegedly voluntary practices are in fact just as required as the mandatory ones; they’re only called voluntary so the football coach can dominate players’ time throughout the summer and still technically not violate the rules of the school or the athletic conference. 

It’s an absolute scam, and everybody knows it, but no one is willing to say anything because… football. But, and as they say in burlesque it’s a big but, the unwritten rule is that the only punishment a coach can levy against someone who skips one of these sessions is benching him—because who plays and who doesn’t is within the legitimate purview of the coach, even of an unethical one. Wattley overstepped even that line. He’s gone, and should be. 

2). Those of us whose Congresscritter is Loony Louie Gohmert have known this for a long time, but the wider world is now learning that he truly is dumber than dirt. His recent (I was going to say “most recent,” but his stupidity is prolific, and he’s probably moved on, already) escapade was asking a representative of the Department of Agriculture if, and I quote, “there [is] anything that the National Forest Service or BLM can do to change the course of the moon’s orbit or the Earth’s orbit around the sun?” in order to curb climate change. It’s probably worth mentioning that BLM here is the Bureau of Land Management, not the other BLM. 

When Curmie first read this, he thought this had to be Andy Borowitz or the Onion. Nope: there’s video. Of course, this plays to liberal opinion of Gohmert, and we need to be cautious of going too far down that path. And to be fair, there’s a follow-up that suggests that Gohmert might, might have been joking. He reacts to a befuddled response to his earlier question with “Yeah, well, if you figure out a way that you in the Forest Service can make that change, I’d like to know.” 

If Gohmert’s question was sarcasm, then we have discovered the best dead-pan artist since Buster Keaton. But we also have something a little more problematic than simply a single moronic Congresscritter, as it would suggest a strategy to identify all attempts at mitigating climate change are either useless or illusory. Certainly a little conservation, the use of solar or other “green” energies, tax incentives associated with purchasing fuel-efficient vehicles (or disincentives to buy gas-guzzlers), restrictions on air pollutants: all these are to be abandoned. I think I’d rather go with “stupid.” 

3. One of Curmie’s Facebook friends posted a meme recently that suggests it’s an “American History Quiz.” There’s a series of questions with two possible answers: “A. Black lives” and “B. All lives.” Among the questions: “Brought to America on chains at the bottom of ships,” “Counted as 3/5 human in America,” etc. You get the idea. 

Curmiphiles who’ve been following this blog or the Facebook page for any length of time know that one thing that really annoys me is when an otherwise useful point is undercut by intellectual sloppiness or laziness. Let’s leave aside the more complex arguments and look specifically at one of those question prompts: “Enslaved in America for over 400 years.” Um… none of the above is the correct answer. 

Exactly when the first slaves in the New World arrived is unclear, but the earliest date I’ve seen is 1526, although a revolt ended that colony in a matter of months. Other historians would argue that slavery probably followed soon after the first permanent white settlement in 1565. (The 1619 project chooses their eponymous date because it was the first date of slaves in Virginia. Don’t ask me why.) The Emancipation Proclamation was 1863; the end of the Civil War was 1865. 

So… choosing the earliest date for slavery starting and the latest date for slavery ending, and we get (wait for it) 339 years. On Curmie’s planet, 339 is less than 400. You want to say “over 300 years,” fine. “Suffered prejudice,” yep. “Enslaved for over 400 years,” no. And an objective error of that magnitude renders the rest of the argument, which is valid, less persuasive. 

4. <Mumblemumble> years ago, when Curmie was a graduate student at the University of Birmingham in England, he did his banking at the local branch of Lloyd’s Bank. The choice was, to be honest, one of convenience rather than considered choice, as it was located en route between my bed-sit and the university. 

Nadia Begum and Clifford Weedon 

If he could go back in time, he might make a different choice, as the bank fired a branch manager because she helped an elderly, visually impaired customer, open his mail. Yes, Gentle Reader, you read that correctly. She assisted a customer, and the banking conglomerate sacked her for her efforts. 

Surely there’s more to this than that, right? If so, Curmie can’t find it or imagine it. Nadia Begum developed a friendship with Clifford Weedon and helped him out. But that, apparently, is against the rules, which, to be sure, descended from the mountaintop, elbowing Moses and the 10 Commandments out of the way. 

Even in the torrent of negative press Lloyd’s suffered when the BBC told the story, they continued to sniff that “we have a colleague code of responsibility in place to safeguard both our colleagues and customers…. In this instance our standards were not met.” Curmie doesn’t know which they need more: a brain or a box of laxative. 

The good news is that Ms. Begum was headhunted by Octopus Energy, whose CEO specifically wanted “Nadia’s warmth and humanity.” The other good news is that Curmie will never again have to deal with Lloyd’s Bank. 

5. Curmie isn’t sure how this case made it as far as federal court, but at least the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals got it right. Seven years ago, Emma Semler and her friend Jenny Werstler shot up heroin in the bathroom of a West Philadelphia KFC. Werstler, who was celebrating (if that’s the word) her 20th birthday, wanted a second shot, whereupon she overdosed, and died. Semler had fled the scene, leaving her friend to her fate instead of calling for help, so she’s no angel. 

But prosecutors decided that because Semler physically passed Werstler the drugs, she was guilty of “distribution,” which carries a minimum 20-year sentence. Five years after the event, she was convicted of that presumed offense. OK, anyone with an IQ over room temperature knows that law was intended to go after dealers and pushers, not addicts. 

But some crusading DA or ADA wanted to make a name for him/herself, and so the case found its way to the appeals court, which found, quite reasonably, in the words of Judge Jane Richards Roth:

The government would have us believe that if two drug addicts jointly and simultaneously purchase methamphetamine and return home to smoke it together, a ‘distribution’ has occurred each time the addicts pass the pipe back and forth to each other. Such an interpretation diverts punishment from traffickers to addicts, who contribute to the drug trade only as end users and who already suffer disproportionally from its dangerous effects.

Semler, who seems to have cleaned herself up after the death of her friend, was certainly a contributor to Werstler’s demise, but she was hardly a “distributor.” 

Whoever brought these charges and the judge who allowed the case to go forward and even prescribed a harsher sentence than the one required by law for distribution should be fired, disbarred, and probably arrested; every juror who went along with this charade needs to be wupped up ‘side the head with a 2x4. 

6. As it happens, Curmie has a Comment of the Day on Ethics Alarms, this one on the hype surrounding the casting of black actress Jodie Turner-Smith as Anne Boleyn in a new TV mini-series currently airing on the UK’s Channel 5. You can see Jack Marshall’s original post on the subject here.

The Texas Board of Education, Propaganda, and the Threat to the Future

There have been two big stories in the recent past about the Texas Board of Education. Neither brings good news. Both, in fact, represent an all-out, open carried guns-blazing attack on public education in the state. These particular assaults come from the most frothing-at-the-mouth lunatics of the state’s GOP—the Democrats are terrible on education; the Republicans, by contrast, make them look like Solomon, Confucius, Socrates, Einstein, and Leonardo da Vinci rolled into one. Indeed, it is a rather profound testament to the skill, tenacity, perseverance, and general badassitude of literally thousands of teachers in this state that anyone entering Curmie’s university-level classroom knows literally anything that’s actually true… or the difference between fact and opinion.

Donna Bahorich, the new Chief Propagandist

Chair of the Texas Board of Education

First, Governor Greg Abbott, whose sole raison d’être, as far as Curmie can figure out, is to make us nostalgic for the idiot that is Rick Perry, named Donna Bahorich as the new chairperson of the TBOE. Had it been his desire to find the worst possible person for the job (and, let’s face it, it pretty much was), he could not have done much better.

The Texas Freedom Network (of which—full disclosure—Curmie is a member) is an organization that believes education ought to be a process of developing mental acuities, of refining critical thinking skills, and of distinguishing between actual academic disciplines on the one hand and religio-political mythology on the other. Here’s what their press release has to say about the Bahorich nomination:

If Gov. Abbott wanted to demonstrate that he won’t continue his predecessor’s efforts to politicize and undermine our state’s public schools, this appointment falls far short. The governor has appointed as board chair an ideologue who voted to adopt new textbooks that scholars sharply criticized as distorting American history, who rejected public education for her own family and who supports shifting tax dollars from neighborhood public schools to private and religious schools through vouchers. This appointment almost guarantees that the board will continue to put culture war agendas ahead of educating more than 5 million Texas kids.

Let me call your attention to something in this paragraph you might have missed. Bahorich home-schooled her own kids, then sent them off to private religious high schools. Yes, really. And she seems to think that’s a job qualification!

The outgoing chair, Barbara Cargill, is also an ideologue and a Bible-thumper, but at least she has taught in the public schools. (Of course, the fact that a science teacher would support creationism in public schools might be more disturbing than having a home-schooler do so.)

Even Republicans on the TBOE are raising eyebrows at the audacity of naming someone as singularly ill-suited for the job as Bahorich. Here’s Board member and former vice-chair Thomas Ratliff, for example:

Public school isn’t for everybody, but when 94-percent of our students in Texas attend public schools, I think it ought to be a baseline requirement that the chair of the State Board of Education have at least some experience in that realm, as a parent, teacher, something.

You know, that sort of makes sense to anyone with an IQ above room temperature. Of course, that leaves out a fair number of politicians (and, let’s face, that’s all TBOE members are).

The other headline isn’t really news. Rather, it’s the implementation of new standards in history textbooks that will take place this fall. The actual codification of those standards took place years ago, in an embarrassing display that Curmie wrote about in his very first essay in this blogging persona and then again a couple of months later. The entire process was a clown show from start to finish… you can check out some of the details in those posts from 2010.

Why this story has resurrected is only partially the imminence of the effects of these frankly silly and anti-intellectual standards: the new textbooks will be in classrooms in the fall. But one particularly idiotic suggestion in the TBOE’s laundry list of inanity has a new-found relevance. Here’s a paragraph from what I wrote in May of 2010:

The Board now lists “sectionalism” (whatever the hell that is) as the principal cause of the Civil War. Slavery? Third in line, behind states’ rights. The Venona papers, which prove basically that some of the people whose lives were ruined by HUAC and/or Joseph McCarthy were in fact guilty, are now credited with “confirm[ing]” HUAC “findings.” The conservative faction, generally all about required lists, shifted ground when Sonia Sotomayor was added to a standard on women’s contributions to American history… all of a sudden, that list is merely “suggested.”

You caught it, didn’t you, Gentle Reader? That first bit, about the causes of the Civil War? You see, I bet you thought the Civil War was about slavery, didn’t you? That’s because the Civil War was about slavery. Except in Texas: because although nobody really knows WTF “sectionalism” is, it was that, not the… um… you know… other thing, that caused the war.

There’s a word for that line of reasoning, and it rhymes with fullbit.

Given the recent controversies over the Confederate battle flag, the Civil War in general has become a topic of conversation, and with it the insane notion, propagated by a whole lot of people who aren’t historians and precisely none who are, that slavery was only tertiarily related to the Civil War. This is akin to ascribing a cause of death to heart failure, while casually ignoring the bullet in the chest.

Alexander H. Stephens

At least he was honest about what he believed.

But don’t take it from me. Listen instead to the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, who, presumably, was reasonably well acquainted with the relevant motivations of the participants:

…the new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution….

Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. [Applause.] This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

Is it just me, or is that pretty damned clear? There’s a reason Texas students are required to read Jefferson Davis’s inaugural address (which doesn’t mention slavery per se) but not this “Cornerstone speech.” That reason is precisely, unequivocally, and absolutely intentionally to present a distorted view of the past to undergird a 21st century political (and religio-political) agenda.  Call it indoctrination.  Call it propaganda.  But it sure as hell isn’t education.

By the way, Texas’s own secession document is absolutely clear, as well:

[Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery—the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits—a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.

The document goes on to detail the alleged atrocities committed by the “non-slave-holding states,” amounting essentially to “they don’t want us to have slaves anymore”:

…based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color—a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.

Nope, slavery sure wasn’t an issue. Not unless you count the 21 references to “slaves,” “slave-holding,” or “slavery” and the nine instances of “race” or “races” in that “Declaration of Causes” (by contrast, “rights” appears four times).

The proponents of the new standards are fools or charlatans or both, and this is troubling in two ways. First, and most obviously, these people have a lot of power, and their indoctrination attempts are far more successful than many people believe. Even in a “liberal” discipline like theatre, I often encounter students who proclaim that the US was founded as a “Christian nation” and evince utter contempt for those who argue that, say, slavery was an issue in the Civil War.

Equally important, however, is the erosion of the “brand” of Conservative. When Curmie was a lad, the two major political parties agreed on the value of education per se, on the need for funding of primary, secondary, and post-secondary institutions alike, and on the quest for truth. Sure, there were disagreements about priorities, and there were different interpretations of events. That’s what makes for a free and informed electorate. But there weren’t separate facts. They’re an invention of a new and vastly inferior breed of pseudo-conservative, a “conservative” who ignores actual facts when mythology better serves the short-term interests of one’s political cronies.

Evolution is the foundational belief in modern biology. Dinosaurs were long gone before any species bearing the slightest resemblance to ours existed. The earth is not the center of the universe. The authors of the Declaration of Independence (Thomas Jefferson), the Preamble to the Constitution (Gouverneur Morris), and the Constitution itself including the Bill of Rights (James Madison) all wrote specifically that the United States is not a Christian nation. And slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War. Facts.

It’s ironic, in a way, that the elephant should be the symbol of the GOP, because the facts are the elephant in the middle of the room, and every national Republican politician is trying very hard indeed to ignore that well-fed pachyderm. They—the ones who aren’t naturally stone stupid, at least—are engaging in a terrifying game of anti-intellectual chicken. They truly believe, to paraphrase Isaac Asimov, that their ignorance is as good as other folks’ knowledge. It is not. There are, of course, plenty of Republicans who aren’t idiots. But they’re not raising their voices even a little bit to insist that our students, the people who will be running the country someday, deserve better. They deserve the truth. And we as a society need to provide it or we will, to coin a phrase, perish from the earth.