The Left and Right Both Hate Free Expression--They Just Do It Differently

Curmie, as anyone who has seen a handful of his posts will know, leans left on most issues, but is more civil libertarian than liberal. 

Those on the left think those on the right want to shut down freedom of expression, and vice versa. Trouble is, they’re both accurate assessments of current reality. It was, after all, the right that forbade doctors from giving their best medical advice to women seeking an abortion. Similarly, it was the left that rejoiced when the Twitter and Facebook accounts of a sitting US President were shut down by those social media corporations. But let’s confine ourselves to events of this month. 

Curmie offers two examples (there are undoubtedly more) on each side. I ask you to believe me that I literally just flipped a coin to decide which to talk about first. Liberals first, then. 

Exhibit A, we’ve already discussed: the Hamline University case in which adjunct professor Erika López Prater was dismissed because she showed a couple of images of the prophet Muhammad. The artworks were shown in a course in global art history. They were by Muslim artists, celebrating the prophet. Students in the course were warned in the syllabus and immediately prior to showing the images in class exactly what was going to happen; they were given the opportunity to opt out of the viewing. No one did. 

Ah, but one student claimed to have been grievously wounded by seeing an image she was given every opportunity to avoid, and every administrator you could mention rushed to appease her tender sensibilities. The professor did nothing wrong, but became a pariah anyway, because pretending to believe the victimization claims of anyone who can claim any kind of minority status is easier for those with no ethical compass, no moral courage, and no actual belief in their protestations of academic freedom. 

Ultimately, with virtually the entire academic community piling on, the administration issued an “oops” statement. But it was too little, too late, and López Prater is suing. Curmie hopes she wins big. Also too little, too late, the Hamline faculty is now asking President Fayneese Miller to resign. 

Exhibit B comes not from a “where’s that?” school like Hamline, but from one of the most respected universities in the world, Stanford. Let’s just say Curmie is glad he didn’t end up there after they recruited him for their PhD program forty-something years ago. 

Anyway: the story. It seems that an as yet unnamed (but apparently identified) student was photographed reading a copy of Mein Kampf, and that photo was circulated on Snapshat. 

The book, by the way, has been required reading in at least one Stanford course of late, albeit only a single chapter, and as a linked pdf. The FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) website suggests that the book is available for loan from the university library; Curmie checked, and can see no copies of the book per se except in the original German. Literally scores of analyses, but no copies of the book itself in English. In other words, the student in question apparently purchased the book. The question “So what?” presents itself here. 

Reading a book, any book, is an exercise in freedom of expression. Curmie supposes this idea could be contorted to excuse actual unethical (but still probably legal) conduct, but barring the specific intention of offending onlookers (a variation on incitement), the student in question is guilty of nothing more than accidental rudeness. 

Of course, as might be expected from those who are never happier than when they can claim to be abused, a Protected Identity Harm (PIH) report has been filed with university authorities. The PIH may or may not be well-intentioned—Curmie doubts it, but you know how he is, don’t you, Gentle Reader? The idea is that anyone can nark on their friends conflate the university with the Stasi “address incidents where a community member experiences harm because of who they are and how they show up in the world.” 

Here, as at Hamline, the censorious asshats were urged on by university-employed religious leaders, in this case Rabbis Jessica Kirschner and Laurie Hahn Tapper, who couldn’t resist the siren song of victimhood: “Jewish people belong at Stanford, and deserve to be respected by our peers.” FFS, literally no one is suggesting otherwise. What is being not merely suggested but screamed from the metaphorical rooftops is that students who want to know what Hitler actually wrote instead of what someone else said he wrote don’t belong at Stanford. Intellectual curiosity used to be considered a good thing. Not anymore, apparently. 

Of course, FIRE is right in declaring that “the process is the punishment”: “Administrators with disciplinary authority formally notifying students they’ve been accused of ‘harm,’ when they’ve done nothing more than read a book, and asking them to ‘acknowledge’ what they’ve done and ‘change’ their ways through restorative justice-type exercises undoubtedly chills student speech.” 

It might be going a bit far to suggest that the author of Mein Kampf would approve of Stanford’s tactics (not their overt political stance, of course), but that suggestion is not far off the mark. 

OK, let’s look at the other side of the ledger: Exhibit C. We all know that Florida governor Ron DeSantis is positioning himself for a presidential run.  Those of us of a particular political disposition might be tempted to suggest that he’s trying to be the sane and not senile version of Donald Trump.  Curmie, to say the least, has never been impressed: he objected to DeSantis’s obviously phony rationale in demanding that everyone—faculty and students alike—at state universities declare their political affiliations. No rational being believed the rhetoric about “competing ideas and perspectives,” especially when there was a not-so-veiled threat of withholding funding if not enough of his acolytes were hired. 

Curmie also wrote:

Diversity of perspective doesn’t require hiring both liberals and conservatives; it requires faculty who know what the hell they’re doing. Curmie has taught plays that are very Catholic, very Jewish, very Buddhist, very Hindu, very atheist; he’s taught plays that advocate for monarchy, for democracy, for socialism, for capitalism, for anarchy. Do I really need to tell you, Gentle Reader, that I’m not an adherent to all of these philosophies?

As for Gov. DeSantis… he's baaaaaack, and he continues his mendacious ways. We knew that because he’s Ron DeSantis and his lips were moving, but just for verification’s sake, let’s look at his desire to make New College of Florida into a “Hillsdale of the South.” (To be fair, Curmie can’t find anywhere those precise words were uttered by DeSantis himself, only by his minion, Education Commissioner Manny Diaz. Kinda doesn’t matter, though.) 

The point is that DeSantis hasn’t the slightest interest in making New College into a Hillsdale. How can Curmie be so sure? Two reasons: 1). Curmie has a dear friend of long standing who teaches at Hillsdale, and we’ve had more than one discussion about life at our respective institutions, and 2). Hillsdale is a private college whose defining characteristic isn’t its conservatism, but rather its libertarianism and self-styled independence from government interference. The government says “your students can’t get Pell Grants unless you do this,” and Hillsdale replies, “Okay, no Pell Grants.” The college is breaking no rules by their refusal, it’s just that the government is flustered by their inability to impose demands. 

New College is a state institution, and DeSantis wants to be able to appoint its board members; if it were a private college, he wouldn’t be able to get his grubby mitts anywhere near its day-to-day operations. He’s a megalomaniacal narcissist, not the slightest bit interested in diversity of perspectives; he wants his own views presented to the exclusion of others, and he wants the state to pay for it. 

Curmie has made the point repeatedly that for the last generation or more, boards of state colleges and universities are appointed for their adherence to the political philosophy of the governor. The state university from which Curmie recently retired had dozens of Regents over the last two decades; nary a one, to the best of Curmie’s knowledge, was a Democrat. Indeed, being active in Republican politics far outstripped any particular skillset or interest in education in the selection process. So whereas DeSantis is less than ethical, he at least has, or, rather, had, the lame but commonplace excuse that everybody does it. 

This is different, though. As Peter Greene writes at Curmudgucation, “Taking the liberal and successful New College and targeting it to become the ‘Hillsdale of the South’ is not about creating more choices, and nobody is even pretending that it is. It’s about silencing one set of voices and amplifying another set.” 

Greene continues by arguing that “School choice advocates who hold Florida and DeSantis up as examples of forward-thinking awesome school choice advances are being disingenuous—Florida is on a road to impose a more ideologically focused authoritarian model of education in which only ideas approved by the governor may be included in schooling.” 

Curmie agrees, and notes also that DeSantis wants to overthrow the tenure system, audit money spent on DEI programs (this could actually be legit, but it’s Ron DeSantis, so we’d be wise to expect the worst, especially in terms of an attempt to suppress Critical Race Theory), block AP courses on African American Studies (newsflash, Ron, it’s not your call)… well, you get the idea. This is the “free speech” guy conservatives salivate over? Seriously? 

And so we move on to Exhibit D. Now we’re in the great (or perhaps not so great) state of North Dakota. Needless to say, Curmie is not an expert on things in the Peace Garden State (yes, Curmie had to look that up). There are actually two stories here, but Curmie is going to lump them together because of their chronological propinquity. The first to catch Curmie’s attention wasn’t in the form of a news story per se, but in a post by the above-mentioned Peter Greene. His post is titled “ND: Actual Anti-Furry Legislation. Really,” which sort of borders on clickbait because the essay is really about some pretty creepy manifestations of transphobia. 

You should check out Greene’s post in its entirety, Gentle Reader, but there are two specific points that need to be emphasized. First, North Dakota (like Missouri, apparently) clearly has no real problems to solve or no sane person would be wasting time on stuff like this. Second, like Texas’s abortion bill of a couple years back, there’s money to be had for narking on your neighbors. At least the left only encourages this kind of crap; they don’t provide monetary incentives. 

The other North Dakota story concerns proposed legislation being pushed by the House majority leader to give university presidents the right to fire tenured faculty pretty much at will. A decision to do so could not be appealed by the faculty member, and “the president and any administrators designated to assist the president shall fulfill these duties without fear of reprisal or retaliation. No complaint, lawsuit or other allegation is allowed against a president or other administrator for actions taken pursuant to these provisions.” 

This idiocy makes tenure meaningless, of course, and completely ignores both the advantages of a robust tenure system and the obligations owed to faculty who took a position or didn’t leave because they believed the state and the university would behave ethically. 

More to the point: the governor appoints the board, the board appoints (and fires or rewards) the president, and the president is to be granted absolute, unrestricted (by internal appeal or lawsuit) authority to fire even tenured faculty. (Curmie notes that Kansas tried this crap a couple of years ago, disingenuously invoking financial exigencies caused by COVID. Guess what party controls Kansas’s government.) What could possibly go wrong? 

Neither the left nor the right, then, really give a damn about free expression. Curmie won’t bother to link all the examples he’s written about over the years, but there have been a lot of them, from both sides, and scores of others he didn’t get to. As Hall of Fame baseball manager Casey Stengel would say, you can look it up. Both sides want to control what happens in the classroom; Curmie was about to say the left is more interested in what happens outside the classroom, the right in controlling the curriculum and the faculty… but that really isn’t true, at least universally. 

The one difference is the strategy. Most of the repression from the left comes from the campus per se, generally from idiot administrators at both the university and secondary school levels. The right prefers to legislate from outside the institution itself, citing often imaginary problems that need to be solved. 

Neither side seems willing to allow faculty to teach and students to learn. ‘Twas not ever thus, and the future of education and indeed of the nation depends on returning to free expression in and out of the classroom, to the quest for truth rather than the dubious claim to have found it, and to finding an appropriate balance between encouraging disparate perspectives and believing (or pretending to believe) that they’re all equally valid.

The AP Proves Itself The Silly

Seriously, AP, what the hell?

Oh, bloody hell. 

Curmie had just gotten a little momentum on a piece on the craziness emanating from the apparently not-so-great state of North Dakota (hopefully forthcoming) when he encountered this little gem. This post may be shorter than most, but it takes priority. 

The fun folks at the Associated Press, long-time progenitors of the world’s worst style sheet, have outdone themselves. The AP Stylebook Twitter account posted this yesterday: “We recommend avoiding general and often dehumanizing ‘the’ labels such as the poor, the mentally ill, the French, the college-educated. Instead, use wording such as people with mental illnesses. And use these descriptions only when clearly relevant.” 

It’s worth noting that they appear to have taken the post down after being humiliated by… well… virtually everyone, but there are enough screenshots out there (here, for example), and enough comments by other than the usual suspects to make it pretty clear that the tweet really did exist, and really was that perfect storm of condescension, Woke self-importance, and, let’s face it, bad grammar. 

The reason not to use those phrases, assuming there are such reasons, is that in all cases we’re dealing with nominalized adjectives, which are by their nature a little problematic in formal English. (Is this where Curmie shows off and mentions that such usage is perfectly acceptable in some other languages?) Using articles with adjectives can certainly be regarded as less than ideal grammar, although the AP does manifest all the attributes of the silly. (See what I did there?) 

But it’s also true that many such adjectival noun-wannabees have been accepted into common parlance, although Curmie has never seen “the college-educated” thus employed. “The poor,” “the mentally ill,” and “the French,” however, fail to send shivers up the spine. 

All those expressions probably ought to be in quotation marks (as Curmie has done), too, but one could argue that this would add unnecessary clutter, so we’ll let that one go. 

The problem with the tweet, however, extends past the ironic incompetence demonstrated by whoever posted it. The proposal is stupid on its face, which ought to be (and appears to have been) enough to generate the wrong kind of publicity, but it’s the tired and rather flaccid invocation of “dehumanizing” that really caught the public’s attention. Paul Graham’s tweet that “The AP Stylebook has just checked itself out of the relevance hotel” is more succinct than most, but can be taken as indicative. Curmie kinda likes Ben Collins’s (assuming he got there first) “people experiencing Frenchness,” too. 

Nicholas Fondacaro’s tweet—(“Should we stop referring to ‘the’ AP Stylebook and refer to “a stylebook experiencing stupidity?”)—was also pretty good. Still, the prize for the first round goes to the French Embassy, which now claims the title of the “Embassy of Frenchness in the US.” 

The AP, not content with the initial embarrassment, apparently pulled the tweet with an apology, since “The use of ‘the French’ in this tweet by @AP was inappropriate and has caused unintended offense. An updated tweet is upcoming.” Unintended offense? Uh, no. Here’s Paul Graham again: “You wish it was offense. Actually people were laughing at you.” 

And he’s right, of course (except for omitting that comma). It would be difficult to see the offensiveness of the term “the French” to describe people who called themselves “les Français,” which translates as… [checks notes] “the French.” 

I mean, ouch. The AP would have us believe they’re legitimate protectors of written communication, and they come off looking like utter buffoons. True, they’re not going to show up on our doorsteps with battering rams because we made reference to “the poor.” They (apparently) seek to control not how all of us express ourselves, but only how adherents to their Cult of Enlightened Journalists do so. 

But there was a time, many, many, moons ago, when the AP Stylesheet could at least be taken seriously. Back when Curmie was advising a college newspaper (Curmie shudders to realize that was over four decades ago), it was an indispensable tool, not because it was necessarily “right,” but because it provided a means of achieving consistency. We could, and did, ignore its guidelines, but we did so by establishing our own specific standards, which we attempted to apply across the board. 

But the AP, like so many other once-respected institutions, has lost its damned mind. Basing a stylesheet on the most paranoid delusions of a tiny segment of the population is just nuts. Speaking as a member of “the college educated,” Curmie is unable to suppress a chortle at AP’s ineptitude in… wait for it… the use of language.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

The great 20th-century philosopher,
Forrest Gump

Curmie comes by his sobriquet honestly, and there are times he just needs to vent against the raging stupidity of humanity in general. So here are a few items prompting Curmie to scream into the void. In no particular order… 

#1. This ad for Bounty. The premise is that the couple has just won the lottery, but in the excitement hubby knocks over his drink (soda? juice?), and it threatens to soil (de-legitimize?) the winning ticket. So it’s important that they have a really good paper towel, you see? 

Erm… no. It doesn’t matter how good your paper towel is if the spill will have done its damage before you can grab a sheet from the roll under the sink (or wherever). You want to protect that lottery ticket? Pick the damned thing up before the liquid can get there! Then you can mop up the spill. Anyone who does otherwise is apparently stupid enough to use the product in question. 

#2. Facebook. Gentle Reader, if you know Curmie personally, you know that he’s the president of a national organization.  In that capacity (and as an admin of the Facebook page), he announced that the deadline for applications for a rather hefty scholarship had been extended for a couple of weeks, and he posted a link to the page on the organization’s website from which the application can be downloaded. 

The next morning, Facebook’s algorithm proved itself even stupider than humans (well, not stupider than the particular humans who programmed it) by proclaiming the post “spam” and threatening dire consequences should Curmie similarly misbehave in the future. Of course, virtually everyone Curmie knows has been thrown into FB jail for alleged but usually imaginary offenses against their Divinely Inspired (i.e., Total Bullshit) “community standards.” 

Like a lot of other folks, Curmie has a history with Facebook, as you can see here and here, for example. My favorite Facebook story, though, had nothing to do with me: it’s the saga of the sexy onions from a year and half ago. Sigh. 

#3. FEMA Follies. FEMA has been an enduring punchline if not always a national embarrassment since Heckuva Job Brownie didn’t do a heckuva job. But most of their failures have been simple incompetence. This one is different: it’s fraud (not theirs, necessarily), and it damned well better be treated as such. After a September storm caused extensive damage in western Alaska, FEMA stepped in to help out. So far, so good, right? 

Alas, no, Gentle Reader. When residents sought out documents in such native languages as Yup’ik or Inupiaq, they encountered some… ahem… “translations” that were, shall we say, less than useful. When Monty Python riffs on horrible translations, it’s at least moderately funny (even if it isn’t one of Curmie’s favorite bits). When it happens in real life, it’s less amusing, and unless you think there’s a legitimate reason to say “Your husband is a polar bear, skinny” in an official government document, we’ve got a problem here. 

Whoever put together the faux translations seems to have used languages that aren’t indigenous to the area, trotted out a decades-old Russian text, and otherwise just fucked around, obviously thinking this whole business was a colossal joke. Those weren’t the exact words of Gary Holton, a University of Hawaii at Manoa linguistics professor and a former director of the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. What he did say was “They clearly just grabbed the words from the document and then just put them in some random order and gave something that looked like Yup’ik but made no sense”; he called the final product a “word salad.” 

FEMA fired Accent on Languages, the company that “translated” the documents. Of course, anything less than a lawsuit and a prosecution for fraud is insufficient. Meanwhile, of course, Jeremy Zidek, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, claims that the mistranslations did not create delays or problems. It is unclear whether Zidek can see Russia from his house. What is undeniable is that if he were Pinocchio, he couldn’t see the end of his nose without a telescope. 

#4. Well, it’s Missouri. What do you expect? Apologies to anyone offended by Curmie’s allowing his inner Kansan to sneak out for a second, there. But seriously, are there no actual problems in the Show-Me State that merit the attention of the legislature? Apparently not, because the male GOP majority has decided that policing their female colleagues’ accoutrement is of paramount importance. (Note: to be fair, this absurdity was introduced by a Republican woman). 

It’s those arms, you see. They’re almost as distracting to the pseud-prude crowd as (gasp!) high school girls’ shoulders. Exactly what problem is allegedly being solved here is not entirely clear. What is, is that state reps Raychel Proudie and Ashley Aune err more on the side of understatement than of hyperbole in declaring this measure “ridiculous.” 

#5. California Capers, Exhibit A. Curmie hasn’t voted for a politician in years; it’s always been lesser-of-two-evils time (or, perhaps more accurately, the evil of two lessers). In other words, the Loony Left is as scary as the Jewish Space Lasers crowd on the right. There are two discrete issues here: what is a sensible, ethical, and pragmatic choice on the one hand, and what is politically efficacious on the other. Needless to say, if an action is so problematic in terms of the former criterion that it offends the sensibilities of any rational person, then there is a price to be paid in terms of the latter. 

There are, in short, a lot of people like Curmie—not in political philosophy, perhaps, but in voting for the candidates of Political Party X simply because they’re not quite as nauseating as those of Political Party Y. Nothing makes the right happier, therefore, than someone on the left not merely doing something the average person would regard as transcendently stupid (because it is), but bragging about it. And if the idiots in question are from California, the right-wing ideologues are in something very much akin to ecstasy. 

Naturally, the Bay Area Woke Folk are happy to oblige. A San Francisco panel has recommended the following for each of its black residents who meet any two of eight criteria in light of “decades of harm they have experienced”: a one-time payment of $5 million (yes, apiece!), plus wiping out all debts associated with educational, personal, credit card and payday loans for black households. Yes, really. The cost would be equal to approximately the city’s total budget for three and a half years… oh, did I mention they’re already running in the red? 

If you’re looking for how actual racists can get elected, look no further, because this proposal, presented with straight faces, apparently, makes anyone even remotely associated with the left look like an utter idiot. Frankly, Curmie resents it. 

Have at least some black SF residents experienced prejudice during their lifetimes? No doubt. To the tune of $5,000,000 apiece? It is remotely possible that a few have, but Curmie would need to see some proof. In fact, because of affirmative action set-asides and similar programs, one could make a case that the average black San Franciscan has already been compensated more than they deserve. 

It’s also telling that other groups who have certainly been the victims of prejudice—there are no doubt some life-long American citizens now living in the city who were interned during WWII simply because of their Japanese descent, for example—go unrecompensed in this proposal. 

There are no words that can adequately express the level of disdain Curmie holds for anyone supporting this ludicrous and almost certainly unconstitutional recommendation. 

#6: California Capers, Exhibit B. If there is one more step past “California” to really float the boat of the right, it’s adding in… “university.” After all, that’s where all those commie pinko weirdos are indoctrinating our precious babies with such seditious ideas as “other people have different experiences and therefore different perspectives.” 

Right on cue, the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work at the University of Southern California has decided not merely to fulfill the right wing’s stereotype of academics, particularly of those in the social sciences, but to surpass in idiocy even that tortured misrepresentation. Wanna guess what word they’ve decided to drop from their active vocabulary? Go on, guess… If you said “field,” Gentle Reader, you’ve either already ready about this story, or you’re wasting your time reading this blog: you should be crafting B-movie plots with diabolical villains named Professor Psychoto and Dr. Deviance. 

Yes, because, you see, “Language can be powerful, and phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign.” The acceptable word is now “practicum,” by the way, a reasonable enough synonym for the meaning of “field” most appropriate to the study of social work… but having little in common with the definition associated with the work undertaken by slaves. 

Look, if you want to argue that people ought to be circumspect about how to employ words with multiple meanings, one of which is offensive, Curmie gets it.  But it takes a contortion of mythic proportions to get to anything actually problematic about “field.” 

Ultimately, Curmie feels compelled to warn you, Gentle Reader, to watch where you step when you walk through that practicum, as there is an incredible amount of bullshit out there.

The Indecent Suppression of *Indecent*

One of the most common topics for Curmie’s blog over the years has been when idiot school administrators (the usual apologies for redundancy) do something stupid and censorious with school plays. Curmie is no doubt forgetting an episode or two, but here’s a brief sampling: 

There was the moronic Superintendent in Pennsylvania who pulled a production of Kismet—yes, the thoroughly innocuous 1950s musical that gave us “Stranger in Paradise” and “Baubles, Bangles, and Beads”—because the central characters are Muslims, and 9/11 was [checks notes] only ten and a half years or so before the scheduled production date. (That same post also discusses a community theatre that cancelled its production of The Rocky Horror Show because it turns out that parts of the show are risqué: who knew, right?) 

There was the Ohio principal who fired the director/choreographer of the musical Legally Blonde (after it had received standing ovations) for violating vague “code of conduct” guidelines: not deleting the word “skank” from the script and similar offenses which the principal could have headed off if he’d… you know… done his job. 

There was the Utah school board who, admitting they “they failed to give [All Shook Up] careful scrutiny” when they signed off on a contract to produce it, were apparently more shocked than Claude Rains in “Casablanca” that a musical loosely constructed around the songs of Elvis Presley might contain some suggestive choreography. 

Ah, but the #1 target of the censorious asshats: any play that suggests that gay people exist and that they sometimes… sometimes fall in love. Thus, this post from a little over eight years ago about the cancellations of a Pennsylvania school’s production of Spamalot! and a North Carolina school’s production of Almost, Maine. 

In the climax of the former show, Lancelot takes stage as a flamingly (and hilariously) gay character who ultimately marries the man of his dreams. In the latter, a scene called “They Fall” shows two young male characters literally falling (as in being unable to stand) as they realize their attraction for each other. Both moments are fun; neither would offend anyone who has decided that the 1950s are behind us. 

Here’s what Curmie wrote then:

High school plays ought to be appropriate for the performers, but directors and student actors ought to be under no obligation to pander to the least common denominator of their audiences unless a particular production is specifically intended for children. Think about the second most-produced high school play: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. [Note: at the time, the most produced play in American high schools was… wait for it… Almost, Maine.]

Fairies, forbidden love, a whole lot of sex jokes in the mechanicals’ performance (I know this in part from having played an Egeus/Philostrate conflation; part of my job in Act V was to laugh at all the dirty stuff so the audience would be alerted to the jokes), a variation on the theme of bestiality… and why do you think Oberon was so interested in that Indian Boy, after all? Fact is, pick any show and if you look hard enough, you’ll find something to complain about.

Also remarkable about both these plays is the willingness of the rights-holders to accommodate “milder” versions. There’s a “school” version of Spamalot!, for example, and the North Carolina school had already announced that a different scene from Almost, Maine, one suggesting imminent (heterosexual) sex, had already been cut, presumably with the permission of the playwright or his agent. 

There were ways, then, by which administrators could have protected the tender sensibilities of their charges without being censorious asshats. Whether they’re terminally constipated, dumber than the proverbial box of rocks, or just like throwing their weight around because they can (or more than one of the above) is difficult to determine, and ultimately doesn’t matter. 

A scene from the Broadway production of Indecent.

By now, of course, Gentle Reader, you will have surmised that there’s a new variation on a well-worn theme. This time, it’s the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville that shut down a production of Paula Vogel’s Indecent. 

The first news story Curmie can find, from a local television station, sums up the situation concisely: the play “contains a same sex relationship.” And that is precisely the reason for the censorship, the school’s protestations that the problem was “adult sexual dialogue” are, in a word, bullshit. 

And spare us the nonsense about “inappropriate for student cast members and student audiences.” The participating students had permission from their parents, and frankly there’s nothing in the play’s language that won’t be heard in the halls of the school on a daily basis… well, other than the Yiddish, that is. 

Once again, school administrators created the problem by not doing their damned jobs. First off, as Curmie has pointed out repeatedly in the past, someone other than the director had to have signed off on the show. And what’s that play’s title, again? Wouldn’t it be worth spending 30 seconds on an internet search before de facto approving a show called Indecent? Ah, but that would have been the responsible thing to do; these yahoos can’t be bothered. 

And it is, of course, the case that a compromise solution could almost certainly have been worked out had administrators simply expressed concerns instead of over-reacting. Paula Vogel issued a response to the censorship.  It’s worth reading in its entirety, but the especially relevant portion to this discussion reads as follows: 

For the past 40 years, I receive requests from high schools to change language in my plays, and to restage the scenes, ignoring my stage directions. And I readily give my permission. There have been high school productions of INDECENT where the student actors hold hands. The Victorian translation is demure, and one can amend my updated translation with permission. 

Ms. Vogel was much admired, both as playwright and as person, by one of Curmie’s most beloved mentors. Curmie met her once and found her charming and sensible. Curmie believes her, in other words, when she says she’s likely to have been accommodating. 

To be fair, Indecent is not a play Curmie would choose to be produced by high school kids, although not for the reasons the show was cancelled. Rather, it’s a damned difficult play. It requires an understanding of a culture the average American knows little if anything about, and is often specific about the music, choreography, fashion, and attitudes associated with that society. There are a host of complex characters, requiring nuanced performances. And the play-within-a-play structure demands an attention to detail that adolescents aren’t necessarily prepared to provide. 

Finally, of course, although the play had been nominated for a host of major Broadway awards—the Tony, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, and Drama League Award—it’s probable, given the response of director Madeline Scotti (that the powers-that-be are “trying to tell me that, I, myself and my community is dirty, immoral, obscene, and indecent”), that initial choice of the play was based more on its lesbian kiss and its critique of anti-Semitism—its representation of Scotti’s political views, in other words—than on any critical appreciation of the dramatic text. 

All of this would give Curmie pause before selecting (or approving) Indecent to be part of a high school season. But the point is, it was chosen. Administrators knew, or at the very least should have known, what the play is about and the language it employs. Students had been granted parental permission to be in the play, suggesting two things: that the producers knew the show might be controversial and made sure there wouldn’t be any complaints from the families of the participants, and that the school’s later insistence that the language was “inappropriate for student cast members” did not coincide with the views of the people most responsible for those students’ welfare: their parents. 

This, of course, presents an ironic reversal of what has become a common trope in secondary schools, especially in Florida: that parents object to the teaching of this or that work of literature, this or that scientific theory, or this or that interpretation of history. So… do we side with the school, or with the parents? 

Neither. We side with free expression. We teach Oedipus, we teach evolution, and we at least make students aware of the fundamental tenets of Critical Race Theory. None of the above should be confused with endorsing those positions, merely presenting the arguments and treating adolescents as if they have at least some cognitive ability: knowing how to separate the persuasive from the excremental is what education ought to be about. Oh, and if we have at least implicitly signed off on a production of Indecent, we put it on stage and talk about it after the performance. 

Curmie generally claims the last word in these posts, but generally there isn’t a professional writer involved. So we’ll turn things over to Paula Vogel: “Why hurt the students who are aiming to become theatre makers? Instead of letting them discover the issues of antisemitism, intolerance, censorship and the Holocaust the school board is censoring them. Disempowering young artists at this crucial age borders, to me, on an obscene act.” 

What she said.

From the "It Could Have Been Me (or Anyone Competent)" Files

About the only Hamline-related image
Curmie could find that didn’t
make him want to barf

Curmie’s profession being what it was, he applied over the years for scores of academic jobs all over the country in three rounds of job searches that culminated in accepting positions in Kentucky, Iowa, and Texas. He may have once applied to Hamline University in the Twin Cities; why else would he have heard of the place prior to the last couple of weeks, after all? 

If Curmie did apply there, they showed no interest, which, it turns out, may have been one of the best things to have happened in Curmie’s professional life. Sometimes not getting what you want is the best possible outcome. 

Curmie first heard about the recent brouhaha at Hamline, in which an adjunct professor was fired without either legitimate cause or due process, from a friend’s post on her Facebook page. She and another friend both described the situation as “complex.” Loath though he was (and is) to disagree with two of the most sensible and intelligent people of his acquaintance, Curmie suggested that there is nothing complex here at all, but rather that “Stupidity, laziness, and cowardice are in a death struggle to be the administration's defining characteristic.” Curmie stands by that analysis. 

On October 6 of last fall, Erika López Prater, an adjunct professor of art history at Hamline, showed a pair of images depicting the prophet Muhammad in her course in global art history. [Note: a number of articles Curmie links here show a photo of the Rashīd al-Dīn work mentioned below. Recognizing the possibility of causing inadvertent offense, Curmie does not include this image on the blog page per se, nor will it appear on the CC Facebook page. If you do not want to see this image, do not click on the links; if you do, then click here.] 

According to an article by Sarah Cascone on the Artnet site, “One of the artworks was an illustration of the archangel Gabriel delivering his revelations to Muhammad from a 14th-century manuscript by Rashīd al-Dīn called the Compendium of Chronicles, while the other was a 16th-century work by Mustafa ibn Vali showing the prophet with a veil and halo.” 

As is fairly common knowledge, some sects of Islam regard viewing images of Muhammad as idolatrous. But three points need to be made. 

First, as López Prater herself pointed out, “there is this common thinking that Islam completely forbids, outright, any figurative depictions or any depictions of holy personages. While many Islamic cultures do strongly frown on this practice, I would like to remind you there is no one, monothetic Islamic culture.” 

Second, an art history course which does not show images such as these could reasonably be said to be lacking in the “global” element advertised by the course title. Indeed, such an omission could legitimately be regarded as Islamophobic, as it would signal a disregard for Islamic contributions to world culture. 

Finally, and by far most importantly, Prater warned students in the course syllabus (see?), urging students who chose not to view the images to contact her (no one did). She also issued a “two-minute content warning prior to the artworks’ appearance, to allow students to opt out of viewing the potentially offensive imagery should they feel it was against their faith.” What more could possibly be asked of her? Wait, let me re-phrase that: what more could a sentient adult have asked of her? They are, as shall become clear in a moment, very different questions. 

By now, you’ve long since figured out where this sordid tale is headed, haven’t you, Gentle Reader? Student Aram Wedatalla, the president of the university’s Muslim Student Association (MSA), was a student in the class. Of course, she did nothing to avoid seeing the images in question, because that would have been the mature and intelligent thing to do. Rather, she claims to have been “blindsided.” (Pay no attention to the aroma of cow pasture here, Gentle Reader; it will pass. Eventually.) 

Naturally, she went whining to The Oracle, the student newspaper: “As a Muslim, and a Black person, I don’t feel like I belong, and I don’t think I’ll ever belong in a community where they don’t value me as a member, and they don’t show the same respect that I show them.” Oh, no. Trust me, you narcissistic little brat, you don’t want to be treated with the same level of disrespect with which you regard anyone who might be sacrificed on the altar of your quest for victimhood. It really doesn’t matter if it was your petulance or just your laziness that is foregrounded here; the point is that if you want to see the culprit in this incident, look in a damned mirror. 

Of course, the student newspaper is complicit in all this, but at least the editorial staff there has a three-fold excuse: they’re post-adolescents, there are no longer many examples of journalistic integrity to be used as role models, and, alas, they’re being “educated” at Hamline. “Hamline teaches us it doesn’t matter the intent, the impact is what matters,” quoth one student. The real problem is that she’s probably right. 

Youthful impetuosity cannot be used as an excuse for the utter incompetence of the university administration’s handling of all this, however. The major players should never be allowed on a university campus again without a ticket to the basketball game or the orchestra concert. Nur Mood, the MSA advisor and Assistant Director of Social Justice Programs and Strategic Relations (is that title sufficiently pretentious?), blathered that “the harm’s done,” blithely ignoring the fact that his paranoid fantasies are far more responsible for “the harm” than Professor Prater will ever be. 

Oh, and speaking of ridiculous job titles, how about “Associate Vice President of Inclusive Excellence”? That would be one David Everett, whose email to everyone at the university declared Prater’s actions (he doesn’t identify her by name, but how many people at Hamline teach a course in global art history?) as “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic.” Two responses: 1). Bullshit. 2). Do your damned homework and provide a little due process before you slander a faculty member, Davy. (Curmie sincerely hopes López Prater will sue the snot out of this preening twatwaffle.) 

This is also the same guy who was later to write that “In lieu of this incident, it was decided it was best that this faculty member was no longer part of the Hamline community.” (The school later lied about dismissing Prater.)  Erm… Davy… “in lieu of” means “instead of,” not “in view of.” It always does Curmie’s heart good to realize that illiteracy is no impediment to a career in university administration. (Wonder why Curmie is retired?) 

Most remarkable, however, was the outrageous statement over the names of both Everett and university president Fayneese Miller that “respect for the observant Muslim students in that classroom should have superseded academic freedom.” First off, there is no legitimate education without academic freedom (Ron DeSantis, please take note!). It would hold on any university campus worthy of the name, even if there really were something to get upset about, and even if it were intentional. 

To be fair, academic freedom doesn’t completely kick in until tenure, but Hamline (of course), purports to guarantee it. The university’s website includes this intriguing sentence: “The University embraces the examination of all ideas, some of which will potentially be unpopular and unsettling, as an integral and robust component of intellectual inquiry.” Wouldn’t it be fun if they actually believed that? 

Oh, Curmie nearly forgot. A Hamline faculty member who actually knows what he’s talking about, Religion Department chair Mark Berkson, wrote a letter to the student newspaper, too, pointing out that “in the context of an art history classroom, showing an Islamic representation of the Prophet Muhammad, a painting that was done to honor Muhammad and depict an important historical moment, is not an example of Islamophobia. Labeling it this way is not only inaccurate but also takes our attention off of real examples of bigotry and hate.” 

He also points out that, contrary to what Hamline seems to try to instill in its students, that intentions are irrelevant, “the Prophet Muhammad himself said that people will receive consequences for actions depending on their intentions.” Professor Berkson’s letter was removed from The Oracle’s website two days later; whether this was by an editorial staff longer on zealotry than on competence or at the insistence of the Stalinistic administration is impossible to determine. 

The hypocrisy, lack of due process, cowardice, and outright stupidity are the subject of a lot, and Curmie does mean a lot, of commentary. Yes, there are a few indignant whimpers from those whose lives have no meaning unless they can perceive themselves as oppressed, but—Allah be praised—everyone else is of a single mind. 

Curmie isn’t an art historian, but Christiane Gruber, author of an article titled “An Academic Is Fired Over a Medieval Painting of the Prophet Muhammad: The dismissal of an instructor at Hamline University on baseless charges of ‘Islamophobia’ raises concerns about freedom on campus,”  is.

Curmie isn’t a Muslim, but Aman Khalid, author of an article titled “Most of All, I Am Offended as a Muslim: On Hamline University’s shocking imposition of narrow religious orthodoxy in the classroom,” is. [This one may be behind a paywall. If so, trust me on this…] Khalid writes: “Barring a professor of art history from showing this painting, lest it harm observant Muslims in class, is just as absurd as asking a biology professor not to teach evolution because it may offend evangelical Protestants in the course.” 

Curmie is not a lawyer, but the folks at FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) are. And they’ve been busy: check it out here and here and here and here and here and here and here. 

The American Freedom Alliance describes Hamline’s actions as “an egregious violation of academic freedom,” and argues that they “severely damaged the intellectual climate at Hamline University and told every scholar who sets foot on your campus that free and open inquiry is circumscribed by the sensibilities and sensitivities of the students.” 

The article on the National Association of Scholars site is titled The Death of Academic Freedom at Hamline University. 

PEN America’s article argues that “Hamline University has committed one of the most egregious violations of academic freedom in recent memory,” and that “Non-renewing a professor’s contract under these circumstances is academic malpractice of a type that chills speech among all faculty, particularly contingent faculty who cannot rely on the status of tenure to protect their academic freedom.” 

Hamline is getting hammered across a wide spectrum of outlets—Curmie hasn’t even cited them all. Good. Perhaps, just perhaps, the principles of academic inquiry and free expression will be upheld, at least at other institutions which would rather not have this kind of publicity. The Hamline administration, however, has proven to be not merely craven and ridiculous, but mendacious, as well. They need to be gone. All of them. 

Now, the Trustees have gotten into the act. Curmie has a distrust of such people, born of over four decades in the trenches. But they couldn’t be any worse than the administration. We can hope for the best, but admitting they’ve put the wrong people in charge isn’t what Trustees are best at.  Alas.

EDIT: For what is perhaps the best statement of support for Professor López Prater, check out what the Muslim Public Affairs Council has to say.

On the Aftermath of the Damar Hamlin Injury

Damar Hamlin in a healthier moment

One of the biggest stories in the sports world this week has nothing to do with final scores, win streaks, or records being broken. Last Monday night, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest and collapsed on the field after making a tackle in a game against the Cincinnati Bengals. He was given CPR on the field and transported by ambulance to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. He was given CPR again, either at the hospital or in the ambulance on the way there (reports differ). 

Exactly what happened remains unclear (or at least unpublicized). There is speculation that the cause may have been a rare condition called commodio cordis (“disruption of the heart”), in which a blow to the chest at a precise instant causes the heart to stop beating. So far, however, Curmie can find nothing definitive to state that this was, as opposed to could have been, the cause. 

The good news is that Hamlin seems on the way to recovery, the long-term extent of which remains uncertain. The fact that he’s now communicative is certainly a positive sign, but don’t expect to see him lining up in an NFL game any time soon (or perhaps ever again). 

What interests Curmie about this affair has more to do with the subplots and spinoffs than the main storyline. For one thing, Hamlin’s injury has received a lot of press. Coverage of other sporting events was interrupted for progress reports, which told us nothing we didn’t already know. Tweets from current and former players made headlines. There was even (barf) an on-air prayer led by former journeyman quarterback and current ESPN talking head Dan Orlovsky. 

Injuries, both acute (concussions, broken bones, etc.) and chronic (e.g., chronic traumatic encephalopathy) are “part of the game” and more preventable than the NFL would have us believe. There is a large enough percentage of fans who actually revel in the violence (and ensuing injuries) of the sport, however, that little is likely to change in the foreseeable future. 

Here’s the thing. The seriousness of Hamlin’s injury is rare but not unprecedented. Life-threatening or even fatal injuries occur with grim regularity at all levels of the sport. A report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention six years ago identified 28 football-related deaths among high school and college players over a ten-year period from 2005-14. How to interpret that figure, of course, depends on perspective and context. Given that we’re talking only about deaths and not, say, permanent injury—paralysis, for example—that’s a lot of young people dying. But fewer than three deaths per year from a sport played by well over a million athletes means an annual fatality rate of about .0024%, which doesn’t seem so bad… unless, of course, it’s your son, or best friend, or significant other. 

An article by Devan Markham on the NewsNation site lists nine “previous life-threatening NFL injuries.” Curmie remembers three of them, including the first chronologically, that of Darryl Stingley. What’s significant is that all of these incidents occurred during Curmie’s adulthood, meaning that two-thirds of them never even registered with him. Curmie chooses not to speculate on why that is the case, but notes that it would be impossible for any sports fan, not merely NFL fans, to be ignorant of Hamlin’s injury. Curmie’s Facebook feed features literally dozens of “thoughts and prayers” for Hamlin’s recovery from people Curmie knows for a fact don’t give a damn about football. 

One reason for this phenomenon is that, despite the litany of previous cases and the significance of the Bills/Bengals game (it was the marquee game of the weekend, as it would go a long way toward deciding seeding for the AFC playoffs), this was the first time an NFL game has been cancelled because of an injury like this. It is not entirely clear how this came about. It appears that the referees were intending to re-start the game (there’s footage of Cincinnati quarterback Joe Burrow warming up while the ambulance was on the field), but the stoppage seems to have been initiated by the Bengals’ coaching staff. After a lengthy delay, the referees, NFL office, players union, and the two teams agree to suspend the game (actually cancelling it came later). 

Curmie is not going to approve or disapprove of this action. There is no clearly defined rationale why this game should be handled differently than all the others in which similar incidents occurred, but it certainly qualifies as a sporting gesture, concerned with the mental and emotional health of the athletes and an appropriate prioritization of what really matters. 

That said, there’s a difference between saying that Hamlin’s health is the most important thing (we can all agree on this, yes?) and saying it’s the only thing that matters. Fox Sports talking head Skip Bayless had the audacity to wonder exactly how the NFL was going to handle the game’s cancellation: “No doubt the NFL is considering postponing the rest of this game – but how? This late in the season, a game of this magnitude is crucial to the regular-season outcome … which suddenly seems so irrelevant.” 

Look, Bayless is a narcissistic blowhard, but 1). the question he raises is a legitimate one, and 2). the last phrase of his tweet makes it clear that Bayless believes Hamlin’s well-being is of paramount importance. Of course, understanding this latter observation requires a 5th-grade reading level, so the usual litany of boneheaded jocks and ex-jocks jumped all over him. 

New York Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner led the charge, indignantly proclaiming “Damar Hamlin’s health is ALL that matters at the moment! Nothing else!!!” Gardner is a rising star on the team Curmie has rooted for since before they were the Jets. He’s also, alas, an idiot. That other stuff matters, too, and if you don’t understand what Bayless was actually saying, then I do hope the folks at MLK High School in Detroit and the University of Cincinnati are embarrassed that they failed you so badly. 

Bayless’s broadcast partner, former star tight end Shannon Sharpe, skipped the Tuesday show. Whether this was a sign of respect for Hamlin or in a fit of pique because he, too, would rather be indignant that competent is unclear. What we do know is that things were tense on the set on Wednesday (and ratings were WAY up), and that Bayless, although refusing to take down the offending tweet (good!), did grovel a series of apologies which may or may not have been sincere. 

For the record, by the way, Bayless was correct. The NFL couldn’t figure out a way to re-schedule the Bills/Bengals game, and came up with a convoluted solution involving the distinct possibility that the AFC championship game would be played on a neutral field. If it is indeed true that the Bills/Bengals game was suspended at the Bengals’ instigation, it is particularly ironic that the major objection to the league’s proposal comes from Cincinnati, as the home field for a potential Cincinnati/Baltimore game would be decided by a coin toss.  (As it happens, that situation was avoided, although the neutral field championship game could still happen.)

There were plenty of other stupid responses to Hamlin’s injury. The most egregious (please, let it be the most egregious!) came from Ernest Owens, who sees this as a racial issue. The fact that previous games weren’t called when white players (Mike Utley and Dennis Byrd, to name two) were paralyzed in on-field incidents apparently doesn’t register with Owens. Owens also rants that “players who are arrested for domestic abuse are often given a slap on the wrist,” which he attributes to the “NFL [not appearing] to care about the morality, accountability, and responsibility of its players.” Guess what race the majority of those offenders are? 

There is plenty of legitimate criticism of the NFL and its half-hearted efforts to protect the short- and long-term health of its players. But Hamlin’s injury, assuming it was commodio cordis, was more bad luck than anything else. If that hit happens a split-second earlier or later, Hamlin simply bounces up from the ground, and the game continues. So we can’t blame the NFL for that. And what, other than a little self-conscious symbolism would have been different if the game had been called immediately? 

Finally, there’s the standard ex-jock bloviation from Ryan Clark: “The next time I think that we get upset about our favorite fantasy player or the guy on our team who doesn't make the play or we're saying he’s worthless and we’re saying you get to make all this money, we should remember they’re putting their lives on the line to live their dream…” OK, the fact that a 24-year-old is making more money on a four-year contract than the average person will see in a lifetime does matter, at least to the extent that it makes the job (despite the accompanying risks) all the more attractive, and the fact that he’s “living his dream” couldn’t be less relevant. 

As for “putting his life on the line”: really? For all the fact that the NFL does not have a great safety record especially in terms of the cumulative effects of all that violence, you know how many NFL players have died on the field, ever? One. Oh, and one who died from heat stroke sustained during a practice. 

You know who really do put their lives on the line? Law enforcement officers. Soldiers. Marines. You get the picture. Curmie need hardly mention that he’s often been critical of individuals within those demographics, but there are a host of good people in those groups, too. And they actually do risk their lives on a daily basis. Ever so curiously, when one of these folks faces a life-threatening situation, there are no “Love for...” t-shirts, there aren’t constant updates on their conditions, and life does not grind to a halt. 

All of this leads Curmie to a bit of nostalgia. In one of the first handful of posts on this blog, a defense of Sarah Palin (yes, really), Curmie wrote “I, for one, am tired of hearing athletes described as ‘warriors’ who ‘go into battle,’ ‘guns blazing,’ and similar nonsense. There’s a difference between war and a football game.” 

Curmie is reasonably confident that Damar Hamlin and/or his teammates have been described in these terms. But they are not warriors. Warriors face an enemy determined to kill them; football players face an opponent who may accidentally cause serious injury. Warriors do not cease what they’re doing when one of their comrades goes down. They fight on. 

Imagine what the world would look like if the soldiers landing on Omaha Beach took a knee after the first casualty. I’ll give you a hint: it wouldn’t matter if there really was a swastika in the New York Times crossword puzzle a couple of weeks ago, because the damned things would be everywhere. Again, Curmie is not saying the cancellation of the game was necessarily wrong, but if it’s right, it’s because sporting events are just sporting events, and not all that important in the grand scheme of things.

Curmie certainly hopes Damar Hamlin has a complete recovery. That is, indeed, the most important part of this whole business. But it’s not the only part. Context matters. Perspective matters.  The game matters. Words matter. And, dare I say it, nuance matters. Or at least it should.

Too Much and Too Late: The Hussey/Whiting Lawsuit

Hussey and Whiting as Curmie prefers to remember them.

Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting are suing Paramount Pictures for “more than” $500 million because of “sexual abuse” that occurred over 54 years ago. Yes, really. Their story is that they “suffered emotional damage and mental anguish for decades” because of their treatment surrounding the nude scene in Franco Zeffirelli’s famous film version of “Romeo and Juliet,” in which they played the title characters. 

All this reminds Curmie of the case of the “Nirvana baby,” I wrote about a year and a half ago. You may recall that after years of exploiting his accidental claim to fame, Spencer Elden, whose four-month-old dangly bits appeared on the cover of the “Nevermind” album, would have us believe he was traumatized to the tune of over $2.25 million. Hussey and Whiting, of course, are suing for a couple hundred times that figure and waiting nearly twice as long. That they may have suffered some anxiety over the nude scene is pretty close to undeniable. That they were damaged to the extent of $500 million is laughable. That they’re bringing suit over a half century after the fact is worse. 

The suit is possible because of a recently-enacted California law which suspends the statute of limitations for cases of child sexual abuse. (I confess I’m a little confused here, as I thought the statute of limitations applied only to criminal cases, and this is obviously a civil suit.) Anyway, the actors, now in their 70s (he was 16 and she was 15 when filming began), claim that Zeffirelli had told them that they’d wear flesh-colored underwear for the scene in question, then insisted when they arrived for the shoot that they had to perform in the nude (with body makeup) or “the picture would fail” and there would be fallout for their careers. 

They were assured, they say, that camera angles would be such that nudity would not be shown. (How Zeffirelli could get away with claiming they needed to be nude, then, is not terribly clear. Some kind of bizarre variation on “method” work?) 

There is no compelling reason to disbelieve the actors’ account. Zeffirelli, who died in 2019, was a brilliant director and, apparently, a first-class creep. Curmie has no difficulty believing he would manipulate a pair of teenage actors into doing what he wanted and then lie about it later. What is objectively true is that there is a short sequence in the final cut in which Whiting’s buttocks and Hussey’s breasts are briefly visible. (You can see the moment in question here if you’re curious; that this image is available on imdb tells you pretty much all you need to know.)  

More to the point, that film was seen by literally millions of people, including, no doubt, thousands of law enforcement officers, prosecutors, judges, attorneys general, and the like. Oh, and also presumably by the actors’ parents, who certainly granted tacit if not explicit permission for the scene to be shot and released as it was. Yes, people knew of the evanescent nudity, but the portrayal of Mercutio (John McEnery) as having homoerotic feelings for Romeo was perhaps the film’s most controversial element. 

So the argument made by walking lawyer joke Solomon Gresen that “Nude images of minors are unlawful and shouldn’t be exhibited” is severely undercut by the simple fact that no one (or at least no one in a position to take legal action) thought the scene was “unlawful” at the time or, indeed, in the several decades since the film’s release. 

Plus, of course, as recently as 2018, Hussey proclaimed the scene “was needed for the film,” and that “Everyone thinks they were so young they probably didn’t realize what they were doing. But we were very aware. We both came from drama schools and when you work, you take your work very seriously.” In other words, she was either lying about that scene four and a half years ago or she’s lying now. 

Both Hussey and Whiting went on to reasonably successful careers in film and related fields: Whiting also did a fair amount of stage work and sang with the Alan Parsons Project; Hussey was, according to Beloved Spouse, who fit the target demographic, “on every magazine cover” and in a host of cosmetic print ads. Neither, however, has achieved the level of stardom one might have expected; indeed, it would be difficult for the average person to name a single film either has done since “Romeo and Juliet.” 

They claim (now) that the mental anguish caused by that scene between two adolescents who actually did “fancy each other” prevented them from achieving stardom. Curmie is skeptical, to say the least. Fact is, not all dreams come true. To choose a more recent variation on the theme of teenage stars, Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson are now huge attractions, but it would take a real fan to name a single Rupert Grint or Evanna Lynch film project outside the world of Harry Potter. Yet both continue to work, and neither need worry about whether they can afford to Supersize that Big Mac combo. So it goes, sometimes. 

“Romeo and Juliet” offered Hussey and Whiting breakthrough roles, effectively launching their careers, but I have no doubt that they suffered moments of regret and perhaps shame. Certainly Zeffirelli was already internationally famous (mostly as an opera director), and in the position to derail the futures of the teenagers had they not submitted to his demands. It is understandable that they felt something akin to blackmail. They certainly would have had a case against Zeffirelli (and perhaps, but not necessarily, Paramount) back in the ‘60s. Of course, the director’s death a couple of years ago makes it a lot harder for him to rebut their allegations. Coincidence? Perhaps; perhaps not. 

But here’s the thing: it took a change in the California law to allow a lawsuit to go forward. There has never been anything, however, to prevent their going public with their stories ages ago. With the exception of their reunion project, an apparently terrible 2015 film called “Social Suicide,” which, ever-so-coincidentally was, according to imdb, “loosely based on Romeo and Juliet” (get it?), Hussey hasn’t made a film since 2008; Whiting was in a TV series in the ‘90s, but has no film credits since 1975. Their careers have effectively been over for years, so it’s not like they feared they’d lose future projects which weren’t coming, anyway. 

Curmie does not deny that altruism might be a motivation for this suit, but he doubts that it’s, if you’ll pardon the pun, paramount. Rather, the two septuagenarian erstwhile actors seem to have succumbed to the Great God Victimhood, which has now replaced Scientology as the trendiest pseudo-religion amongst the Beautiful People. They certainly have adopted that system’s Holy Trinity of Narcissism, Opportunism, and Greed. In doing so, they have marred both their own legacies and, alas, the movie that made them famous. 

That’s too bad; it’s a good film.