High School Girls and the Voyeuristic Do-Gooders

It appears that this time, this time, Florida governor Ron DeSantis might well be innocent of Creepiness in the First Degree. (There’s a chance he’s involved, at least indirectly, but the hysteria on the left would be there either way.)  And if this really is DeSantis’s work, at least he was smart enough to wipe the evidence clean of his fingerprints.

There’s a recommendation, not yet a rule, coming out of the sports medicine advisory committee to the Florida High School Athletic Association to require female athletes to submit information about their menstrual cycles to… well, that’s sort of unclear, too: their school? an online database? The status quo asks that information, but responses are optional. 

Curmie understands the need for athletes to be checked out by a doctor prior to engaging in strenuous activity. No one wants students to endanger themselves if a simple physical exam could prevent it. And Curmie doubts that the prospective new requirement is designed to identify trans women, as some detractors have argued. 

He gets it, too, that students sometimes supply more information than those requesting it need or even want. Curmie took seven groups of students, about 100 in all, on Study Abroad trips to Ireland. Students taking the courses were required to answer a series of rather personal medical questions on the off chance that they would become incapacitated while abroad and Curmie needed that information to tell to medical staff. One of those questions was what medications the student was taking. Given that well over half the students on the trip were women between the ages of 18 and 23, a lot of them were on some form of birth control, and said so, often parenthetically after the name of the particular drug. 

After receiving a couple of forms with Too Much Information, Curmie began sending out an email as soon as a student signed up for the trip, saying that he needed to know the name of the drug, but would rather not know why the student was taking it unless the student thought it essential that he’d know. 

Frankly, Curmie doubts that he ever needed any of that information, but the university thought so, so he dutifully put all of those medical forms in a loose-leaf notebook, which he took with him across the Atlantic but thankfully never had to access. There were a couple of incidents of common colds, a turned ankle, and a reaction to an allergen the student had never encountered before and therefore didn’t know to avoid; not much else. The forms were promptly shredded when we got back to the US. 

Curmie has noted repeatedly on this blog that he is not a lawyer. He’s not a doctor, either (well, he has a PhD, but you know what I mean, Gentle Reader). So, although it doesn’t seem to him that some of the specificity of the questions on the form is necessary, perhaps it is. It is certainly a bit odd, however, to note that the girl is to give the date of her “most recent menstrual period,” information that is quite likely to be outdated by the time the season starts, let alone when it ends. It’s also a bit weird that a student who answers in the affirmative to “have you had a menstrual period?” is then expected to “Explain ‘yes’ answers.” What the hell do you think happened, guys? (The masculine noun in the previous question is not entirely coincidental.) 

Florida, it turns out, is not the only state to ask this kind of information, but different states handle it differently. Louisiana, for example, asks only a yes/no question if there are “menstrual irregularities.” (They do ask for the date of the “last cycle.”) A yahoo article says that five states and the District of Columbia ask no questions about menstruation at all, and that ten others tell students not to turn in their medical records to their school. Vermont’s form seems to Curmie to be perfectly sufficient: a doctor certifies that the student is cleared (or not), with or without restrictions, for all or some sports. Common conditions that don’t necessarily prevent participation, but of which coaches should be aware (allergies, asthma, etc.) are also noted. 

Of course, the links between menstrual dysfunction and certain sports, especially those emphasizing slenderness and low body mass—gymnastics is the prime example, but also dance, figure skating, etc.—is well-documented. The research supporting national guidelines suggests that athletes are considerably more likely than non-athletes to experience amenorrhea (loss of menstrual cycle) or oligomenorrhea (a decrease in number of menstrual cycles per year). So when the guidelines themselves say that menstrual history is “an essential discussion for female athletes,” Curmie isn’t going to argue. 

But isn’t this where we trust in the expertise of physicians? Yes, a member of the high school cheerleading squad ought to discuss her menstrual periods (or lack of them) with her doctor, but in the absence of cause for concern, why does anyone else—the school, the coach, some hackable database somewhere—need to know the details? To Curmie, that positions itself somewhere between the prurient and the garden-variety creepy. 

So the matter at hand isn’t whether the girl’s overall health ought to be paramount, or even whether menstrual history is relevant. It’s who has access to that information. Lose the mandatory questions on the form (which are necessarily self-reported, anyway) and allow doctors to protect their patients: both their bodies and their confidentiality. The proposal may (perhaps) be well-intentioned, but the result is an invasion of privacy that far outweighs any benefits.

2024 Election Preview: Be Afraid; Be Very Afraid

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
Prescient Analyst of 21st-Century Politics

Curmie was just reading an article about how most Democrats don’t want President Biden to seek a second term. Barely a third of party members want him to run again; that number drops to less than one in four among Democrats under 45. Curmie, well over 45, concurs. 

Biden’s performance so far has been underwhelming in both policy and political terms, albeit better than the most logical other choice for a 2024 run, Kamala Harris, whom Hillary Clinton described as lacking the political instincts to win primaries. She also polls, as of this writing at a -13.5% approval rating, which is even worse than Biden’s -9.1%. 

The only good news for Democrats is that former President Trump, who is perceived by many as the most likely GOP candidate, is worse still, at -15.9%. The other three Republicans whose names have been most bandied about—Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, and Greg Abbott—are nearly as repulsive as Trump. Curmie would vote for the Sauron/Voldemort ticket over any of that quartet. Perhaps there’s a latter-day Nelson Rockefeller or a pre-sellout John McCain out there somewhere? Curmie isn’t holding his breath. 

And who do the Democrats have to offer? We start by eliminating Harris, a lightweight who shows little interest, let alone competency, at anything other than advancing the career of Kamala Harris. Biden, whose presidency hasn’t been quite as bad as Curmie’s Republican friends would argue, has still been “meh” on his good days. Plus, he’s 80 now, and neither his mental acuity nor voters’ confidence in it is likely to improve over the next 21 months. 

Age is a particular problem for Democrats. Hillary Clinton is 75, John Kerry is 79, Elizabeth Warren is 73, Bernie Sanders is 81, Nancy Pelosi is 82, Sherrod Brown is 70, Chuck Schumer is 72, Henry Cisneros is 75… even Amy Klobuchar is 61, but she’s at least sane and not yet on Medicare, making her a potential front-runner. (Curmie would be inclined to support her, at the moment.) 

Could Hakeem Jeffries (52) develop into a viable candidate? Perhaps, but he certainly doesn’t have a lot of name recognition right now. Gavin Newsom is 55, but his principal attributes seem to be that he is tall and good-looking; plus, he’s from California, which is regarded by a fair share of the country as something of a lunatic asylum. Curmie doesn’t see a lot of gravitas in Cory Booker (53), but there’s at least some possibility he’s not a male version of Kamala Harris. 

Pete Buttigieg is only 41, but his performance as Secretary of Transportation has been, well, “less than impressive” would be the polite way of saying it. Beto O’Rourke (50), who has made a career out of losing statewide races to unpopular Republicans, is the Democrats’ version of Paul Ryan: an over-hyped mediocrity who somehow gets positive press coverage. 

And don’t get Curmie started on “The Squad,” now up to nine members, ranging in age from 33 to 49. None of them would make a good President (at least yet), but that’s okay, because none would stand a chance of winning, either. 

As Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, there is no there, there. Does the party turn, as some have suggested, to the likes of Michelle Obama (59)? The party could do worse, but it’s difficult to see someone that inexperienced being the nominee. The problem here is not that the Democrats might lose the next election; it’s that the Republicans might win. And, alas, vice versa. 

But the country has survived some pretty awful Presidents of both parties—Curmie would say the best grade of the last eight would be a B-, and there are a couple of D- grades that are that high only because the country was still standing when they left office. So the stakes are high, but it’s not yet time to move to Canada or fling yourself off a bridge. 

As one of the few folks in the country to have been registered to vote in both New Hampshire and Iowa (not at the same time!), Curmie looks forward to the caucuses and primaries with anxiety, but perhaps a little hope. We couldn’t get a lot worse, and there might just be someone we hadn’t thought of who’ll emerge from one party or the other. Just… uh… don’t bet the mortgage on it. And be prepared to vote for the less awful candidate.

Another Play Cancellation: This One Is Even Stupider Than the Others

There are a lot of really stupid reasons to cancel a scheduled theatre production. Just in the past couple of weeks, we’ve learned of examples in Florida and Ohio. Little did we know those stories were just the warm-up acts. The University of Groningen has just responded with a metaphorical “hold my beer.” At least the place is in the Netherlands, so the beer in question is likely to be Amstel, Grolsch, or Heineken: a step above Budweiser or Coors, to be sure. 

A scene from the original production of 
Waiting for Godot (En Attendant Godot)

The production in question was of Samuel Beckett’s most famous play, Waiting for Godot, scheduled to be staged at the university’s Usva student cultural center in March. It was cancelled because—get this—someone at the venue found out that the director had auditioned only men for the all-male cast. Yes, really. No, it wasn’t that he’d cast only men: that apparently would have been acceptable. 

Usva theatre programmer Bram Douwes, a serious contender for the dimmest light in the firmament, told the local Ukrant newspaper that “if it concerned a play with five white guys that they’d held open auditions for, everything would have been fine. But you can’t ban people right from the start.” In other words, The Idiot Douwes apparently has no objections to an all-male cast, only one which came from a process which did not involve wasting the time of everyone involved: the director, the women who auditioned (and who might have believed it was possible to be cast), and the men who auditioned (as auditions would have taken longer). 

By the way, the part about “white guys” was just a bit of gratuitous virtue-signaling, as Curmie seriously doubts that non-white males were excluded from the process. Curmie’s own experience as a director has included both casting BIPOC actors in roles obviously first played by whites and ending up with all white actors when he went into auditions thinking he’d almost certainly get a multi-racial cast. It works out how it works out. 

It’s important to call attention to the play in question. Samuel Beckett insisted that his scripts be followed to the letter: no line changes, no omissions, no changes, period. He got furious when he learned that Alan Schneider, who directed the American premiere of Endgame (and several other Beckett plays) had given Clov an additional prop to carry offstage at play’s end. So if he said Godot has an all-male cast, he meant it, even suing the producers of a different Dutch company in 1988 for casting women. Beckett’s estate has been conscientious about upholding his wishes; they control the production rights for another several decades. 

What passes for a brain trust at Groningen, of course, supports the suppression of the play. “Times have changed,” quoth university press officer Elies Kouwenhoven. Yes, they have. What hasn’t changed is the need to acquire the rights to perform an author’s work. We can speculate all we want about whether Beckett might have a different perspective were he still alive, but there is little that could be less relevant. Kouwenhoven proceeds to proclaim that “We as a university stand for an open inclusive community where it is not appropriate to exclude others, on any basis.” 

“On any basis”? Like, for example, it would be inappropriate to deny students the opportunity to perform one of the most influential plays of the 20th century because you hired a moron as your “theatre programmer” and you care about neither art nor your students, right? 

And it would be inappropriate to cancel a production already well into rehearsal because you and your minions failed to do their jobs by not bothering to read the audition notices which clearly stated that “unfortunately no leniency can be afforded in this casting”? And no, Ms. Kouwenhoven, it is not at all “outdated and even discriminatory” to cast only men in male roles. More to the point, it wouldn’t matter if it were. Obeying the law is generally considered a good thing. 

Nor are protestations that the play is better, or at worst unharmed, by casting women in any way relevant. Curmie has, in fact, seen a university production with a female Gogo (Estragon, one of the two leads); presumably either a waiver was acquired or the school got away with it because the rights-holders didn’t find out. He doesn’t think the play suffered at all. 

It doesn’t matter. It might be a little—only a little—too strong to say that if you want to do Beckett’s play, you must do Beckett’s play. But certainly obeying the wishes of the playwright, adhering to the dictates of the rights-holders, and avoiding the potential of a lawsuit ought to be at least acceptable behavior. Not in Groningen, apparently. 

Curmie has also seen the argument that Shakespeare gets changed all the time, as if that is a pertinent observation. It is not. For one thing, Shakespeare is in the public domain; Beckett is not. Obeying copyright law really does matter. 

Equally importantly, it is also reasonable to do Shakespeare outdoors on a thrust stage with an all-male cast. (One of Curmie’s most treasured memories as a theatre-goer was seeing Peter Hall’s production of Aeschylus’s Oresteia at the National Theatre in London; it had (OMG!) an all-male cast, meaning that Clytemnestra, Cassandra, Electra, Athena, and two of the trilogy’s three choruses were, contrary the norm of modern productions, played by men, as would have happened in the original production.) 

Oisín Moyne, the young Irishman at the helm of the production, notes the absurdity of the acknowledged masterpiece of the Theatre of the Absurd being thus subject to the whims of irrational yet powerful forces. And now, seeking another venue for their work, the company are waiting for Godot.

From the "Sports Build Character" (Basketball Edition) Files

There are three (count ‘em, three!) basketball-related stories on Curmie’s radar at the moment, none of them, of course, really about basketball. They’re really more about ethics and the problems with viewing sports in general as a positive force in society. 

Obviously, there are advantages to sports: the athletes are of necessity in better physical shape (apart from sports-related injuries, of course) than they’d otherwise be. Team sports—even those which feature individual performances, like high school or college competitions in tennis or swimming—build an understanding of goals greater than personal aggrandizement: most of those players who say they’d rather be on a championship team than to be the MVP are actually telling the truth. And the lessons extend past teamwork to include worth ethic, discipline, etc. 

But there’s also a downside which comes into play in various ways—sometimes when the identification with the team becomes so great that it warps ethical values, sometimes when the allure of personal notoriety dwarfs them. 

We start with what appears to be a manifestation of the former. In far northwestern Vermont, a brawl broke out at a middle-school basketball game between 13- and 14-year-old boys from St. Albans and Alburgh. There is a little cell phone footage of the incident, showing that the scuffle, largely if not exclusively among adults, by the way, spilled onto the court while players from both teams stayed out of the altercation. 

Such episodes are infrequent but not unheard of: there was a good-sized altercation after a wrestling match at Curmie’s high school, for example, and a few years later someone got stabbed for cheering for the wrong team at a high school basketball game in the small town where Curmie lived at the time. There are, no doubt, dozens if not hundreds of such occurrences every year. 

What makes this story different is that someone died, apparently (although the investigation is not yet concluded) from injuries sustained in that brouhaha. There’s one headline that identifies the victim, Russell Giroux, as a “dad,” but neither the accompanying article nor any other Curmie can find supports that claim, so proceed with that assumption at your own risk, Gentle Reader… especially since that same headline says he died “at” the game; he died in the hospital after summoning emergency workers at some point on his way home. 

At this point, it’s a reasonable guess that injuries sustained in the punch-up contributed to Giroux’s demise, but that’s still speculative. What isn’t apparently, is that he was indeed a participant in the melee. What started it all is still not clear: it’s certainly possible that the brawl had nothing to do with the game at all, but it’s certainly a possibility that something in the contest, or something that someone in the stands said about its participants, triggered the incident. So the only thing we’re sure of is that crowds intensify The Stupid. 

Story #2: Duke women’s basketball coach Kara Lawson is claiming that the first half of their game at Florida State last Sunday was played with the wrong size ball. Lawson believes the half was played with the ball used in the men’s game; the ball used in the women’s game is two ounces lighter and an inch smaller in circumference. Both teams shot well off their season averages in the first half and much better in the second half: a statistic which, of course, could be either telling or simple coincidental. 

The error, assuming there was one, is significant in part because, if Lawson is correct, Florida State’s win in that game is tainted: the home team provides the balls, so the fact that the ball wasn’t kosher is on them. Plus, the two teams are battling for position in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), and the Seminoles’ win could affect seed lines for the conference and/or NCAA tournaments. 

Lawson claims her players were complaining about the ball throughout the first half, and that the officials finally noticed the error and changed to the right ball at halftime. She attempted to appeal, but the ACC denied her request, pointing to a rule that players (players? not officials?) must confirm the correct ball size before tipoff, and claiming that “following the thorough and objective review process, there was no evidence found to support the claim.” 

One thing is certain: somebody is lying. Whether it’s Lawson, the officials, or the ACC is unclear, but Curmie’s money is on the conference, mostly because of this part of their statement: “The conference continues to prioritize and support our nearly 10,000 student-athletes in a world-class manner and conduct its 27 sponsored sports with the utmost integrity.” When you start saying irrelevant stuff, especially if it’s self-congratulatory, the chances are really good you’re ducking responsibility for something. Or, as generations of Curmie’s students have heard him say innumerable times, “if you have to tell me, it ain’t so.” 

By the way, a similar phenomenon happened a while back, when the College of Charleston was docked two wins in terms of seeding for the Colonial Athletic Conference tournament for using “improperly sized” balls in two conference games in January of 2017. 

But the winner of the WTF Sweepstakes has to be one Arlisha Boykins. She was an assistant coach for the Churchland High School girls’ JV basketball team in Portsmouth, Virginia. One of the team’s players was out of town playing in a club tournament, and the 22-year-old Boykin impersonated her, playing under her name, using her uniform, and taking the floor in a game against Nansemond River. Boykins was playing with and against girls no older than 15. 

Apparently everybody associated with the team except the girl whose identity was stolen is culpable. Boykins was fired; so was the JV head coach, who had to be in on the deception, and the varsity coach, who was reportedly “encouraging the behavior” during the game. Of course, the other girls on the team had to have known what was going on. They can be forgiven, perhaps, for fearing to come forward about what was happening, but there are a lot of adults who had to have feigned ignorance. It took the parents of the girl who wasn’t at the game to point out the emperor’s déshabillément. 

That girl, by the way, has transferred to another school, where, presumably, she’ll be able to play ball for the rest of the season. Churchland’s season is over; whether this was indeed a decision by the players, as has been reported, or a decision imposed by the administration, which has decided to do its job for a change (who hired those coaches, after all?) is not clear, but failure to do the right thing can have consequences. 

We close with a quote from one of the few actual adults in this piece, the father of the girl who place was taken by Boykins: “Coaches always preach to the kids about integrity and those types of things, so I was just shocked.” Curmie was young and naïve once, too…

Freedom of Expression and the Duty to STFU.

Curmie has written a lot of late about matters relating in one way or another to the notion of freedom of expression. We had the art history professor punished for doing her job (and for going out of her way not to offend or embarrass students), the cancellation of high school plays in Florida and in Ohio, the Associated Press’s ridiculous campaign against “the” and the University of Southern California’s Social Work Department’s even sillier skittishness at the word “field,” Stanford’s administration’s getting all in a tizzy that someone would actually read Mein Kampf, and a Broadway star’s narcissistic inability to take a joke. You could probably include the insistence that the globe immediately stop rotating because a football player suffered a medical emergency. 

All of these episodes at least appear to have originated on the left, where hypersensitivity, virtue signaling, and garden variety silliness are regarded as exemplary characteristics. The right, not wishing to be left out, exercises its desire to squelch voices other than their own by governmental action, packing the board of a state university with True Believers, reacting to “threats” they know damned well to be imaginary, and seeking to de facto eliminate the protections of tenure. 

There are plenty of similar stories out there now. The lead has to be that FIRE (the Federation for Individual Rights and Expression) has now released its list of the 10 Worst Colleges for Free Speech. Curmie wrote about the case at Hamline (linked above), the Georgetown case, and, over a year ago, about part of the debacle at Collin College. A couple others prompted links on Curmie’s Facebook page, but he never wrote about them here. And a couple escaped his attention altogether. Curmie did write about cases that didn’t make the Top-10 cut at FIRE here and here. The goal is to cover over half of next year’s FIRE Top-10 while the stories are still news. We shall see. 

Also in the news of late is the case of Jeff Gray, who has filed suit against a pair of small-town southern police departments for arresting him, thereby depriving him of his 1st amendment rights. His alleged crime: holding a man-made sign reading “God bless the homeless vets” on public property. Is Gray (and FIRE) grandstanding? Of course, if for no other reason than you can pretty much count on cops to do something stupid if given the opportunity. He dangled the bait, but they took it. 

Not all of these cases are on this side of the big pond, of course. The Welsh Rugby Union has banned the Tom Jones classic “Delilah” from the Principality Stadium choirs’ song list because of the WRU is “respectfully aware [whatever the hell that means] that it is problematic and upsetting to some supporters because of its subject matter.” 

OK, a couple of things. First, it is indeed a song about a man stabbing his unfaithful lover in a fit of jealous rage. There aren’t a lot of other ways to interpret “She stood there laughing / I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more.” That’s not a healthy respect for women we’re talking about. Still, it would seem that the authorities might have noticed that previously in the over half-century since the song’s release. (To be fair, the song was dropped from halftime playlists in 2015.) 

Curmie does admit, however, that he’s heard the song dozens of times and never paid much attention to those lyrics, concentrating on the famous chorus, which is also the part spectators want to sing along to at rugby matches. Of course, it’s not the only song with similar lyrics—“Hey Joe,” best known in the rendition by Jimi Hendrix, comes to mind immediately—and one would have thought that if the song is so problematic, it wouldn’t have been featured at the Diamond Jubilee concert. 

Curmie has no difficulty understanding why some people would not want to hear the song featured at a rugby match, especially at the forthcoming Six Nations competition. And Welsh rugby has apparently come under scrutiny for racism, sexism, and homophobia of late. So the move has merit, even if it does seem to substitute for actually doing something about actual substantive problems. 

But Curmie also has a little experience of such things. He entered Dartmouth College shortly after the unofficial “Indian symbol” was officially discontinued. The urge to append a chant—“Dart-mouth! Indians! Scalp ‘em!”—after the sort of unofficial football fight song was overwhelming among the upperclassmen, mostly, no doubt, as a display of post-adolescent defiance and bravado. By the time Curmie was a senior, the chant had pretty much disappeared. 

But undergraduates tend to leave after four years; rugby fans are likely to be around a lot longer. Curmie predicts a variation on the Streisand Effect, with the song being sung louder and more often by fans, who are not subject to the ban, as they don’t represent the WRU. As “Durham Steel” tweeted, “You do realise the first song Welsh rugby fans will sing, after the national anthem, will be Delilah & they'll sing it non stop i reckon just to prove a point, just like the English did when tried to ban Swing Low.” (There was an attempt a few years ago to ban “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” the unofficial anthem of English rugby, for being culturally appropriative.) 

But this post isn’t really about any of these attempts to limit free expression. It’s about when someone in a position of authority is too stupid to shut up. In Providence, Rhode Island, assistant principal at Mount Pleasant High School Stefani Harvey sent out an email from her school account, reading,

Hello team:

Please see the message below regarding your consideration for an urgent matter to support one of our own students here at Mount.

We have a student who came to America with “Coyote”, which is a group that helps people. This group gives you a time frame to make a payment of $5000 to those, who bring them into the states.

Our student needs our urgent support to raise another $2000 to meet his goal of $5000 by February 1, 2023.

Please considering helping if you can by donating on Friday. Melanea will be around to collect money between 8:00-8:45am.

And yes, it hurt Curmie to reproduce that email’s manifold errors. One thing four decades in the classroom teaches you is how to distinguish between the inevitable typos we all commit and the inability to write at the 6th grade level. This is the latter. 

No, not these guys...

Even more problematic than an assistant principal who ought to be in middle school, however, is one who ought to be in federal prison. Can it be possible that she doesn’t know that “coyotes” are human traffickers? Even if that were the case, how is it “helping people” to charge them $5000 to get into the country? 

More to the point, as Jonathan Turley points out, “Harvey was trying to help the student pay off the coyote fee, but there is a little problem with this fundraiser: transporting aliens is a federal crime. Even worse, these ‘contracts’ for human smuggling often become human trafficking enterprises where those who cannot pay are used in prostitution or the drug trade.” No one wants the student to become victimized further than has already happened, but (quoting Turley again):

It is not known the status of the student beyond the illegal entry. It is a federal crime under 18 U.S.C. 1324(a)(1)(A)(i) and 1324(a)(2) to knowingly bring or attempt to bring into the United States an alien into the country illegally. Section 1324(a)(1)(A)(ii) makes it a crime for any person, with knowledge or reckless disregard of the alien’s illegal immigrations status, to transport an alien within the United States by any means of transportation.

It is also a crime to harbor an illegal immigrant or shield the alien from detection. Section 1324(a)(1)(A)(iii). It is also a crime under Section 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv) to encourage or induce an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States as well as conspiring or aiding or abetting in any of these crime. Section 1324(a)(1)(A)(v). This is a direct campaign to raise money for an unlawful payment to a human trafficker.

That’s not good, right? The principal, Tiffany Delaney, did what damage control she could early on, but Harvey is now on paid leave. PAID LEAVE? For committing a federal crime that it’s obvious she committed? What the hell would it take to get fired? 

Curmie’s more conservative friends suggest that the answer to that question is to be other than a black lesbian who, in their view, was hired to begin with to fulfill a DEI quota rather than for any actual credentials. Problem is, in this case, they’re probably right.

Yet Another High School Show Shut Down by Morons

A little over a week ago, Curmie wrote about the supression of the a production of Paula Vogel’s Indecent by the censorious asshats at the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, Florida. That was bad enough; this is worse. 

First, this one is personal. Curmie found out about it from a Facebook post by his nephew, an alum of the school in question, Cardinal High School in Middlefield, Ohio. Curmie’s Beloved Spouse, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, niece, and nephew all worked on shows at Cardinal in one or more capacities: on stage, on tech crews, and/or in the pit orchestra for musicals. 

So that’s one thing that’s especially irritating. The other is that the show that’s been cancelled is The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which may not be as innocuous as Kismet, but it’s pretty close. The post on the Curtain 440 Facebook page describes the play like this:

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is… sweet, moving, hilarious, and yes, sometimes irreverent, it shows all types of kids and their imperfect lives. It shows that no matter how much someone appears to have it together, they are going through struggles just like you. It shows teamwork, competition, friendship, puberty, growing up, conflict, working with people who are not like you—things that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US has gone through.

A scene from the Off-Broadway production.

That pretty well sums it up. When Curmie was teaching, he would see dozens of résumés each year from high school or junior college students auditioning for admission into and scholarships to the university program in which Curmie taught and directed. 

 For the last decade or so, i.e., since the musical became available for amateur productions, Curmie would guess that, as a conservative estimate, 15-20% of those kids had worked on a production of Putnam County. The show is a staple of both high school and community theatres across the country: as recently as a couple of years ago, it was the fourth most produced musical in American high schools. It’s hardly an unknown commodity. (And a 15-second Google search would alert you to potential problem areas.) 

Curmie’s university did a production as part of our summer season a few years back. A lot of people in town came, brought their kids, and really enjoyed it. We did not, by the way, do the alternate version to the “erection song” (“Chip’s Lament”). Didn’t matter: there were no protests, no stomping out of the show, no letters to the editor. This is in a place represented in Congress by Louie Gohmert, remember: not exactly the most liberal community on the planet. 

Ah, but the self-appointed Guardians of All Things Decent in northeastern Ohio have declared, without any clarification of terms, that the play is “not family friendly” because of the (now bowdlerized) “Chip’s Lament,” a brief scene in which Jesus shows up to say He doesn’t concern himself with spelling bees, and (OMG!) a student’s having two dads. 

Of course, despite the fact that the production team say they were told that the “two dads” business was a cause for concern, Superintendent Jack Cunningham, who is probably the idiot who said that but is also aware that being outed as a homophobe is probably not in his best interest, denies the allegation. That’s because he’s a superintendent, and superintendents are, even more than principals, more interested in covering their asses than in telling the truth. 

Side note: one of Curmie’s most treasured memories from teaching Theatre Appreciation to non-majors came in the discussion of a production of John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation. There were two guys in the back of the classroom who purported to be thoroughly grossed out by an inter-racial kiss between two men. Curmie wondered aloud why it’s okay to show axe murders on stage but not an expression of affection. 

Then, in a moment of inspiration, he looked directly at the two junior high refugees and said “maybe it’s because you know you’re not an axe murderer.” Curmie is pleased to note that although neither of those young men understood the barb, a woman in the front row nearly exploded, trying to control her laughter. 

Revenons à nos moutons… there are a lot of reasons why this action by the Cardinal board was, shall we shall, ill-considered. (Curmie resists, for the moment, at least, language invoking bovine fecal matter.) 

First, as you have no doubt already concluded, Gentle Reader, the play wouldn’t be performed so frequently in so many different places if it couldn’t attract audiences of all descriptions… and if it hadn’t passed the scrutiny of literally hundreds of different school administrations and community theatre boards. One wonders what all those other folks missed that the Acme Vulgarity Detector Kit at Cardinal caught. 

And trust me, Jack, ol’ boy, if you stroll through the hallways of the school during the changeover between classes, Curmie will absolutely guarantee that you’ll hear far more “vulgar language” than anything in Putnam County. Of course, that would require a modest attempt to understand what life in a high school is actually like, and we can’t have that, can we? 

Second, if what you mean by “family friendly” is that it might not be appropriate for 6-year-olds, fine. So make it the equivalent of a PG-13 movie, which is precisely what the production team was doing in requiring parental approval for junior high kids to see their preview. Cunningham sniffs that (undefined) “vulgarity” made the show “not suitable for our pre-teen and teenage students in an educational setting.” Erm… Jack… Sweetie… it’s a high school play;  there are no pre-teen students in your high school. Just sayin’. 

And the subsequent plaint that only productions which “community members of all ages may enjoy without adult supervision” should be allowed is a). transcendent in its stupidity (you really want to have toddlers determine your season?), and b). absolutely guaranteed to be applied capriciously. 

Once again, the school had at least de facto if not explicitly signed off on the show. You don’t get rehearsal scripts or scores to a musical until you’ve paid the royalties, so there was a check written for probably well into four figures. Theatre directors in high schools can’t just do that; it takes administrative approval. 

Oh… wait… Cunningham himself signed off on the check! Well, glory be! Tie me to an anthill and smear my belly with jam! Who’da thunk it? Ah, but, you see, the production team didn’t do what no one had ever expected them to do before and submit a script for board approval. That, you see, means it’s their fault the principal and the superintendent didn’t do their jobs. 

By the way, the parents of all students involved in the production met with the production team early on. The director and her staff explained that they were using the alternate version of the one song, and explained the context of other potential areas of concern. None of the parents pulled their kids from the show. In other words, as with the cancelled production of Indecent, the people most concerned with the welfare of the students—their parents—had no issues, or at least not enough to prevent their sons and daughters from active participation. 

Of course, the all-too-familiar “the board has received complaints” line demonstrates the ubiquitous cowardice of censors, in this case both the anonymous (of course!) complainants and the board themselves. As for the former, there’s a simple solution: don’t go. As for the latter: get a life. 

Third, there is something very important but easily overlooked by people outside the profession. The majority of the characters in this show are adolescents, meaning that high school actors a). understand them better, and b). don’t have to “take age” either in their acting or their physical appearance. That makes for both a better production and better development of young actors. 

Fourth, if you’re going to shut down a show, the time to do it is before students and faculty have put in literally thousands of person-hours in rehearsal and the shops: they’re a month into rehearsals. You know, like a good time might have been before you signed the scripts and royalties check? It would also be a more sound business practice to have done so before spending big money on the production: Curmie’s guess is that scenery construction has already begun. Even if that isn’t the case (one of the show’s attractions is that it doesn’t require much of a set), you’re unlikely to get your full royalty payment back, and you have a 0% chance on the rental fees for scripts and scores. 

Finally, this year’s seniors have already lost one show to COVID (after weeks of rehearsal). That may have been unavoidable. Taking away yet another show, for reasons that smack more of a socio-political agenda than of any legitimate concern for the welfare of students or their families: this is definitely not unavoidable. 

There is an email-writing campaign, by the way. Curmie will probably abstain, lest he offend the tender sensibilities of the school board by engaging in vulgarities to describe the extent of their stupidity and hypocrisy. If you are interested and can channel your frustration a little better than Curmie suspects he’s capable of at the moment, click here for info. 

Curmie has made the point repeatedly in the past that if you look hard enough, the chances are really good that you’ll find something objectionable in virtually any play ever written. And this is one of the tamer shows out there, especially if the alternate version of that one song is used.  Idiots on school boards are everywhere.  They will come after your next show, whatever it is, just to show that they can.  They, like all the other opponents of free expression Curmie has talked about of late, must be stopped.

From Curmie’s perspective, Superintendent Jack Cunningham and the school board members are, in no particular order, authoritarian, censorious, stupid, craven, lazy, and mendacious. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play? 

Above all, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee does not deserve to be censored just because a couple of school board members need more bran in their diet.

TWO UPDATES: 

Rachel Sheinkin, who won a Tony Award for the book to the show is now on record, saying in an email to assistant director Mandi Matchinga, “Specific words are easy to change to match the community’s needs. It sounds like this could be a mask for other issues and that by now you’ve moved on to considering other shows. But know that you and your students have our sympathy and support.”

And there’s now a Change.org petition which you are more than welcome to sign, Gentle Reader.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The school board has reversed their decision!  Thanks to everyone who signed the petition or otherwise supported the cause!  Taking this episode nationwide had to have made a difference.  People like this aren’t going to admit they’re wrong unless the embarrassment reaches an unendurable level.  Apparently, it did.

There Might Not Be a Storm in NY, But There Are Certainly Snowflakes on Broadway

Broadway star Adam Jacobs is a very special snowflake, indeed. Just ask him. 

Last week, late-night host Stephen Colbert did a riff on the Proud Boys, that testosterone-poisoned collection of sociopaths described by the Encyclopedia Brittanica as a “neofascist white nationalist organization… noted for their misogynistic and anti-Semitic rhetoric, QAnon-related beliefs, their support for U.S. Pres. Donald Trump, and their propensity for street violence.” 

In particular, Colbert poked fun at the organization’s anthem, “Proud of Your Boy,” from the Broadway musical Aladdin, in which Jacobs played the title role for nearly three years. You can see Colbert’s routine on Youtube; the Proud Boys sequence starts at about the 8:24 mark, and the specific bit that has Jacobs all hot and bothered starts at 10:06. Colbert mocks the dissonance between the Proud Boys machismo self-image and the considerably less than macho song they have adopted as their anthem. He sarcastically suggests that the anthem, which “is healthy to sing… at least once a night,” is intended to “present healthy, masculine vigor,” and that the “alpha-song anthem… sets testosterone ablaze!” 

Adam Jacobs as Aladdin,
being all macho and stuff

Then they cut to the scene in the musical in which the song is performed.  Shall we say it will never be accused of toxic masculinity? Jacobs does a little twirl and generally looks about as far from macho as Don Knotts on a bad day. In other words, Jacobs was playing Aladdin; Curmie, being neither a musical aficionado nor in close proximity to Broadway, hasn’t seen the show, but is willing to bet that Jacobs played the role very well indeed. 

Colbert does a little mock twirl of his own, pulls his suitcoat off his shoulders, twirls again, and, with exaggerated gestures, shouts “Hell, yeah! Tough guys! Lions, not sheep! Original Broadway cast recording! Our patriarchal neofascism just wants to be [switch to singing to the tune of a song from The Little Mermaid] part of your world!” 

Curmie has never been a huge Colbert fan, but this is actually a pretty good bit, and if anyone deserves to be skewered on national television, it’s the Proud Boys. But you’ve long since figured out where this story is going, haven’t you, Gentle Reader? Jacobs decided to take offense, and posted to Instagram:

Not funny @colbertlateshow. I understand the point you were trying to make with the Proud Boys, but completely emasculating me, mocking my work (and all musical theatre artists) all while using my image without my permission, is a poor way to go about it. I had always thought @stephenathome was a friend to the Broadway community but it sure doesn’t seem like it in this clip. #PoorTaste

How is your comment inane, Adam? Let me count the ways. (The usual apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning.) 

#1. You say you understand the point, but you obviously don’t. One would have hoped than an actor would know how to read a text. 

#2. There is nothing in Colbert’s sketch that “emasculates” you or your work, or that of other musical theatre artist. Nothing. It might have done so had Aladdin been supposed to be a tough-guy role, but Colbert is establishing a contrast between the Proud Boys’ self-image as alpha males and the reality that not all masculinity is constructed in that stereotypical, misogynistic, and sociopathic fashion.

Even one of the first commenters (thank you, _monsteraa_) on the Instagram post, which, after all, would be seen mostly by your fans, points out that: 

He’s mocking a specific idea of masculinity - a dumb alt-right misogynist version of it. Healthy masculinity comes in many forms and Colbert knows this. Not to mention, Stephen Colbert is very much a theatre person, having worked both on Broadway and alongside theatre his entire career. The joke was not aimed at you and your masculinity, Adam.

We might also mention that Stephen Colbert himself is not exactly an exemplar of the kind of masculinity the Proud Boys purport to embrace.

#3. Colbert is definitely a “a friend to the Broadway community,” and your desperate desire to be a victim doesn’t change this.

#4. I know you’re a Broadway star and all, but here’s a newsflash: it isn’t always about you. 

#5. Let me get this straight: you think that you should control the rights to your image and performance—rights you no doubt signed away to Disney long ago, probably for no little financial reward. You can be assured that Colbert’s producers procured the rights to that brief clip from the people who actually control them. On the other hand, I’ve got 20 bucks that says you didn’t get permission from Colbert to use a clip from his show in your petty little display of paranoia and narcissism. 

The foregoing will do for now, although Curmie does have a bone to pick with whatever Jacobs fan called Colbert’s shtick “mean-spirited.” First off, of course, it is: towards the Proud Boys. Secondly, even if you can contort the bit into somehow mocking Jacobs, have you ever seen a Colbert sketch that couldn’t be described that way? Only the victim of the barbs would be different… and Jacobs is only a victim in his own mind and in the opinion of idiot fans who feel compelled to rush to his defense even though he’s spewing hogwash. 

This also goes for the folks at onstageblog.com, specifically Chris Peterson and Greg Ehrhardt. At least the latter acknowledges that Colbert doesn’t owe anyone an apology (“it’s comedy”), but he feels compelled to say moronic things like that Colbert “scoffed at the idea of the songs and performers from ‘Aladdin’ being masculine.” He did not. He said nothing whatsoever about the performers, merely suggesting that Aladdin, the character, wasn’t an example of toxic masculinity; Curmie would have thought that was a good thing. And does Curmie really have to go over basic concepts like the difference between actor and character that he used to cover in about the third lecture of a non-major Theatre Appreciation class? 

As for Jacobs himself: if you want to be treated like a man, be one—and this is not at all a gendered comment. Curmie has no problem whatsoever with your version of masculinity, but it’s time to grow the fuck up. There’s a difference between men and boys, and age 38 is a little late in the game to understand that. If you want people to stop thinking you’re a snowflake, maybe you should try not behaving like one.

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.