How should Adventures of Huckleberry Finn be taught?

How about “Huck No!”

I predict that many readers of this piece will fall on the “teach it” side.

A New York Times Magazine article discusses this in great detail. The author traveled around the country to elicit opinions from teachers and students.

Primarily at issue is Mark Twain’s prolific use of what I will term the N-word. Twain, of course, was not encumbered by current taboos.

Most notable were responses from hundreds of readers, nearly all of whom saw the novel in its full N-wordiness as essential for both Black and white students. The arguments included the historically supported claim that the work is powerfully anti-racist and that Twain’s use of the N-word was necessary to the narrative and the time in which the book is set.

Alan Gribben, a white professor of English, noticed the absence of Black students when he taught the book and crafted an N-word-deleted version, which came to be known as the NewSouth edition. It was widely pilloried, although still in use in some settings.

Teachers and scholars agreed that teaching in context and with great sensitivity is necessary. But they insist, teach it we must lest we surrender to a kind of cancel culture that would deprive students of a seminal literary experience. After all, the novel shows Huck’s political and ethical growth into seeing slave Jim as an equal, at high personal cost.

While Huck’s partial conversion has some ethical value, the portrayal of Jim remains a dismal racial caricature throughout. That alone can cause Black students to recoil, even with the N-word euphemized.

Although some of the comments were apparently those of Black teachers and students, the vast majority were white.

The insistence on teaching it strikes me as a form of white privilege, despite the teachers’ claims to be decidedly anti-racist. Is it possible for Black teachers or scholars to manifest white privilege? Perhaps not manifest, but inadvertently advance.

The indefatigable Huck fans declare it one of the world’s literary masterpieces and a mandatory exposition and rejection of racism. One would think there is no other path to racial enlightenment.

There is no reason any Black student should be expected to hear - or read - a word that carries centuries of historic and epigenetic pain. Arguments about its use in popular culture ring hollow. Like an abused person who wrestles a weapon from the assaulter, only the victim or her family members reserve the right to brandish it. The N-word belongs to Black folks, and we may not borrow it or bandy it about, even with permission from some Black folks.

Although Huck evolved from an ignorant racist to a modestly redeemed racist, Black students do not benefit from tales of noble white saviors.

Removal of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from classroom curricula is not censorship. The novel should be in every library collection and available to all interested students. Those who stridently insist that omitting it from the classroom is censorship, one can only note the hundreds of other books that are not chosen for the classroom.

There is so much great literature with race or racism as core themes that insisting on one by a white author with a white narrator is an offense of its own. Students, Black, white, gay and straight, would find much richer perspectives in any number of James Baldwin’s works. Or ask students to wrestle with Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me.

As Toni Morrison remarked, “I’ve been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagues me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates. The language of Between the World and Me, like Coates’s journey, is visceral, eloquent, and beautifully redemptive.”

Reading a bit of Toni Morrison is not a bad idea either. Perhaps start with The Bluest Eye, which is a gut-wrenching representation of life for Black children, one with which Black students can identify and white students might learn from.

Neither Black nor white students need several hundred stings from the N-word to appreciate great writing or receive invaluable lessons about race and racism in America.

What do you think?

Share

Leave a comment

Share First Do No Harm

In the 19th century canaries in cages were taken into coal mines to serve as as early warning signs of the presence of toxic gases. The metabolism of the sensitive birds revealed dangers before humans felt symptoms. The phrase “canary in a coal mine” has taken on common meaning as an early indicator of danger.

The practice was only slightly inhumane, as efforts were made to mitigate damage to the vulnerable little creatures. No one thought the exposure to gases like carbon monoxide was good for them.

The phrase came to mind as I read a long piece in this week’s New York Times titled, I’m a Psychiatrist. I’m Hearing Something New From Young Women.

The lede was: Patients used to dread being told that there was something, as they saw it, wrong with them. Now these young women were announcing their diagnoses — attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, depression — almost before telling me their names.

Because it is analogous to many of the issues raised in the article, and the scores of comments from teachers, therapists, parents and others, I start with the SATs, the stressful gatekeeper to many opportunities in higher education.

Among the diagnoses mentioned by the author, several, especially ADHD, are used to gain extended time on the SATs and other standardized tests. There seems a cottage industry of affluents parents and willing practitioners who collude to gain these accommodations for students. The implication is that the SAT is “normal” and that some students are “disordered,” thus needing a little more time.

This is precisely backwards. It is the test that is disordered and the vast majority of students seeking relief are quite normal. The test is timed, which suggests that intelligence and academic potential fall along a speed continuum. An essay is no less cogent if crafted over four hours rather than two. A deliberate cognitive process that takes double the time to discern an algorithm is no less valid. Timing any test severely compromises its validity.

Students also have very different decoding skills - none more “intelligent” than the other. A certain sort of intelligence is assumed by the architects of standardized tests and this assumption is narrow and exclusive.

This armchair analysis applies to many, if not most, of the other self-diagnoses offered by young women using, as the author notes, “therapy-speak.”

Years ago I served on a panel of experts discussing ADD/ADHD in schools.I was the school representative and the others were the experts - psychologists, psychiatrists, neuropsychologists . . .

Hundreds of parents awaited the medical and psychological wisdom.

In my opening remarks I noted my dilettante status and then suggested that the problem was primarily school design and practice, not flawed children. Expecting children to be still and respectfully attentive is unrealistic. The fact that many kids can manage it does not vindicate the expectation. Medicating them to conform is, to allude to Frank Smith’s take on the science of reading instruction, an unspeakable act and unnatural practice.

The author’s observations about therapy-speak are based on her practice, so the sample of young women is selective - of course. But her wider views were confirmed by the hundreds of comments. It seems inarguable that girls and young women are suffering and that the therapy-speak only represents the easy availability of labels, courtesy of social media and popular culture.

Girls are inundated with unrealistic images of women. The standard to which many strive is unhealthy and often created through photo-shopping, make-up, restrictive clothing and careful selection. This alone can be a source of OCD, anxiety and depression.

I have a front seat to observe the pressure to conform. Literally. My wife and I wait in the pickup line at our granddaughter’s high school. The number of teenaged girls with waists the size of my neck is remarkable and alarming. I can’t know their realities, but the statistical likelihood of this being normal variation is unlikely. I suspect that it takes a toll on both the narrow-waisted and on those who are not. Again, any distress reported from either side is not abnormal. The social standard is abnormal and unhealthy.

The girls, of all sizes and shapes, are normal.

Girls and young women are navigating a culture which has reverted to a pre-1970s level of sexism, which they absorb by observing who has power and who does not. Feeling powerless or depressed in a world dominated by toxic masculinity is not abnormal. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 81% of girls and women have experienced some form of sexual harassment and/or assault. Toxic masculinity is abnormal.

The author wisely suggests ignoring the therapy-speak and self-diagnosis. Behind the labels are real girls who are suffering. They need to be listened to, not dismissed or argued with.

At least the canaries were removed from the coal mines before any permanent harm was done.

Share

Leave a comment

Damn coddled kids who got participation trophies can’t even get over the bar set by the soft bigotry of low expectations and god only knows how they will ever survive when they get into the REAL world!

This compacted sentiment represents the view of 99% of readers responding to the University of Michigan’s plan to give some students Pass/Fail assessments in their first semester, beginning in 2027.

As the NYT reported, “. . . It is intended to relieve pressure on freshmen and help them ‘start strong and curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals,’ the university said in a statement.”

Some folks fretted that Michigan’s reputation would crumble, just like the bridges designed by the pathetic engineer crybabies turned out by the once great institution turned to progressive mush by wimpy administrators. And that’s not to mention the concerns of those who fear undergoing surgery at the hands of a pampered product of progressive permissiveness who wasn’t baptized in the fierce fires of freshman failure.

Among 857 comments, fewer than a handful applauded the plan.

As a practical matter, this eruption of angst is absurd, even if one believes that grades and gritty striving are the essence of learning. Under the plan, students will still get grades behind the curtain, and those grades will be included in GPAs and in various institutional reports. And, of course, the same grade-grubbing, high stakes, eating-disorder, depression-inducing race will commence after this short breather. The future bridge designers and heart surgeons will have 3 1/2 years to run the gauntlet of all-nighters and crushing disappointments.

I too object - to the limited scope of this intent and to the baffling lack of understanding about learning, motivation, cognition and human development. If Michigan or any other university had the balls, other than basketballs and footballs, they would abolish grades entirely. I do sympathize. Our cultural misunderstanding of schools and learning is so deeply ingrained that few would even apply to such a place.

A simple notion, oft-employed by some educators to make a deeper point, is: Not everything measured is important, and not everything important can be measured.

Grading systems, standardized testing and the national obsession with data make the fundamental error of predication on the near absolute pre-eminence of measurement. At the pre-K-12 level, this has led to decades of increasingly bad policy and practice. Everything but this reliance on meaningless data is blamed for poor outcomes. It’s the teachers. It’s the unions. It’s the irresponsible parents.

Along with the collateral damage left behind by the hard bigotry of high expectations, the systems in place throughout education rely on extrinsic motivation - rewards, praise, grades, prizes. A 2021 post more thoroughly explicates this argument.

Any dilettante psychologist knows that extrinsic motivators are less effective and less-enduring than intrinsic motivators - curiosity, self-realization, competence, purpose. Research shows that extrinsic emphasis essentially extinguishes curiosity by 8th grade. That’s among the reasons that the most asked question among striving students is, “Will this be on the test?”

As an example, I cite a lovely chat with a recent Calhoun graduate who went on to Princeton. I should note that she did so without undue stress, without any class ranking, without any AP or honors courses, very few exams and with minimal school or family pressure. She remarked, as have many of our graduates regardless of their college choice, that many of her freshmen peers were burned out and incurious, despite – or perhaps because of – all the achievement. But the funniest part of her report was about an essay assignment.

The professor said, “Write about whatever you’d like. I just want to get a sense of your thinking and your writing skills.”

“But, but …” replied several students, “What do you want us to write about?”

“Whatever interests you,” replied the professor.

“But what are we supposed to write about? What are we supposed to be interested in?”

The exchange consumed several minutes, clearly frustrating the professor and amusing my young friend. How can these bright students change the world if they don’t even know what they are “interested in?”

The magic of discovery, the experience of beauty and the power of lifelong curiosity are sacrificed in the chase for the elusive gold ring of acceptance into the next - whatever.

(Because this post is based on an elite university’s action, the focus is on the needless harm done to advantaged kids, but the harm to poor kids, particularly of color, is several orders of magnitude greater. The corrosive effects of poverty and racism make it nearly impossible to succeed.)

Most vicariously infuriating is the incessant insistence on calling these young adults “coddled” or “pampered.” They were in 5th or 6th grade when the Covid pandemic disrupted school and everything else in their lives. They’re living through the disintegration of our social order, the constant threat of gun violence and the terrifying effects of climate change.

The least we can do is offer a few months of slightly less stress. If some of them use the time to be carefree and just have fun, all the better.

Share

Leave a comment

Put a Little Love in Your Heart

This anthem to kindness was a major hit for Jackie DeShannon in 1969 and later covered by Annie Lennox and Al Green. DeShannon had an earlier hit with Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s What the World Needs Now is Love, later covered by Dionne Warwick.

Both songs were a counter-balance to the turmoil of the 60’s, stirred by the increasingly disastrous war in Vietnam and the racist violence following the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, viciously punctuated by the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. It was a volatile time.

These admittedly saccharine songs ran through my head Tuesday night as I watched primary election returns.

Unmentioned in the commentary and interviews throughout the night was a consistent theme of self-interest. Candidates and voters alike cited one or another of personal woes in justifying their votes or political positions.

While addressing personal woes is not a new campaign phenomenon, my observation is that we Americans have drifted further and further from our social contract - the commitment to collective responsibility. This drift is apparent in the depth and rigidity of the partisan divide. Despite the occasional call to listen to the other side or love thy MAGA neighbor, most of us, including me, do precious little listening to or loving those on the other side of the chasm.

Listening and love aside, our politicians lean toward appealing to self-interest and the electorate responds accordingly. Even progressive candidates, who profess a commitment to human rights, quickly segue to food or housing costs to avoid appearing too “woke” to the mass of self-interested voters in the theoretical “middle.”

I was dismayed by every media interview on election night. Voters repeatedly voiced cost of groceries and gas at the pump as their primary concerns. I don’t doubt their sincere expressions of financial stress. Candidates were equally monotonous - and I do question their excessive caution.

I cannot recall any time in my past when anyone I knew was motivated primarily by what are glibly called pocketbook or kitchen table issues. We were mortified by the immoral war in Vietnam and the endless violence against or marginalization of our Black neighbors - among other things. No one said, “I’d vote for (blank) except eggs are too damn expensive!”

Even when approaching the outer edges of empathy, most voters’ concerns are skewed toward those things that directly affect them.

There are a great many issues that should relegate gas prices to the bottom of the voting motivation list.

* The war in Iran is not just a stupid Trump/Hegseth folly. Hundreds of thousands of children, women and men are injured, dead, displaced and living in abject misery. We should care.

* Immigrants, including citizens and others with legal status are being harassed, assaulted and warehoused in inhumane conditions. We should care.

* The Trump administration, particularly the felon-in-chief, is corrupt far beyond anything in our history. He and others should be in jail, not issuing offensive, dishonest social media posts, some of which are inarguably war crimes. Candidates for national office tiptoe around this blatant criminality and quickly turn to the “affordability” theme. We cannot “afford” to normalize crude authoritarianism by playing nice. We should care.

* Our planet is burning to a crisp. Real scientists are like Cassandra, screaming into the void left by candidates and office-holders who would rather lower gas prices by opening the strait of Hormuz than ask anyone to sacrifice by engaging in important environmental practices. We should care.

Popular culture is increasingly crude and violent. My wife and I cringe at the pounding beats and offensive lyrics - it discernible - coming from our grandkids’ devices in our backseat. A quick scan of popular movies and television reveals an endless invitation to horror, thrillers, sci-fi or a combination thereof. Neither children nor adults are yearning for tales of kindness. People subconsciously absorb these repetitive assaults.

Schools are competitive and dreadfully devoid of any curriculum or social emphasis on cooperation and empathy. Educators should be engaging our children in examination of the matters mentioned above. But here too, there is no risk tolerance for teaching children to open their hearts to the “other,” whether marginalized classmates or distant infants caught in the rubble of Pete Hegseth’s testosterone contest.

Ultimately, each person is morally connected to all others. Precious few officeholders or candidates are willing to make that case, whether in terms of our neighborhoods, towns, cities, nation or world.

What the world needs now is for each of us is to put a little love in our heart. Find the song on Spotify and sing along.

Think of your fellow man

Lend him a helping hand

Put a little love in your heart

You see it’s getting late

Oh, please don’t hesitate

Put a little love in your heart

And the world will be a better place

And the world will be a better place

For you and me

You just wait and see

Another day goes by

Still the children cry

Put a little love in your heart

If you want the world to know

We won’t let hatred grow

Put a little love in your heart

And the world (and the world)

Will be a better place

All the world (and the world)

Will be a better place

For you (for you)

And me (and me)

You just wait (just wait)

And see

Wait and see

Take a good look around

And if you’re looking down

Put a little love in your heart

I hope when you decide

Kindness will be your guide

Put a little love in your heart

And the world (and the world)

Will be a better place

And the world (and the world)

Will be a better place

For you (for you)

And me (and me)

You just wait (just wait)

And see

People now, put a little love in your heart

Each and every day

Put a little love in your heart

There’s no other way

Put a little love in your heart

It’s up to you

Put a little love in your heart

Come on and

Put a little love in your heart

You’ve got to

Put a little love in your heart

Share

Leave a comment

It is a confusing time for reasonable people. Our democratic republic wobbles at the abyss and the upcoming midterms may be the only salvation.

At a time when unity among democrats, liberals, progressives and democratic socialists is desperately needed, the squabbling is dangerously divisive.

How do we balance integrity and passion with compromise and pragmatism?

Mainstream democrats worry that passionate progressive rhetoric, particularly in those areas considered “woke,” will alienate voters in the amorphous “middle,” who will be pushed rightward or simply opt out if the non-Republican candidate seems too radical.

This concern is heightened by the apparent Republican delight in characterizing everyone left of George Bush as a communist. Red Scare reprise. It matters not a whit that these dunderheads have no idea what communism is and, of course, actual communists in the United States are rarer than hens’ teeth.

“Socialist” is proxy for “Commie!” in the intellectually stunted minds of the masses of low information voters.

So the liberal establishment moans and groans at the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), whose members are winning some primaries, but pose a risk to the general election maps needed for a Democratic majority in Congress come 2027.

New York Mayor Zorhan Mamdani’s stunning ascension was despite his membership in the DSA. I believe the label was irrelevant to most voters. He won because he proposed policies that dealt with real issues facing real people. And he’s wicked talented.

The symbolic divide between young Democratic Socialists and mainstream Democratic leaders is wide. The actual divide is quite small. Both groups champion universal health care, progressive taxation, climate activism, equal rights for all (except trans athletes!), and other hallmarks of a decent society.

Our challenge, lest our republic wobbles fully into the authoritarian abyss, is to embrace this coalition and give as few free cards to the nutbags as possible.

A case in point is the brouhaha arising from Mamdani’s youthful error in suggesting the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi when he sets foot on our soil. Bibi is the subject of a warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his commission of war crimes. The outcry from the right was immediate and, in one sense, relevant, because we arrogant Americans are not even party to the ICC for fear that our own war criminals - Donald, Pete and many others -would be subject to arrest too.

Mamdani was both right and stupid. During an election that should be primarily - only - about saving the republic, saying virtually anything about Israel and/or Palestine is a losing proposition. My own view about the genocide in Gaza and Netanyahu is quite radical, but if I chanted about it in a campaign for the school board, I’d please my friends and lose in a landslide.

Mamdani can’t and won’t have Bibi arrested, despite how richly he deserves to be handcuffed and humiliated.

This is why almost every seasoned Democrat pivots immediately to gas prices when asked about anything. It’s infuriating, but necessary. Republicans have virtually nothing to run on but Red Scare #2. We needn’t give them fresh ammo when their bandoliers are empty.

Other examples can be instructive. Spawned in part by George Floyd’s murder, my ideological soulmates adopted “Defund the police!” as a marching song. Exactly the right sentiment and politically suicidal. No reasonable person wishes to or is able to defund the police. Reform? Yes!! Strictly regulate? Yes!! But “Defund the police!” became a machete to help mow down a whole field of Democratic candidates. It’s like “Off the pigs!” back in the day. The backlash to 15 years of proper radicalism brought us Ronald Reagan, and it’s been a bumpy, mostly downhill, ride ever since.

Even “Black Lives Matter” carries freight that can lose votes.There is no progressive voter who would base their vote solely on that slogan. There are measurable numbers of semi-racist, but not entirely crazy, voters who would. Perhaps “Black Lives Matter Too?”

I’m somewhat ambivalent about Democratic Socialists of America. I am an unofficial member, based on my own values, but the label is not an electoral advantage. I do see long term hope in building this identity as an alternative to the stagnant and fetid binary of Republican and Democrat, but the identity must be managed with delicacy. I don’t endorse hypocrisy or dishonesty, but all that matters is that good people regain the reins of power before it’s too late.

If that means “gas prices” rather than “Black Lives Matter” for the moment, so be it.

Leave a comment

Share

“Fucking Commies!”

This celebratory 4th of July phrase was posted as a comment on our town’s Facebook group page. I think it was in response to a post reminding residents of the extreme fire danger posed by high winds, dry grass and searing heat.

Another local resident offered a similarly ballistic diatribe over fireworks restrictions. Therein he also grunted cathartically about the terrible restrictions that accompanied the COVID pandemic. Both issues clearly represented an affront to the guarantees of freedom explicit in our founding documents (and sports bars everywhere).

Trump, whom I refuse to dignify with “President,” drifted off script during a holiday speech at Mount Rushmore. As the New York Times reported, “Mr. Trump read from an apocalyptic script as the stony faces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln looked on. He said the word ‘communism’ so many times, you might’ve thought the Cold War was still on.”

His opponents are “godless” and “evil.” Fucking Commies!

Across the street, our invariably pleasant neighbors have a huge “FREEDOM” banner in a yard ringed with American flags. Up and down most American streets, flags and fireworks fly, damn the risks and God Bless America.

At a moment when our democratic republic seems most fragile, if not already irreparably shattered, I scanned my mind and heart to find reason to feel celebratory or proud. As to “celebratory,”my family members and I enjoy freedom’s fruits. Our privileges and opportunities are manifest. As to “proud,” not so much. I’ve always found “Proud to be an American” an odd claim. Most of us did precious little to “be an American.” Lucky, perhaps.

My grandparents emigrated from Sweden and Holland and, although they were hardly escaping tyranny, they found their small slice of the American dream and built solid foundations for my parents who, in turn, made my life possible.

I genuinely feel gratitude for this good fortune and recognize that the American experiment, as promised in the Declaration of Independence and codified in the United States Constitution, allowed this multi-generational flourishing.

Although somewhat tangential to this post, one cannot celebrate or acknowledge such good fortune without noting the nation’s original sin - slavery - which has its roots planted in the same soil. White folks’ freedoms grew expansively from generation to generation while Black women and men have realized only halting and incomplete freedom.

My 4th of July ambivalence led to a spontaneous experiment. I searched the entire Declaration of Independence for the word “responsible” or “responsibility.” The search yielded “no result.” Curiosity piqued, I pasted the entire United States Constitution into a document and repeated the search. No result once more. I don’t feel a rush of originality, but I’ve never encountered that analysis. I think it matters.

Our nation came to be through fighting oppression and escaping tyranny. The declaration of freedom meant something that it does not mean now. We have luxuriated in freedom for most of our existence, although we must be mindful of the caveat above.

Now “freedom” has been twisted and perverted from collective meaning. In the examples cited - “fucking commies” from the fireworks oppressed neighbors and “godless” and “evil” from Trump - freedom has come to mean “I can do what I want, dammit.”

Our founding documents would have been more elegant and prescient had they paired our freedoms with our responsibilities. That would have provided a moral tether to hold our freedoms at bay. To ensure that one person’s freedom is not another person’s burden. This notion is honored in 1st Amendment jurisprudence - you know, the fist and face analogy. But that’s about it.

In matters of gun violence, fireworks stubbornness and other obvious examples, freedom must be balanced with community responsibility. On a broader and vastly more important level, the capitalist’s freedom to profit must be circumscribed by the health, welfare and economic security of the community. Freedom without responsibility is anti-democratic and selfish.

You and I can surely cite innumerable examples of the dangers of freedom without responsibility. If I were inclined to decorate my home for the 4th - which I am not - I would fly a banner and flag with the word “Responsibility” in bold red, white and blue. Perhaps we can start a trend for next year and beyond.

Several times a year I find a reason to post my favorite poem from the late Grace Paley, with whom I had a nodding acquaintance while living in Vermont.

It is the responsibility of society to let the poet be a poet

It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman

It is the responsibility of the poets to stand on street corners giving out poems and beautifully written leaflets also leaflets they can hardly bear to look at because of the screaming rhetoric

It is the responsibility of the poet to be lazy, to hang out and prophesy

It is the responsibility of the poet not to pay war taxes

It is the responsibility of the poet to go in and out of ivory towers and two-room apartments on Avenue C and buckwheat fields and Army camps

It is the responsibility of the male poet to be a woman

It is the responsibility of the female poet to be a woman

It is the poet’s responsibility to speak truth to power, as the Quakers say

It is the poet’s responsibility to learn the truth from the powerless

It is the responsibility of the poet to say many times: There is no freedom without justice and this means economic justice and love justice

It is the responsibility of the poet to sing this in all the original and traditional tunes of singing and telling poems

It is the responsibility of the poet to listen to gossip and pass it on in the way storytellers decant the story of life

There is no freedom without fear and bravery. There is no freedom unless earth and air and water continue and children also continue

It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman, to keep an eye on this world and cry out like Cassandra, but be listened to this time.

Listen to her.

Share

Leave a comment

Oops.

Ross Weiner, former policy director for the Education Trust, crafted a semi-mea-culpa Op-ed for the New York Times last week.

Therein he acknowledged the failure of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the federal accountability disaster passed in 2002, later replaced by Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). ESSA emerged from the Obama years and remains in force. The failure, Weiner and others declare, is demonstrated by the inarguable decline in test scores. I have argued relentlessly and hopelessly that the decline in test scores is an inevitable consequence of practices designed to raise test scores!

To be fair, Education Trust is not among the conservative villains who are chopping public education to bits with school choice chain saws. Weiner and his former colleagues support racial and economic justice in education. There is, unfortunately, little evidence that they have been effective.

While EdTrust’s equity mission is well-intended, and Weiner is too, the mea culpa is too little and far too late. 24 years have passed since NCLB began changing schools for the worse through grandiose proclamations and harmful expectations. It is nearly impossible to quantify the damage inflicted and opportunities lost as a result of the ongoing accountability era.

It is particularly tragic that the harm was - and continues to be - incurred most by the very students EdTrust has pledged to support. Poor Black and brown children have always felt the firm hand of government pushing them to perform and holding them accountable for the negligence of the powerful.

NCLB and ESSA have been irritating and inconvenient for relatively affluent, white majority schools. But white, affluent communities and private schools have more money, smaller classes, and a great many resources that encourage learning despite the nuisance of standardized tests.

Both of my Colorado grandchildren have gone through public elementary school without the least bit of test-prep or anxiety, even though they wasted many days sitting in front on a screen taking standardized tests. They also had art, music, theater and lots of free play outside in all seasons.

But poor Black students are virtually warehoused in schools that dress them like little soldiers and practice “tough love” because, as a wealthy, powerful reformer once told me, “They need it.”

NCLB and ESSA were bound to fail because they drove practices that violate almost everything known about children and how they learn. Among many other sins, these accountability policies assume that all children learn in the same way and develop at the same rate. It is hard to imagine a policy more futile and stupid than one demanding that all children be fluent readers by third grade.

Most infuriating is the widespread belief that the problem in education is not anything I have summarized. A plurality -if not majority - of NYT readers seem convinced that what most plagues schools is lousy parenting. I assume that most Times readers enjoy some measure of privilege and, like most privileged folks, are blind to their own manifold advantages.

The poor Black and brown parents at the receiving end of these judgments are, in many cases, too damn tired to pack nutritious lunches with $30 water bottles or join the PTA. They have often been the victims of the same lousy, filthy, underfunded schools attended by their own kids. They are frequently on a bus or subway before dawn, commuting to a job caring for the children of the wealthy folks who blame them for not being sufficiently engaged in their children’s school.

They are caring for elderly relatives in cramped spaces, dodging rodents in their deteriorating public housing, and living with the dull, persistent depression that accompanies poverty. The debilitating effects of multi-generational poverty are the moral failing of a nation.

Schools are a reflection of the society in which they exist. Our society is segregated as are our schools.Our society is inequitable, as is school funding. We relegate generations to poverty or near poverty through political and economic apartheid and then blame the poor for not being good enough parents.

For several decades, the standards and accountability craze has been a massive cover for a nation unwilling to address the fundamental problems - poverty and racism.

Now folks like Weiner have to admit; the approach failed.

But don’t wait for that recognition to inspire meaningful change. All of today’s political capital is being directed toward giving white folks the ability to get the hell out of the mess we’ve made by using school choice to further segregate education and society.

Share

Leave a comment

There’s nothing quite like a walk in the woods to lift the vague veil of despair that hangs over much of life these days.

And so it was that my “little” brother Pete, visiting from his home in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, and I drove up through Left Hand Canyon to Brainard Lake in Ward, CO. I enclose little in quotes because he is not . . . and because, to our mutual amusement, he now receives Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Our expectations were modest. For me, completing the 7-mile Lake Isabelle roundtrip would be a triumph, given my octogenarian-adjacent, spinal-cord-injured, reality. For Pete, my survival and a moose sighting were top ambitions.

If a splendid day might augur success, we were in luck. The blue sky was thick enough to stir with a spoon. Although wind gusts approached 50 mph, we were soon enough in the embrace of spruce and subalpine fir trees.

This lovely hike is moderate in length and challenge, thus attracting a range of abilities. This June Wednesday brought quite a crowd. It is always amusing to observe trekkers in full expeditionary regalia on a stroll that a limited geezer could navigate in ancient, treadless sneakers.

Most of our encounters were pleasant enough, although I will never understand any person avoiding eye contact or a cheery word or two when passing. I guess some veils of despair are impenetrable, even as close to heaven as we were at 11,000 feet.

There was no lack of eye contact or missing cheery words when we came upon a group of newly minted high school graduates from Denver - Nahom, Maahir, Kamil and Tyrese. The young men, pictured above, were paused mid-trail while Nahom thrashed down through the underbrush to jump across a rushing stream because, I suppose, it was there for the jumping.

Soon thereafter, three of the teens and one pre-geezer mounted a thick tree trunk spanning a rivulet of water below. This too, I suppose, because it was there for the mounting. As one teen remarked hopefully, “I don’t think it’s high enough that we could die.”

We chatted for a few minutes and learned of their college choices - Oberlin, Harvard, USC and somewhere in Barcelona. They were open, curious and without any of the reticence one might anticipate with teenagers encountering strange older folks engaging them on a mountain trail.

This was the first of a handful of encounters as the sun and trail ascended. Each time, we greeted each other with more familiarity and warmth. It is not irrelevant that “familiarity” and “family” grow from the same linguistic root.

Eventually their easy pace drew them distant from our (my) labored saunter. When we crested the final incline, there were small groups of hikers here and there along the edge of sparkling Isabelle, but our young friends were nowhere to be seen.

We rested briefly and headed back down, still moose-less, despite frequent piles of moose scat along the trail.

Perhaps a third of the way back, along they came once more. While we had rested lakeside, they’d continued part way around Isabelle, obscured by a massive mound of snow which had not yet surrendered to June.

I suppose one might think our sentiments were induced by ineffable beauty or thin air, but this final meeting felt more like fate than serendipity.

We exchanged our mutual feelings that finding each other had become the highlight of our day. That’s a high bar on a day that had as many highlights as a Jalen Brunson 4th quarter. I can’t speculate as to why our teen friends judged us a highlight. Perhaps because too few adults actually care to know them, at least on such scant acquaintance.

I exercised my talent for the obvious by pointing out that we were neither the same age nor the same race. Duh. But it merited mention because in these times, perhaps any times, variables of age and/or race keep too many people from seeing and hearing one another at all. Nahom suggested the selfie and then asked what advice we old codgers might offer our own 18 year-old selves if we could rewrite our lives. We tried, but their 18 year-old selves could probably tell our 18 year-old selves a thing or two. (btw, one of our friends is actually 19.)

Pete and I agreed that this quartet of new friends provided a much-needed antidote to cynicism and hopelessness. It is easy to dismiss Gen Z as social-media addled and inconsequential. But Nahom, Maahir, Kamil and Tyrese restored faith. We don’t know what they will do with the world we leave them, but we feel better that they will be in it.

They will read this essay and perhaps wince when I say that I love them. Our time together totaled 15-20 minutes - no time at all, yet enough time to make a family. I don’t have any right of expectation, but would sure be honored if they stay in touch.

At saunter’s end, we got our moose! Two moose! A closer encounter than ever before. On any other hike - any other day - that would have been a unsurpassable highlight

.

Sorry, moose. Runner-up.

Share

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

The latest, most manipulative and dangerous assault on American education is largely flying under the radar. Endorsed by such luminaries as former Ed Secretary Arne Duncan and Colorado governor Jared Polis, the soon-to-be rolled out federal school choice plan has gotten little public scrutiny, perhaps because the daily flash bangs tossed by the Trump administration keep folks distracted.

I encouraging you to read this NYT article and then consider my post a rebuttal.

The program’s architects have brewed a kettle of artificial sweeteners to persuade policy makers that this is really a win-win-win proposition.

For example, they argue that vouchers for private schools will not reduce funding for public schools because the vouchers will be paid for by donations to non-profits. The donations, up to $1,700 per person, will be 100% deductible. Sound harmless? Well, not really. Every buck funneled into this program is a buck diverted from other programs as a result of reduced tax revenue; which means the rest of us will pay for the vouchers once this sleight of hand completes its circular play.

The other “oh-my-gosh-ain’t-this-swell?” gimmick is that public schools can tap the funds for a few after school services, thereby realizing additional revenue. What is unmentioned is that the voucher scheme will result in students leaving the public system and per capita funding will reduce overall revenue for many schools. As any reasonably informed observer knows, a school cannot reduce expenses in proportion to enrollment losses.

As is already the case in many states, this scam allows affluent folks to access voucher funds to take to the private school of their choice. Stunning, I know, that wealthy families win agaIn.

Beneath the heaps of cleverly contrived bullshit, the purpose of this scheme is unambiguous. Conservatives constantly rage against those damn “government schools,” which they accuse of indoctrinating kids into socialism, atheism, and white self-loathing caused by all those DEI programs. In truth, of course, most “government schools” are having enough trouble managing huge classes, hungry kids, and the enervating expectations of the accountability crowd.

This “choice” program will also allow many parents to choose a school that doesn’t expose their darlings to too many brown and Black children. America’s schools have become steadily re-segregated in recent years. White flight will get a fresh pair of wings with this program.

So, beneath the thin, shiny veneer, this massive con job is designed to kill public education and redistribute money and children to unaccountable charter schools, storefront religious schools, online money-suckers and other varietals that might appeal to the average News Nation viewer. Trump famously said he likes the uneducated, and this Education Freedom program will swell their ranks.

The current conservative movement, led by people who are generally operating behind the scenes, does not care a great deal for democracy. They support an autocrat wannabe and have enabled a steady attack on democratic institutions.

Public education is the institution best equipped to sustain a thriving democracy. It is among the only systematic ways of forging a common culture out of a wonderfully diverse population. Most Americans, including the less rabid MAGA troops, say they bemoan the deep divides in our nation. Then they cheer the possibility of sending their children to a school that deepens the divide by indoctrinating them into a perverse understanding of our history and values.

Amidst the more spectacular offensives of the current era, this issue may seem less urgent, but it is more urgent, not less. Most of the Trump era unraveling of decency and democracy can be re-raveled within a few election cycles. Our public education system is nearing the point of no return. Once gone, it’s too late. I cannot envision any politician or policy maker demanding or persuading parents to leave the school they chose for a “government school.” What’s left of the public system will warehouse children in poor neighborhoods, whose parents have insufficient power, energy or resources to do anything about.

An objective look at American schools today shows that we are not far from that point now.

“If they can’t sell records, why should they get our tax dollars?”

This is a rough paraphrase from a conversation many decades ago about music grants made from the National Endowment for the Arts. I’ve thankfully forgotten who made the remark, but they would be quite welcome in the Trump administration.

The new version of “record sales as an accurate measure of worth” is the Trump plan to deny student loans to enrollees in graduate programs whose alumni fail to meet earnings standards. According to the New York Times, these programs, among many, many others, would fail the new earnings standards:

Yale University’s master’s programs in visual arts and music.

Harvard University’s master’s degree in museum studies.

The Juilliard School’s undergraduate and graduate programs in music.

I might comment that Yale, Harvard and Juilliard are also not “an accurate measure of worth,” but arguably better than record sales. Their prestige does help to emphasize the absurdity of the proposal.

The Times report said, “The rising cost of higher education — annual tuition for an undergraduate degree can reach $90,000 — has legislators interested in holding colleges accountable for programs that provide a low financial return on investment.”

Of course no students pay 90 grand unless they are from wealthy families, so that point is moot. But that darned “return on investment” is the prime consideration.

U.S. News and World Report published a list of top earning professions. Anesthesia and psychiatry topped the list, followed by many other medical fields, then tech, architecture and a variety of others. The list was not long enough to get to violinist, poet, sculptor or dancer.

Members of the Education Department and of the Senate committee providing oversight would be hard pressed to name a single violinist, poet, sculptor or dancer. Their tastes lean more toward Kid Rock and Lee Greenwood (who didn’t need no stinkin’ graduate school!).

I don’t mean to dismiss the importance of the “return-on-investment” professions. I have benefitted from the skill of anesthesiologists and may need psychiatric help before Trump is done dismantling our democracy. But do we live in an economy or a society?

I’m much closer to the end of life than the beginning - or the middle or even late-middle. The general dumbing-down of American culture is disheartening and directly correlated with the current political environment. While exceptions surely exist, it is broadly true that anyone who is captivated by a Beethoven piano sonata or Balanchine ballet would not be numb to the egregious cruelty and depthless ignorance of the current administration and their slack-jawed adherents.

Music, visual arts, dance and other arts are the way we express and experience the dimensions of life that cannot be quantified - beauty, tenderness, amazement . . . . It is a somewhat hackneyed notion, used often in education, but valid nonetheless: Not everything that is important can be measured and not everything that can be measured is important.

Government hostility to the arts is bad, but the cultural decline is worse. Artists will always pursue their work, but in increasing obscurity. Many factors contribute; social media, coarsening of popular culture, commercial vulnerability of arts.

And language matters too. These days anyone can call themselves an “artist.” Most popular music is derivative, mostly costume and pyrotechnics, and increasingly laced with gratuitous violence and sexual nonsense. The only dancers making money are the Shuffle Mamas (look them up) and their fans think they are the next coming of Suzanne Farrell (look her up.).

I suppose the greatest insult is the scheduling of a UFC match to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. I’ll bet every member of Trump’s administration and every Republican legislator will be on hand to watch one cretin try to beat the bloody hell out of another. It’s only a slight step above lions in the Colosseum.

But, to be fair, it is Mixed Martial “Arts.”

Perhaps Yale, Harvard and Juilliard can offer graduate programs in the inhumanities.

Share

Leave a comment

Share First Do No Harm

Memorial Day came and left with my annual internal conflict about the valorization of military service.

Although I was drafted in September 1966, my first death shock came 6 months later. My gentle, good-spirited high school friend and swim team mate, Fred West, had surprisingly joined the Marines and was found in a pile of mutilated bodies during a rescue mission in Vietnam. Fred was 19 years old.

Neither his enlistment nor his death made America safer.

Memorial Day is intended to honor the more than 1,000,000 men and women who died while serving their country.

I mean no dishonor to Fred, other friends who died in Vietnam, or any who died in the line of duty. But Memorial Day is rife with meaningless expressions of gratitude and patriotism. I don’t doubt the bravery or patriotism of the individuals, but the day also represents an inadequately examined and recurrent national delusion.

Particularly during the Vietnam war, our voluntary and involuntary soldiers were sent on a fool’s errand disguised as a noble mission. The domino theory used to justify our presence was largely discredited long before social and political pressure forced our withdrawal.

58,000 Americans and millions of Asians died in the gruesome process. As with my friend Fred, each of those deaths left a trail of profound grief. No death, on either side, kept anyone safer.

I have similar reservations about the spasms of anger after 9/11. That attack was vicious and without provocation, but it led to irrational Islamophobia, government dishonesty and a pointless war. Weapons of mass destruction were conjured out of thin air to justify attacks on Iraq that included war crimes, like the use of Agent Orange on soldiers and citizens.

Retribution is a futile action, stirring more of the ant-American animus that inspired the radical psychopaths who flew planes into buildings. In this instance as well, no death on either side made anyone safer.

All of our various “excursions” into that always simmering region have been unproductive or counterproductive. Only delusion could yield a sense that we - or anyone else - are safer as result.

Now, under the incomprehensible incompetence of Team Trump, the contemporary version of “weapons of mass destruction” is an equally contrived “imminent nuclear threat.” So Trump threatens to end a civilization. This obscenity is only the slightly more egregious among a litany of war crimes offered up in the Trump/Hegseth vernacular.

The reason I offer this dismal resume of American immorality and corruption alongside the somber honors of Memorial Day is because our calls to military service are fundamentally dishonest.

Young women and men are invited to join to keep America safe. Ever since the unambiguous peril posed by Hitler and allies, the threats have been manufactured or greatly exaggerated.

The other motivating language is that the military is protecting American principles and values. Those principles and values desperately need protection, but not from the Viet Cong, Iraqis or Iranians. If today’s young women and men want to protect our principles and values, there is work aplenty to do at home.

They can mount a full-scale attack on their elected representatives, insisting that they remove Trump from office before there are no principles or values left to protect.

They can organize a battalion of like-minded patriots and knock on millions of doors, encouraging every citizen to vote out the scoundrels who are violating our principles and defacing our values every day.

They can uphold or restore the principles of equality, liberty and justice by advocating for voting rights, free speech and the dignity of all fellow humans.

They can work to make America safer by fighting against climate change and its devastating consequences.

When people learn that I was an Army officer, they frequently say, “Thank you for your service.” I don’t want to be rude, so I usually smile and say nothing. Occasionally I’ll say, “Thank you, but I did nothing noble.”

Not long after my completion of Officer Candidate School, I admitted to myself that the best way to advance American values would have been to refuse service and join the growing peace movement. I was insufficiently mature and courageous.

It is understandable that those who lost a loved one might need to justify the loss: That their son made “the ultimate sacrifice” in order to keep the rest of us safe; Or that their daughter lost her life in a mission to preserve our noble democratic principles. Wishful grief, I suppose.

Peace can only grow from kindness and generosity. We Americans need a Department of Peace led by a poet, not a Department of War led by a resentful drunk.

Pete Seeger’s words should be heeded.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Where have all the flowers gone?

Long time passing.

Where have all the flowers gone?

Long time ago.

Where have all the flowers gone?

Gone to young girls, everyone.

When will they ever learn?

When will they ever learn?

Where have all the young girls gone?

Long time passing.

Where have all the young girls gone?

Long time ago.

Where have all the young girls gone?

Gone to young men, everyone.

When will they ever learn?

When will they ever learn?

Where have all the young men gone?

Long time passing.

Where have all the young men gone?

Long time ago.

Where have all the young men gone?

Gone to soldiers, everyone.

When will they ever learn?

When will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone?

Long time passing.

Where have all the soldiers gone?

Long time ago.

Where have all the soldiers gone?

Gone to graveyards, everyone.

When will they ever learn?

When will they ever learn?

Where have all the graveyards gone?

Long time passing.

Where have all the graveyards gone?

Long time ago.

Where have all the graveyards gone?

Gone to flowers, everyone.

When will they ever learn?

When will they ever learn?

Where have all the flowers gone?

Long time passing.

Where have all the flowers gone?

Long time ago.

Where have all the flowers gone?

Gone to young girls, everyone.

When will they ever learn?

When will they ever learn?

Share

Leave a comment

Share First Do No Harm

“Because I said so,” is the last refuge of the fatigued parent, It is also the first option of the incipient fascist.

This observation derives from a pair of unintentionally related items in the New York Times.

The first was an article in The Athletic that reported on the disqualification of a high school track team. The young men’s 400 meter relay squad was in the final few meters of the last relay leg when the runner raised an open hand, the five digits representing his team’s fifth consecutive state title. Immediately, an eager official brandished a yellow flag, disqualifying the relay for excessive “celebration.” The dignity with which the coach and runner accepted this indignity dwarfed the petty bureaucracy demonstrated by the official.

Rules are rules.

As often the case, comments from readers were illuminating. Some readers shared my view, acquired through my rule-testing youth, that the disqualification was excessive, picayune, and mean-spirited. More folks cluck-clucked that it was too bad, of course, but the kid and coach knew the rules and suffered the just penalty.

The woman official who raised the yellow flag said she had warned the same runner for a similar infraction earlier in the meet. The runner and his coach disagreed. They appealed and lost. The head official also cluck-clucked, but said she must support the official who made the call. Rules are rules.

Unsportsmanlike conduct indeed, but by the officials, not the kid. His gesture was sweet and restrained. Their conduct was typical of small-minded people who often inhabit positrons where they can exert control.

We encounter them frequently, like the airport enforcer on a recent pick-up who insisted that I move my car and repeatedly drive a circular route through the orange-coned chaos that is Denver International Airport. I was waiting beyond the pick-up zone at a lonely curb far from any possible obstruction. But rules are rules, so I drove the loop and lifted my hand like the relay runner, but with only a single digit.

The second, far more tragic, report revealed the astonishingly cruel actions of our government, which has separated more than 140,000 children from their immigrant parents. These actions dwarf the border separations of the first Trump administration, but have garnered scant notice. Perhaps we’ve become numb from serial traumatization.

The circumstances leading to the separations vary widely, but the main takeaway, as with other chapters in this miserable book, is that cruelty is the point.

Here too, readers’ comments were revealing and demonstrative of the many chasms of emotion and reason that divide our body politic. It is important to note that these were not comments of subscribers to Breitbart News, where one might expect a chorus of “fuck ‘ems.”

These supposedly more erudite New York Times readers placed the blame primarily on parents who exposed their “anchor babies” to the consequences of bad decisions. We are a nation of laws, they said and cluck-clucked away just like those who supported the bitter little women who ripped a championship from overly-cheerful teenagers. Rules are rules.

Did I note that the runner is Black and that all those “bad” parents are brown and Black? I’m sure even a few of my erudite readers will roll their eyes and accuse me of playing the “race card.” Guilty as charged, I suppose, but it is hard to avoid playing a race card when the entire American deck is stacked with race cards.

I began with, “It is also the first option of the incipient fascist.” That language is not hyperbolic. The parallels with Nazi Germany are striking, while not identical. There too, rules were rules and led apparently normal humans to perform abnormally inhumane actions.

(Of course I recognize that disqualifying a high school runner is several furlongs short of fascism. But the mindset is traveling in the same direction.)

These actions and the inaction of others were the result of declaring the exclusive exceptionalism of white men and the constant relegation of Jews, Slavs, gay folks, those with disabilities and Jehovah’s Witnesses into a violently disfavored “other.”

When “other” slides to “subhuman,” genocide becomes conscionable, even necessary.

Our current administration is steeped in white nationalist supremacy. The wholesale and indiscriminate imprisonment of Black and brown people is unconscionable, yet merits only brief scrutiny below the fold in our daily attentions. They are our “other.”

A nation that can murder Iranian schoolchildren, support genocide in Gaza and stand by while 140,000 children are torn from parents is not as far from 1930s Germany as we like to think.

Share

Leave a comment

Share First Do No Harm

One need look no further than two stories in last week’s New York Times to characterize the up is down, down is up world we’re enduring these days.

The more absurd is the “investigation” launched by the Department of Education (DOE) into Smith College’s enrollment of transgender students. Smith, an all-women’s school, has done so for more than a decade. The DOE claim is that the presence of trans women violates Title IX, which bans sex-based discrimination.

The convoluted argument is that Title IX provides a sex discrimination exception for single sex schools like Smith and many others. By admitting “biological males,” Smith ceases to qualify as “single sex.”

Like so many other culture war assaults, the “investigation” was prompted by a complaint from Defending Education. In their words, “Defending Education is a national grassroots organization working to restore schools at all levels from activists imposing harmful agendas.”

When scanning the particulars of this and similar protections from the sinister work of activists, the only apparent injury is to the delicate sensibilities of conservative snowflakes, who are mortified at the mere thought of some imaginary college student getting an inadvertent glimpse of a penis. It is notable that no current or former Smith students have complained.

Having known a handful of trans students, I can accurately state that I would feel more comfortable sharing a locker room with them than sharing a conference room with the moralizing prigs at Defending Education. Unfortunately, this is but the tip of a cold-hearted conservative iceberg that seeks to further marginalize trans folks until they have few places to turn.

It is also worth noting that transgender folks are 4 times more likely to suffer from sexual assault than cisgendered people - 47% in all. So it’s not those at Defending Education who should fear trans folks. Methinks it’s the trans folks who should keep a wary eye on those buttoned-up conservatives.

A statute intended to remediate one kind of discrimination is being employed as a bludgeon to perpetuate another kind of discrimination. Up is down, down is up.

The other story is slightly less absurd, but more representative of a broad inclination for reversing many decades of discrimination against white men. We poor white men, who are already blamed for everything, are finally fighting back.

In this case, a white man at the New York Times filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), claiming that he was the victim of discrimination because of his race and gender. He was passed over for a Deputy Editor position, apparently filled by a woman. Facially unjust, or perhaps farcically unjust.

The complaint argues that the white guy was the victim of the newspaper’s DEI program, which seeks to diversify the workforce. The Times denies the discrimination, of course, but the denials ring hollow, as surely the white guy was the best candidate. Aren’t we always?

I am not sure how such a claim is resolved. Criteria for hiring are always a mix of quasi-objective and somewhat subjective factors. I suggest that ex-post-facto analysis might conclude that any white man filing such a discrimination complaint is self-disclosing as an irredeemable asshat, thereby inarguably unqualified for the position being sought. Ironic, right?

This climate is pervasive, as white privilege rises once again above the tide of social justice that threatens white male hegemony.

That hegemony is statistically apparent in corporate leadership, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, nationwide compensation and damn near everywhere else. If that is not evidence of systemic discrimination, the only other possibility is that white men are just better. You know, American meritocracy.

The good ol’ boys (you too, Coney Barrett) at the Supreme Court are working overtime to make sure this white supremacy prevails. The recent gutting of the Voting Rights Act was premised on the notion that racism is no longer an issue of concern, which is true if you are either a powerful white man or Clarence Thomas. Billionaires do not discriminate when it comes to lavishing their largess on those who will do their bidding. Aunt Amy and Uncle Tom are glad to help too.

Here too, up is down and down is up. They claim that racism is over and then act in a way that will send our Black friends and neighbors back to Jim Crow days.

My life has not been uneventful. I have lived through the greatest era of social progress - civil rights, voting rights, gay rights, sexual and gender freedom - and am now witness to the greatest era of social regress.

I don’t know if we’ll recover.

Share

Leave a comment

Share First Do No Harm

“Violence is never the answer.”

This short sentence was the prelude or coda to virtually every comment I’ve read or heard about Cole Allen’s attempted assault on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

The short sentence is patently false. To paraphrase MLK, Jr., the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward violence. Around the world and in the U.S, violence is too often the answer.

Much is yet to be learned, but Cole Allen’s so-called manifesto indicates that he believed violence was the only answer to the monstrous people, especially Donald Trump, wreaking havoc here and abroad. I am usually cautious about invoking Hitler to make a point, but hindsight could justify the benefits and morality of a hypothetical assassination in the early days of Hitler’s ascension. Trump is not Hitler, but it is a matter of degree, not sharp differentiation.

The other common response is, variously phrased, “Can’t we all just get along?” or “We must turn down the heated rhetoric!”

In the aggregate, this manufactures the grandest of false equivalences.

Several times in the past few days, MS NOW hosted Robert Pape, professor at the University of Chicago, a supposed expert in matters of terrorism and domestic political violence. He rambled interminably and seemed inordinately pleased with himself.

His self-satisfaction peaked when he proposed an urgent way to cool the political rhetoric. He suggested that Trump and Hakeem Jeffries join together, perhaps on the White House lawn, for a televised Kumbaya summit, wherein they would pledge to calm the stormy waters, setting a bipartisan example that would surely infect the body politic.

This approach assumes that we have a bipartisan problem and that Jeffries is the bookend to Trump’s frothing and endless incitements and vulgarities.

To once again ignore my usual reticence, Pape’s suggestion is rather like having Hitler sit down with Anne Frank to iron out their differences. This is not a bipartisan problem. It is, along every dimension, a Republican problem.

It is Republicans who refuse to stem the proliferation of guns in America.

It is Republicans who are complicit in the extra-judicial execution of fishermen in small boats.

It is Republicans who support or passively allow the unchecked violence that resulted in the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

It is Republicans who slashed aid to starving children resulting in 500,000 small corpses. The cuts to USAID are predicted to cause 14 million deaths by 2030.

It is Republicans who condone the violence against Iran, including the massacre of 167 schoolchildren.

It is Republicans who enable government thugs to drag an 85 year-old woman out of bed and into handcuffs and ankle shackles.

It is Republicans who confirmed angry men and women, like Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi, to ignore the rule of law and run roughshod over the rights of countless humans, here and abroad.

It is Republicans who assured the deaths of thousands of women by restricting access to reproductive health care.

It is Republicans who deny climate change, thereby creating conditions for catastrophic, deadly weather events and as yet undetermined cataclysmic effects on all of humankind.

It is Republicans who chastise Jimmy Kimmel for a joke, while their dear leader celebrates the death of Robert Mueller by posting, “Good, I’m glad he’s dead.”

I don’t wish for a successful assassination of Trump, especially since it would confer martyr status.. The post-assassination lionization of Charlie Kirk is a case in point. Kirk espoused racist, xenophobic and hateful comments and conspiracy theories and was posthumously honored as a great American.

There are legitimate policy disagreements between our political parties, but I challenge you to cite any Democratic policy that has the direct or indirect effect of harming others.

Cole Allen’s violence arose from empathy. He may be unstable and his actions are not laudable. But they are understandable.

Cole Allen is reportedly a practicing Christian. In pre-rebuttal to those who might find his acts “unChristian,” he wrote:

“I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial. I’m not a school kid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration.

Turning the other cheek when ‘someone else’ is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.”

Share

Leave a comment

Share First Do No Harm

The United States’s war crimes echo across the decades.

Trump’s vile threats to end a civilization are the most sensationally immoral, but we have bombed our way into infamy for more than 60 years.

I wrote this in a recent post:

“But what the Viet Cong and NVA feared most was the B-52 strikes. They called them the ‘whispering death’ because the first they knew of the presence of the bombers high above the jungle canopy and the clouds was the whistling of the bomb. Aerial bombardments could go on for days or weeks at a time. Even the most battle-hardened veterans lost control of their bodily functions, soiling their pants and shaking uncontrollably. Some went mad and no one who survived could ever be cured of the abject terror a B-52 strike inspired. A B-52 mission could drop up to 54,000 pounds of bombs on a single target . . . Tran Thi Truyen, a sixteen year-old nurse who served in a field hospital in southern Laos, recalled how intense American bombing denuded the jungle and there was no place to hide. During her month-long march down the (Ho Chi Min) trail, she carried a rifle, a sixty-pound knapsack, and a shovel. When American planes came overhead, her group would disperse and dig foxholes. After the bombing had stopped, she said she could not focus her eyes and her head ached for hours. Wounded Vietnamese soldiers were brought up the trail for her to treat in her underground hospital. Most were so badly wounded, nothing could be done for them.” - from A War Lost and Won, by British author Nigel Cawthorne

I watched those B-52s take off from a Thai airbase, pregnant with bombs, and return to the base in time for happy hour at the Officers Club. It was nauseating.

Little did I know that it would be relevant again so soon, with powerful poignancy.

Over the course of several months my wife and I have struck up acquaintance with a parent at our grandson’s elementary school. For reasons of privacy I’ll limit identifying information. Our kinship was established in part by our handicapped parking proximity. It was elevated by our grandson’s friendship with his child.

Our parking “privileges” arose from very different medical adventures, but those experiences formed the basis for casual conversation. Thereafter, as often seems to happen, we encountered him in various settings with surprising frequency. On the most recent such occasion, our conversation turned to his life story - a tale of remarkable hardship, courage and resilience.

He was born in Vietnam and escaped the ravaged country by boat at age 5. If not familiar with the so-called “boat people,” you may find the Wiki summary interesting and heart-wrenching. For the next 4 years he and family members were flung from one refugee camp or settlement to another. At age 9, he found a first semi-stable existence and slowly built his life.

Part of the painful recollections he shared was the story of his grandparents. He told of the macabre discovery of his grandfather’s feet, found rising from a rice paddy along or near the trail that carved its way from north to south. His was one among the more than a million corpses left by our indiscriminate bombing campaigns in the 1960s.

I restate my experience from 1968/69: I watched those B-52s take off from a Thai airbase, pregnant with bombs, and return to the base in time for happy hour at the Officers Club. It was nauseating.

I recognized the distinct possibility that it was one of those missions that took his grandfather’s life. I may have watched the B52, socialized wth the pilot, and transferred a speck of my DNA onto the hand that released the bomb that killed him. Improbable, perhaps, but surely possible.

The echo across the decades is haunting. My friendship with the grandson of a victim of that immoral war is not, in itself, remarkable. But my witnessing the missions that took so many lives is unforgettable.

My intent is honesty, not sensationalism; because we Americans must come to terms with our violence, always disproportionate to the perceived threat.

There are already desperate refugees from our complicity in the genocide in Gaza and our “excursions” in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Now, while temporarily restraining Trump’s impulse to extinguish a civilization, we are leaving thousands of Iranian children without families or hope.

Perhaps someday, somewhere, one of my grandchildren will encounter a courageous refugee from Iran who will tell of the time his grandfather’s feet were found sticking out of the rubble in Tehran.

Share

Leave a comment

The picture above is a well-authenticated image of graves being prepared for the young Iranian schoolgirls murdered by our indiscriminate bombing of Minab. They are the most sympathetic victims among the 2,000 Iranians we’ve slaughtered and the 25,000 we’ve wounded.

But children’s graves be damned. Night-after-night, television news reports explicate our version of the devastating consequences of our carpet-bombing of Iran. They are, in order of most mentioned:

Rising gas prices.

Rising gas prices.

Rising food prices.

Rising utility bills.

Rising costs of vacation travel.

Rising gas prices.

Rising gas prices.

The rising American death toll of 13, with special emphasis given the “dignified transfer” of soldiers’ caskets, accompanied by Trump in a branded USA cap, which you too can own for $50.

Rising gas prices.

You will note that the Iranian, Lebanese and many other victims of our “excursion” did not make the list. The image of children’s graves from Iran, vetted by Reuters, has not appeared in the New York Times or during the nightly blathering on MSNOW or CNN.

But those gas prices! This is key to the Democratic hopes in the midterms. Stopping the madness of rising gas prices is far more compelling than stopping the massacre of brown children.

A perspective:

Given the monthly mileage of the average American, an increase of $1 per gallon is an additional $40 per month.

The typical Starbucks customer, admittedly not everyone, spends $80-100 per month.

The average American beer drinker spends $100 per month on their preferred buzz.

The last election was based in large part on egg prices. One could argue, perhaps with a smidgeon of hyperbole, that we elected an authoritarian, adulterous, felonious, narcissistic sociopath because of the promise of lowering egg prices.

A 50% reduction in egg prices would save a family of four about $20 per month.

As with all of our “excursions,” not just the incompetence directed by our Sultan of Narcissism, the emphasis is always on poor us. Our dead and injured troops. And, of course, the economic consequences. (Cue the reporter at the gas pump.)

Going back to Vietnam, the grief was always about our boys in body bags. We killed 40 innocent Vietnamese for every American soldier lost in that war of choice inspired by flimsy rationales about dominoes falling.

The ratio was equally unbalanced during our war of choice in Iraq, inspired by lies about weapons of mass delusion and misplaced blame for 9/11. Afghanistan - same story with similar dishonesty.

And more recently, we unleashed atrocities by proxy in the virtual genocide in Gaza. 70,000 dead and millions dislocated. Israel has our weapons and unconditional immoral support.

American Exceptionalism is considered ample justification for whatever we choose to do. This has always been true but cartoonishly so in Trump’s world. In his first term he had some reasonably sane people to temper his illogical and ignorant impulses.

Now he has Pistol Pete Hegseth, whose stunted masculinity has him salivating at the prospect of evermore intense violence. I don’t doubt for a moment that he would order the use of nuclear weapons. No politically correct restraints for this fierce warrior!

And then there’s Stephen Miller, a resentful little turd who is having unprecedented success getting back at a world that found him charmless and unappealing. In that respect he is a perfect match for Trump, whose aimless malevolence stems from a similar inability to be accepted into the social circles he envied.

But these current perversions aside, our leaders and most of the populace are incapable of circumspection.

I am infuriated at the casual dismissal of the agony and heartbreak left in the wake of our hubris.

If the graves pictured above were about to receive the corpses of white American schoolgirls, our national grief - and anger - would be immeasurable.

But those grim images have less power because the lives of brown Iranian children are not of equivalent value to those of our own white children. And if you think race has nothing to do with it, I have a Trump steak to sell you.

I never much cared for the phrase, “Proud to be an American.”

But I am truly ashamed.

I’m known in our family as an Uber grandfather. Not because I’m the grandest of all, but because I drive a lot. Among the gigs is daily pickup at our granddaughters’s high school, followed by grandson’s elementary school.

We park at each school for 20-30 minutes, watching kids and parents come and go until the gush of full dismissal. It is a very white experience.

At each school the number of Black kids can be counted on the fingers of one hand out of a combined enrollment of about 2,500. This may not be a fully accurate count, but it is indicative of a stunning lack of diversity.

Erie, CO may not be the whitest community in the nation, but it’s not because of a lack of effort. The current Mayor and Town Council have resisted efforts to diversify housing stock and have reduced or eliminated funding in support of diversity-related initiatives. As is true in residential choices, school choices, and work choices, individuals and families of color give careful consideration to the composition of a community before joining. The lack of a critical mass of kindred folks often - usually - leads to different choice.

In addition to statistics, social activism - or lack thereof - signals a community’s intentions.

In my work as a school head, breaking racial homogeneity was the first and hardest step in crafting a diverse faculty and student body. My colleagues and I persisted in that work for all of my 19 years. Our work included very clear steps to signal our values and intentions. While affirmative action is usually disparaged as direct preference by race, most “affirmative actions” are simply gestures of generosity and expression of a welcoming spirit.

Amid the endless crises accompanying our incompetent and erratic authoritarianism, the demise of racial pluralism in neighborhoods and schools is scarcely noted.. According to the Stanford Graduate School of Education, racial segregation in the 100 largest school districts has increased by 64% since 1988. We’re damn near approaching pre-Brown v. Board levels. Segregation by economic status has increased by 50%. As one might expect, these patterns of segregation are overlapping. The compounded effect of race and poverty has pushed resegregation over 70%.

The trends and causes are not hard to identify. Two major factors in recent decades are the rapid growth of charter schools/school choice and the wholesale release of large school districts from court-ordered desegregation oversight.

Following Brown v. Board in 1954 and the Civil Rights Act 10 years later, our nation changed profoundly. In 1964, my high school class of 1,000+ had one Black student. A decade later the school was successfully integrated. Now the school and community are more than 40% Black.

These changes were not court-ordered, but largely due to the work of committed citizens who insisted on fair housing practices and created a welcoming sense of community to Black families. As in my school work, achieving a critical mass allows integration to continue more naturally.

As I watch the few Black students in our town, I can imagine the challenges implicit in navigating social and school lives. While there are few reported incidents of virulent racism, I know the kinds of micro-aggressions and racist assumptions that plague all schools and communities.

(Very few white people have ever experienced life in an almost all Black setting. In the rare instances when my wife and I have been in such a setting, the kindness and acceptance were remarkable, given the many reasons that folks of color have to be resentful or suspicious.)

I suppose many of our neighbors don’t really care. They may claim to be in the “I’m not racist” camp, but very limited participation in diversity-related work and activities speaks volumes. I would be remiss in not acknowledging the committed group that persists in good work despite the town government’s indifference and/or hostility.

The adage (perhaps only my own?), “We can’t learn to live together if we don’t live together,” is more urgent than at any time in my adult life.

I know that living and working in a diverse community is vastly preferable to segregation. My life is richer from such experiences. It raises the hackles of most white folks, especially in the mythological post-racism era, but we are all racist. Racism is deeply, subconsciously embedded in our society. The only antidote to this systemic disease is to live together. To be confronted with our biases and to be open to new understanding.

This can and should start in our schools, but we are tumbling backward at an alarming rate.

Given the lack of civic and civil commitment to diversity, locally and nationally, I don’t see a path forward.

And that saddens me.

Leave a comment

Most afternoons my wife and I pick up our grandson from school. We park facing a playground where 50 or 60 kindergarten kids end their day in joyful play. Sequined skirts glisten and swirl in the late afternoon sun. The girls and boys plot, race, dig, swing and climb. It seems nearly miraculous that there are so few collisions.

It is heartbreaking to know that our military may have struck a school like this in Iran, killing nearly 200, mostly little girls like the ones giggling under the deep blue Colorado sky. It is unclear precisely who bombed the school and whether it was a horrifying mistake or a more horrifying intentional act.

It is crystal clear that it resulted directly from the U.S./Israel attacks.

As I watch the children play, my mind flashes to an image of them incinerated in an instant. I think, “That’s what we’ve done.” The image is too painful to hold.

Our Congress has not declared war yet Trump, Hegseth et al rain hellfire with seeming impunity. Hegseth takes peculiar pleasure from sneering that we won’t be politically correct or restrained by international law or convention. He is a preening peacock of male insecurity, clearly pleased with himself and cherishing the opportunity to wage war as viciously and indiscriminately as possible. Not a hint of recognition or remorse for the child corpses left in his ego’s wake.

There is, as always, cluck-clucking from media and politicians about this particular atrocity. But this was not an aberration. This is who we are.

The abuse of presidential authority and the indiscriminate slaughter of children accompanies the national conversation about soldiers’ obligation to refuse to follow illegal orders. Every order in the current operation is arguably illegal, but ethical and legal considerations have never tempered our exercise of military might.

The effort to indict six members of Congress who dared reiterate that obligation in a video is absurd. That obligation has never been part of the military culture, despite claims to the contrary.

The lawmakers’ arguments included a broad assertion that all members of the military are instructed that they must not follow illegal commands. Crow cited his own experience as an Army Ranger:

“But let’s be really clear. The man (Trump) has never served a day in his life in uniform. I went three times to war for this country in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was a paratrooper and I was an Army Ranger. From my first day of boot camp, we were taught about the law of war. We were taught about the Constitution. Before we ever deployed, I sat my men down, my soldiers, my paratroopers, and I taught them about their obligations under the law and the Constitution. This is ingrained in service.”

The video was more a publicity stunt than a selfless public service. While I support the lawmakers, it is baldly contradictory to claim that all members of the military are routinely reminded of these rights and obligations and then say the video was to inform the military folks of their rights and obligations.

Crow’s statement is also not reflective of my experience.

I was drafted in 1966 at the height of the war in Vietnam. On my first day in boot camp we were not “taught about the law of war.” We did pushups and were taught to keep our mouths shut.

For the next year I did pushups and tried to keep my mouth shut through boot camp, advanced individual training (AIT) and Officer Candidate School (OCS).

In a year of training to potentially serve in an immoral war, I can’t recall a single mention of the Constitution. We were, instead, conditioned to dehumanize the enemy by using ethnic slurs (gook) and shoving bayonets through dummies painted with slanted eyes.

Although the horrific slaughter of 504 women, children and elderly men in the My Lai massacre is emblematic of illegal military cruelty, we Americans killed as many as 2,000,000 innocent Vietnamese in our indiscriminate, wanton, waging of war.

In his book, Vietnam: A War Lost and Won, prolific British author Nigel Cawthorne wrote:

“But what the Viet Cong and NVA feared most was the B-52 strikes. They called them the ‘whispering death’ because the first they knew of the presence of the bombers high above the jungle canopy and the clouds was the whistling of the bomb. Aerial bombardments could go on for days or weeks at a time. Even the most battle-hardened veterans lost control of their bodily functions, soiling their pants and shaking uncontrollably. Some went mad and no one who survived could ever be cured of the abject terror a B-52 strike inspired. A B-52 mission could drop up to 54,000 pounds of bombs on a single target . . . Tran Thi Truyen, a sixteen year-old nurse who served in a field hospital in southern Laos, recalled how intense American bombing denuded the jungle and there was no place to hide. During her month-long march down the (Ho Chi Min) trail, she carried a rifle, a sixty-pound knapsack, and a shovel. When American planes came overhead, her group would disperse and dig foxholes. After the bombing had stopped, she said she could not focus her eyes and her head ached for hours. Wounded Vietnamese soldiers were brought up the trail for her to treat in her underground hospital. Most were so badly wounded, nothing could be done for them.”

I watched those B-52s take off from a Thai airbase, pregnant with bombs, and return to the base in time for happy hour at the Officers Club. It was nauseating.

That was who we were then and is who we are now.

In a violent spasm after 9/11, we avenged 2,977 deaths by killing several hundred thousand innocent Iraqis, who had nothing to do with 9/11.

We refuse to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) because, to paraphrase our national narcissism, “Nobody can tell us what we can do!”

All these years later, I read with fresh horror of the slaughter of innocent Iranian schoolgirls.

This is collateral damage on a much smaller scale than our role in the genocide in Gaza, where 75,000 Palestinians are dead by way of our complicity in Netanyahu’s bloodlust.

Soldiers are taught to follow orders, not question them. The focus should be more on who issues the orders than on who follows them.

Trump and Hegseth should be impeached and put on trial for war crimes.

Share

Leave a comment

The Epstein Files! This phrase has become a mantra for Democrats and a topic for endless conversation, especially on MS NOW, which is MS ALL THE TIME in our household - unfortunately.

I like to see powerful men caught with their pants down as much as the next guy, but the entire debacle represents, among other things, an institutional breakdown of epic proportions. Former prosecutor and Columbia law professor Daniel Richman lays out a strong counter-narrative case in a recent New York Times essay.

In the degrees of separation game, fallout from the Files landed on someone I met years ago when his son attended Calhoun early in my tenure as head of school. Richard Axel is a Nobel Prize winning molecular biologist and resigned from the Zuckerman Institute at Columbia when his Epstein connection was revealed.

The fall-out from the radioactivity of Epstein association lands on someone new each day.

Business

Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem (DP World)

Kathy Ruemmler (Goldman Sachs)

Brad Karp (Paul, Weiss)

Thomas Pritzker (Hyatt Hotels)

Casey Wasserman (Wasserman Agency)

Larry Summers (OpenAI/Harvard)

Jes Staley (Barclays)

Leon Black (Apollo Global Management)

Politics and Diplomacy

Peter Mandelson (UK Labour Party)

Mona Juul (Norway Ambassador)

Miroslav Lajčák (Slovakia National Security Adviser)

Jack Lang (Arab World Institute)

Morgan McSweeney (UK Labour Party)

Alexander Acosta (U.S. Labor Secretary)

Academia

Richard Axel (Columbia University)

Joanna Rubinstein (Sweden for UNHCR)

Joi Ito (MIT Media Lab)

David A. Ross (School of Visual Arts)

Arrests and Investigations

Prince Andrew (Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor)

Thorbjørn Jagland (Former Norwegian PM)

Many of these individuals have stated that while they had contact with Epstein, they were not involved in his criminal sex-trafficking activities.

It seems clear that Epstein had some intellectual curiosity, which served as a medium in which these relationships began. He also had money, or access to money, which probably attracted or sustained interest from academics and others seeking funding for one enterprise or another. And, putting aside the disgusting criminal behavior, he offered luxurious outings for friends and associates.

Don’t mistake my offering context as excusing any of these or others in the Epstein circle of shame. Most, perhaps all, of these relationships began or continued long after Epstein’s original arrest and conviction. There is some parallel to Trump’s recitation of the Snake song in the 2016 campaign. The collateral victims of Epstein knew he was a snake and are now being bitten in the ass.

But is that justice, apart from the cosmic satisfaction one might derive from seeing powerful people getting their justice desserts? I think not.

The so-called Epstein Files have many millions of documents, most relating to sprawling investigations over many years. In such comprehensive work, witnesses and records will yield innumerable associations, acquaintances, incidents and happenstances that are at some remove from the serious allegations of sexual and other forms of criminality. The job of investigators, prosecutors and -eventually - grand jurors, jurors and judges, is to determine whom should be charged with what. That’s how the system should work.

Under normal circumstances the work of investigators, prosecutors and grand juries is to sift through mounds of material and distill it into salient evidence sufficient to charge. Until that point confidentiality is crucial, as many inaccuracies, falsehoods and blind alleys will be layered between the truths that bring justice.

Exposing mounds of unvetted findings, however tawdry they may seem, does irreparable repetitional harm. Do these men and women deserve it? Maybe, in our unrequited lust for some accountability in a time of unfettered corruption, But that’s a dangerous precedent. There are millions of people who could be soiled by the revelation of some past association with a present or future scumbag, even if their connection was at several arms length from the scumbag’s actions.

Despite Professor Richman’s and my reservations, it also matters to point to the primary cause of this breach of important custom and practice. If we had a normal Justice Department, an unprecedented level of media attention and Congressional legislation would not be needed.

In addition to the current, laughable, “Justice” Department, we have a long political, cultural and legal history of sliding scales of justice in America. In an inversion of the usual meaning of “sliding scale,” in this one the poorest among us pay the highest costs and the rich and powerful too often get off scot-free.

So I get it.

It may be that public exposure is the only way the true scumbags will be held to account in this corrupt environment, but the cost is high.

It’s like catching the rats by sinking the ship.

Share

Leave a comment

There’s this old fogey in me that I usually try to restrain. I’m no “get off my lawn” guy. I love kids, small and large, and generally tolerate popular culture.

Today the restraints gave way.

This country is in big trouble, in ways the media covers ad nauseam every day. An incompetent sociopath issues endless, senseless, illegal orders. He tries to jail political opponents or anyone who ever made fun of him. He thinks the military is a set of action figures he can deploy whenever and wherever his impulses.suggest. His cabinet makes a clown car look dignified and distinguished. He and his smarmy family members are bit-coining and scamming their way to billions. Nary a day passes when he doesn’t commit an act that would be impeachable in any other era. And so it goes.

But my inner fogey wishes to rant about an insidious coarsening of society that accompanies the governmental dumpster fire and will persist long after the MAGA era self-implodes by way of incomprehensible stupidity.

Let us begin with Snoop Dogg.

I love the Winter Olympics and have watched everything from curling to skeleton. Snoopy has his mug in every venue, hobnobbing with the athletes and the other preening celebrities.

It’s not that I am dismayed that a “rapper” has branded himself into America’s sporting life. I thought Bad Bunny’s halftime show was a pretty good cultural rebuke of white nationalism, although the slack-jawed members of that demographic were busy watching Kid Rock lip sync about two beats behind the crappy music.

But Snoop is a different matter entirely. He should probably be in jail and here he is cavorting for NBC Sports and flashing his peacock bling on Peacock. He’s like the mascot for the U.S. team. Of all the dogs, they chose this Dogg. A Golden Retriever would have been nice.

My inner fogey does not object to a little weed. I take CBD for various creaks and smoked a joint once in a while long before my joints gave out. But Snoop Dogg has branded himself as the pothead-in-chief of a nation full of impressionable teens. From what I can tell, his “art” is the kind of rhymes and rhythms a stoned adolescent could whip up. His background is disgusting and should be disqualifying. I pasted part of his Wikipedia resume at the bottom of this post. He’s a career criminal who is wrapping himself in the flag. The muckety-mucks at NBC know he draws eyes, so his sordid past is not a dealbreaker.

Enough about the Dogg.

Trump, whose idea of culture is bad country music and cheeseburgers, has announced plans for our 250th birthday. If we had to have a tyrant, at least we could have had one with more refined taste. Benito Mussolini used opera for nationalistic propaganda. Trump has Lee Greenwood on retainer.

For our birthday we will have an automobile race through our historic monuments Lots of beer and beer ads.

And then, on the White House lawn, a spectacle just below feeding humans to the lions will commence. Men, and probably a few scantily clad women, will try to beat each other to a pulp in the distinctly American Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). The late Senator John McCain called it “human cockfighting.”

It seems that Americans have an insatiable appetite for watching people beat the crap out of each other. This commercialized savagery has desensitized a broad swath of the country that sees it as entertainment. The normalization of this brutality seeps into the milieu in which our children are steeped.

Over 70 million subscribers can watch all the fights on Paramount+. Families with small children can watch this bloodsport with their Doritos and Jellycats.

And then, the granddaddy of the “are you kidding me??” phenomena.

Gambling.

Scandals in pro sports are emerging left and right, but that will not inhibit the gamblers. In 38 states you can bet on the Winter Olympics. I’m not sure how they stop the other 12.

I wonder how many folks lost their sequined shirts by betting on figure skater IIia Malinin, the American shoe-in for gold, who went from Quad God to OH MY GOD!!!!! in four agonizing minutes.

If millionaire pro athletes get caught manipulating games, just imagine the potential for Olympic manipulation. You can find the odds for nearly every event at FanDuel.

A pussy-grabbing, vulgar liar at the helm. Snoop Dogg as American brand ambassador. Human cock-fighting and race cars for our birthday party. And you can bet on everything!

America the Beautiful!

Share

Leave a comment

Snoop’s qualifications to represent the United States at the Olympics:

1989–1990: Felony possession of drugs and three-year prison sentence

Shortly after graduating from high school in 1989, Snoop Dogg was arrested for possession of cocaine and for the following three years was frequently in and out of prison.[23] In 1990, he was convicted of felony possession of drugs and possession for sale.[299]

1993–1997: Traffic violation, gun possession and guilty plea

In July 1993, Snoop Dogg was stopped for a traffic violation, and a firearm was found by police during a search of his car. In February 1997, he pled guilty to possession of a handgun and was ordered to record three public service announcements, perform 800 hours of community service, pay a $1,000 fine and serve three years’ probation.[300][301][302]

1993–1996: Murder trial and acquittal

While recording Doggystyle in August 1993, Snoop Dogg was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in connection with the shooting death of Philip Woldermariam, a member of a rival gang, who was actually killed by Snoop Dogg’s bodyguard, McKinley Lee, aka Malik.[28] Snoop Dogg had been temporarily living in an apartment complex in the Palms neighborhood in the West Los Angeles region, at the intersection of Vinton Avenue and Woodbine Street—the location of the shooting.

Both men were charged with murder, as Snoop Dogg was purportedly driving the vehicle from which the gun was fired. Johnnie Cochran defended them.[303] Both Snoop Dogg and his bodyguard were acquitted on February 20, 1996.[304] In February 2024, the case was sealed.[29]

1998–2010: Misdemeanor marijuana charges

Snoop Dogg has also been arrested and fined three times for misdemeanor possession of marijuana: in Los Angeles in 1998;[305] Cleveland, Ohio in 2001;[306] and Sierra Blanca, Texas, in 2010.[307]

2006–2007: Airport arrests and convictions

On April 26, 2006, Snoop Dogg and members of his entourage were arrested after being turned away from British Airways’ first class lounge at Heathrow Airport in London. Snoop Dogg and his party were denied entry to the lounge due to some members flying in economy class. After being escorted outside, the group got in a fight with the police and vandalized a duty-free shop.[308] Seven police officers were injured during the incident. After a night in jail, Snoop Dogg and the other men were released on bail the next day but he was unable to perform a scheduled concert in Johannesburg.[309]

In September 2006, Snoop Dogg was detained at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, by airport security after airport screeners found a collapsible police baton in his carry-on bag. Donald Etra, Snoop Dogg’s lawyer, told deputies the baton was a prop for a musical sketch. Snoop Dogg was sentenced to three years’ probation and 160 hours of community service for the incident, starting in September 2007.[310]

He was arrested again in October 2006 at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank after being stopped for a traffic infraction; he was arrested for possession of a firearm and for suspicion of transporting an unspecified amount of marijuana, according to a police statement.[311]

The following month, after taping an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, he was arrested again for possession of marijuana, cocaine and a firearm. Two members of his entourage, according to the Burbank police statement, were admitted members of the Rollin’ 20s Crips gang and were arrested on separate charges.[312]

In April 2007, he was given a three-year suspended sentence, five years’ probation and 800 hours of community service after pleading no contest to two felony charges of drug and gun possession by a convicted felon. He was also prohibited from hiring anyone with a criminal record or gang affiliation as a security guard, talent manager or driver.[299]

2015: Sweden arrest for illegal drug possession

Snoop Dogg, after performing for a concert in Uppsala, Sweden, on July 25, 2015, was pulled over and detained by Swedish police for allegedly using illegal drugs, violating a Swedish law enacted in 1988 which criminalized the recreational use of such substances – therefore making even being under the influence of any illegal/controlled substance a crime itself without possession. During the detention he was taken to the police station to perform a drug test and was released shortly afterwards. The rapid test was positive for traces of narcotics and he was potentially subject to fines depending on the results of more detailed analysis.[313][314] Although final results “strongly” indicated drug use the charges were ultimately dropped because it could not be proven that he was in Sweden when he consumed the substances.[315] The rapper uploaded several videos on the social networking site Instagram criticizing the police for alleged racial profiling; police spokesman Daniel Nilsson responded to the accusations, saying: “we don’t work like that in Sweden”. He declared in the videos, “Niggas got me in the back of police car right now in Sweden, cuz”, and “Pulled a nigga over for nothing, taking us to the station where I’ve got to go pee in a cup for nothin’. I ain’t done nothin’. All I did was came to the country and did a concert and now I’ve got to go to the police station. For nothin’!”. He announced to his Swedish fanbase that he would never again go on tour in the country because of the incident.[316][317][318]

Civil2005: Alleged assault of a fan and lawsuit

Snoop Dogg, Compton rapper Jayceon “the Game” Taylor and group Tha Dogg Pound, were sued for assaulting a fan on stage at a May 2005 concert at the White River Amphitheatre in Auburn, Washington. The accuser, Richard Monroe Jr., claimed he was beaten by the artists’ entourage while mounting the stage. He alleged that he reacted to an “open invite” to come on stage. Before he could, Snoop Dogg’s bodyguards grabbed him and beat him into unconsciousness.[319] He claimed attack by crew members; Snoop Dogg and Taylor were included in the suit for not intervening, but both parties denied ever having any involvement.[320][321][322] The lawsuit focused on a pecuniary claim of $22 million in punitive and compensatory damages, battery, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.[323] The concerned parties appeared in court in April 2009; Snoop Dogg was cleared of the lawsuit in May. However, Snoop’s label Doggy Style Records was found liable.[324]

Death Row bankruptcy case and compensation loss

In May 2016, through the Death Row Records bankruptcy case, Snoop Dogg lost $2 million.[325]

Sexual assault lawsuits

In January 2005, Snoop Dogg was sued by a makeup artist who claimed that Snoop Dogg and several others drugged and raped her backstage at a Jimmy Kimmel Live! taping in 2003.[326] Snoop Dogg had filed an extortion lawsuit against the woman a month before she brought her case. In August 2005 the two parties settled, with the accuser stating “the matter has been resolved amicably”, and Snoop Dogg’s representative stating no money was exchanged.

In February 2022, a woman sued Snoop Dogg for $10 million, alleging that he sexually assaulted her in May 2013 following a concert in Anaheim, California.[327][328][329] Only a few months after its filing, the suit was withdrawn, then reintroduced in July.[330] In May 2023, court documents revealed that the case had been dismissed.[331]

Regional or international banishments

2006–2010: United Kingdom

On May 15, 2006, after his arrest on vandalism charges in London, the region’s Home Office decided that Snoop Dogg would be denied entry to the United Kingdom for the foreseeable future and his British visa was denied the following year.[332][333][334] As of March 2010, however, Snoop Dogg was allowed back into the UK.[335] The entire group was banned from British Airways “for the foreseeable future”.[336] According to Snoop Dogg, Queen Elizabeth II overturned the ban, saying: “This man has done nothing in our country. He can come.”[337][338][339]

2007–2008: Australia

In April 2007, the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship banned Snoop Dogg from entering the country on character grounds, citing his prior criminal convictions.[340] He had been scheduled to appear at the MTV Australia Video Music Awards on April 29, 2007.[341] The Australian DIAC lifted the ban in September 2008 and had granted him a visa to tour Australia. The DIAC said: “In making this decision, the department weighed his criminal convictions against his previous behaviour while in Australia, recent conduct – including charity work – and any likely risk to the Australian community … We took into account all relevant factors and, on balance, the department decided to grant the visa”.[342] He later visited for the 2014 Big Day Out festival, the 2023 “I Wanna Thank Me Tour” and is expected to provide entertainment for the 2025 AFL Grand Final.[343][344]

2012–2014: Norway

Snoop Dogg was banned from entering Norway for two years in July 2012 after entering the country the month before in possession of 8 grams (0.3 oz) of marijuana and an undeclared 227,000 kr in cash, or about US$29,400 in 2022 terms.[345][346][347]