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Glory Days (concluded)

Reading old clippings from the Sheboygan [Wisconsin] Press, I found a remarkable listing of cultural events. For example, the visual arts were going to be the topic at the Sheboygan Branch of the American Association of University Women. Their guest was one Gerhard C.F. Miller, who painted in watercolor and sketcher’s pen “realistically but also imaginatively and creatively.” His talk “Painting to Travel and Traveling to Paint” would describe how he and his wife, the former Ruth Morton, “a nationally-known interior decorator,” who lived three miles north of Sturgeon Bay, traveled widely and painted, drawing inspiration from “the weathered houses, the gnarled cedars and the rocky landscapes of the Door County Peninsula as well as in the moonlit silhouette of a Biblical village, in the fortified Crusaders’ Harbor of Malta and in the jungles of South America.”

The Junior Woman’s Club announced a full slate of programs and activities for the coming season. Mrs. Jacob Fessler would speak and “show scenes” from her trip to the Far East, and a month later Wayne Jung would illustrate his talk with his decoupage creations. In April of the new year, Mrs. Emil C.A. Muss would exhibit and talk about her doll collection. I was especially intrigued by Mrs. Marion C. Fox, coming all the way from Milwaukee for a presentation entitled “History in Hats.”

However, the cultural event I most missed attending was the presentation at the Kewaskum’s Women’s Club by Manitowoc’s Mrs. Conrad Daellenbach, who gave humorous readings in Norwegian dialect including “one entitled ‘The Telephone.’’’ The accomplished Daellenbach—she was past president of the Manitowoc Women’s Club and the present secretary of the Civic Music Association—“has given readings and his written special monologues for church groups and social and fraternal organizations, featuring the brighter side of life. Many women’s clubs have booked her and these included Rhinelander, Marinette, Oconto, Sturgeon Bay and Manitowoc.” I’ll bet Garrison Keillor knew of her.

If I had read this paper when it first was published, I probably glanced at the ads, but now my eye is drawn to them, both for the products and for the prices. One hardware store offered an O-Cedar sponge mop for $2.44 and a two by six feet carpet runner for $1.98. In the new technology department, a 6 transistor radio using “2 penlight cells,” weighing 10 ounces, and promising to play up to 100 hours cost $12.88.

Ads in September anticipated winter, and fur trims were stylish. One store offered a fur boa “in quality mink only” and said that it was “fashion’s most flexible, most fascinating, most fabulous accessory.” It had clips and ties that allowed many uses. “Loop it, twist it, twirl it into the glamorous Neckline Décolletage shown above, [I am a little surprised this was not censored but perhaps many unsophisticated readers like me would not have known what décolletage was. On the other hand, in the accompanying drawing, it was hard to tell that the woman had breasts under the fur], a Shoulder Scarf, a Draped Hat, a Neckline Ascot, plus the many ways you will discover.” The price: $69.

Another company offered a coat that the spouse still considers attractive, perhaps because it is similar to one she once owned. Even though the offered garment may not have been the most practical outerwear for a Wisconsin winter, it was the “epitome of elegance. Slim clutch coat on Eininger’s famed Grandura, bracelet length sleeves; in walnut or topaz with huge bolster collar of rare Fromm natural pedigreed Golden Amber Fox. Also available in Fromm’s natural Ciel Fox on white Grandura.” It carried a price tag that few Sheboyganites could have afforded for what had to be a special-occasion wrap: $169.98. (Over $1,700 in today’s dollars.)

When asked about Sheboygan, I have often given the clichéd answer: It is a good place be from. Looking at these clippings returned me a little to that time and place, which was a good environment for me to grow up in. I do sometimes wonder what my life would have been if I had stayed in that place of glory days. I know that the prices have changed, but I don’t know how much of the rest of it has endured. My visits once I left have been brief, and the last was more than a decade ago. I am curious about that small town, but that curiosity is not strong enough to consider a permanent return. Somethings should stay in the memory or, in my case, in a file tucked in the back of a desk drawer.

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Glory Days (Continued)

In looking at old newspaper clippings about my hometown, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, from my high school days, I found that the town had disputes that I did not remember. One clipping reported the start of a trial where a local realtor claimed that a Greek Orthodox Church had misused his gift of $4,800. It was a multi-day proceeding, and I don’t know the outcome, but I am curious.

Of course, there were also glorious occasions. One newspaper section had lengthy reports of four weddings. Each had a picture of the bride captioned with the married woman’s new name in the then-accepted style, such as “Mrs. Willard D. Bouwman” or “Mrs. Nevin J. Grasser.” All were church weddings, and the music, heavily religious, was listed for each wedding. At one the father of the bride sang, including “Wedding Prayer” and “The Lord’s Prayer.”

Each story had a detailed description of the bridal party’s dress. At one, “they appeared in delustered [what is that?!?] satin gowns in a turquoise shade with three-quarter length sleeves and bateau necklines that had a V in the back. The sheath skirt cascaded in back tiers of satin. Headpieces, satin pillboxes [this was the day of Jacqueline Kennedy], each centered with a rose, had silk illusion veils attached. Their colonial bouquets combined puffy white carnations with red garnets that were surrounded by filicifolia [?!] foliage with satin streamers completing their arrangements.” (In some ways I have changed little from those days. I doubt that I read about these weddings back then, but I would have only vaguely understood these descriptions, and my understanding of them is not much better now.)

Of course, the brides’ dresses were described in exquisite detail. At one, “the bride entered in a gown of peau de soie fashioned with sequin-trimmed lace appliqué detail at the sabrina neckline and down the front of the dress which featured a full, chapel train. A bustle arrangement at the back was another style note of the long-sleeved style topped by a French illusion veil and jeweled pillbox. Her bouquet combined white cymbidium orchids and stephanotis.”

I was not surprised by the attire or their descriptions, which were probably common in many small-town newspapers, but I was surprised at the size of the weddings. The ceremonies and receptions were not for the country- club crowd. All of these families were working class; none of the brides or grooms had college degrees, but these were not scaled-down weddings. While one had “only” 100 guests, two others each had 275 and the fourth had 300.  But then I remembered the few wedding receptions I went to in that era. There was limited alcohol or a cash bar and a buffet dinner with only a few selections. No swag bags. They probably cost a tenth per person of the weddings I attend today.

Perhaps I would have stayed in Sheboygan if I had known of all the cultural opportunities it offered in my high school years. For example, I was not familiar with the Irish History Club, which tackled the rather ambitious one-evening topic of the “Irish in America.”

I was amused that the D’Werdenfelser Schuhplattler Club was holding a public dance to music by Delbert Dicke’s Orchestra at which there was going to be three guest clubs from Milwaukee and one from Minneapolis and all were going to “combine for a mass performance to climax the entertainment.” I imagined this spectacle and thought of the father. We lived next to a neighborhood tavern frequented by many including bachelor brothers who lived across the street who sometimes could be seen carrying a pail of draft beer home. (The father never drank at this tavern; he had a different favorite across town.) Behind the tavern was a dance hall, which was infrequently used, but on occasion schuhplattlers (you can look it up) danced there, and the resultant sounds from the stomping feet, the slapping of the lederhosen, and the accompanying shouts and yips drove the father into one of his frenzies. I could only imagine what his reaction would have been if five clubs had performed at once next door.

(concluded May 31)

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Glory Days

          She emailed a picture of me and a group of other guys on our last day at Washington Grade School. If Carol had not told me the names of those standing casually in front of a wall, I am not sure that I would have recognized any, even me, although we had all been classmates and would be for four more years in high school.

          I replied to Carol, and we struck up a correspondence. Each time she would attach a picture with me in it and would ask about my memories of some event—the safety patrol picnic, for example—which I hardly remembered at all. Recently she said that she had only one more picture to send, although she had Sheboygan Press clippings that mentioned me. She felt certain that I already had these. I assumed that her assumption was wrong. I don’t dwell much on those “Glory Days.” After all I did not have an outstanding high school speedball, though I did hit a walk-off home run in my first Little League game. But…but…but then I vaguely remembered that I had a file in a rarely-opened drawer labeled “High School.” I dumped its contents onto my desk and a flotilla of faded newspaper clippings floated across it. This unexpected volume of paper was misleading. From handwritten notes I realized that aunts and friends and even the local bank had sometimes sent my parents an article they had clipped out of the evening paper if it mentioned me, so my high school file had many duplicates.

          On the other hand, the Press published articles about high school students that a paper in a larger town (Sheboygan had a population of about 45,000) no doubt would not have, and thus the clippings did contain a fair number of separate stories. Even though I played high school sports, there were no mentions of my athletic accomplishments. There were good reasons for that. My four-point basketball average did not draw much attention. The athletic glory days ended in grade school.

I remembered many of the events chronicled in the clippings, but there was one that surprised me. I did not remember winning the Constitution Contest sponsored by Sheboygan Elks Lodge 299, although I remembered placing third in the state constitution contest sponsored by the Elks. The story said I had won $150. How could I forget such a thing?! That was a significant amount of money to me, and my parents, back then—the equivalent of about $1,300 today. By comparison, I had my first forty-hour-a-week job that summer. I was paid the minimum wage, which was $1.25 an hour. Work a day and get paid ten bucks. Work three weeks and get $150 — the same amount I got for taking a two- or three-hour test. (That $1.25 an hour minimum wage translates to about $11.10 an hour today, a paltry amount but still more than the national minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.) I don’t have the vaguest notion of what I did with my $150 largesse.

          What I found most interesting was not reading about me or my classmates, but the stories on the back or surrounding the clippings. They revealed that I did not know as many things about Sheboygan as I thought I did. Growing up, I thought of the area as safe, but there were more hazardous happenings than I was aware of. For example, a driver struck and killed a 500-pound black calf on County Trunk S. “He said that two calves suddenly ran across the road in front of his car and he was unable to avoid striking one of them.” The story did not report any damage to the driver or damage to the vehicle.

Cooking oil on a residential stove ignited and the fire department was called. “The blaze was extinguished by the time firemen arrived, but they used fans to ventilate the home.”

A truck ran into a road barricade, and the driver was charged, but the clipping cut off the rest of the story, so I did not find out with what.

A man not feeling well left his work at a furniture manufacturer. He felt worse as he was headed to the hospital and flagged down a patrol car “to take him the rest of the way. He apparently suffered a slight heart attack.”

A 9-year-old “suffered a bump to the back of the head and bruises to the left arm in a fall from his bicycle.”

A warning went out about a poisonous bean used in necklaces, rosaries, and as dolls’ eyes.

          The town had crime unknown to me. Six weeks after a night of vandalism that included dragging a swing set and garbage cans into the street and opening car doors, twenty boys and girls were apprehended and referred to the juvenile authorities. A Mr. James Prigge discovered that windshield wipers, the radio aerial, horn ring, steering wheel, gas pedal and floorboards were ripped out, a tire was flattened, and the cigar-lighter was missing from his seven-year-old car that had been parked in his company’s parking lot. (A disgruntled employee? General labor trouble? Or just vandalism? I did not have a follow-up story.) An owner of a plumbing supply company reported that in the last two days chrome pipes were stolen from a storage area. “He valued the missing supplies at $4.20.”

“Vickie Fintelmann reported her J.C. Higgins bicycle, valued at $15, stolen from the Kuehne Court playground.” This surprised me. I went to that playground on my bike almost every day during the summer. We left the bikes unattended, and there was no thought in those days of locking them. I had never heard of one being stolen. But perhaps Vickie’s bike was tempting because it was a J.C. Higgins. Almost everyone, both boys and girls, rode a single speed bicycle with wide tires, often with a basket on the front. Then a few people showed up at the bike racks with the fancy “English-style” bicycles with narrow tires and three gears, and I think the J.C. Higgins fell into that category. My memory is that my correspondent Carol, on whom I always had a crush, was the first I knew to have such a bike although hers may have been a Raleigh.

(Continued May 28)

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Snippets

That blue and red produce purple makes sense. That orange comes from yellow and red also seems right. But that green results from mixing blue and yellow always strikes me as an unintuitive miracle.

Why is it that sushi tastes better when eaten with chopsticks than when consumed with fork or fingers?

I never learned a musical instrument. Sometimes I regret that. If I were going to learn one now, I would choose the bagpipes. Listeners can’t tell if it is played well, if notes are missed, or even if it is close to the supposed tune.

A friend told me that he had just talked to his son who had settled in Australia. The son was pleased with his new Sydney apartment, but he told his father that his neighbors were weird. At nine every evening, the attractive, young woman in the next flat started moaning, “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.” The distinguished, elderly gentleman on the other side of the son’s apartment sounded at that time as if he were pounding his head against the wall. The father asked, “What do you do?” The son responded, “I just ignore it and go back to practicing the bagpipes.”

Conservatives in many states have been passing a wide range of election “security” measures including requirements that voters show an identification to cast an in-person ballot. They do this even though instances of voter identity fraud have been shown to be rarer than rare. However, even though fraud problems have been few, showing an identification to vote has intuitive appeal, and polls have shown that voter ID laws are popular among the populace. Those concerned that the real goal of the legislators passing such laws is voter suppression should not spend capital opposing the laws. Instead, they should agree that the legislation could be a good thing as long as acceptable identification documents can be obtained easily and efficiently by all voters. Many forms of government identifications should qualify, such as public housing IDs as well as Medicare and Medicaid cards. (Why would I give you my Medicare card so that you could vote in my name? The card is precious, and normally I would use it myself to vote. What is the likelihood that such cards would be widely forged with fake names, and then people would register under those fake names, and then would vote under those fake names?) In addition, advocate for making it easier to get government IDs. Couldn’t we have mobile DMV offices traversing all parts of the state for the purpose of obtaining identification cards. In addition, college identification, employer identification, health insurance cards should all allow access to the voting booth. Those fervent for voter ID laws often express distrust of the government, and they should agree not to restrict the necessary identification documents to government ones. If you are concerned that voter identification laws will lower the number of voters but you know that the bills are going to pass anyway, support the proposals but advocate for a broad range of appropriate identification methods and find ways to make them easier to get.

“In that moment, silently, we agreed that we were indeed in the presence of an exceptionally delusional white man—which is of course one of the most dangerous things in the world.” Mat Jonson, Pym.

You can’t make some stuff up. Representative Kevin McCarthy who opposes a January 6 commission was a prime mover behind the 432 (or so it seemed) Benghazi hearings.

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Romanian Venice

          We stayed on the Lido across the lagoon from Venice. The spouse was attending a scientific conference there. I would ride the vaporetto to Venice and take long walks through the city while she was at her meetings. I went to the lesser squares and on one of them heard from a church a soloist rehearsing for an evening concert. I stopped at markets and, being without Italian, pointed to foods to try. I saw apparent immigrants selling apparent knock-off goods outside fancy shops. It was late September, and the weather was generally beautiful, but on a few days, I saw some of the rising water which is common in autumn, and it was interesting to see how the Venetians coped. A movie scene with Heath Ledger was being shot next to San Marco, and it was fun to watch it–a rescue from a hanging for the movie Casanova.

          Other times I walked throughout the Lido that was simultaneously part of Venice and separate from it. Here there were cars and buses, a bit of a shock. I went to the aristocratic, but aging hotel of Death in Venice and tried to picture the beach, empty at that time of year, as it was a century ago when Thomas Mann must have studied it.

          Our hotel made good recommendations for restaurants in what were said to be the non-tourist parts of Venice. I doubted non-tourist places existed, but since we often appeared to be the only non-Italians in the restaurants, or at least we heard no English or German, we weren’t in the usual Venetian places.

          But most memorable was a dinner at the end of our stay with other scientists from the conference. My job had been to scout up a restaurant, and I picked a place on a small canal on the Lido. It definitely was not a tourist place. The staff did not speak English. We were outside on a beautiful night and through nods and pointing and much laughter and wine, we selected local fish, which was wonderfully prepared. This was a night for Venetian memories, but the night became more memorable because of the stories of D and M.

          D was a colleague of the spouse and M her husband. M and D were born, raised, and wed in Romania. Romania was still a communist dictatorship when they tried to leave some thirty years before, but permission was denied. They protested; they cited the Helsinki Accords; they spoke on a pirate radio station. The Romanian response was to imprison M. D, now alone with a new baby, had no idea what to do. She did not know how M was being treated or when or whether she would ever see him again. Out of desperation, D contacted the American embassy, and some official there got word back that D should visit the embassy. D was afraid to do that. The embassy was ringed with Romanian security, and she expected to be arrested if seen approaching it. She called the embassy and told an official, whom she had never met, of her fears. The disembodied voice on the phone told her, “Meet me under the street lamp at this intersection at this time. I will be wearing such and such, and I will take you into the embassy. The Romanian military will not arrest you if you are with an American from the embassy.” Not knowing what else to do, D took the leap of faith and did as the voice instructed. The man was there at the appointed place and time. With an American at her side, she walked into the embassy and told her story of how she and her young family just wanted to leave Romania. Apparently American diplomats worked behind the scenes, and after a few months, M was released. Permission to leave, however, was not granted; instead, the Romanians “punished” the couple by expelling them from the country. No punishment was more gladly received.

          It all sounded like cloak and dagger out of a modern Alan Furst novel, but not the way they told it. They wove it into an amusing story, concentrating on how naïve they were and how lucky. They elicited much laughter under the stars by the Lido canal. But surely anyone in a Ceausescu jail had to wonder about the possible fate that awaited the prisoner.

          I thought, once again, whatever my country’s flaws, how lucky I am to be an American. And I wondered how harrowing times should best be preserved. In their memories, was it as humorous as they presented it?

          Their story, of course, had a happy ending. Not only did they get to leave the country as they desired, M made a lifelong friend while in jail. After the conference, he and D were driving up to Austria to see again his cell mate.

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The Wit of JFK

Is wit necessary to be a good president? I thought about that as I read The Kennedy Wit edited by Bill Adler, a book published eight months after the assassination. My paperback copy, which I found in an antique store in a Pennsylvania village, was printed in February 1965. Its cover proclaims:

THE LANDSLIDE NATIONAL BESTSELLER

110,000 COPIES IN PRINT AT $3.00. NOW ONLY 60¢!

 Reading this, I could not remember the last time I saw the cent sign. However, written in pencil on the first page was a three, so I paid the proprietor the cost of the original hardcover. That seller, in handing back a couple singles, said, “He was the last good president they produced.” (An inflation calculator tells me that $3 in 1964 equals $25.84 today, so I guess my purchase was still a bargain for an antique book.)

All presidents try to be witty, but in the age of the speechwriter, it is hard to know how much a president should get credit, or blame, for attempts at wit, which too often fall embarrassingly flat. Perhaps we can only gauge their delivery. E.g., Obama had great timing and Reagan told a good story. Both of them, I suspect, were truly witty, as was President Kennedy. JFK delivered droll, often self-deprecatory one-liners with a confident deadpan, and it was fun to read many of them again. Some of them:

“I do not think it entirely inappropriate to introduce myself to this audience. I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.”

To the National Industrial Conference Board: “It would be premature to ask your support in the next election and it would be inaccurate to thank you for it in the past.”

“There is no city in the United States in which I get a warmer welcome and less votes than Columbus, Ohio.”

“Politics is an astonishing profession. It has enabled me to go from being an obscure member of the junior varsity at Harvard to being an honorary member of the Football Hall of Fame.”

“Those of you who regard my profession of political life with some disdain should remember that it made it possible for me to move from being an obscure lieutenant in the United States Navy to Commander-in-Chief in fourteen years with very little technical competence.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, I was warned to be out of here in plenty of time to permit those who are going to the Green Bay Packers game to leave. I don’t mind running against Mr. Nixon but I have the good sense not run against the Green Bay Packers.”

“We had an interesting convention at Los Angeles, and we ended with a strong Democratic platform which we call ‘The Rights of Man.’ The Republican platform has also been presented. I do not know its title, but it has been referred to as ‘The Power of Positive Thinking.’”

“Last week a noted clergyman was quoted as saying that our society may survive in the event of my election, but it certainly won’t be what it was. I would like to think he was complimenting me, but I’m not sure he was.”

“You remember the very old story about a citizen of Boston who heard a Texan talking about the glories of Bowie, Davy Crockett, and all the rest, and finally said, ‘Haven’t you heard of Paul Revere?’ To which the Texan answered, ‘Well, he is the man who ran for help.’”

Explaining to a little boy how he became a war hero: “It was absolutely involuntary. They sank my boat.”

“When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we’d been saying they were.”

“My experience in government is that when things are non-controversial, beautifully coordinated and all the rest, it must be that there is not much going on.”

At the Gridiron dinner before he was elected: “I have just received the following telegram from my generous Daddy. It says, ‘Dear Jack: Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.’”

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First Sentences

“Whenever I think of my mother, I picture a queen-sized bed with her lying on it, a practiced stillness filling the room.” Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom.

“I underwent, during that summer that I became fourteen, a prolonged religious crisis.” James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time.

“Darkness came on that town like a candle being snuffed.” Jess Walter, The Cold Millions.

“I’m eight years old.” Vivian Gornick, Fierce Attachments.

“The first time they drove by the house Eddie was so scared he ducked his head down.” Delores Hitchens, Fools’ Gold.

“There is a hidden world of design all around you if you look closely enough, but the cacophony of visual noise in our cities can make it hard to notice the key details.” Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt, The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design.

“Su Alteza Isabel II, Reina de España, carried ten relics on her person during her last few weeks of pregnancy.” Chantel Acevedo, The Living Infinite.

“The classical world was far closer to the makers of the American Revolution and the founders of the United States than it is to us today.” Thomas E. Ricks, First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped our Country (2020).

“This is the saddest story I have ever heard.” Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier.

“I am writing a book about war . . .” Svetlana Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II.

“My name, in those days, was Susan Trinder.” Sarah Waters, Fingersmith.

“The cocktails were typically strong, and tonight they felt like fortification.” Jeff Shesol, Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court.

“Ever since you were a boy, you’ve dreamt of being Kung Fu Guy.” Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown.

“Had she grown up in any other part of America, Jennifer Doudna might have felt like a regular kid.” Walter Isaacson, Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race.

“It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t know it.” Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence.

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Snippets

I have lived long enough to see what I never thought I would see: professional cornhole players. If I can keep hanging on, perhaps I will eventually see professional axe throwers.

When the game is between two American soccer teams, should the American announcer use the American zero, or is it ok, or merely pretentious, for him to say that the score is “two to nil”?

I read that trees and other vegetation are connected below the ground by fungi. I liked the term used to describe the phenomenon: Wood wide web.

          There is always a loin cloth in the depiction as if nakedness would be a greater indignity and affront to us than being nailed to a cross, but perhaps without this modesty protection there is concern that someone, seeing what had been hidden, would shout, “Oh my God!!!”

          I learned from Richard W. Fox, Jesus in America: Personal Savior, Cultural Hero, National Obsession that many Protestant churches early in America’s history did not publicly display the cross because it was seen as a mere emblem that substituted for the doctrine of Christ crucified and, therefore, was a form of idolatry akin to Catholic practices. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, most Protestant churches had abandoned strictures on the representations of Christ, and crosses and “portraits” of Jesus began appearing in the churches.

“We are commanded to forgive our enemies; but you never read that we are commanded to forgive our friends.” Sir Francis Bacon.

On a streaming show, when it was asked if a character was involved in the crime, Miranda uttered the cliché, “Oh no, Alex is a Boy Scout.” Are there any data on whether present or past Boy Scouts are more morally and ethically upright than others?

Was it a step on the road to perdition for me that I felt a spark of gladness when I saw the BMW being towed off for illegal parking?

          From her church “she learned that while there was only one road to heaven, there were a great many to hell.” Michael Lewis, The Premonition: A Pandemic Story.

          New York City has primary elections for mayor next month. We will use ranked choice voting for the first time. Somewhere, I am sure, there is someone who understands what that means, but that ballot process is only one part of the confusion. There are many candidates, and I’m guessing that most of the electorate could not name them all, much less state what their credentials or policies are. Nevertheless, this election does have what now seems a standard feature—an allegation of sexual harassment that included the claim of abuse of power because the candidate suggested that the woman would get coveted political positions if the two had sex. That made me wonder if we will ever see this: A woman is running for office when an older man comes forward and says, “She and I had sex twenty years ago. I helped her become [pick a position]. But once she got in office, she dumped me. She was just using me to move up. She abused me by using her sexual power over me.”

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From “Socialism” to “Diversity” (concluded)

          Diversity, often paired with “inclusion,” has been a favored word in academia for a long time. My former institution had a policy stating, “We will recruit and retain faculty who will bring their diverse perspectives, experiences, and expertise into the classroom and broaden the intellectual community. Therefore, the recruitment, retention, and promotion of full-time and adjunct faculty who are themselves diverse are essential functions to this Diversity Plan.”

          The full-time faculty at the law school was overwhelmingly white and disproportionately Jewish. I knew of only one colleague who had been raised Catholic, but few regularly attended religious services of any kind. Overwhelmingly this faculty had attended elite law schools. Although many of the graduates would be solo practitioners or practice in small firms, no faculty member had worked in such settings. Almost all the faculty had come from families whose incomes were well above the national median. Their political views were overwhelmingly liberal or further left. All supported LGBTQ rights; none pronounced right-to-life views. One or two may have voted for a Republican, but more likely they supported a libertarian candidate. All the rest supported Democrats. You get the picture.

          In short, there were a lot of ways of enhancing diverse perspectives and experiences within the faculty, but diversity did not mean bringing conservatives or Buddhists or those with varying legal backgrounds into the mix. It primarily meant hiring non-whites. One colleague did tell me that he wanted us to hire a black lesbian even though gays and lesbians were well represented on the faculty. I, too, was in favor of hiring non-whites, for I believed that they could add perspectives and experiences to our faculty. But I objected to the term “diversity,” for it had an Alice-in-Wonderland meaning. Throw out the dictionary; it meant only what we meant it to mean. One of the goals of a law school is to produce graduates who think and therefore write clearly, but I wondered how we could do that if this was our written product. I was embarrassed for our use of the term. (What did it mean to have faculty members “who are themselves diverse”?) It led to some strange conversations. I remember, e.g., the discussion of whether the appointment of a Cuban American from an upper-class family who had practiced in a Wall Street firm would add “diversity” to the faculty because we could check the Hispanic box for her.

          “Diversity” and “inclusiveness” have now become coded terms for the left just as socialism and cancel culture are for conservatives. I was reminded of this last year when a group in my summer community concerned about racial matters after the George Floyd murder convened. They sought a name and accepted the cliché: The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. The community of 300 residences comprises primarily second homes. To maintain and operate the twenty-seven holes of golf, ten tennis courts, two lawn bowling greens, a restaurant, an Olympic-size pool, and miles of trails on over four thousand acres of forestland, we pay more than $15,000 in annual dues. The overwhelmingly white residents have varying political and religious allegiances and in other ways are diverse as long as we count the spectrum from the well-to-do to the very rich as diverse. To talk and strategize about diversity, equity, and inclusion in this community seems ironic. Case in point: the people who are employed by the community to give us this privileged experience are predominantly white, but they make well below the nationwide median income. If we got back to the true meanings of diversity, equity, and inclusiveness, wouldn’t we begin to make plans to pay these people more? We would be concerned about racial justice, but also about income inequality and social mobility. But is this part of the mission of this group? What do we actually mean by diversity, equity, and inclusion? They remain imprecisely defined. Do we want to subsidize low-income people to come into the community? Do we want to recruit nonwhite folks to buy in? Should we encourage Muslims? This is a group of well-meaning individuals, but because of the vagueness of the terminology – its very name — this group is likely to fail in identifying and fulfilling important – as yet undefined — goals.

          The left and the right are alike in many ways. They may use different terms, but often to the same effect. I am a believer in free speech, but I sometimes wish that we could ban the use of all meaningless or ill-defined terms that do not enlighten and cannot persuade but are only coded phrases meant to evoke emotional responses from those who already agree with the speaker.

Posted on by rjonakait · 1 Comment

From “Socialism” to “Diversity”

          It is hard for people to communicate with each other when they don’t share a common language. But it is equally hard for people who speak the same language to communicate with each other when they use words and terms whose definitions remain vague and amorphous.

          Such words, however, often do have a purpose; the goal is not to communicate meaning but to appeal to emotions. Of course, meaningful language often evokes an emotional response, but meaningless slogans are different; they do not convey content, only emotion. They are code words.

          Not all code words, however, are without content. Take the terms “illegal aliens” and “undocumented migrants.” They have the same meaning and could be part of a sensible discourse, but, of course, they are also codes, partly to evoke an emotional response in the hearer, but more often to tell us about the political sensibilities of the speaker since “illegal aliens” are dangerous while “undocumented migrants” are people in need of help.

However, there are words and phrases widely used in national discourse that look as if they are part of rational communication but don’t convey meaning; instead, they only evoke emotions in a limited group. Common language helps create a community, but emotional code words that elicit a visceral response from some but do not have content for all merely divide. And that happens a lot.

          The right uses such terms. “Socialism,” for example, is thrown about more than beads at Mardi Gras. I know what beads are, but I don’t know what socialism means to the conservatives who breathe it out seemingly on every third or fourth exhalation. I can tell that it is an epithet, but it only seems to mean any government spending or program that the speaker doesn’t like. Merely labeling those disfavored things as “socialism,” however, does not aid my understanding. I would have you explain to me why you oppose the spending or program in language that I share with you so that I can understand your opposition. Only then can you persuade me. But the word “socialism” provokes a negative reaction in a certain cohort of people and stops the conversation thus increasing divisiveness within the community.

          Of course, some on the left proudly proclaim themselves to be socialist or at least democratic socialists, but I don’t know what they mean by that either. It must mean something other than merely liberal or New Deal or Great Society liberal, but it is not clear what the differences are. Instead, the “socialist” tag is used by the left, but in their case the slogan is meant to disparage liberals who are not as far “left” as socialists. Thus AOC and Hannity, although they would never admit it, are linked by their use of that code word. They both use it to disparage their opposition.

          The right is all up in arms about “cancel culture.” But what is that? Another code phrase that seems to excoriate the left for calling out bad behavior. Those who use the term also favor the term “personal responsibility,” but the relationship of the one to the other seems vague. If I get on a soapbox seeking to influence others, I should know that my actions have effects. I should expect to take responsibility for them or at least expect that there can be consequences for them. But when the term “cancel culture” is thrown about, it seems to mean that some people should be excused from personal responsibility for their words or actions. As far as I can tell, however, cancel culture is only something the left does. Removing a writer from a television show for racist and misogynistic statements is considered cancel culture, but censuring Republicans for not toeing the Trump line is not.

          The left also has its catchphrases although one has been largely taken over by the right. “Critical race theory” has been known to legal academics for decades. Like many social theories, it was not defined with precision, but it examined the intersection of race and law to show how law negatively affected non-whites. Its first focus was on criminal justice and illuminated, e.g., that Blacks were disproportionately stopped for speeding on the New Jersey turnpike or that cocaine sentencing laws resulted in much longer sentences for Blacks than whites. CRT expanded into other areas affected by legal institutions, for example, the intersection of law and housing. I don’t know that the author would call himself a critical race theorist, but a powerful book that fits in with the movement is Richard Rothstein’s, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.

          This mode of analysis morphed from the intersection of law and race to intersection of race and powerful institutions generally—corporations, labor unions, the healthcare system, churches. Such critiques got little blowback when they were largely confined to universities. This changed when scholars and others contended that American history had too often ignored race and racism in its recounting and that the teaching of American history in grade schools, high schools and universities should change. This seems to have touched a nerve, and “critical race theory” is now often a conservative epithet used to condemn education of a broader American history without reasoned explanations of the flaws in the approach.

          The path started by critical race theory, however, has given us leftist terms: institutional racism and systemic racism. These phrases do have meaning, but often they, too, are presented as conclusory self-evident terms without explanation or evidence. They do not lead to discourse that could inform or persuade but are uttered to end discussions. They, however, are better than the left’s frequent use of “diversity,” which has the barest relationship to a dictionary definition.

(concluded May 12)