Dizziness, chills and a roaring headache.
Those could be symptoms of love-sickness, appropriate for Valentine’s Day weekend. But they’re not. Instead, they are my body’s reaction to the first dose of the COVID vaccine.
Don’t misconstrue this to mean that I’m sorry I received the shot. I’m not. If anything, I’m grateful that my job as a teacher qualified me for protection. I recognize that many people who want and need the vaccine haven’t yet been able to secure a place in line.
And I’m definitely going back for the second dose in a few weeks. I’ve heard and read that people who actually have had COVID — as I did in the fall — have a stronger reaction to the first dose and a more muted response to the second. For people who have never had COVID, these reactions are reversed — fewer side-effects after the first dose, more after the second.
In reality, what I experienced weren’t side-effects. It was, instead, my body responding to the vaccine in a way anticipated and intended by its makers. My immune system was learning how to deal with the virus. Because it had already done so once before, for real, some of the antibodies still in my system reacted more violently — they didn’t walk away from the bar fight, but instead took it outside for a good thrashing in the alley, so to speak.
The vaccine was an important step toward normal, and one I was glad to take.
***
I must confess, however, to confusion and saltiness, to borrow a word from the younger generation, over how inequitably Ohio’s public schools have dealt with the pandemic. It’s a microcosm of the way the nation’s schools have handled COVID and a reflection of the mismanagement from the federal level on down over the past year.
In some districts, students have not been in face-to-face classrooms since last March. A condition for receiving the vaccine was a promise by these districts to resume in-person learning, at least in a hybrid model, by March 1.
The March deadline has received pushback in some quarters because many teachers won’t have received a second dose of vaccine by then.
Meanwhile, districts in our area have been in session and in person one way or another for most of the school year, with only a few weeks of remote-learning to help stop community spread.
I understand decisions are made by each district, so differing circumstances came into play. Local control is essential.
Still, with the majority of Ohio’s counties designated red (level three, very high exposure and spread) since the Public Health Advisory Alert System went into effect — and with some counties, including Stark, reaching purple (level four, severe exposure and spread) at various points — it’s difficult to imagine the criteria for all-in, hybrid, and all-remote differing so much by district and county.
Surely it isn’t that more conservative, red-leaning (in the political sense) communities are less concerned about students’ and teachers’ health and more willing to tolerate the risk of spread than more progressive, Democratic-leaning communities. Or is it?
Regardless, it is hard for educators, like me, who have been in the trenches throughout this school year, scrubbing desks and gerrymandering seating charts to keep something close to six feet of space between students, to understand why some districts are allowed to delay face-to-face contact not only until vaccines are fully administered, but ventilation issues have been resolved.
And now, right on cue, come concerns about “loss of learning” and the need for remediation — longer school days, summer classes, and the like. Gov. DeWine says our kids are only young once, an observation that is as heartfelt as it is pointless.
Let’s hope wiser heads prevail about extending an already interminable-feeling school year for Ohio’s students.
Yes, kids are behind based on arbitrary, adult-designated standards. But they are also surviving a pandemic, with all the social, emotional, and financial trauma that entails.
Time enough when the dust and virus settle next school year to fret over what they’ve lost educationally. This year, let’s celebrate what they’ve endured and how well they’ve survived.
And let’s open up more conversations about safety and equity, examining why health risks to students and staff were more tolerated in some places than in others.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Sunday, February 14, 2021
What I don't know about football would fill this column
I hear there’s some big football game this weekend.
No kidding, I had to look up which two teams were playing. I also had to find out which Super Bowl it was. LV, for those who like Roman numerals; 55, for those who don’t.
As part of my extensive research, I learned Tom Brady will be the quarterback for Tampa Bay and why that’s significant — because he’s old for a football player, but young for most everything else.
I also learned this is the first Super Bowl where one team, Tampa Bay again, will play in its home stadium. Oddly enough, they will wear their road uniforms.
I assume the Tom Brady info is well-known enough that nobody will be impressed if I drop his name into a conversation. But the other two factoids might gain me an appreciative glance or two, assuming I talk to anybody who cares about football, which during a pandemic is even less likely than it would be otherwise.
Still, old habits are hard to give up.
Years ago, when I worked in sales, and everything was testosterone and football, I used to bone up on a few gridiron facts every week. I figured I needed to know one talking point on Friday and maybe two on Monday to make me effective.
This was necessary because I recognized the importance of sports in general and football in particular to American life. Tell a customer you don’t like football and they make all sorts of assumptions about your life, patriotism and manhood. From there, you’re only one interception away from losing a sale to the rival team.
It wasn’t that I hated football. I just didn’t watch it or have the slightest interest in it. To this day, I doubt I can name more than four or five professional franchises. If I did, chances are good one or more of them would be a basketball or baseball team.
In the pre-internet era, my screen pass — see, I know some of the lingo — required advance legwork. “Boy, I can’t wait to see the Browns face off against the Steelers at 4 p.m. Sunday on NBC,” I might say, because it was easier to glean such information from the TV listings or a radio commercial than from the sports pages, which were filled with cryptic columns of numbers that had all the meaning of runes carved into a cave wall to me.
Then I would listen attentively to the news on Monday morning, memorizing a few scores and maybe one key observation from some commentator to pass off as my own, usually some gobbledygook about the defensive line looking anemic or a bungled call that should have gone the other way.
I didn’t know what I was saying and I didn’t care. I couldn’t — and can’t — visualize any part of the game. If you showed me a video of dogs cavorting in a park and said it was fourth-and-inches, I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to contradict you.
To be honest, I doubt I fooled too many customers. After all, what other salesperson rushed through their doors and rattled off yardage stats like Robby the Robot on crack, trying to spit it out before he forgot it?
Maybe they liked me or maybe they actually wanted what I was selling. Or maybe they were playacting like I was, thinking they had to sound erudite about football when talking to the wan and doughy sales guy who sauntered into the business a few times each month wearing a trench coat and ponytail. (My sense of style in the ’90s was even more deficient than my football knowledge.)
It’s sad to think of people faking their way through a conversation because they’re afraid to be more authentic, but I guess that’s ’Merica. Or capitalism. Or both.
These days, I’m more likely to be honest about my football failings, especially to my high-school students, who find my lack of understanding about the game to be funny. And humor is a disarming weapon. When they’re laughing at me, their defenses are down, and I might score a touchdown by getting them to think critically about an essay they’re reading.
Nevertheless, it is kind of cool to think of Tampa Bay wearing their away uniforms at home, even if I don’t know what color those uniforms are and have already forgotten the name of the team they’re playing.
Maybe I’ll tune in for a little while on Sunday, just to find out.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
No kidding, I had to look up which two teams were playing. I also had to find out which Super Bowl it was. LV, for those who like Roman numerals; 55, for those who don’t.
As part of my extensive research, I learned Tom Brady will be the quarterback for Tampa Bay and why that’s significant — because he’s old for a football player, but young for most everything else.
I also learned this is the first Super Bowl where one team, Tampa Bay again, will play in its home stadium. Oddly enough, they will wear their road uniforms.
I assume the Tom Brady info is well-known enough that nobody will be impressed if I drop his name into a conversation. But the other two factoids might gain me an appreciative glance or two, assuming I talk to anybody who cares about football, which during a pandemic is even less likely than it would be otherwise.
Still, old habits are hard to give up.
Years ago, when I worked in sales, and everything was testosterone and football, I used to bone up on a few gridiron facts every week. I figured I needed to know one talking point on Friday and maybe two on Monday to make me effective.
This was necessary because I recognized the importance of sports in general and football in particular to American life. Tell a customer you don’t like football and they make all sorts of assumptions about your life, patriotism and manhood. From there, you’re only one interception away from losing a sale to the rival team.
It wasn’t that I hated football. I just didn’t watch it or have the slightest interest in it. To this day, I doubt I can name more than four or five professional franchises. If I did, chances are good one or more of them would be a basketball or baseball team.
In the pre-internet era, my screen pass — see, I know some of the lingo — required advance legwork. “Boy, I can’t wait to see the Browns face off against the Steelers at 4 p.m. Sunday on NBC,” I might say, because it was easier to glean such information from the TV listings or a radio commercial than from the sports pages, which were filled with cryptic columns of numbers that had all the meaning of runes carved into a cave wall to me.
Then I would listen attentively to the news on Monday morning, memorizing a few scores and maybe one key observation from some commentator to pass off as my own, usually some gobbledygook about the defensive line looking anemic or a bungled call that should have gone the other way.
I didn’t know what I was saying and I didn’t care. I couldn’t — and can’t — visualize any part of the game. If you showed me a video of dogs cavorting in a park and said it was fourth-and-inches, I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to contradict you.
To be honest, I doubt I fooled too many customers. After all, what other salesperson rushed through their doors and rattled off yardage stats like Robby the Robot on crack, trying to spit it out before he forgot it?
Maybe they liked me or maybe they actually wanted what I was selling. Or maybe they were playacting like I was, thinking they had to sound erudite about football when talking to the wan and doughy sales guy who sauntered into the business a few times each month wearing a trench coat and ponytail. (My sense of style in the ’90s was even more deficient than my football knowledge.)
It’s sad to think of people faking their way through a conversation because they’re afraid to be more authentic, but I guess that’s ’Merica. Or capitalism. Or both.
These days, I’m more likely to be honest about my football failings, especially to my high-school students, who find my lack of understanding about the game to be funny. And humor is a disarming weapon. When they’re laughing at me, their defenses are down, and I might score a touchdown by getting them to think critically about an essay they’re reading.
Nevertheless, it is kind of cool to think of Tampa Bay wearing their away uniforms at home, even if I don’t know what color those uniforms are and have already forgotten the name of the team they’re playing.
Maybe I’ll tune in for a little while on Sunday, just to find out.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Less art, more directions in online recipes
My wife is a no-nonsense person.
One impractical part of modern life she rails against are recipe websites with flowery descriptions of food, accompanied by long, rambling love letters about how “everybody” the cook knows was wowed by the results.
“This is a venerable family tradition,” a typical entry might read, “and the results are a taste-tempting dish that looks as scrumptious as it tastes.”
Another site might opine about the challenges of making home-cooked meals in a time crunch and on a shoestring budget: “Here is a little something that can be whipped up between taking the dog to the vet and the kids to soccer practice. It’s possible most of these ingredients are in your cupboards already.”
I can tell from two rooms away when my wife is scrolling through these sites because she shouts, “Just tell me how to make it already!” (Expletives have been omitted out of deference to an all-ages audience.)
To erstwhile recipe writers, here are some tips from an intensely practical cook.
First, most souls who go online to look for recipes do so in a low-grade panic. The guests are coming tonight, the house needs cleaned and a menu prepared.
Protracted passages about how a recipe was smuggled by mule and body cavity along enemy lines in some banana republic might make for compelling television or a suspenseful novel. But they only get in the way of finding ingredients and determining if macaroni and cheese from scratch is viable or if swallowing one’s pride and buying a box mix is the way to go.
(For me, the path-of-least-resistance guy when it comes to manual labor — including slaving over a hot stove or oven — the box mix is always preferable, but I digress.)
Secondly, put the ingredients near the top of the page. Of course, a photo of the finished dish deserves star billing, but the ingredients should come immediately after. If you must share the biographies of Aunt Ida and Uncle Sid, who toiled over the exact ratio of salt to dough for almost 18 years in their SoHo flat before birthing a pretzel bundt cake that enthralled heads of state in several European nations, do it at the bottom of the page.
On the topic of ingredients, if anything needs to be set back for later, make a note of this at the top. Few things in the cooking realm are more maddening than learning you’ve added one too many cups of flour at an early stage and created a viscous mass more likely to terrorize Steve McQueen in a 1950s sci-fi movie than serve as your family’s dessert.
This next recommendation might strike some as cynical, but recipe writers should think like inexperienced people who seldom do more than boil water or cut slits in film before putting TV dinners in the microwave. If they were more skilled, they wouldn’t be trolling the dark web for something as simple as a recipe for barbecued chicken.
At least in my experience, if it can go wrong in the kitchen, it will. A few weeks ago, I tried to make brownie waffles. The video accompanying the recipe was deceptively simple: Mix togetheringredients from a box of Betty Crocker brownies, heat the waffle iron, pour and wait.
The results in the video looked wonderful. The brownies slid out of the waffle iron more smoothly than lies from a politician’s lips.
My waffles, not so much.
Maybe I overfilled the waffle iron or didn’t use enough cooking spray. Whatever the reason, the mix sloshed over the top when I closed the lid, oozing into the guts of the device and down the sides before flowing across the cupboard like frothing flood water. When I tried to remove the waffles, everything stuck to everything else.
The cleanup was as much fun as you might imagine. I can still smell brownies whenever I make a traditional waffle, an olfactory ghost in the machine.
Surely the recipe writer could have anticipated such a mess and added a warning, maybe in place of the gushing summary about how the cook’s family gave a standing ovation, the queen knighted the recipe’s creator and the pope canonized her.
In the meantime, my wife and I would be thankful to anybody who can point us toward a site with just the Cliff’s Notes and none of the autobiographical fluff.
Less “author, author!” and more “entree! entree!” please.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
One impractical part of modern life she rails against are recipe websites with flowery descriptions of food, accompanied by long, rambling love letters about how “everybody” the cook knows was wowed by the results.
“This is a venerable family tradition,” a typical entry might read, “and the results are a taste-tempting dish that looks as scrumptious as it tastes.”
Another site might opine about the challenges of making home-cooked meals in a time crunch and on a shoestring budget: “Here is a little something that can be whipped up between taking the dog to the vet and the kids to soccer practice. It’s possible most of these ingredients are in your cupboards already.”
I can tell from two rooms away when my wife is scrolling through these sites because she shouts, “Just tell me how to make it already!” (Expletives have been omitted out of deference to an all-ages audience.)
To erstwhile recipe writers, here are some tips from an intensely practical cook.
First, most souls who go online to look for recipes do so in a low-grade panic. The guests are coming tonight, the house needs cleaned and a menu prepared.
Protracted passages about how a recipe was smuggled by mule and body cavity along enemy lines in some banana republic might make for compelling television or a suspenseful novel. But they only get in the way of finding ingredients and determining if macaroni and cheese from scratch is viable or if swallowing one’s pride and buying a box mix is the way to go.
(For me, the path-of-least-resistance guy when it comes to manual labor — including slaving over a hot stove or oven — the box mix is always preferable, but I digress.)
Secondly, put the ingredients near the top of the page. Of course, a photo of the finished dish deserves star billing, but the ingredients should come immediately after. If you must share the biographies of Aunt Ida and Uncle Sid, who toiled over the exact ratio of salt to dough for almost 18 years in their SoHo flat before birthing a pretzel bundt cake that enthralled heads of state in several European nations, do it at the bottom of the page.
On the topic of ingredients, if anything needs to be set back for later, make a note of this at the top. Few things in the cooking realm are more maddening than learning you’ve added one too many cups of flour at an early stage and created a viscous mass more likely to terrorize Steve McQueen in a 1950s sci-fi movie than serve as your family’s dessert.
This next recommendation might strike some as cynical, but recipe writers should think like inexperienced people who seldom do more than boil water or cut slits in film before putting TV dinners in the microwave. If they were more skilled, they wouldn’t be trolling the dark web for something as simple as a recipe for barbecued chicken.
At least in my experience, if it can go wrong in the kitchen, it will. A few weeks ago, I tried to make brownie waffles. The video accompanying the recipe was deceptively simple: Mix togetheringredients from a box of Betty Crocker brownies, heat the waffle iron, pour and wait.
The results in the video looked wonderful. The brownies slid out of the waffle iron more smoothly than lies from a politician’s lips.
My waffles, not so much.
Maybe I overfilled the waffle iron or didn’t use enough cooking spray. Whatever the reason, the mix sloshed over the top when I closed the lid, oozing into the guts of the device and down the sides before flowing across the cupboard like frothing flood water. When I tried to remove the waffles, everything stuck to everything else.
The cleanup was as much fun as you might imagine. I can still smell brownies whenever I make a traditional waffle, an olfactory ghost in the machine.
Surely the recipe writer could have anticipated such a mess and added a warning, maybe in place of the gushing summary about how the cook’s family gave a standing ovation, the queen knighted the recipe’s creator and the pope canonized her.
In the meantime, my wife and I would be thankful to anybody who can point us toward a site with just the Cliff’s Notes and none of the autobiographical fluff.
Less “author, author!” and more “entree! entree!” please.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
QAnon followers face reality on Inauguration Day
Hard to imagine a small but vocal group of Americans rooting for a declaration of martial law ahead of last Wednesday’s inauguration, but they were, nonetheless.
Some followers of QAnon, the focal point for a series of baseless conspiracy theories positioning Donald Trump as a valiant defender of the American dream against an alleged “deep-state” and a coven of Democratic pedophiles, hoped for President Joe Biden in handcuffs and a second term for the 45th president on Inauguration Day.
All by noon, apparently. (The afternoon and evening would have a lot to live up to.)
NBC News and the New York Times both reported on QAnon followers and their real-time disillusionment. “Wake up. We’ve been had,” wrote one in a QAnon chat group after the inauguration went off without the expected political parousia. “Anyone else feeling beyond let down?” moped another.
It didn’t take long for some to shift their prophecies to an unspecified date in the future. Those nominally in charge of prophesying for the movement have apparently learned their lesson: In the world of conspiracy, being too specific is a liability.
Scoffing at crazy stories of nefarious deeds in the basements of D.C. pizza parlors would be easy if we were talking about just a few lost souls howling in the wilderness. But one central QAnon influencer has more than 100,000 followers, a not-insignificant number of people.
How dedicated these adherents are to the cause is a matter of some speculation, of course. They may well pick and choose among the more outre theories espoused by their leaders, who trade in memes and innuendo, sharing and amplifying the same cyber screeds.
Like grazing through an all-you-can-eat-buffet, some followers may support only QAnon positions about election fraud. Call them the My Pillow faction, after CEO Mike Lindell, photographed leaving the White House last week with a document that referred cryptically — or not-so-cryptically — to the invocation of martial law.
These same followers may not subscribe to the Satanism and cannibalism charges. Or maybe they do. It’s hard to say.
At any rate, their disappointment would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. Anybody who’s ever had their heart broken by unrequited love, been passed over for a big promotion or new job, or realized they were just one number away from winning the lottery knows what QAnon folks are feeling this week.
Like those deluded warriors who stormed the Capitol building, believing they would be seated at the right hand of the Trump father that night and basking in his reflected glory but instead found themselves on no-fly lists and/or in custody, these poor QAnon expats must now return to sepia-toned reality after a brief, haunting glimpse at a Technicolor Oz.
Shades of the Ancient Mariner, they rejoin their lives “sadder and wiser” for the experience.
Unless they don’t and aren’t.
An ongoing concern is whether some of these lost folks will be recruited by groups of white supremacists, who will feed off this disillusionment and radicalize them within an even more dangerous and violent cause.
The best antidote to all this is decisive action by the Biden administration, not to deal specifically with QAnon or white supremacists, but rather to move with alacrity in bringing the pandemic under control, providing further financial relief to those who need it, and working diligently to prove the new president will be a leader for all Americans, not just those who voted for him.
Some money in the bank and a sense of purpose are the best bulwarks against disillusionment. And not just for QAnon followers, but for all of us.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Some followers of QAnon, the focal point for a series of baseless conspiracy theories positioning Donald Trump as a valiant defender of the American dream against an alleged “deep-state” and a coven of Democratic pedophiles, hoped for President Joe Biden in handcuffs and a second term for the 45th president on Inauguration Day.
All by noon, apparently. (The afternoon and evening would have a lot to live up to.)
NBC News and the New York Times both reported on QAnon followers and their real-time disillusionment. “Wake up. We’ve been had,” wrote one in a QAnon chat group after the inauguration went off without the expected political parousia. “Anyone else feeling beyond let down?” moped another.
It didn’t take long for some to shift their prophecies to an unspecified date in the future. Those nominally in charge of prophesying for the movement have apparently learned their lesson: In the world of conspiracy, being too specific is a liability.
Scoffing at crazy stories of nefarious deeds in the basements of D.C. pizza parlors would be easy if we were talking about just a few lost souls howling in the wilderness. But one central QAnon influencer has more than 100,000 followers, a not-insignificant number of people.
How dedicated these adherents are to the cause is a matter of some speculation, of course. They may well pick and choose among the more outre theories espoused by their leaders, who trade in memes and innuendo, sharing and amplifying the same cyber screeds.
Like grazing through an all-you-can-eat-buffet, some followers may support only QAnon positions about election fraud. Call them the My Pillow faction, after CEO Mike Lindell, photographed leaving the White House last week with a document that referred cryptically — or not-so-cryptically — to the invocation of martial law.
These same followers may not subscribe to the Satanism and cannibalism charges. Or maybe they do. It’s hard to say.
At any rate, their disappointment would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. Anybody who’s ever had their heart broken by unrequited love, been passed over for a big promotion or new job, or realized they were just one number away from winning the lottery knows what QAnon folks are feeling this week.
Like those deluded warriors who stormed the Capitol building, believing they would be seated at the right hand of the Trump father that night and basking in his reflected glory but instead found themselves on no-fly lists and/or in custody, these poor QAnon expats must now return to sepia-toned reality after a brief, haunting glimpse at a Technicolor Oz.
Shades of the Ancient Mariner, they rejoin their lives “sadder and wiser” for the experience.
Unless they don’t and aren’t.
An ongoing concern is whether some of these lost folks will be recruited by groups of white supremacists, who will feed off this disillusionment and radicalize them within an even more dangerous and violent cause.
The best antidote to all this is decisive action by the Biden administration, not to deal specifically with QAnon or white supremacists, but rather to move with alacrity in bringing the pandemic under control, providing further financial relief to those who need it, and working diligently to prove the new president will be a leader for all Americans, not just those who voted for him.
Some money in the bank and a sense of purpose are the best bulwarks against disillusionment. And not just for QAnon followers, but for all of us.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Saturday, January 16, 2021
Enough is enough for many in corporate America
Follow the money, goes the Watergate-era bromide. It still describes today’s Washington.
Large corporate donors are stepping away in droves from Donald Trump and the 147 Republicans who, on Jan. 6, opposed President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
Their decision not to accept the certified election results came only hours after a mob, egged on by President Trump himself, stormed the Capitol building and attempted unsuccessfully to …
Well, it’s hard to say what these wannabe insurrectionists hoped to achieve.
A few, armed with handcuffs and zip ties, appeared intent on taking lawmakers hostage or perhaps even executing them. Some seemed bent on mindless destruction. Many acted like misbehaving students bored with a tour, perching on the dais in the Senate chambers, putting their feet up on desks, taking selfies.
Now there are concerns about far-right insurgents within the Capitol Police and allegations by Democrats that some unnamed Republican members of Congress may have given tours to insurgents ahead of the riot. The fallout culminated in Wednesday’s historic — in all the wrong ways — second impeachment of President Trump.
All this after weeks of haranguing by Trump and others about widespread election fraud, unsubstantiated and unproven, with 60 losses or dismissals of cases in various courtrooms across the country.
Is it any wonder corporate America is abandoning those members of Congress who chose to stand on the wrong side of the election-certification issue? Especially because many seemed less intent on ferreting out alleged fraud than with securing the loyalty of Trump’s base for their own political futures?
Walmart’s political action committee and its millions of dollars are gone. Ditto American Express, Disney, General Electric, Mastercard and others.
While it would be wonderful if these corporate behemoths have grown a moral spine, it’s just as likely they are acting out of self-preservation, distancing themselves from negative press and guilt by association.
For some, it may be too little, too late. Walmart gave large sums of money to Donald Trump in 2019, more than it gave to any other individual candidate, possibly because his supporters’ demographics are so similar to the company’s. Executives were less concerned then with his multiple conflicts of interest, his racist dog whistles, and his environmental disdain.
Companies aren’t the only ones following the money. It’s not too much of a stretch to suppose at least a few of the ten House Republicans who voted along with Democrats to impeach the president were thinking of their own political fortunes — in the literal sense — as the Trump brand becomes more tarnished.
Ohio’s own Rep. Jim Jordan insists this second impeachment is a byproduct of so-called “cancel culture.” Let’s be honest: Trump richly deserves to be cancelled. He has earned his lifetime block on Twitter, his indefinite ban on Facebook, and any other moves to mute his ongoing lies and provocations.
But the reality is that Trump is not being cancelled, not now or in the future.
While the First Amendment does not guarantee him — or anybody — the right to a vast audience of Twitter followers or a YouTube channel to post videos that repeat the same baseless conspiracies, the president still has many options.
For a few more days at least, he can call a news conference whenever he wants. After next Wednesday, he can feel free to hold rallies, likely to substantial, adoring crowds.
Companies, likewise, have the freedom to take their money elsewhere, especially when customers urge them to support candidates who, at the very least, have not displayed a flagrant disregard for the rule of law and who respect the sanctity of our election system. Consumers can use their First Amendment rights to pressure these companies to make the right call.
And our money can follow the businesses that do.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Large corporate donors are stepping away in droves from Donald Trump and the 147 Republicans who, on Jan. 6, opposed President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
Their decision not to accept the certified election results came only hours after a mob, egged on by President Trump himself, stormed the Capitol building and attempted unsuccessfully to …
Well, it’s hard to say what these wannabe insurrectionists hoped to achieve.
A few, armed with handcuffs and zip ties, appeared intent on taking lawmakers hostage or perhaps even executing them. Some seemed bent on mindless destruction. Many acted like misbehaving students bored with a tour, perching on the dais in the Senate chambers, putting their feet up on desks, taking selfies.
Now there are concerns about far-right insurgents within the Capitol Police and allegations by Democrats that some unnamed Republican members of Congress may have given tours to insurgents ahead of the riot. The fallout culminated in Wednesday’s historic — in all the wrong ways — second impeachment of President Trump.
All this after weeks of haranguing by Trump and others about widespread election fraud, unsubstantiated and unproven, with 60 losses or dismissals of cases in various courtrooms across the country.
Is it any wonder corporate America is abandoning those members of Congress who chose to stand on the wrong side of the election-certification issue? Especially because many seemed less intent on ferreting out alleged fraud than with securing the loyalty of Trump’s base for their own political futures?
Walmart’s political action committee and its millions of dollars are gone. Ditto American Express, Disney, General Electric, Mastercard and others.
While it would be wonderful if these corporate behemoths have grown a moral spine, it’s just as likely they are acting out of self-preservation, distancing themselves from negative press and guilt by association.
For some, it may be too little, too late. Walmart gave large sums of money to Donald Trump in 2019, more than it gave to any other individual candidate, possibly because his supporters’ demographics are so similar to the company’s. Executives were less concerned then with his multiple conflicts of interest, his racist dog whistles, and his environmental disdain.
Companies aren’t the only ones following the money. It’s not too much of a stretch to suppose at least a few of the ten House Republicans who voted along with Democrats to impeach the president were thinking of their own political fortunes — in the literal sense — as the Trump brand becomes more tarnished.
Ohio’s own Rep. Jim Jordan insists this second impeachment is a byproduct of so-called “cancel culture.” Let’s be honest: Trump richly deserves to be cancelled. He has earned his lifetime block on Twitter, his indefinite ban on Facebook, and any other moves to mute his ongoing lies and provocations.
But the reality is that Trump is not being cancelled, not now or in the future.
While the First Amendment does not guarantee him — or anybody — the right to a vast audience of Twitter followers or a YouTube channel to post videos that repeat the same baseless conspiracies, the president still has many options.
For a few more days at least, he can call a news conference whenever he wants. After next Wednesday, he can feel free to hold rallies, likely to substantial, adoring crowds.
Companies, likewise, have the freedom to take their money elsewhere, especially when customers urge them to support candidates who, at the very least, have not displayed a flagrant disregard for the rule of law and who respect the sanctity of our election system. Consumers can use their First Amendment rights to pressure these companies to make the right call.
And our money can follow the businesses that do.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
What would parallel Trump do?
It didn’t have to be this way.
Instead of exiting under a tsunami of violence and a flurry of lies, Donald Trump could have left office with a semblance of dignity.
In some alternate reality, maybe he did.
In a parallel universe, vibrating at a frequency just different enough to be invisible to us, President Trump quickly exhausted any legal remedies for contesting November’s election, as was his right. But once it became obvious no evidence of widespread fraud existed, he conceded with grace, commended his followers for damming a blue wave down the ballot, and maybe promised to return in four years.
He instructed his people to smooth the way for a new administration. Subsequently, he turned his full attention to the virus ravaging our nation and world.
This other Trump went to the American people and, with an eye roll, noted how guidance in the early days of the pandemic was contradictory and confusing. There was so much we didn’t know. However, he said masks — as imperfect as they are — are now endorsed by the vast majority of epidemiologists and other medical professionals to decrease viral transmission.
He then urged Americans to stop politicizing the practice and to embrace it for the duration. He put on a mask himself whenever he was in public.
Instead of exiting under a tsunami of violence and a flurry of lies, Donald Trump could have left office with a semblance of dignity.
In some alternate reality, maybe he did.
In a parallel universe, vibrating at a frequency just different enough to be invisible to us, President Trump quickly exhausted any legal remedies for contesting November’s election, as was his right. But once it became obvious no evidence of widespread fraud existed, he conceded with grace, commended his followers for damming a blue wave down the ballot, and maybe promised to return in four years.
He instructed his people to smooth the way for a new administration. Subsequently, he turned his full attention to the virus ravaging our nation and world.
This other Trump went to the American people and, with an eye roll, noted how guidance in the early days of the pandemic was contradictory and confusing. There was so much we didn’t know. However, he said masks — as imperfect as they are — are now endorsed by the vast majority of epidemiologists and other medical professionals to decrease viral transmission.
He then urged Americans to stop politicizing the practice and to embrace it for the duration. He put on a mask himself whenever he was in public.
Then, this counter-Trump in a different universe worked with Congress to come up with a second stimulus plan to address the economic peril of so many Americans. He instructed his people to collaborate with states to ensure the incredible gift of Operation Warp Speed — a vaccine far faster than many pundits predicted — would just as quickly find its way into the arms of Americans.
This parallel Trump is not so different from our own president in temperament. He still picks fights with the media. He still crows about his accomplishments — hundreds of judicial appointments across all levels, including three Supreme Court justices whose conservative leanings will impact the court for decades; the aforementioned Operation Warp Speed; and a resurgence of conservatism in America.
(Hey, just because many people don’t agree with these accomplishments — or that Trump has a right to take credit for some or all — doesn’t make them less valid.)
Yeah, people like the alternate-reality me would still criticize him, calling any about-face an example of too little, too late, especially when we look at the staggering loss of life under this president, much of it preventable if he had listened more to science and less to sycophants.
But at least it would have been something, a soothing coda to a four-year symphony of discord.
Instead, in this reality, President Trump has been obsessed with overturning the will of the people, amplifying conspiracy theories, pondering military intervention in the election, making the infamous phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state, and helping to thwart his own party’s chance to retain control of the Senate.
And, of course, needling his followers on Wednesday to march on the Capitol.
Subsequently, these deluded acolytes invaded the building, disrupted a completely ceremonial proceeding, forced legislators into hiding, and sacrificed their own, all of it initiated by Trump himself.
It’s hard to point to a definitive nadir of Trump’s presidency, as the man keeps finding creative ways to set the bar lower, but Wednesday has to be it.
In the end, this reality’s Trump has been revealed as the malignant narcissist so many of us feared, a petty grifter Mitch McConnell and many other Republicans hoped to control as a useful fool, but who came far closer to destroying democracy than anybody ever dreamed.
Trump may soon be gone, and if there were any justice in the system, his removal would come from a second impeachment and a final walk of shame following a conviction in the Senate.
Regardless, his fetid legacy will live on in the distrust of democracy he leaves behind, the undeserved pall of illegitimacy he casts on his successor, and the pain and suffering he did nothing to alleviate.
This is our reality, more’s the pity.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
This parallel Trump is not so different from our own president in temperament. He still picks fights with the media. He still crows about his accomplishments — hundreds of judicial appointments across all levels, including three Supreme Court justices whose conservative leanings will impact the court for decades; the aforementioned Operation Warp Speed; and a resurgence of conservatism in America.
(Hey, just because many people don’t agree with these accomplishments — or that Trump has a right to take credit for some or all — doesn’t make them less valid.)
Yeah, people like the alternate-reality me would still criticize him, calling any about-face an example of too little, too late, especially when we look at the staggering loss of life under this president, much of it preventable if he had listened more to science and less to sycophants.
But at least it would have been something, a soothing coda to a four-year symphony of discord.
Instead, in this reality, President Trump has been obsessed with overturning the will of the people, amplifying conspiracy theories, pondering military intervention in the election, making the infamous phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state, and helping to thwart his own party’s chance to retain control of the Senate.
And, of course, needling his followers on Wednesday to march on the Capitol.
Subsequently, these deluded acolytes invaded the building, disrupted a completely ceremonial proceeding, forced legislators into hiding, and sacrificed their own, all of it initiated by Trump himself.
It’s hard to point to a definitive nadir of Trump’s presidency, as the man keeps finding creative ways to set the bar lower, but Wednesday has to be it.
In the end, this reality’s Trump has been revealed as the malignant narcissist so many of us feared, a petty grifter Mitch McConnell and many other Republicans hoped to control as a useful fool, but who came far closer to destroying democracy than anybody ever dreamed.
Trump may soon be gone, and if there were any justice in the system, his removal would come from a second impeachment and a final walk of shame following a conviction in the Senate.
Regardless, his fetid legacy will live on in the distrust of democracy he leaves behind, the undeserved pall of illegitimacy he casts on his successor, and the pain and suffering he did nothing to alleviate.
This is our reality, more’s the pity.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Monday, January 4, 2021
Celebrate diversity through 'disruption'
The Wall Street Journal’s children’s books columnist went on a tear last month.
Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote a piece excoriating Disrupt Texts, an online movement by teachers to introduce more diversity into reading curriculums. Gurdon described a situation where educators are gleefully shredding traditional reading lists, replacing classic authors with contemporary ones with alleged axes to grind about issues like sexism and racism.
The reality is far different, however.
Disrupt Texts is merely the latest in a long series of conversations about what should or should not be considered “canon” in schools. Hang around English educators for any length of time and you’re likely to hear them decry the “dead white guys” (and a select few dead white gals) whose work is often elevated to Olympian — or at least Mount Rushmore-ian — heights.
You can practically rattle off these writers’ names in your sleep: Homer, Shakespeare, Poe, Hawthorne, Twain, Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Steinbeck, Hemingway and maybe Harper Lee, if only because “To Kill a Mockingbird” is a sentimental favorite of many teachers and parents, probably because it was read at a formative time in their lives.
A big question about canonical creators in any undertaking — literature, music, interpretive macramé — is, “Who sez?” In other words, who decides these particular movers and shakers are representative? In the case of literature, at least, the answer has traditionally been other now-dead white guys, who selected from among works they knew, based on a culture that for centuries has foregrounded white males.
This being the case, movements like Disrupt Texts, which promote BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) voices, are welcome. Not to displace the “canon,” but to broaden it, to help ensure the reading lists children and young adults encounter mirror the diversity of people and perspectives they see in the world around them.
Of course, traditional authors can still be used to introduce modern social issues. Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” remains a poignant examination of racism, and Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” is practically a case study in holier-than-thou hypocrisy.
But shouldn’t the curriculum be flexible enough to include both Homer and something like Tomi Adeyemi’s “Children of Blood and Bone,” which incorporates West African mythology? Or Edgar Allan Poe’s plague-ridden “Masque of the Red Death” and Ling Ma’s “Severance,” which apparently plays with the same tropes? (Both modern authors are on my growing to-read list.)
I’m not saying either Adeyemi or Ma will still be read in fifty or one hundred years (nor am I saying they won’t), which is part of the traditionalist argument for a canon, that it provides a sturdy bedrock of shared literary experiences. Well, this and the more insidious goal of some conservatives to preserve a European-American-centric monopoly on literature. But when I think back to some of the books I read in school, I recall a blend of contemporary and classic, the former used as bait to get us to read the latter.
Which is not to insinuate the role of BIPOC authors is to lure children back to Shakespeare. Reading these contemporary authors is a laudable end in itself and likely will do more to create lifelong readers than any well-intentioned but misguided attempts to keep shoving “To Kill a Mockingbird” down students’ throats.
And while I find the Disrupt Texts website to be a little too chummy with Penguin Random House, which collaborated with the movement to produce reading guides for — surprise! — the publisher’s YA titles, I can’t fault the intent of the founders.
What Disrupt Texts seeks to do, it appears to me, is not to ban older works, but to make the curriculum more responsive to today’s readers. It also attempts to make older educators, like me, aware of the explosion in contemporary voices, the multiplicity of titles available and the need to examine critically our own attitudes and beliefs about certain social issues.
All of which sounds like something the WSJ’s children’s books columnist would want to celebrate, not criticize.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote a piece excoriating Disrupt Texts, an online movement by teachers to introduce more diversity into reading curriculums. Gurdon described a situation where educators are gleefully shredding traditional reading lists, replacing classic authors with contemporary ones with alleged axes to grind about issues like sexism and racism.
The reality is far different, however.
Disrupt Texts is merely the latest in a long series of conversations about what should or should not be considered “canon” in schools. Hang around English educators for any length of time and you’re likely to hear them decry the “dead white guys” (and a select few dead white gals) whose work is often elevated to Olympian — or at least Mount Rushmore-ian — heights.
You can practically rattle off these writers’ names in your sleep: Homer, Shakespeare, Poe, Hawthorne, Twain, Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Steinbeck, Hemingway and maybe Harper Lee, if only because “To Kill a Mockingbird” is a sentimental favorite of many teachers and parents, probably because it was read at a formative time in their lives.
A big question about canonical creators in any undertaking — literature, music, interpretive macramé — is, “Who sez?” In other words, who decides these particular movers and shakers are representative? In the case of literature, at least, the answer has traditionally been other now-dead white guys, who selected from among works they knew, based on a culture that for centuries has foregrounded white males.
This being the case, movements like Disrupt Texts, which promote BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) voices, are welcome. Not to displace the “canon,” but to broaden it, to help ensure the reading lists children and young adults encounter mirror the diversity of people and perspectives they see in the world around them.
Of course, traditional authors can still be used to introduce modern social issues. Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” remains a poignant examination of racism, and Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” is practically a case study in holier-than-thou hypocrisy.
But shouldn’t the curriculum be flexible enough to include both Homer and something like Tomi Adeyemi’s “Children of Blood and Bone,” which incorporates West African mythology? Or Edgar Allan Poe’s plague-ridden “Masque of the Red Death” and Ling Ma’s “Severance,” which apparently plays with the same tropes? (Both modern authors are on my growing to-read list.)
I’m not saying either Adeyemi or Ma will still be read in fifty or one hundred years (nor am I saying they won’t), which is part of the traditionalist argument for a canon, that it provides a sturdy bedrock of shared literary experiences. Well, this and the more insidious goal of some conservatives to preserve a European-American-centric monopoly on literature. But when I think back to some of the books I read in school, I recall a blend of contemporary and classic, the former used as bait to get us to read the latter.
Which is not to insinuate the role of BIPOC authors is to lure children back to Shakespeare. Reading these contemporary authors is a laudable end in itself and likely will do more to create lifelong readers than any well-intentioned but misguided attempts to keep shoving “To Kill a Mockingbird” down students’ throats.
And while I find the Disrupt Texts website to be a little too chummy with Penguin Random House, which collaborated with the movement to produce reading guides for — surprise! — the publisher’s YA titles, I can’t fault the intent of the founders.
What Disrupt Texts seeks to do, it appears to me, is not to ban older works, but to make the curriculum more responsive to today’s readers. It also attempts to make older educators, like me, aware of the explosion in contemporary voices, the multiplicity of titles available and the need to examine critically our own attitudes and beliefs about certain social issues.
All of which sounds like something the WSJ’s children’s books columnist would want to celebrate, not criticize.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
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