Tommy Tuberville teaches me how ideology cultivates irresponsibility

Looking at how newly elected Senator Tommy Tuberville has handled his first solo controversy as a member of Congress is instructive to seeing what's wrong with today's political right. When asked what he thought about one of his screwballier colleagues, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, he deftly dodged the question by announcing, in effect, it was snowing too much for him to read the news. 

"I haven't even looked at what all she's done," he said. "Travel in this weather it's been a little rough looking at any news or whatever."

Now one online friend read that precious quote and concluded Tommy Tuberville is an idiot, that he possibly couldn't read regardless of the weather. But I think that's wrong. He's many things, but he ain't dumb. But lots of smart people, when it comes to politics, end up saying and doing dumb things. It was probably in service of not saying something stupidly inflammatory that Tommy played deer in the headlights and sputtered out such a lame dodge. It was poorly played, but the instinct is both understandable and revealing.

He's been a very successful football coach. That means he knows how to motivate, how draw out personal excellence from young men, how to teach athletes to think strategically. That's a wonderful skillset. But it doesn't relate to his current job, which is writing laws, overseeing the management of government by the executive branch, vetting political appointees for personal competence, comprehending and successfully communicating the critical issues of the nation.

He doesn't seem to understand the concept of public service, how to look out for the greater good.  That's the real tragedy of today's Republican party. First they doubled down on an ideology of governing over a duty to look out for the public good. That quickly led to a desire for power and a personal discomfort when the lack of control meant they couldn't service their ideology. So now they've devolved into a love of power for its own sake. Hypocrisy and horrible social consequences don't matter to them anymore. They want to win, to control, to destroy whatever stands in the way of their winning. And failing to win causes them psychological dissonance. 

Many literally can't summon cohesive arguments to express their views. That's why they rely on slogans, ridicule of others, and the smug gratification of a [b]#winning[/b] mentality. Our country is in a pickle today, a horrible deadly pickle, and it's primarily because one half of our political spectrum has taken a nosedive into the shallow waters of ideology. To be fair, I think there's a growing share of lefties also prizing ideology over logic. But I don't have time to talk about San Francisco un-naming its public schools today. 

American Accent

There's basically two different ways to do an American accent for a male actor. One is the hard way, the Hiddleston way, by just working the fundamentals of regional linguists. The other way, which Sam Neill taught me, is to just lower your accent an octave. Maybe shave down your harder consonants. Metal and medal are homonyms. Atom and Adam. Hostile and hostel. 

People who it is not sad that they died

Larry King, 87

Hank Aaron, 86

Gregory Sierra, 83

Phil Spector, 81

Don Sutton, 75

Norwegian ballet dancer Jorunn Kirkenær, 94

Duke Bootee, 69 (aka Edward Fletcher)

Bob Avian, 83 (choreographer)

Jimmie Rodgers, 87

Sheldon Adelson, 87

People who it is sad that they died

Tanya Roberts, 65

I learned something a couple of days ago

But then I forgot to blog about it and now I've forgotten what it is. 

It's been a while

But it's hard to write about "What I've Learned Today" when I am so darn smart that most days I don't learn anything new. Here's what I learned today.

My principal is a liar

Altho I diligently tried to go to both the Library and Room F103 to do either of these trainings, in fact there were no such trainings to attend. When I went to the library, the training going on was on how to be positive and welcoming or some such bullshit and the only people attending were the school clerks and academy secretaries. No teachers. They all stared at me. I knew immediately I didn't belong there. Like I said, I'm pretty darn smart.

Besides, there are no people in this building more positive or welcoming than our support staff. This is the last training they needed. There were no other trainings there. This was lie #1 from my principal. PrinciPAL, my ass.

Nevertheless, I persisted. I went on to find Room F103 for the Goalbook Training. I've only worked in this building since 2005 (and late 2005, mind you). So it took me a spell to recall that F-Hall is the tiny art corridor underneath my office. Oh, that's right. I office in F210. Derp. So I went down to F-Hall and started counting thru the doors. F107... F106... next studio over... F104... F103... BAM!! exit door to the lunch patio.

There IS no F103. That was lie #2 and #3. Neither the room nor the training seem to exist. I'm wondering now if it's a test of some kind. Like, maybe he'll give a bonus or an accommodation certificate for anyone honest enough to report back that there wasn't a training to go to... to confront their immediate supervisor that he's a bold faced prevaricator... like maybe he wants to see who doesn't fear his arbitrary power... who places integrity over obscurity as a personal value in their bureaucratic career...

No, no way.

I'm hunkering down. Avoiding notice. Ducking behind the hedges. Hiding in the broom closet till it's time to clock out. I'm no fool. I'm a teacher. And there ain't much left in this world for me to learn.

Echoes of Tragedy

In one week, three people who were touched by school violence took their own lives.

Parkland, Florida high school shooting survivor Sydney Aiello, 19, suffering from PTSD and survivor's guilt, shot herself in the head a week ago

A day or two after her funeral, an unnamed sophomore also a survivor of last year's Marjorie Stoneman Douglas HS shooting also took his own life

And most recently, Jeremy Richman, father of one of the 20 elementary school children gunned down at Sandy Hook in 2012, also committed suicide.

The cost of allowing rampant gun violence to go essentially unaddressed, other than with obvious caution, reaches far beyond the simple death tolls that accompany the news of each shooting. It's a grim sport we practice, watching the initial reports, waiting to see if the shooting is going to go to double digits, as with Sandy Hook and Parkland, or if will reach the unfathomable body counts of Las Vegas or Christchurch.

But still, we wait when the news comes in. We wait and we count, as if numbers can make the horror of decivilization manageable. We wait through the initial reports that inevitably say there was a second, or sometimes even multiple, gunmen. It's always just one gunman.

Maybe we think if it's two or three shooters, if it's organized, that makes it more sensible. It's an evil organization in the world. Violent men manipulating other men--always it's men--makes sense. True diabolical evil would send others to do their bidding, like petty Lucifers. Then there's a guiding intelligence to the bloody chaos; then there's a rationality, at least.

Because who could hope to benefit from this slaughter directly? Because how can we live in a world where one lone man could cut down 20 or 50 or even a few strangers?

We understand the angry ex-husband, usually drunk, lashing out at his abused former partner, a loser making the ultimate loser move of destroying the one life. We understand the crazed mother drowning her child in a tub. It's horrifying, but it's an intimate murder, a private dysfunctional family matter that boils over with passionate hatred. It's graspable, because it's irrational.

But the irrational violence of the mass murderer targets victims, and the most helpless victims imagineable--school kids, churchgoers, movie watchers. They could be any of us and so it has that intimacy. But it's strangers killing strangers, so it's still detached, an event at a peaceful social gathering. It's random, but it's personal. It's impersonal, but it's life shattering for the families of the victims, and ultimately for the society that sees the violence on television

Thank you, Blogger dot Com

Today I learned that Blogger/Blogspot blogs are retained even if you leave them unattended for 8 years. Okay then. What else have I learned?