On Censorship and Victimology Again

Tucked into "Why are Scholars Such Snitches," Laura Kipnis's recent (March 17, 2022) essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education detailing Stasi-like persecution of academics deemed by any disgruntled colleague or student to have said or done anything offensive, is the following paragraph:

There are still, it seems, occasional old-school types (often leftists) who persist in thinking that there’s a distinction between quoting James Baldwin or Martin Luther King Jr. in full and hurling an epithet. The college-admissions consultant Hanna Stotland, who specializes in “crisis management,” told me that the snitching impulse is taking hold among younger and younger students. She used to have two such cases a year; she’s had 20 in the last two years. N-word offenses are a cottage industry here too. High schoolers squirrel away incriminating texts, or videos of friends at age 15 singing along with rap lyrics, then forward them to admissions committees when the friend (or frenemy, rather) gets an athletic scholarship or is admitted to an Ivy. Colleges are so quick to act on the intel, says Stotland, that they’ll sometimes retract an offer without even giving the accused student a chance to respond.

(1)  There really is a distinction between quoting in full James Baldwin or Martin Luther King Jr. or Mark Twain or Countee Cullen or Maya Angelou or John Steinbeck or Langston Hughes or plenty of other writers in full and hurling an epithet.

(2) Critical thinking--which supposedly we're all teaching students--is the ability to distinguish either an author's or a text's intention, its style, its tone.  Students who know how to do these things--for example, can distinguish a ballad from a sonnet and a joke from a rant--are too smart to pretend that the sound of "that word" in a classroom injures them personally or that "impact" matters and intention does not. "Performed delicacy"--the term John McWhorter uses to describe this "wounded" behavior--is accurate.

(3) The very first thing students learn about Mark Twain should not be that he uses a word that's become taboo. But a teacher should be aware of her student population. If she's got a group of kids who have only ever heard the word as an insult hurled at them, she's got to take a different approach from the one she'd use with students who have never experienced a racist insult and who would never use the word themselves unless they were reading aloud from a text using it.

(4) Scholars are snitches because everybody's pretending Ibram X. Kendi and Robin diAngelo are not shysters. Oh, and racists too.

Unite around Zelensky

The March 14, 2022 New Yorker cover shows Volodymyr Zelensky proving through the night that his flag is still there. 

But as long as Putin knows the West is scared of What He Might Do, he's winning. His troops are advancing. He's losing men, tanks, money. None of that touches this poisoner, liar, murderer. All this the West well knows. But they're afraid of what he might do.

Zelensky stands firm, getting standing ovations--but not much else--from the West. Putin's scorching earth. Going down in a blaze taking the Ukraine with him seems to be a thing that turns him on.

Food, medicine weapons--not enough.

I wish  the U.S. would give Zelensky a no-fly zone and whatever else he needs. His requests are for the world, not just the Ukraine.

Thank You, Marina Ovsyannikova

Marina Ovsyannikova's bravery is breathtaking. On Monday evening, she interrupted a state-run Russian broadcast with an anti-war poster. As the seated broadcaster continued to read, loudly, trying to drown-out the truth-telling Ms. Ovsyannikova, Ms. Ovsyannikova radiated energy behind her, the poster displaying news the West has been seeing for the last 19 days but that so many Russians don't.

It takes tremendous guts to do what she did--to tell the truth when she could be thrown in prison for years--or much worse. 

I hope she gives other Russians the courage to commit similar acts of truth-telling. I hope the West stops trying to appease Putin and works to remove his power to wage war, to brutalize, to destroy.

In War: How Conflict Shaped Us (London: Profile, 2021) Margaret MacMillan remarks: "Power alone without some support from the people cannot ensure the survival of Leviathans." Putin's support is slipping. Marina Ovsyannikova's act of defiance won't be the last. 

In the final book of the Hunger Games trilogy--Mockingjay--the good guys manage to disrupt the propagandized news broadcasts coming from the capitol--and deliver real resistance news.  An electronic infiltration of state-run Russian TV sounds like a lovely idea--imagine Russians who have always trusted Putin seeing on-the-ground footage of Russian fire hitting pregnant women and children. Imagine more. Imagine the infiltration revealing Putin and his generals saying this:"Let's ask Xi Jinping for enough ammunition to pulverize the Ukrainians--if they won't throw rose petals at my incoming tanks, let's scorch earth them." Putin's given the Ukraine a choice: marry me or I'll kill you. Let's make sure Russians glued to state TV know that.

Imagine ordinary Russians having access to that information--imagine all of us having it--topped with one of Zelensky's heroic broadcasts. 

 Imagine. 

Chicken Eggplant De Luxe: Works for Women who Want to Lose a Pound or Five

 I threw this meal together: it's satisfying and good for diets in the sense that it's carb-free, a good thing at dinnertime. You'll have leftovers for the next day, too.

You will need:

Two or three chicken thighs

Sliced or minced garlic--lots

Chopped fresh parsley

Sliced zucchini

Olive oil

Juice of one half lemon

Herbal salt

Thinly sliced eggplant (Used three small ones)

Garlic powder

Chop or slice garlic and put in a medium-sized pyrex baking dish. Add rinsed, chopped parsley and zucchini. Toss in olive oil. Place the chicken thighs on top. Ideally these have cooled their heels in the fridge, already graced with herbal salt, for at least a few hours if not overnight, but if you don't have time, I won't tell. Drizzle with a little olive oil and the juice of that half  lemon.

You'll save something that looks like this:

Set aside for the moment and put your eggplant into an olive-oiled larger pan. Ideally you've salted it, let it sit for fifteen minutes, and paper-toweled off the salt (I did) but if you're in a rush, no worries. Do toss in olive oil and lay out as follows:

Everything goes in the oven at about 190ºC (about 375ºF) for about an hour--you'll check all from time to time; flip the eggplant a bit, baste the chicky from the juice in the pan. And then you'll eat:

 

This goes nicely with a single glass of dry white wine. Dry! No other carbs.  I promise you, you won't gain weight. You might lose a tad when the eggplant kicks in.

Soulful Salmon (or the fish of your choice--soulful sole will work)

 

This two-minute preparation needs only one medium-sized baking dish.

You will need:

Dijon mustard (I like the grainy kind--but smooth will work)

Mayonnaisse 

Sliced black olives (I like the kind mixed with garlic)

Two slabs of salmon or sole

Asparagus

Olive oil

Balsamic vinegar

 

 (1) Place the fish at one end of the baking dish.

(2) Rinse the asparagus and put it at the other end.

(3) Mix mayonnaise and mustard to taste, and spread it over the fish.

(4) Slice the olives and lay them over the fish.

(5) Drizzle the asparagus with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

 Should look like this:

Bake at about 190º for about twenty minutes (depends on how thick the fish is).

Voila! Enjoy with a glass of dry white wine. This batch could have used more of the mayo-dijon mix. We added a little packaged Hollondaise sauce to the asparagus.

 

Zelensky the Lionhearted and Putin the Liar

Twelve days. Two million refugees. At least 400 civilians murdered. 202 schools and 34 hospitals bombed.

Putin's whopper--that a Jewish former comedian and grandson of Holocaust survivors is a Nazi--has had its impact: an awful lot of Russians believe him. An awful lot of experienced statesmen aren't willing to risk the one-two punch that could stop Putin.

I wish those statesmen would take the lesson from Kurt Jooss's 1932 ballet, The Green Table, an exposé of the dithering, flattery and insincerity of politicians playing at diplomacy--firing their guns as death wanders the table, as nobody takes a stand:

Because the statesmen didn't take a stand, Hitler did.

Putin too.

But in a move that gives us all hope, Volodymyr Zelensky has also taken a stand. The following hymn--"Once to Every Man and Nation," inspired by James Russell Lowell's passionate protest of the 1845 American annexation of Texas and, in 1890, set to music by Thomas J. Williams, stands for all that Zelensky represents:

If only President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken would follow in Zelensky's footsteps, and fight just as bravely, and with all firepower to defeat Putin--who like all cowards stands aside.

The Bravest Man I Know, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky

It never surprised me that a comedian with no political experience has become a world-class statesman, a David hurling stones at Goliath, Harry Potter fighting Voldemort--a hero. It's always the one seeking truth and justice, not the one seeking power, who makes the best leader. In the first book of C.S. Lewis's Narnia series, The Magician's Nephew, in which Aslan the lion creates the land of Narnia, a London cabby and his wife find themselves asked to be king and queen of the new land. Astonished, the cabby--later, King Frank--humbly demurs: he's got no experience, he says, and he's not educated. Aslan asks a number of questions--would he be fair? Not pick favorites among his children or his subjects? Defend the land? Yes, yes, yes. The cabby qualifies because he wants to do right by all.

It's the truly serious who succeed as comedians, and Zelensky's best comedy reveals dedication to the truth, to his identity:

 

 

 

 

Vladimir Putin can throw bombs and throw his weight around. He can kill Zelensky, and make a martyr who will haunt him for the rest of his career.  Military might, Putin's iron fist, can only do so much. He can kill the mouse that roared, but never the desire for freedom and self-determination, what Zelensky is so passionately defending at the risk of paying the ultimate price. The underdog with the balls of steel is the moral giant, the one putting his life on the line for all that makes life worth living.

Unfiltered: My Hundred-Plus Mother--a Snapshot

I'm wheeling her down the hall at her assisted living facility; she's telling me it's wonderful I'm visiting when a woman exits the elevator near us. 

 "She's fat!" yells Mom, at the top of her lungs. 

High-wattage blue eyes gleaming, Mom has the charm--when she's not insulting people--of a pixie. Her expression immediately relapses to innocent, eyes wide, smile beatific.

"This place is a parking lot for wheelchairs and walkers!" she yelled a few months ago. Before she was using both herself. 

Now, she tells the aide, "your socks are ugly! Why are you wearing those ugly shoes?" But afterwords, she's nice.

Until she says, "I don't wanna wash my hands!"

"I missed you so much!" she tells me. She asks about my children and is very happy to hear about them. She asks same questions again. I tell her, and she's happy again. We do this all afternoon.

When I arrived, the receptionist said, "Oh, you're mother is so great!" They're still saying that--her aides forgive the insults and say they love working for her. But everyone talks about "her personality change."

There hasn't been one. She's lost her memory, but she hasn't changed a bit. "I like breathing," she said. "I'm going to try to keep it up." Her determination is one quality I admire.