Ruminations

The failure of U.S. newspapers to provide fair, accurate and informative coverage of breaking news was amply displayed in a recent Washington Post story, “Penn president resigns amid backlash to testimony on antisemitism.”

The story is a follow up to testimony given by University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, President Claudine Gay of Harvard and President Sally Kornbluth of MIT before a Republican-led House committee giving them “a chance to answer and atone for the many specific instances of vitriolic, hate-filled antisemitism” on campus, according to Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C), chair of the committee.

No less than the televised 1940s hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the infamous Salem witch trials before them, the determination that those called were guilty came long before the proceedings. “The antisemitism we’ve seen on your campuses didn’t come out of nowhere,” Foxx said. “There are cultures at your institutions that foster it because you have faculty and students who hate Jews, hate Israel, and are comfortable apologizing for terror.”

Initial WaPo coverage failed entirely to report or seek quotations that might bear witness to the fact that the three presidents before the committee, and therefore “charged” with the ineradicable letter A of antisemitism, number among the fewer than 30 percent of presidents of top research universities who are female. (Gay is also the first Black president of Harvard.) Yet the top research universities I inhabited for three decades bore almost no resemblance to the bastions of vitriol and unfettered hatred committee members described. Today’s universities favor coerced conformity over public disagreement.

Nor did WaPo coverage indicate that this hearing, like so much that today passes as government “action”without media challenge, misused the power of Congress to harass citizens and provide a grandstand for committee members. Coverage gave prominence to representatives’ heated words that failed to distinguish between expression and action, between what is speech protected by the First Amendment and what is punishable as harassment, intimidation or violence.

Follow-on reporting was little better. One story opened with six paragraphs about Magill’s resignation from Penn before featuring Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-N.Y.) pointed questioning during the hearing. Magill’s responses noting the vital distinction between punishable conduct and protected speech were, in the words of WaPo news coverage, seen by “many” as “attempts at nuance [that] came off as weak-kneed and legalistic equivocations.” Ten days later, WaPo headlined a news story filled with editorializing with the notion that “Criticism of Harvard’s president is growing. Some see race as a factor.” Wow. Really? The story focused on a single wealthy Black alumni donor who asserted, with no evidence, that Gay (whose credentials are deep) was hired to advance Harvard’s diversity goals.

Surely foundational legal principles are more than nuance. Fundamental democratic principles are far more than legalistic equivocation. Surely, the vast space the U.S. Constitution carves between the strongly protected free and unfettered speech to be encouraged in a democratic society and violent action is as essential and meaningful as the difference between, say, manslaughter and first-degree murder. Surely newspapers should know and report that distinction.

Little can be gained from outlining the many failures of WaPo’s coverage, which placed Magill’s resignation in the context of the latest Israeli-Gaza war, interviewed several Jewish Penn students (but not a single identified Palestinian), and relegated a clear statement of the applicable law from a well-known constitutional law scholar to the bottom.

Suffice to say that this former journalist, university professor and widely published legal scholar is appalled and concerned. Coverage that amplifies hate and bellicosity has real-world consequences. The HUAC hearings made clear that media are not immune to congressional efforts at censorship. Nor is any one of us.

The blooms in the back garden, neglected for most of a decade before I bought this old house, emerge as the season shifts toward autumn. Old fashioned cabbage roses, phlox, and delicate Japanese anemones struggle to poke their heads through the weeds and scent my rooms with memories of Maine. Mornings in the garden, hand snugged in my great-grandfather’s, the chatter of birds and clatter of cooking in the kitchen. The sounds and scents of love.

Amid a late week of significant snow accumulation here in the inland Pacific Northwest, a turkey call greeted me from above the house as I fetched firewood in the predawn. I think I know who is calling. She strolled my upper meadow several times yesterday, occasionally pecking for food, but mostly with the air of proprietorship a landowner has as she surveys here gardens several times each day as if not only to see what progress her plants have made but also–at least as much–to cheer her blooming companions on and to applaud the miracle of her own efforts, or so it seemed to me because I felt she was staking her ground, establishing her priority rights to that small newly cleared slope that affords proximity to my feeders and to bramble thickets that offer good hiding and shelter for chicks, nice rich soil filled with worms, grubs and bugs, native grasses and lovely sun all within a short trot of the woods, where she had berthed for the night. I welcome her company and easy companionship as COVID again bares its claws, but I do hope she keeps her own little Idaho private because an entire flock of her brethren is far less lovely.

Again it snows for the seventh consecutive day, totaling thus far about eighteen inches of very light lovely whiteness, an ongoing stockpiling that is beyond odd so late in the season. The first days of snow were amusing, whimsical, and drew me out into frenzied excursions with my ATV plow. As the novelty waned, I grew weary of the sapped gray light and heavy sky, but today it all simply is. This morning’s snow is languid, almost half-hearted, drifting slowly down like motes of dust rater than water-laden missives to the drought-thirsty earth. Turkey and I are each content in our own nesting spots, the trees are frilled and laced with snow that will tumble with great thuds to slowly, deeply penetrate the earth that needs it so dearly. I can’t imagine being so petty as to begrudge the earth, the gardens that I love, having this last full draught of winter.

April 15, 2022

Photo by Mark Olsen on Unsplash

In a Facebook post today, economist and political pundit Robert Reich said it’s time to amend the U.S. Constitution to overcome the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission that “[allowed] individual donors to pour as much as $3.6 million directly into federal campaigns every election cycle – buying unparalleled personal influence in Washington and drowning out the voices of ordinary citizens.” His proposed amendment would establish that: 1. Money is not speech protected by the First Amendment, 2. Corporations are not people endowed with First Amendment rights, and 3. Congress can limit spending on elections.

While some might wish devoutly for such an amendment, its blithe recommendation could come only from someone poorly versed in the law or ill grounded in reality. First, any amendment to the Constitution requires the support of a majority of the members of Congress who, regardless of party affiliation, bathe themselves in the overflowing trough of election money that floods in from wealthy individuals, corporations, and PACs. President Trump famously began his re-election campaign immediately after his election to keep the spigot gushing the cash that flows disproportionately toward the GOP. It appears Trump has spent a large share of the money he continues to amass on personal expenses unrelated to re-election, but the funds also support party initiatives that are systematically gutting state election rules to favor permanent GOP dominance.

Any constitutional amendment requires passage by either a two-thirds affirmative vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or a constitutional convention called for by affirmative action by the legislatures of two-thirds of the states. To understand the near impossibility of this in today’s polarized political environment, one need look no further than the Equal Rights Amendment, which is hugely popular with voters. It took nearly 40 years for Congress to pass that amendment, and another 48 years for it to earn the necessary ratification by the required number of states in 2020. Still it languishes because Congress refuses to repeal the 1982 ratification deadline it imposed on states.

Should the nearly impossible happen, with Reich’s proposed amendment becoming law, it likely would not achieve the ends he hopes when applied by a Supreme Court skewed so heavily toward the modern GOP-version of conservative originalism. The problems we see manifest in Court holdings on elections, electioneering, election ads, election funding, campaign lies, and more started far before McCutcheon or the earlier Citizens United decisions. The difficulties are deeply enmeshed in the muddle of First Amendment precedents that establish, move, transgress, and obscure a mind-numbing array of tests, lines, categories, and distinctions without a difference and create new divisions that violate logic and reality.

The profound mess of free speech precedent and jurisprudence cannot be untangled through yet another new law with a new set of definitions that cannot be clearly understood or consistently applied. Is there a rational way to assert that election spending is not speech if we believe that “money talks” to express both our preferences and our displeasures? If corporations, which are simply the legal representation of their shareholders, are not “people” with constitutional rights (including freedom of speech), are unions or clubs or political parties … or families? If almost 235 years of constitutional law has taught us anything, it is that every law or rule must be interpreted and applied, and the devil of First Amendment law lies in who decides and how.

Today’s debacle may be built into an increasingly partisan system that selects Supreme Court justices from a very very narrow slice of the U.S. population, appoints them for life, segregates them from society, denies them the freedom to broadly discuss or gather opinions about controversial legal issues, and allows them to act in deeply political and self-serving ways with nearly absolute impunity (think Ginni Thomas). The similarity of justices’ personal experiences, legal training, and backgrounds (with even the most “diverse” members of the Court coming typically through the most prestigious and expensive Ivy League schools) predisposes even the most “liberal” among them to be cautious about broad rulings or new directions and encourages them toward inapt historical analogies ill-suited to real, contemporary applications. Personalities/ideologies that differentially lean individual justices toward or against compromise, mutual respect, and adherence to solid precedent (rather than its selective and overt misapplication and misrepresentation) weigh heavily in an adversarial “justice” system that leads parties to select and color their interpretation of data and allow decisions to be made without a complete set of verifiable, objective facts or full review of all relevant information.

Constitutional scholars (including me) have done little to help the Court address its errors or forge a better path forward because publishable/influential work must justify and credential itself with grounding in the very Court precedents and practices it wishes to excoriate. Like a dog chasing its tail, scholars follow the lead of the Court they wish to influence. The result is Court approval of high rollers with bottomless pocketbooks spending unlimited amounts on election chicanery, lies, and attacks, while voters make poorly informed choices among so-called representatives who offer impossible promises and distorted records that disguise their swift and inevitable dive into the coffers and influence of big money.

When all laws are subject to interpretation, and the rule of law is mutable, no constitutional amendment will correct the problem.

Photo by Brad Weaver on Unsplash

April 2, 2022

Yesterday I pulled a rune for the first time in a long while. Ansuz, the first of the thirteen cycle runes of self-awakening and self-change. Auspicious. Ansuz says it is timely for me to receive a message from the universe, a message that can be life changing. Perhaps the rune itself?

Ten days until classes start and I am far from ready. Yet I find myself pickling beets and putting up roasted peppers to kick off this year’s serious canning. Tomatoes are slow because of the cool nights this summer, and they and my infantile squash have a long way to go. I’m hopeful the predicted week of hot weather (just in time for my class-free summer days to end) will get things going. So I’m watering in preparation and thinking what a blessing it is not to have the wildfire smoke and drought so far this year. I never realized how much I had to be grateful for before last summer’s awful smoke and fire-terror filled days and nights. I don’t feel ready to get back to the grind of classes. I’m feeling a bit edgy, touching on overwhelmed, but classes wait for no (wo)man, so push on I must.

As I canned, I spent some time thinking about radical transformation and change. The holidays offer the chance to establish new patterns, new traditions, to create new habits just for me. So last night I went to the pond cabin for no reason other than to change. It was musty and stuffy and hot from being closed up unused through this past week of 90-plus days and much longer, but I decided to sleep there and luxuriate in that space, that wonderful wild place.

I’m glad I stayed there, though I didn’t get a wink of sleep. In the end, I dragged a spare mattress out on the screened porch for some fresh air and a bit of a breeze and for the “glamping” aspect. Ha! I was rewarded by a night of sleepless attentiveness to all the animal noises only a screen away and by a late night/early morning visit from the bear. She was standing beside the pond tearing the leaves and branches from the mountain ash, making these low, soft throat vocalizations. Little half growl half purrs. Gentle sounds of self-comfort.

Still, here I am well before 6 a.m. with my coffee and yogurt, shaking the night from my head, and thinking I’ll revise those first chapters of the memoir here in the cabin, away from routine and the demands of the new term. Worth a shot.

Aug. 17, 2016

All our work on the Bernie campaign produced a 78% win for him among Idaho Democrats. Truly wonderful and remarkable. Then two days of glorious weather have me acting as if it’s spring: cleaning the garden, shopping for plants, but I know it’s false hope. That was a few days ago, before I spent four hours in half a foot of the new, heavy, wet snow that falls this time of year (knocking the power out, too, of course) with the tow truck to get my RAV out of the culvert next to the drive up to Keith’s pond.

Everything started so well, and then the freezing rain began. I left for yoga at 7:20 and was returning on ice-slick roads from a wonderful class. Carefully navigating the steep, slush-covered drive, I was stopped dead just above the culvert, blocked by an enormous, 80-foot pine that had fallen across the drive. I had no way to drag it out of the way and, with my neighbor out of the country, no one to cut it up and clear it with his chainsaw. Nothing but to try to back back down with limited rear visibility. Near the bottom I decided to back into the pond drive to turn around, but as I made the turn, slipping sideways, the weight of the engine slid the front end in seeming slow motion off into the culvert, wedging the front bumper against the ground and leaving the driver’s tire dangling. That bumper saved me from rolling. No way a pickup would pull me out of that.

It took a long wait for a large tow truck and a long winch line wrapped around two trees to ease the car backwards up the incline to get me back on four wheels. Meantime, the tow truck slid off the drive, but my neighbor with her trusty pickup got it back out. Quite the fiasco. I called around and found someone to get the tree off the drive for a usurer’s ransom. Someone else pushed the slush off the drive to make it passable, and I have spent the past two days in pure recovery mode. Living in these woods in my sixties definitely has its challenges.

March 24, 2016

The temperature dropped to 9 degrees last night and it’s 58 in the house, which isn’t too bad except that my fingers get really cold writing. Once the fire gets going, it’ll heat up. The main driveway is passable again after my ex next door spent half a day plowing yesterday. Apparently he decided it needed to be done because a friend nearly slid off into the creek near the top of the rise a few days back. I’m glad he has friends who like to visit or else he might never plow until it’s too deep for his ATV, which it almost is.

I’ve been trying to find someone to plow my spur and to help with the main drive, but no luck. No one wants to drive out here to plow even though some plow quite nearby. It’s something I hadn’t foreseen, this difficulty of getting folks to come out here to work. I mean it is only five miles from town!!!

It took me five hours to shovel the deck, but I’m glad I did it. The stuff was really piling up and I’m afraid it can’t take that much weight. Who knows when it’ll stop coming down. I earned sore muscles for all that shoveling. And the drive is thigh deep. I have to get some help with that.

On top of that, I needed to bring in Presto logs from the hardware store because I’m worried I won’t have enough firewood for the entire winter. This was supposed to happen weeks ago, but the neighbor with the truck is full of good intentions and sometimes lacks the opportunity to follow them through, shall we say. Anyway, turns out the delivery had to be this weekend or who knows when because of other commitments. Unplowed driveway be damned.

In her trusty 4WD truck with chains, she insisted she’d be good backing into the unplowed drive. But she’s unfamiliar with it and rather overzealous and quite confident of her driving skills, though some have suggested otherwise. So back in she did and kept too close to the uphill side, a natural instinct were it not for the drainage ditch there. She got stuck up to the axle, tore up the drive, and nearly capsized the truck, dumping a large share of the logs into the snow. Another friend helped dig them out and get them under shelter quickly because they absolutely disintegrate when wet. He also promised to bring his big snowblower up tomorrow to clear my drive. Hooray. Thank heaven.

Yikes. The drive’s a real mess, impassable for sure, because we had to get a tractor in to tow out the truck. Now my friend’s snowblower seems to be out of commission, but he assures me he’ll come up tomorrow with his neighbor’s four-wheeler and plow because after a slightly warmer day the snow is now too heavy to blow. I’m worried I’ll have to park at the bottom and haul everything in the half mile all winter if we don’t get this figured out soon.

But it’s such a small problem compared to a friend’s ongoing and ever uglier divorce, another’s serious financial woes, their personal and parental medical problems including, perhaps, early onset dementia, vague murmurings of what sounds like abuse and an irregularity in a breast that now requires a lumpectomy and more tests.

I hate it that I seem to use their serious issues as a reality check, but they really do help me see how truly blessed I am now, living here in this beautiful place I built, where my biggest challenge is the driveway. Oh, and a brief encounter with my ex to deliver his wine that was incorrectly delivered to me. He looked like it nearly killed him to stand outside (he would NOT come in) and chat for a minute while I retrieved the wine. But such small problems. Thank you, universe.

Jan. 8, 2016

We had a massive wind storm last night. All around town, limbs were crashing and power was out so folks went off to bed by 8 p.m. I had power but went to bed early too. So, here it is, 4 a.m., and I’m writing a children’s book in my head rather than go back to sleep. I’ll scribble down what I have to empty my brain and maybe go back to sleep, though I doubt it.

Despite–or because of–the early start, it was a good day. I finished a first draft of the children’s story that once I get it illustrated will be a great one-of-a-kind Christmas present. I’m really happy to have that in the works, and it gave me the reality of being productive while totally avoiding those horrible class essays I need to grade. Ugh. I reviewed all the sources used, and in the main they did so poorly there that I may merely do mechanical grading for failure to meet the prompt’s requirements. It’s beyond sad that this is the work of graduating seniors, but I’m not going to tie myself in knots about it.

A proposal for a two-term, two-country Fulbright on migration and conflict in Turkey and Greece passed the first hurdle with Phil and Sevda on board, and Greek Fulbright looking into how to make it possible. It would be wonderful and exciting and a great way to move toward a hoped-for 2020 retirement. I hope it works out. Meanwhile, I really do need to get cracking on that quilt for Matthew and Lizzie.

I am occupied with too much busy-ness these days and need to go outside for a stroll with Otto. The forest will do me good.

Nov. 18, 2015