[Blogger’s NOTE:  The latest Quinnipiac poll, in which Joe Biden jumped to a six point lead (50-44) is evidence Donald Trump is stuck at a ceiling in the mid-40s while Biden’s previous lows were a floor.  Additionally, Trump’s behavior in and out of the courtroom has alienated women and independents increasing Biden’s margin among these all important constituencies.  Based on this trend, I thought it might be time to take a break and explore the less serious side of the current political discourse.]

Back in the days of young adult mystery series such as Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, there were also the tales of an adventurous young scientist whose stories involved space ships, ray guns and other futuristic inventions.  An endearing feature of the Tom Swift novels was author Victor Appleton’s use of adverbs or synonyms for the word “said” to enhance the characters’ dialogue.  A terse response might include the phrase, “Tom said quickly.”  Or when he hesitated, Appleton would add, “Tom stammered.”

In response, fans of Appleton’s work created a parlor game which became known as “Tom Swifties.”  The goal was to emulate the author’s style with the addition of a pun.  The following is the oft-cited classic example.

“If you want me, I shall be in the attic,” Tom said loftily.

Tom Swifties gained popularity following a May 13, 1963 article in Time magazine which included a contest where readers were encouraged to share their own creations.  Below are a couple of my all-time favorites.

“What our team needs is a home run hitter,” Tom said ruthlessly.

“We just struck oil,” Tom gushed.

Based on the GOP’s obsession with another Swift, I wondered if it might be time to revive the pastime, this time under the banner “Taylor Swifties.”  Consider the following examples.

“I think it’s time to put Senator Grassley from Iowa out to pasture,” Taylor chuckled.

“I’ll take my fans over his supporters any day of the year,” Taylor trumpeted.

“I’m pretty sure there is a deep state conspiracy behind the Chiefs’ Super Bowl run, although I have no evidence,” PizzaGate theorist Jack Posbiec  fumbled.

To enter the Deprog101 Challenge #1, submit your “Taylor Swifties” as comments to this post.  “The winner will receive a free life-time subscription to this blog,” Dr. ESP said frugally.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

Wake up, Maggie, I think I got somethin’ to say to you
It’s late September and I really should be back at school.

~Rod Steward/”Maggie May”

Following the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by election deniers, there has been a push for civics to be taught at every education level from kindergarten to college.  Ironically, the movement has been led by some of the same people who supported efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.  As reported by the New York Times last November, the governors of Florida, South Dakota and Virginia are at the forefront of this movement.  Implementation of their stated goal is even more problematic.  Though supporters of the new standards claim they hope to make instruction less ideological, the Times reports the curriculum reflects conservative positions and values.

Though I often write about things I know little about, I do believe my three degrees in American Government (B.A. from UVA) and Political Science (M.A. and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins) afford me the right to weigh in on this topic.  The curriculum at both universities focused on process.  What authority does the Constitution give each branch of government?  Which decisions are reserved for the federal government and which for the states?  How have Supreme Court decisions from Marbury v. Madison to Nixon (1803) v. United States (1974) added flesh to the framework adopted in 1789?  And finally, in times of crisis, how has that framework ensured preservation of the founders’ vision and ideals for America and when has it failed?

Implementation of Florida’s newly adopted curriculum appears to be going in a different direction.  The state Department of Education turned to two conservative entities to develop the workshop in which Florida teachers are trained to deliver the revised standards.  Hillsdale College, a private conservative liberal arts college in Michigan whose general counsel Ian Norton helped plan the fake electors scheme in his home state.  And the Bill of Rights Institute founder by major Republican donor Charles Koch.  One example of the their impact on the curriculum is promoting an “originalist” view of the U.S. constitution with no mention of the opposing philosophy of a “living constitution” which argues the document must evolve in response to societal change.

Whenever Governor Ron DeSantis talks about the need for civics education he uses the word “patriots” instead of “citizens.”  Interesting, because the Constitution defines who is and who is not a citizen under the 14th Amendment, Section 1.1.2 referred to as the “Citizenship Clause Doctrine.”  The words “patriot” and “patriotism” do not appear anywhere in the original document or any of the amendments.  Why?  Because patriotism is subjective, as we learned on January 6, 2021.  For some the patriots that day where law enforcement officers who ensured Congress could carry out its responsibility to count the electoral vote.  For others, the “patriots” were those who breached the Capitol walls in an attempt to overturn a free and fair election.

But let me end on a positive note.  In the previous blog “The Lady Doth Protest Too Much,” I described my own experience attending segregated schools in Richmond, Virginia.  At the time, Black students could only attend Maggie L. Walker High School, named for the first African-American woman to found and serve as president of a United States chartered bank.  Founded in 1937, the school closed in 1990.  The renovated building reopened in 2001 as the Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School for Government and International Studies devoted to a mission that:

…will develop life-long learners who embrace the responsibility of citizenship, the value of ethical leadership, and the richness of diverse cultures.

A picture of the current student population suggests American education can promote both solid citizenship and diversity.

In August 2014, Maggie Walker Governor’s School was ranked by Newsweek as the 12th best public high school in the U.S.  In 2023, their position rose to #8.  In 2022, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin supported legislation that would prohibit admissions policies used to promote diversity at Maggie Walker and other Governor’s Schools across the state.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

Dear Dr. ESP,

Here you go again.  A fourth post about Nikki Haley.  I’m beginning to think you have an unnatural obsession with the former governor.  What’s the deal?

~Same Imaginary Reader

Dear Imaginary, my interest in Haley is less about her as a presidential candidate and more about how she constantly reminds me how uncreative Americans can be when they want to avoid an inconvenient truth.  When it comes to her sensitivity to the role slavery plays in the Black experience, here is what Haley wants us to believe.

If you grow up in South Carolina, literally in second and third grade, you learn about slavery. You grow up and you have — you know, I had Black friends growing up. It is a very talked-about thing.

It was not just slavery that was talked about, It was more about racism that was talked about. It was more about, you know, we had friends, we had Black friends, we had White friends. But it was always a topic of conversation, even among our friends.

Every liar has a tell.  One of the most frequent is the need to pepper an explanation with unnecessary detail and repetition.  “If you grow up in South Carolina you learn about slavery” was not sufficient.  It happened “literally in the second and third grade.”  Then she refers to friends three times and her Black friends twice.  And she twice claims slavery and racism were a constant topic of conversation.

Haley’s life story suggests something quite different.  Whatever empathy she has for the Black experience did not result from her education.  Like the rest of us, it came from experience.  If she had learned about slavery in elementary school would she have needed the massacre at Mother Emanuel AME Church to finally realize the Confederate flag flying over the state capitol was “a deeply offensive symbol of a brutally offensive past.” (June 22, 2015)  She affirmed it was NOT her 2nd and 3rd grade lessons, when she admitted in the same speech, “The events of this week call upon us to look at this in a different way.”  As reported by the New York Times:

It was a dramatic turnabout for Ms. Haley, a second-term Republican governor who over her five years in the job has displayed little interest in addressing the intensely divisive issue of the flag.

Too bad that lesson had less impact than her elementary school curriculum.  In a December 6, 2019 interview with USA Today writer Susan Page, Haley backtracked again, claiming, “…you know, people [South Carolinians] saw it [the flag] as service, and sacrifice, and heritage” until the Mother Emanuel shooter, in her words, “hi-jacked it.”  Is that what all her Black friends told her?  I know one who did not, former RNC chair Michael Steel, who tweeted in response to the interview:

Really, Nikki?! The Confederate Flag represented “service, sacrifice and heritage”? To whom? The black people who were terrorized & lynched in its name? You said it should never have been there. Roof didn’t hijack the meaning of that flag, he inherited it.

Having grown up in the South mid-20th century, I did not learn the impact of slavery and racism on Black Americans from discussions with my African-American friends, as Nikki Haley alleges she did.  You know why.  I did not have any!  I went to segregated schools.  I went to the movies at segregated theaters.  I ate at segregated restaurants.  And when I entered the main gate at Parker Field to watch our hometown Triple-A Yankee farm team the Richmond Virginians, I saw how Black attendees could only enter through the gate to the right-field bleachers.

When the first African-Americans were admitted in 1966 to Thomas Jefferson High School, which I also attended, I did not need them to explain the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.  The fact that it took 347 years, dating back to the arrival of the first African slaves in 1619, for these students to enter an institution named after the man who wrote “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” was all I needed to know.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

The Middle East is not the only place subject to proportionate responses to attacks.  The following headline appeared in this morning’s edition of the New York Times.

Wife of Investor Who Pushed for Harvard President’s Exit Accused of Plagiarism

Without looking into the merits of the charge, the first thing that came to mind was a question.  Is it possible any prolific writer could be accused of intellectual theft?  And the Dr. ESP corollary, could I?

Regular readers of this blog know, I certainly make an effort to attribute quotations to the originator.  Additionally, some feedback to my recent book In the National Interest suggests the number of footnotes (over 250), at times, detracted from the pace of the narrative.  Looking back, however, I wonder whether a recent post did involve plagiarism.

My December 29, 2023 post “Word of the Year 2023” included the following sentence about reaction to Nikki Haley’s attempts to clean up her “gaffe” about the cause of the American Civil War.

This response was so ludicrous even Ron DeSantis accused her of trying to whitewash history (after which he vanished in a puff of irony).

As I was drafting the sentence, I self-acknowledged the parenthetical phrase had a ring of familiarity.  So, I Googled several variations of the phrase, the most generic being simply “puff of irony.”  No hits.  In the process, I did learn that many language experts believe “irony” is the most abused word in the English Language.  And that Glenn Burnett and Jeff Devlon wrote a book titled The Ironic Cloud in which they describe irony  as “…a powerful and incompletely understood feature of human dynamics.”

Believing I had satisfied my responsibility for due diligence, I included the passage.  Though there is always that possibility someone (most likely a satirist a la the late Mort Sahl) will contact me and demand I either give the originator credit or delete the phrase from the archived version of the post.  Which I would immediately do, no questions asked.

But what if that individual, instead, went to the New York Times with the story how a blogger masked his own plagiarism in December by posting a subsequent blog about how hard he tries not to steal others’ intellectual property.  If contacted by the Times for comment, I would tell them exactly what I shared above.  Would that be good enough?  When so many people are out for blood, it is hard to stop the flow from even the slightest wound.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

On December 15, Dictionary.com selected “hallucinate” as its Word of the Year 2023.  It is not the word I would have chosen, even considering their focus on hallucination’s relevance to artificial intelligence.  Below is the official announcement.

The definition strikes me as an inaccurate description of both “hallucinating” and “artificial intelligence.”  If they intended to show how information can be mangled, or even corrupted, to make a non-factual observation, based on their own definitions, a better choice would have been the following.

CONTEXT

noun

If we learned anything at all during this off-year political conversation, it is the adage “context is everything” no longer applies.  Today, the more apt lesson is, “If you need context to explain any declaration, you have already lost the argument.”  Just ask the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania.

I should have learned this lesson in 1978, when, as director of development planning at the Maryland Department of Economic and Community Development, my team drafted a development policy agenda titled, “A Five-Part Strategy for the Maryland Marketplace.”  The tag line?  “Maryland, Close to What Counts.”  The document laid out the context for this phrase including the state’s proximity to every major East Coast population center, the Nation’s capital, its shipping access via the Chesapeake Bay and the port of Baltimore, etc.  Within weeks, the Delaware economic development agency launched a new campaign.  “Delaware, What Counts.”  They might as well have added, “Maryland, Close but No Cigar!”

While I hopefully did not continue to make that same mistake, others have been less fortunate.  During the 2023 election cycle, voters in Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia told the GOP leadership and pro-life advocates, “If you have to explain why government should intervene in decisions about reproductive health, take your message elsewhere.”  In contrast, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat in a deep red state, won re-election based on a campaign ad in which the now 21 year-old victim asks, “Should a 12 year-old, who has been raped by her stepfather, have to bring his baby to term?”  Game, set, match.  No context needed.

Wednesday night, Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley, at a rally in New Hampshire, ripped the award for “worst answer of the year” from the hands of the three university presidents who wilted during the House Education Committee hearing on anti-Semitism on college campuses.  When asked, “What caused the American Civil War,” she pontificated about the role of government, individual freedom and capitalism.  She did not mention the word “slavery,” to which the questioner replied, “In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word slavery.”  In the video you see Haley hesitate, wondering how to put her response in context.  Lesson #2.  Do not expect, much less ask, those who disagree with you to provide the context in which to explain your position.  Haley responded, “What do you want me to say about slavery?”  In other words, in what context do you want or expect me to talk about slavery?  This response was so ludicrous even Ron DeSantis accused her of trying to whitewash history (after which he vanished in a puff of irony).

Politics and academia are not the sole arenas in which context is used to mask the more obvious reason for any action.  During the holidays, my son-in-law gave me a book by Bruce Schoenfeld titled Game of Edges.  The subtitle reads, “The Analytics Revolution and the Future of Professional Sports.”  A central theme focuses on team ownership and how it has morphed from a hobby of the rich and famous into the most successful investment in their portfolios.  The gift’s relevance was affirmed when the Los Angeles Dodgers spent over one billion dollars to sign two players:  Shohei Ohtani ($750 million over ten years) and Yoshinobu Yamamoto ($325 million over 12 years).

It begs the obvious question about return on this record breaking outlay.  “Will their presence on the Dodgers’ roster generate enough revenue to justify their inflated salaries?”  Sports journalists provided an array of answers about TV contracts, merchandise royalties and income from other activities associated with the team.  Although, I doubt Nobel laureate John Nash could calculate how many #17 and #18 jerseys (Ohtani and Yamamoto, respectively) you need to sell to raise a billion dollars. Schoenfeld suggests such financial gymnastics are unnecessary.  There is a simple answer.  Guggenheim Baseball Management (GBM), headed by majority owner Mark Walter, purchased the Dodgers in 2011 for $2.15 billion dollars.  If sold today, the buyers would pay an estimated minimum of $4.25 billion.  GBM and Walter would recover their investment with a billion dollars to spare.

As we approach 2024, the question for the Biden campaign is whether they have learned the lesson.  Yes, Bidenomics has been successful.  The post-pandemic American economy is the envy of the industrialized world.  Lower inflation.  Higher GDP.  Most job growth in a presidential term.  Increasing consumer confidence.  Inflation reduced by 67 percent without a recession. But that requires context and a longer attention span than most voters have.  You know what does not.  A box score on any sports web site or on the sports pages of any newspaper.  You immediately know which team won and why.  Therefore I suggest the Biden campaign start purchasing billboards across the country with a series of box scores.  Here are two examples.

21st Century Recessions

21st Century Job Creation (in millions)

Let the GOP fumble with the context.

POSTSCRIPT: 2024 Word of the Year

Will journalists, academics and politicians continue to invoke the word “context” in the coming year?  I, for one, hope so.  Although it may take on new significance, requiring  one more definitional variation.

CONTEXT

noun

~a Donald Trump post on social media.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP