Imagery and dramaturgy tend to displace veracity and verity.
Haltom's 11th salutes seeming, which usually outperforms being.
Haltom's 11th should not be interpreted to do more than state a routine inequality: appearances will avail most people most of the time far more than actualities will. The apparent need not displace the actual because appearances work best when they accommodate or accentuate actualities. Indeed, appearances often complete actualities on first dates or in weddings. The competent observer pays attention both to actualities and to appearances, both to what what is going on and to what is being said, sung, shot, or otherwise conveyed about what is going on.
The late David Mayhew stirred political science when he noted how seeming rounded out being in the U. S. Congress. Professor Mayhew did not argue that congresspeople were indifferent to vindication of principles, to improvements in policies, to acquisition of power, or to advancement of agendas personal, partisan, or pecuniary. However, he helped us to see that, to approach any goal or goals, the congressperson had to get herself or himself re-elected. This led lawmakers to seek publicity ["advertising"], to orate eloquently on problems and bills ["position-taking"], and to bribe their constituents with benefits ["credit-claiming"]. Of course, cynics -- my volk! -- tlansrated [sic] advertising as public-relations blather, position-taking as empty posturing, and credit-claiming as pork-barrel politicking. Either way, congresspeople performed well and secured re-election through dramaturgy. Because their survival as members of Congress demanded fraud, frauds they delivered. Congressional con artists made certain that their appearances accommodated and augmented actualities.
Appearances accommodate and complement actualities in other institutions as well. Academic institutions abound in advertising, position-taking, and credit-claiming because they abound in con artists. Institutional and individual web-pages advertise virtues and accomplishments that are more about seeming than being. Schools and scholars alike take positions athwart ignorance and inveigh against evils of an age, evils from when most immediately shrink rather than back their shibboleths or slogans with any actions that might cost them anything. How quickly Dr. Alligator Mouth becomes Professor Ostrich Head! And, of course, this university and that professor claim credit for any good that might be associated with higher education and evade responsibility for any harms that might be attributed to them personally or institutionally. No professor is so complete and utter a fraud as when he or she sits through a celebration of her or his retirement without rebutting the recited litany of ways in which the retiring single-handedly extended the frontiers of knowledge. [Remember! The frontiers of knowledge may be extended by shrinking what is known.]
Haltom's Eleventh Law applies to academic institutions differentially. The more respected and respectable the institution, the more that seeming must be backed by being eventually. The less respectable an institution and the less respected its faculty, the more that seeming will substitute for being over a longer period.
Accordingly, at a respected institution, a manuscript must appear between covers and be issued by a respectable press to continue to be touted as a "book." Books, articles, and reviews each have looming expiration dates after which the author must forfeit repute for his or her fecundity. At even mediocre schools, someone at some time will contrast the record [being] with the reputation [seeming] eventually. If the seeming outpaces the being too much for too long, an evaluator will flirt with such f-words as "fraud" or "failure." At sub-par schools, by contrast, "the culture of evidence" is so occasional and so selective that the author of some of the best rotogravure inserts a tourist bureau could underwrite may parlay such "refereed publications" into tenure and promotion. Indeed, some schools are so desperate to simulate greatness that their faculty will salute fulsomely some colleague for producing a book that has never appeared even as a manuscript in a dozen years. At some point, those who have praised "the book" over the years do not want to acknowledge that they have been lauding an accomplishment more apparent than actual. Belonging to an academic cargo cult would embarrass the laudatory. Better to praise a colleague's invisible manuscript and the latent glory with which it showers the institution and the institutionalized.
Whatever the level of academic institutions, those who cannot be must seem if they are to preserve their sinecures, secure prizes, and maintain an aura of potential. Most of us can simulate much more than we can realize, so seeming beats being for almost all of us almost all of the time, even at the better institutions. The worse the setting and the less accomplished the peers, moreover, the more that seeming may supplant being. Indeed, at truly weak venues, faculty are so busy covering up their lack of productivity that they have too little time in which to be productive. Seeming takes up all their time.
Haltom's Eleventh hints at high art when candidates for tenure must seem excellent without being even competent. As I have noted in previous blogs, at the University of Puget Clowns the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] will certify perhaps 85% of candidates for tenure as excellent teachers and excellent scholars. Some will not just seem but be excellent teachers. Some will be truly excellent scholars rather than performatively and ritually excellent scholars. Almost no one will excel at both teaching and scholarship unless the FAC and co-conspirators manipulate appearances to mask realities. If a candidate for tenure is beloved by her or his department, the department will furnish intra-disciplinary perspectives from which flawed or non-existent accomplishments are "actually" evidence of excellences. Of course, if a department or an FAC or an administrator wants rid of someone, evaluators will pronounce themselves disconsolate that she or he has failed of some standard of which everyone else in his or her tenure-class also failed.
Seeming is more than enough for those whom Puget Clowns wants to keep. Being is not enough for those whom Puget Clowns wants to go. Thus does seeming profit one more than being at the University of Puget Clowns.
After tenure, such seeming must be taken for being. This explains why so many colleagues will shake their heads at junior faculty who worry about verisimilitude. Colleagues addicted to discovering and communicating truth might expose this renowned intellectual as a mirage or that legendary teacher as an urban legend. Naïve faculty who say that "the book" is not invisible but non-existent imperil not only the author of the manuscript that never appears but also the system of evaluation and the institutional publicity that apotheozies him or her. The stubborn realist who opines that a renowned campus intellectual "... knows the first three sentences of every book ever written and nothing else" must be driven from our midst. Exile is too good for anyone who says that evaluation processes that promote fictions and folderol are corrupt; such a knave must be subjected to one or more degradation rituals, then exiled.
If seeming is to continue to outpace being, in sum, those who seemed excellent must be vigilant against demystifiers. Otherwise, a converse of the differential stated above becomes too obvious. Above I wrote, "The more respected and respectable the institution, the more that seeming must be backed by being eventually. The less respectable an institution and the less respected its faculty, the more that seeming will substitute for being over a longer period." One does not want to reverse that premise: "The longer and more that seeming substitutes for being, the less respectable the institution and the less respected its faculty."
Coming Soon -- Haltom's Twelfth Law: No matter how well you teach a class-session, the students would have preferred you to cancel.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Haltom's Tenth Law: As good as it is to be trusted, it is even better not to have to be trusted.
Truly trustworthy people husband trust through transparency and accountability. Those who say "You'll just have to trust me/us" are not trustworthy.
Haltom's Tenth Law pertains to private relations and to public personas. When people want to impart some secret and say, "I trust you," note Haltom's 10th: prefer to be incapable of violating some confidence rather than to be confided in.
Those who vouchsafe me private information need not fear that I might blab, but I cannot spill beans I do not possess. I try to stick with the observable and the verifiable so that friends and colleagues may satisfy themselves that what I assert is true. Nice as it is to hear that I am trusted, I find life easier and more serene when I need not be trusted.
If you cite Haltom's 10th, expect multiple benefits. You will stifle hoped-for leaks by telling a leaker that the rumor is not going anywhere. The less one hears about wife-swapping or recreational drug use, the better. When exposure comes, no part of the consequences will follow from your knowing or doing anything.
You will nonetheless acquire previously latent information because people tend to share with one who would just as soon not know. Careful! You may thereby come to appreciate Bob Seeger's "Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then" ["Against the Wind"] in a new way.
Perhaps the greatest payoff from Haltom's 10th is as a reminder that the more that anyone protests his or her trustworthiness, the less trustworthy she or he is likely to be.
Trustworthiness like other virtues is usually evident. If you must tell those who know you that you possess a virtue, you exemplify the virtue too little. The sexy do not have to cadge compliments; the strong do not advertise their strength; the honest seldom have to protest their integrity.
Moreover, those who cannot be virtuous redouble their efforts to seem virtuous. Masters of virtues are fewer than professors of virtues, just as those who profess ethics are more numerous than those who live ethics [Haltom's Third Law]. The underlying dynamics of being and seeming were covered long ago by Machiavelli and will be covered in the next entry in "Rump Parliament" by your present correspondent.
Hence, when a colleague or superordinate says, "Trust me," the prudent academic distrusts the performance and the performer. Why is reassurance being produced unless there might be good reason not to trust or to distrust? Has anyone but a crook ever assured you that he or she was not a crook? Why tell me you will respect me in the morning unless you suspect that I might believe that you will not?
One requests or demands trust when one knows one is not trusted, will not be trusted, or should not be trusted. The confidence man trades on confidence he entices from you. The politician asks you to put trust in her because she has no better argument.
"Trust me" often serves as a polite form of "Shut up." When an administrator claims that some committee has addressed some matter, that claim is tantamount to refusal to account for the committee. If the committee's decision-making would stand scrutiny, the administrator would be more forthcoming. When committees' processes or outcomes will not bear skepticism, administrators raise trust and civility to suggest that genteel colleagues will not reason why or make reply.
When, for example, an ad hoc committee wanted to assay differences in the tenuring and promotion of males and females at the University, those with access to such information produced it only in its least revealing form and after great delay. When faculty who work with data asked for more revealing data, they were stonewalled with the confidentiality of personnel processes. When these faculty protested that confidentiality could be preserved but good data provided -- for example, by moving averages or other statistics resistent to disaggregation but revealing of gendered disparities -- they were scolded for not trusting those who provided the information. [In one sense, the scolding was merited: if administrators will not find a way to provide reliable, valid information, one already knows what the administrators are striving to conceal.]
Administrators and colleagues might not stifle requests for accountability if they could be certain that faculty and staff would accept accounts. Almost all faculty are unaware of accounts. Made aware of accounts, almost all faculty are indifferent to them. Yet those hoarding latent information fear an outbreak of critical citizenship.
Such fears belie almost all experience in faculty meetings, committees, and the Faculty Senate, yet administrators preempt sensible inquiries with "confidentiality" and "trust" and other shibboleths. Of course, once an administrator proclaims herself or himself worthy of and insistent upon trust, any experienced member of the faculty knows that decisions, the makers of those decisions, and the process by which the decisions were taken cannot survive even the gentlest questioning. "Time to move along." "Nothing to see here."
The majority of the faculty on occasion accommodate insultingly incredible justifications. The routine state of affairs is that almost all faculty are ignorant of and indifferent to decisions, decision-making, and decision-makers. This is the most important rationale behind Haltom's Tenth Law. To be a trusted subject of the University of Puget Clowns, one must be judged to be docile, decorous, and daft [or an "at will" employee, such as staff or untenured faculty].
One who does not have to be trusted or who is not trusted, it follows, receives one of the highest accolades that administrators or power committees can bestow. If such plaudits were medals, the inscription might read "Neither a Dupe nor a Dope!"
Trust me!
Coming Soon -- Haltom's Eleventh Law: Seeming beats being.
Haltom's Tenth Law pertains to private relations and to public personas. When people want to impart some secret and say, "I trust you," note Haltom's 10th: prefer to be incapable of violating some confidence rather than to be confided in.
Those who vouchsafe me private information need not fear that I might blab, but I cannot spill beans I do not possess. I try to stick with the observable and the verifiable so that friends and colleagues may satisfy themselves that what I assert is true. Nice as it is to hear that I am trusted, I find life easier and more serene when I need not be trusted.
If you cite Haltom's 10th, expect multiple benefits. You will stifle hoped-for leaks by telling a leaker that the rumor is not going anywhere. The less one hears about wife-swapping or recreational drug use, the better. When exposure comes, no part of the consequences will follow from your knowing or doing anything.
You will nonetheless acquire previously latent information because people tend to share with one who would just as soon not know. Careful! You may thereby come to appreciate Bob Seeger's "Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then" ["Against the Wind"] in a new way.
Perhaps the greatest payoff from Haltom's 10th is as a reminder that the more that anyone protests his or her trustworthiness, the less trustworthy she or he is likely to be.
Trustworthiness like other virtues is usually evident. If you must tell those who know you that you possess a virtue, you exemplify the virtue too little. The sexy do not have to cadge compliments; the strong do not advertise their strength; the honest seldom have to protest their integrity.
Moreover, those who cannot be virtuous redouble their efforts to seem virtuous. Masters of virtues are fewer than professors of virtues, just as those who profess ethics are more numerous than those who live ethics [Haltom's Third Law]. The underlying dynamics of being and seeming were covered long ago by Machiavelli and will be covered in the next entry in "Rump Parliament" by your present correspondent.
Hence, when a colleague or superordinate says, "Trust me," the prudent academic distrusts the performance and the performer. Why is reassurance being produced unless there might be good reason not to trust or to distrust? Has anyone but a crook ever assured you that he or she was not a crook? Why tell me you will respect me in the morning unless you suspect that I might believe that you will not?
One requests or demands trust when one knows one is not trusted, will not be trusted, or should not be trusted. The confidence man trades on confidence he entices from you. The politician asks you to put trust in her because she has no better argument.
"Trust me" often serves as a polite form of "Shut up." When an administrator claims that some committee has addressed some matter, that claim is tantamount to refusal to account for the committee. If the committee's decision-making would stand scrutiny, the administrator would be more forthcoming. When committees' processes or outcomes will not bear skepticism, administrators raise trust and civility to suggest that genteel colleagues will not reason why or make reply.
When, for example, an ad hoc committee wanted to assay differences in the tenuring and promotion of males and females at the University, those with access to such information produced it only in its least revealing form and after great delay. When faculty who work with data asked for more revealing data, they were stonewalled with the confidentiality of personnel processes. When these faculty protested that confidentiality could be preserved but good data provided -- for example, by moving averages or other statistics resistent to disaggregation but revealing of gendered disparities -- they were scolded for not trusting those who provided the information. [In one sense, the scolding was merited: if administrators will not find a way to provide reliable, valid information, one already knows what the administrators are striving to conceal.]
Administrators and colleagues might not stifle requests for accountability if they could be certain that faculty and staff would accept accounts. Almost all faculty are unaware of accounts. Made aware of accounts, almost all faculty are indifferent to them. Yet those hoarding latent information fear an outbreak of critical citizenship.
Such fears belie almost all experience in faculty meetings, committees, and the Faculty Senate, yet administrators preempt sensible inquiries with "confidentiality" and "trust" and other shibboleths. Of course, once an administrator proclaims herself or himself worthy of and insistent upon trust, any experienced member of the faculty knows that decisions, the makers of those decisions, and the process by which the decisions were taken cannot survive even the gentlest questioning. "Time to move along." "Nothing to see here."
The majority of the faculty on occasion accommodate insultingly incredible justifications. The routine state of affairs is that almost all faculty are ignorant of and indifferent to decisions, decision-making, and decision-makers. This is the most important rationale behind Haltom's Tenth Law. To be a trusted subject of the University of Puget Clowns, one must be judged to be docile, decorous, and daft [or an "at will" employee, such as staff or untenured faculty].
One who does not have to be trusted or who is not trusted, it follows, receives one of the highest accolades that administrators or power committees can bestow. If such plaudits were medals, the inscription might read "Neither a Dupe nor a Dope!"
Trust me!
Coming Soon -- Haltom's Eleventh Law: Seeming beats being.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Haltom's Ninth Law: Age quod agis.
Figure out what you are doing; do that; avoid hypocrisy by doing what you said you were doing or would do.
An IMDb entry for "Tombstone" memorializes a minute of dialog that had me guffawing when first I saw it:
###Wyatt Earp: [to Ringo] He's drunk.
###Doc Holliday: In vino veritas. ["In wine is truth" ... ]
###Johnny Ringo: Age quod agis. ["Do what you do" ... ]
Imagine my joy. In a leadup to the O K Corral, Johnny Ringo and Doc Holliday chirp schoolboy Latin at one another. During their exchanges, much longer than I have included, Ringo uses a Jesuit motto, Age quod agis, "Do what you are doing." Does popular cinema get better than Jesuitic Latin?
Alas! "Age quod agis" is more exhortative than predictive. Most humans fail to come clean with themselves or others about what they are doing, let alone to conform to what they say they are doing or said that they would do.
The Jesuits who beset me meant by Age quod agis that one should focus on one's ends and pursue them one by one. Such an admonition against multi-tasking was reasonable and so has long been ignored. This presents no problems, for exhortations acquire both urgency and apparent cogency the less likely they are to be followed.
I, Professor Sisyphus, repeat Age quod agis continually in my writing course for Politics and Government majors to get them to focus monomaniacally on a thesis that they have set themselves. Every paragraph must serve that thesis directly or indirectly. If not, the author is not doing what she or he said she or he was doing. I ask students to spare readers digressions, asides, pseudo-philosophical posturing, and other professorial predilections. "This is your term paper, not my lecture!"
When I am not hectoring students with Age quod agis, I often am pestering colleagues to admit what they are doing even if I should prefer that they stop doing what they have been doing or start doing what they should be doing.
I have discerned little or no impact from my haranguing. Members of multiple Faculty Advancement Committees and the Professional Standards Cult [2003-2004] have stoutly refused to acknowledge or to account for their decisions, inflating varied and often creative Confidentiality Cons to excuse their reticence. I have induced no members of the Wigger Patwol -- those colleagues so busy proclaiming their own rigor that they have little time in which to do anything rigorously except to proclaim rigor -- to see that they are promoting only themselves and not learning.
Still, like a Lee's nail, I press on. I do what I am doing.
What am I doing? I am signaling my small band of readers and listeners that candid speech and transparent processes befit academics and that mendacity and subtrefuges betray academia.
My philippics do not move colleagues who have mastered "arguing in the alternative," the protean art of "doing" what one was not doing a moment before. Professor Oohooh ["On the One Hand; On the Other Hand"] parries Age quod agis with Virtus in medio stat -- "Virtue stands in the middle," which I admit that more than one Jesuit also said to me. Via elaborate dramaturgy, Professor Oohooh regales all within ear- or eyeshot with the rigors of agony through which he/she must persevere to reach decisions defensible, if at all, by excruciations that precede decisions. What decisions lack in merit, Professor Oohooh more than makes up in the glory of her/his self-crucifixion. Professor Oohooh's daily performances lead up Golgatha to a moment of decision during some matinee. If decision-makers are evenly divided, Professor Oohooh courts favor with each and all before casting a deciding vote after torment exquisite for him/her and endless for everyone else. If decision-makers reach a decision quickly, Professor Oohooh cautions that a no-brainer decision actually has numerous nuances that -- Lord be thanked -- Professor Oohooh has espied just in time to avoid a rush to judgment. A decision becomes hasty, of course, if taken before Professor Oohooh has run through the best material that she/he has prepared. As the voiceover at the start of Casablanca might have ended but did not: "And the people come to the meeting and wait ... and wait ... and wait ... and wait."
Please notice, however, that Professor Oohooh fulfills Haltom's Ninth Law. Professor Oohooh does what he/she is doing. She/He is chewing the scenery and voguing. He/She is simulating balanced, dispassionate decision-making. Indeed, sometimes Professor Oohooh is so buried in decision-taking that she/he is perfectly willing to avoid decision forever to prolong the throes of passionate simulation. Professor Oohooh does what he/she is doing, albeit that what she/he is doing is avoiding doing.
Coming Soon -- Haltom's Tenth Law: As good as it is to be trusted, it is even better not to have to be trusted.
An IMDb entry for "Tombstone" memorializes a minute of dialog that had me guffawing when first I saw it:
###Wyatt Earp: [to Ringo] He's drunk.
###Doc Holliday: In vino veritas. ["In wine is truth" ... ]
###Johnny Ringo: Age quod agis. ["Do what you do" ... ]
Imagine my joy. In a leadup to the O K Corral, Johnny Ringo and Doc Holliday chirp schoolboy Latin at one another. During their exchanges, much longer than I have included, Ringo uses a Jesuit motto, Age quod agis, "Do what you are doing." Does popular cinema get better than Jesuitic Latin?
Alas! "Age quod agis" is more exhortative than predictive. Most humans fail to come clean with themselves or others about what they are doing, let alone to conform to what they say they are doing or said that they would do.
The Jesuits who beset me meant by Age quod agis that one should focus on one's ends and pursue them one by one. Such an admonition against multi-tasking was reasonable and so has long been ignored. This presents no problems, for exhortations acquire both urgency and apparent cogency the less likely they are to be followed.
I, Professor Sisyphus, repeat Age quod agis continually in my writing course for Politics and Government majors to get them to focus monomaniacally on a thesis that they have set themselves. Every paragraph must serve that thesis directly or indirectly. If not, the author is not doing what she or he said she or he was doing. I ask students to spare readers digressions, asides, pseudo-philosophical posturing, and other professorial predilections. "This is your term paper, not my lecture!"
When I am not hectoring students with Age quod agis, I often am pestering colleagues to admit what they are doing even if I should prefer that they stop doing what they have been doing or start doing what they should be doing.
I have discerned little or no impact from my haranguing. Members of multiple Faculty Advancement Committees and the Professional Standards Cult [2003-2004] have stoutly refused to acknowledge or to account for their decisions, inflating varied and often creative Confidentiality Cons to excuse their reticence. I have induced no members of the Wigger Patwol -- those colleagues so busy proclaiming their own rigor that they have little time in which to do anything rigorously except to proclaim rigor -- to see that they are promoting only themselves and not learning.
Still, like a Lee's nail, I press on. I do what I am doing.
What am I doing? I am signaling my small band of readers and listeners that candid speech and transparent processes befit academics and that mendacity and subtrefuges betray academia.
My philippics do not move colleagues who have mastered "arguing in the alternative," the protean art of "doing" what one was not doing a moment before. Professor Oohooh ["On the One Hand; On the Other Hand"] parries Age quod agis with Virtus in medio stat -- "Virtue stands in the middle," which I admit that more than one Jesuit also said to me. Via elaborate dramaturgy, Professor Oohooh regales all within ear- or eyeshot with the rigors of agony through which he/she must persevere to reach decisions defensible, if at all, by excruciations that precede decisions. What decisions lack in merit, Professor Oohooh more than makes up in the glory of her/his self-crucifixion. Professor Oohooh's daily performances lead up Golgatha to a moment of decision during some matinee. If decision-makers are evenly divided, Professor Oohooh courts favor with each and all before casting a deciding vote after torment exquisite for him/her and endless for everyone else. If decision-makers reach a decision quickly, Professor Oohooh cautions that a no-brainer decision actually has numerous nuances that -- Lord be thanked -- Professor Oohooh has espied just in time to avoid a rush to judgment. A decision becomes hasty, of course, if taken before Professor Oohooh has run through the best material that she/he has prepared. As the voiceover at the start of Casablanca might have ended but did not: "And the people come to the meeting and wait ... and wait ... and wait ... and wait."
Please notice, however, that Professor Oohooh fulfills Haltom's Ninth Law. Professor Oohooh does what he/she is doing. She/He is chewing the scenery and voguing. He/She is simulating balanced, dispassionate decision-making. Indeed, sometimes Professor Oohooh is so buried in decision-taking that she/he is perfectly willing to avoid decision forever to prolong the throes of passionate simulation. Professor Oohooh does what he/she is doing, albeit that what she/he is doing is avoiding doing.
Coming Soon -- Haltom's Tenth Law: As good as it is to be trusted, it is even better not to have to be trusted.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Haltom's Eighth Law: No one may be offended; one must take offense
If you are offended, you made yourself offended.
As I recall, my eighth law issued from my fervid brow. It is overstated, so probably it is all mine. The law posits that statements of the form "A offended B" almost always amount to "B took offense at or over A."
Yes! I discovered another passive construction hiding agency. "I am offended ..." soft-pedals my own role in claiming offense.
Although in principle I suppose that some thing(s) might be so inherently offensive as to circumvent cognitive processes, in practice the taking of offense is usually a psychological and/or sociological and an instrumental and/or tactical production. Malediction, for example, need not offend and may even amuse. Cussing is often comedic, odic, epic, or ironic. Some cussing is Homeric. The Ballardite who gave me Haltom's Second and Fourth Laws used to exclaim, "By the testicles of Pericles!" for effect, not for offense.
Yes! I discovered that context matters. Who knew?
Only after one has eliminated alternative interpretations may one justifiably conclude that one has been insulted or assaulted. In Ballard, where most imprecations were little more than devices to intensify or to pace remarks, one might as well parse flatus as ponder curse words. But then, if in Ballard I said, "I find that offensive," I should expect an avalanche of more extreme remarks. Some of those might be intrinsically offensive: "Is it possible that your parents put all their offspring up for adoption and raised the afterbirth?"
Am I seriously maintaining that offensiveness might be relative? Naw! That's radical talk!
At the start of my second year at the university, the all-time Puget Clown asked me whether I had seen a certain fraternity "birding" PLU boosters at the Tacoma Dome during a recent football game. An alum of the University of Washington, I chortled at my cartoonish colleague. "Way worse than that happened every week in Husky Stadium," I offered. The Puget Clown added what he saw as the clincher: "Yes, but my sons were with me." To preserve the offense that he wanted to take, my colleague effortlessly transmogrified drunken frat boys into corrupters of youth. He thereby converted youthful enthusiasm into intrinsically offensive behavior by pointing out that his sons might have been coarsened or traumatized by witnessing such a disgusting display.
Deft deployment of high dudgeon. "Think of the children!" Good cover, weenie.
I certainly hope that he does not recognize himself else he will take offense when I exclaim, "What a fop!" An Ivy League bozo would not be dealt with so leniently in Ballard, where the impertinent question would be "And what did the sire of your sons think about the matter, you sackless wuss?"
Sometimes, Ballardites also get personal.
If to establish offense we infer intent, we often err. If I take a remark to be an insult, I not only risk being seen as humorless and haughty but also give away my sensitivity to certain gibes. The less humor and the more sensitivity I display, the more I advantage "the offender" and exaggerate "the offense" in the eyes of observers. Observers may then regard me as a fop or a wuss or, worse, a sackless wuss.
You'd never guess that I hail from Ballard.
One does not have to be Sigmund Freud [or, in the case of the average Ballardite, be able to spell Froyd's name] to imagine why a person opts to take offense rather than to slough off badinage. If an insult strikes most who know you as wildly off the mark, they will defend you, and you may shake off the insult as sophomoric or soporific or you may embrace it and thereby accentuate its absurdity. If, in contrast, you shift into high dudgeon, you open yourself to "Truth hurts!" or other dazzling ripostes and make friends and colleagues wonder what makes you so thin-skinned.
In addition, Ballardites might wonder if you ever had a scrotum.
The Puget Clown about whom I wrote above frequently insulted junior faculty, especially junior-faculty women. Many colleagues thought him a misogynist. Perhaps he was, although that would scarcely differentiate him from many faculty, male or female. I thought it more likely that he was attempting to be "one of the guys" and was flirting as best he could. He insulted female colleagues because most of them did not wear braids that he could dip in ink wells. The Puget Clown longed to be mistaken for an "alpha male" and thought that churlish insults and catty remarks would advance that mission. When most women dismissed his cattiness and most men thought it unmanly, The Puget Clown got his due. When people took his remarks at all seriously, by contrast, he got to play the wag by assuring the vulnerable colleague that it was all in fun. It often was in fun until the target was denied tenure or reappointment.
You guessed it! The Puget Sound Clowns perpetrated truly offensive injustices while taking offense at trivialities.
Taking offense is much less effective than dismissing remarks as senseless or counterproductive. The latter options cope with sexist, racist, or other inappropriate remarks more effectively than umbrage because a puzzled look or a poker face deprives the would-have-been offender of offense. Ask the bounder to explain his jest, then shake your head and mutter, "I am sure you had some reason to say that." If you hear a discouraging word, simply chuckle, "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Non Sequitur Theater."
You can guess to which orifice such remarks tended to be attributed in Ballard.
The Puget Clown I wrote about above objected to the frat boys' digits as part of an "argument" for delaying rush from August to January. That made no sense. Rather than wrestle with this colleague over whether students were or should be free to assail pigskin opponents, I wondered at the cogency of the sackless wuss's argument. Unless he was pointing out that the faculty were set to perpetrate one obscenity -- regulating when members of a club might seek new members -- on the excuse of the other obscenity -- those fraternity fingers -- his juxtaposition made little sense. I subsequently learned that this faculty member abhorred any student, staff, or faculty entity that he could not order about as he pleased. If I had known that in 1987, I might have interrupted his self-parody. At the time, I thought it as likely that this colleague would gain an important post at the University of Puget Clowns as that Dick Cheney would shoot a rich guy in the face.
A Ballardite would note that his wasn't a very handsome face anyway. Every Ballardite would know how Cheney could mostly miss with a shotgun from a few feet away. "After the third akvavit, I am lucky to piss in the pot I am sitting atop!"
One should husband offense lest one litter one's life with trivial annoyances. Every sapient life-form in modern America finds pretexts for indignation multiple times per hour. Broadcast commercials, liars in high offices, and the vicissitudes of living in the Post-Literate Era, for examples, annoy me. I reserve my being offended for rationalizations of genocide, for practiced stupidities that starve or doom human beings, and for other momentous matters.
Indeed, the same Puget Clown from above abetted the sins of the Professional Standards Cult in 2003-2004 and various inequities worked by the Faculty Advancement Committee year after year. Most offenses were too banal to waste much energy on. Rather than to take offense at power committees, I went on offense. I tried to make the Clown and the committees on which he served account for their actions. The Clown extruded half-truths, tall tales, and Clintonian distinctions; the committees were less persuasive. The Clown and the power committees have provided me ample material for parody, mockery, or burlesque.
Indeed, The Puget Clown and the power committees are the founders of this blog!
A few faculty who dare to learn what has transpired in their name appreciate the inanities chronicled on "Rump Parliament." By contrast, most faculty, uncertain what the PSC did or does, confused about what the Faculty Code might say or mean, but certain that no power committee will assail them if only they maintain their ignorance and deference, strive mightily to maintain their neutrality and their ignorance.
In sum, if you want to play the victim [especially while decrying the tendency of Americans to play the victim] then go ahead and take offense. But be honest with yourself if with no one else. No one need have offended you. You chose to be offended. In Ballard that makes you a common cockbite.
No offense intended.
Coming Soon -- Haltom's Ninth Law: Age quod agis
As I recall, my eighth law issued from my fervid brow. It is overstated, so probably it is all mine. The law posits that statements of the form "A offended B" almost always amount to "B took offense at or over A."
Yes! I discovered another passive construction hiding agency. "I am offended ..." soft-pedals my own role in claiming offense.
Although in principle I suppose that some thing(s) might be so inherently offensive as to circumvent cognitive processes, in practice the taking of offense is usually a psychological and/or sociological and an instrumental and/or tactical production. Malediction, for example, need not offend and may even amuse. Cussing is often comedic, odic, epic, or ironic. Some cussing is Homeric. The Ballardite who gave me Haltom's Second and Fourth Laws used to exclaim, "By the testicles of Pericles!" for effect, not for offense.
Yes! I discovered that context matters. Who knew?
Only after one has eliminated alternative interpretations may one justifiably conclude that one has been insulted or assaulted. In Ballard, where most imprecations were little more than devices to intensify or to pace remarks, one might as well parse flatus as ponder curse words. But then, if in Ballard I said, "I find that offensive," I should expect an avalanche of more extreme remarks. Some of those might be intrinsically offensive: "Is it possible that your parents put all their offspring up for adoption and raised the afterbirth?"
Am I seriously maintaining that offensiveness might be relative? Naw! That's radical talk!
At the start of my second year at the university, the all-time Puget Clown asked me whether I had seen a certain fraternity "birding" PLU boosters at the Tacoma Dome during a recent football game. An alum of the University of Washington, I chortled at my cartoonish colleague. "Way worse than that happened every week in Husky Stadium," I offered. The Puget Clown added what he saw as the clincher: "Yes, but my sons were with me." To preserve the offense that he wanted to take, my colleague effortlessly transmogrified drunken frat boys into corrupters of youth. He thereby converted youthful enthusiasm into intrinsically offensive behavior by pointing out that his sons might have been coarsened or traumatized by witnessing such a disgusting display.
Deft deployment of high dudgeon. "Think of the children!" Good cover, weenie.
I certainly hope that he does not recognize himself else he will take offense when I exclaim, "What a fop!" An Ivy League bozo would not be dealt with so leniently in Ballard, where the impertinent question would be "And what did the sire of your sons think about the matter, you sackless wuss?"
Sometimes, Ballardites also get personal.
If to establish offense we infer intent, we often err. If I take a remark to be an insult, I not only risk being seen as humorless and haughty but also give away my sensitivity to certain gibes. The less humor and the more sensitivity I display, the more I advantage "the offender" and exaggerate "the offense" in the eyes of observers. Observers may then regard me as a fop or a wuss or, worse, a sackless wuss.
You'd never guess that I hail from Ballard.
One does not have to be Sigmund Freud [or, in the case of the average Ballardite, be able to spell Froyd's name] to imagine why a person opts to take offense rather than to slough off badinage. If an insult strikes most who know you as wildly off the mark, they will defend you, and you may shake off the insult as sophomoric or soporific or you may embrace it and thereby accentuate its absurdity. If, in contrast, you shift into high dudgeon, you open yourself to "Truth hurts!" or other dazzling ripostes and make friends and colleagues wonder what makes you so thin-skinned.
In addition, Ballardites might wonder if you ever had a scrotum.
The Puget Clown about whom I wrote above frequently insulted junior faculty, especially junior-faculty women. Many colleagues thought him a misogynist. Perhaps he was, although that would scarcely differentiate him from many faculty, male or female. I thought it more likely that he was attempting to be "one of the guys" and was flirting as best he could. He insulted female colleagues because most of them did not wear braids that he could dip in ink wells. The Puget Clown longed to be mistaken for an "alpha male" and thought that churlish insults and catty remarks would advance that mission. When most women dismissed his cattiness and most men thought it unmanly, The Puget Clown got his due. When people took his remarks at all seriously, by contrast, he got to play the wag by assuring the vulnerable colleague that it was all in fun. It often was in fun until the target was denied tenure or reappointment.
You guessed it! The Puget Sound Clowns perpetrated truly offensive injustices while taking offense at trivialities.
Taking offense is much less effective than dismissing remarks as senseless or counterproductive. The latter options cope with sexist, racist, or other inappropriate remarks more effectively than umbrage because a puzzled look or a poker face deprives the would-have-been offender of offense. Ask the bounder to explain his jest, then shake your head and mutter, "I am sure you had some reason to say that." If you hear a discouraging word, simply chuckle, "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Non Sequitur Theater."
You can guess to which orifice such remarks tended to be attributed in Ballard.
The Puget Clown I wrote about above objected to the frat boys' digits as part of an "argument" for delaying rush from August to January. That made no sense. Rather than wrestle with this colleague over whether students were or should be free to assail pigskin opponents, I wondered at the cogency of the sackless wuss's argument. Unless he was pointing out that the faculty were set to perpetrate one obscenity -- regulating when members of a club might seek new members -- on the excuse of the other obscenity -- those fraternity fingers -- his juxtaposition made little sense. I subsequently learned that this faculty member abhorred any student, staff, or faculty entity that he could not order about as he pleased. If I had known that in 1987, I might have interrupted his self-parody. At the time, I thought it as likely that this colleague would gain an important post at the University of Puget Clowns as that Dick Cheney would shoot a rich guy in the face.
A Ballardite would note that his wasn't a very handsome face anyway. Every Ballardite would know how Cheney could mostly miss with a shotgun from a few feet away. "After the third akvavit, I am lucky to piss in the pot I am sitting atop!"
One should husband offense lest one litter one's life with trivial annoyances. Every sapient life-form in modern America finds pretexts for indignation multiple times per hour. Broadcast commercials, liars in high offices, and the vicissitudes of living in the Post-Literate Era, for examples, annoy me. I reserve my being offended for rationalizations of genocide, for practiced stupidities that starve or doom human beings, and for other momentous matters.
Indeed, the same Puget Clown from above abetted the sins of the Professional Standards Cult in 2003-2004 and various inequities worked by the Faculty Advancement Committee year after year. Most offenses were too banal to waste much energy on. Rather than to take offense at power committees, I went on offense. I tried to make the Clown and the committees on which he served account for their actions. The Clown extruded half-truths, tall tales, and Clintonian distinctions; the committees were less persuasive. The Clown and the power committees have provided me ample material for parody, mockery, or burlesque.
Indeed, The Puget Clown and the power committees are the founders of this blog!
A few faculty who dare to learn what has transpired in their name appreciate the inanities chronicled on "Rump Parliament." By contrast, most faculty, uncertain what the PSC did or does, confused about what the Faculty Code might say or mean, but certain that no power committee will assail them if only they maintain their ignorance and deference, strive mightily to maintain their neutrality and their ignorance.
In sum, if you want to play the victim [especially while decrying the tendency of Americans to play the victim] then go ahead and take offense. But be honest with yourself if with no one else. No one need have offended you. You chose to be offended. In Ballard that makes you a common cockbite.
No offense intended.
Coming Soon -- Haltom's Ninth Law: Age quod agis
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Haltom's Seventh Law -- What he/she/they will do to him/her/them, he/she/they will do to you.
I formulated this law myself -- and it looks it. Still, it is one of the few products of my high school years worth retaining. I retain a great deal more from high school, but I should not.
I observed that various classmates would rejoice that they were now with someone who had dumped someone else. To male friends I said, "If she'll do it to him, she'll do it to you." I'd warn female pals, "If he threw over her to get to you, what makes you believe that he won't throw you over when someone else comes along?" These comments did not increase my popularity.
I expected the answer that I always got. Somehow my interlocutor presumed that the bond broken had been improvident and the bond just forged was meant to be. I suppose some such bonds endured. However, the odds favored a repetition of whatever mercilessness my interlocutor was presently celebrating. Soon enough it would be Judy's turn to cry [see infra].
Not that changing partners was particularly to be lamented. Some that high school had joined together cried out to be put asunder -- for good taste and eugenics if for no other reasons.
Indeed, a confluence of era and good feelings often reduced the trauma of pairings and partings so that my law was a promise and a different sort of warning to the bereft: "He threw you overboard, but he will throw your rival overboard, so do not be near the side of the ship unless you would break her fall rather than her neck. See what or who is shaking on the lido deck while you await word of the woman overboard." Cf. the works of Stephen Stills -- "Love the One You're With" or "Change Partners" comes to my addled mind -- for the crackpot realist attitude toward promiscuity; for a more sentimentalized view of orgies that progress at a more leisurely pace, Leslie Gore offers us "Judy's Turn to Cry." [Yes, Leslie, Johnny tossed you aside for Judy, but now Johnny has come back to you. Bit of advice, Leslie: do not host any more parties; do not go to any more parties; either do not let Johnny out of your sight or, even better, put Johnny out of your mind and out of your bed.]
But I digress. Again.
Haltom's Seventh Law not only is true but ought to be. Why shouldn't betrayal and infidelity and heartlessness get easier with practice and with profit? Why shouldn't cunning and craftiness and callousness desensitize and mithridatize the practitioneer who profits thereby? Why shouldn't the nearly infinite capacity to rationalize accommodate ill-using in the present and future once one has gotten away with ill-using in the past?
Yet husband and wife will chuckle at how they stepped out on previous spouses and thereby met. Like a Valentine's Day tale or a faint echo of Dr. Zhivago, the etiology of an unholy union will be rendered as if balls resting against one another after the break were not likely to end up in distant pockets. Let romantics assume that kismet broke up two couples to make this better couple. Let realists snicker at the presumed economy by which tearing apart two families is acceptable if it pleases two of the conviving parties slurping gin. I'll sit with the cynics near the chip-dip and mutter that faithlessness and faithfulness alike tend to be habit-forming.
Now in "Hungry Heart" Bruce Springsteen get much right but a little wrong regarding these matters:
###Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack.
###I went out for a ride, and I never went back.
###Like a river that don't know where it's flowing,
###I took a wrong turn, and I just kept going.
###
######Everybody's got a hungry heart.
######Everybody's got a hungry heart.
######Lay down your money, and you play your
########part.
######Everybody's got a hungry heart.
### ###
###I met her in a Kingstown bar.
###We fell in love; I knew it had to end.
###We took what we had, and we ripped it apart.
###Now here I am down in Kingstown again.
###
######Everybody's got a hungry heart.
######Everybody's got a hungry heart.
######Lay down your money, and you play your
#########part.
######Everybody's got a hungry heart.
###
###Everybody needs a place to rest.
###Everybody wants to have a home.
###Don't make no difference what nobody says.
###Ain't nobody like to be alone.
###
Sorry, Bruce, but John Hughes wrote about that last matter in "Some Kind of Wonderful" (1987) and did a little better. Amanda Jones [Lea Thompson] says first that she would rather be with someone for the wrong reasons than alone for the right reasons. However, in the course of the film she learns that she would rather be alone for the right reasons. Like Victor Laszlo in "Casablanca," Amanda Jones sees that we each have a destiny for good or for evil. Perhaps we play our parts, but we have some say about parts we accept and which plays we are part of.
###
Moreover, we are capable of foreseeing some consequences. We know that what this miscreant will do to another, the miscreant will do to us. Traffick in gossip; expect to be gossips' and gossip's target. Conspire, then wait to be waylaid by conspirators who acquired a taste for Machiavellian artistry under your tutelage. Betray if you must, but know that you will in turn be betrayed by one conversant with Haltom's Seventh Law who will do to you before you can do to him, her, or them.
I am at present unsure what Bruce Springsteen will do to me now that I have tossed his lyric aside for a script by John Hughes.
Coming Soon -- Haltom's Eighth Law: No one may be offended; one must take offense
I observed that various classmates would rejoice that they were now with someone who had dumped someone else. To male friends I said, "If she'll do it to him, she'll do it to you." I'd warn female pals, "If he threw over her to get to you, what makes you believe that he won't throw you over when someone else comes along?" These comments did not increase my popularity.
I expected the answer that I always got. Somehow my interlocutor presumed that the bond broken had been improvident and the bond just forged was meant to be. I suppose some such bonds endured. However, the odds favored a repetition of whatever mercilessness my interlocutor was presently celebrating. Soon enough it would be Judy's turn to cry [see infra].
Not that changing partners was particularly to be lamented. Some that high school had joined together cried out to be put asunder -- for good taste and eugenics if for no other reasons.
Indeed, a confluence of era and good feelings often reduced the trauma of pairings and partings so that my law was a promise and a different sort of warning to the bereft: "He threw you overboard, but he will throw your rival overboard, so do not be near the side of the ship unless you would break her fall rather than her neck. See what or who is shaking on the lido deck while you await word of the woman overboard." Cf. the works of Stephen Stills -- "Love the One You're With" or "Change Partners" comes to my addled mind -- for the crackpot realist attitude toward promiscuity; for a more sentimentalized view of orgies that progress at a more leisurely pace, Leslie Gore offers us "Judy's Turn to Cry." [Yes, Leslie, Johnny tossed you aside for Judy, but now Johnny has come back to you. Bit of advice, Leslie: do not host any more parties; do not go to any more parties; either do not let Johnny out of your sight or, even better, put Johnny out of your mind and out of your bed.]
But I digress. Again.
Haltom's Seventh Law not only is true but ought to be. Why shouldn't betrayal and infidelity and heartlessness get easier with practice and with profit? Why shouldn't cunning and craftiness and callousness desensitize and mithridatize the practitioneer who profits thereby? Why shouldn't the nearly infinite capacity to rationalize accommodate ill-using in the present and future once one has gotten away with ill-using in the past?
Yet husband and wife will chuckle at how they stepped out on previous spouses and thereby met. Like a Valentine's Day tale or a faint echo of Dr. Zhivago, the etiology of an unholy union will be rendered as if balls resting against one another after the break were not likely to end up in distant pockets. Let romantics assume that kismet broke up two couples to make this better couple. Let realists snicker at the presumed economy by which tearing apart two families is acceptable if it pleases two of the conviving parties slurping gin. I'll sit with the cynics near the chip-dip and mutter that faithlessness and faithfulness alike tend to be habit-forming.
Now in "Hungry Heart" Bruce Springsteen get much right but a little wrong regarding these matters:
###Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack.
###I went out for a ride, and I never went back.
###Like a river that don't know where it's flowing,
###I took a wrong turn, and I just kept going.
###
######Everybody's got a hungry heart.
######Everybody's got a hungry heart.
######Lay down your money, and you play your
########part.
######Everybody's got a hungry heart.
### ###
###I met her in a Kingstown bar.
###We fell in love; I knew it had to end.
###We took what we had, and we ripped it apart.
###Now here I am down in Kingstown again.
###
######Everybody's got a hungry heart.
######Everybody's got a hungry heart.
######Lay down your money, and you play your
#########part.
######Everybody's got a hungry heart.
###
###Everybody needs a place to rest.
###Everybody wants to have a home.
###Don't make no difference what nobody says.
###Ain't nobody like to be alone.
###
Sorry, Bruce, but John Hughes wrote about that last matter in "Some Kind of Wonderful" (1987) and did a little better. Amanda Jones [Lea Thompson] says first that she would rather be with someone for the wrong reasons than alone for the right reasons. However, in the course of the film she learns that she would rather be alone for the right reasons. Like Victor Laszlo in "Casablanca," Amanda Jones sees that we each have a destiny for good or for evil. Perhaps we play our parts, but we have some say about parts we accept and which plays we are part of.
###
Moreover, we are capable of foreseeing some consequences. We know that what this miscreant will do to another, the miscreant will do to us. Traffick in gossip; expect to be gossips' and gossip's target. Conspire, then wait to be waylaid by conspirators who acquired a taste for Machiavellian artistry under your tutelage. Betray if you must, but know that you will in turn be betrayed by one conversant with Haltom's Seventh Law who will do to you before you can do to him, her, or them.
I am at present unsure what Bruce Springsteen will do to me now that I have tossed his lyric aside for a script by John Hughes.
Coming Soon -- Haltom's Eighth Law: No one may be offended; one must take offense
Friday, February 8, 2008
Haltom's Sixth Law: Those who are committed should be.
We are all committed at and to various contracts of depravity.
Haltom's Sixth Law is a double double entendre. It plays on multiple meanings of "committed." Many of those who are committed have very good reasons for their commitment(s). Many of those committed should be put away from polite society. These two interpretations of "Those Who Are Committed Should Be" are neither exclusive nor exhaustive. Indeed, many persons incarcerated in psycho wards should be incarcerated in psycho wards. Others imprisoned in psychiatric institutions are ghost writers of integrity codes and of mission statements.
In ordinary social settings, commitment that is overzealous or fanatical marks individuals who should be hidden from children and from elders. These "committed" persons are disappointed when Kool-Aid gives them a sugar rush or sugar coma rather than the cyanide buzz and ticket to mortality of Jonestown's Flavor Aid. [Every time Bill O'Reilly calls someone a Kool-Aid drinker, he reveals his ignorance about Jonestown. On the other hand, that Bill O'Reilly has not yet revealed all of his ignorance is impressive. What a trove of unabashed unawareness the man comprises!] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid This sort of commitment imperils security and sanity itself.
At the University of Puget Clowns, by contrast, commitment that is not feigned and cunning will often get one exiled. Those who appear to be committed to orthodox expressions or values but moderate their practice of or adherence to such commitments once the klieg lights fade often thereby secure honors and named chairs. A reputation for probity is much more valuable than the practice of honesty or any habits of integrity. Those who commit candor or observe virtues will be denounced, usually for whatever virtue they have most in abundance, and shunned, usually for whatever practices make "distinguished" faculty look bad. In this as in so many respects, the University of Puget Clowns abhors actual virtues and embraces ersatz virtues as if the former were Near Beer and the latter malt liquor.
Many colleagues sincerely committed to honesty, integrity, candor, and openness are no longer among the faculty, while most trimmers, trucklers, and temporizers [Murat Halstead] survive like post-apocalyptic cockroaches. One reason why homo economicus [the academic Latin for "weasel"] we shall always have with us is that the shrewd and the sly guard their reputations against those who, by telling the truth, might expose the sly and the shrewd, which would be dreadful because that would mean the sly were not sly enough and the shrewd had miscalculated. They who landed their jobs or forged their credentials through fraud or misprision must be vigilant lest truth-tellers gain tenure. Famous publishers who have not quite gotten around to publishing what they have assured us was "forthcoming" must fend off the kinds of evaluators given to insisting on reading manuscripts before certifying monographs on which the famous publishers who haven't published have alleged themselves to have been working for years and for grants. Those who threaten or bully fellow faculty must protect their reputations through reliance on colleagues who will vouch for the bullies. After all, without lies or dissembling, thugs might seem less than committed to integrity and other academic values. Can't have that.
When actually virtuous colleagues hold their departments or administrators to mission statements, ideals, or values, they demand that colleagues fulfill pretensions. How unfair that is! If we could live our pretenses we should not pretend. We pretend to be when we know that we cannot be. We pretend to be what we know we shall never be. Is it collegial to mock socially approved, communally shared travesties when shams are all some colleagues have?
Instead, let us commit anew to our "contract of depravity" [The Hustler 1961] by banishing those who, having inadvertently detected dishonesty or corruption, do not immediately find ways to hide malfeasance, nonfeasance, treachery, or mendacity. Colleagues unwilling to avert their eyes from unfairness, bigotry, discrimination, or meanness are simply not as committed as, by Haltom's Sixth Law, they should be.
Coming Soon: Haltom's Seventh Law -- What he/she/they will do to him/her/them, he/she/they will do to you.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Friday, February 1, 2008
Haltom's Fifth Law: No one who whistles in public can
It is a melancholy truth that whistlers pollute the atmosphere.
Haltom's Fifth Law is unprepossessing. No one to whose whistling I have been subjected in some public place has been able to carry a tune via whistling. I do not know why this should be; I know that it is the case. I suppose that there are exceptions. If the University of Puget Clowns bestows an honorary degree on Jean "Toots" Thielmans, then I may come into the presence of someone who might whistle in public and who can. Until that day, I insist that the classes "People who whistle loudly before strangers" and "People who can whistle well" seldom if ever overlap.
I have not been able to ramify this observation. I have heard the occasional lout drive by with an explosive stereo bombarding the avenues with his musical tastes, but his tastes coincided with mine. So I regard it as a mere probability that those who play their car stereos at "setting eleven" [This Is Spinal Tap] will select truly awful music. So some people who play music that is amplified beyond all reason select music that should be heard loud and often -- say "Sympathy for the Devil."
Of course, I could use Haltom's Fourth Law to inflate Haltom's Fifth Law. Although it isn't true that "No One Who Sings in Public Can," I could force the proposition by denying the exceptions. Barring such Procrustean exertions, however, I must admit that I have heard people sing in public, even on street corners for change, who sing pleasantly. Whistling, by contrast, might as well be fingernails on a chalkboard or an operatic aria.
I have never heard a co-worker or a colleague whistle about campus in a pleasing manner. Indeed, usually the whistling is as pleasant as "overhearing" a conversation in an airport terminal. One boob screams into a cellular phone as if it were a tin can the vibrations from which had to reach out and tickle some other tin can across a cord; thank God that he is using a walkie-talkie style phone so that we may all hear the interlocutor's responses re crab lice, death threats, or car racing -- the usual topics of the loudest talkers. As Bill Maher has observed, included among these aural oafs are many folks who are incensed that the FBI or CIA should monitor their phone calls. These oafs should worry not. Let one agent overhear them in a terminal and the oaf's phone number will be taken off any watch list lest those listening file for workman's comp.
I cannot explain why Haltom's Fifth Law should be so. Perhaps many tin-ears whistle when they are happy and their good humor deafens them to the foul airs they issue.
Maybe the bombardiers are trying to drown out the meanness and repetition in their lives, a la the dwarves before Snow White.
Just whistle while you work / Put on that grin and start right in to whistle loud and long /
Just hum a merry tune / Just do your best and take a rest and sing yourself a song /
When there's too much to do / Don't let it bother you /
Forget your troubles / Try to be just like a cheerful chick-a-dee /
After all, many colleagues act as if they work the salt mines, so maybe they believe that they do.
However, this explanation does not fit the most prominent faculty whistlers. They do no work, so how could they be whistling to make more bearable that which they never do? Maybe they would be explained by an alternative hypothesis from The King and I, another song in another movie for which I do not care:
Whenever I feel afraid / I hold my head erect /
And whistle a happy tune / So no one will suspect I'm afraid. /
While shivering in my shoes / I strike a careless pose /
And whistle a happy tune / And no one ever knows I'm afraid.
The result of this deception / Is very strange to tell /
For when I fool the people / I fear I fool myself as well!
Coming Soon -- Haltom's Six Law: Those who are committed should be.
Haltom's Fifth Law is unprepossessing. No one to whose whistling I have been subjected in some public place has been able to carry a tune via whistling. I do not know why this should be; I know that it is the case. I suppose that there are exceptions. If the University of Puget Clowns bestows an honorary degree on Jean "Toots" Thielmans, then I may come into the presence of someone who might whistle in public and who can. Until that day, I insist that the classes "People who whistle loudly before strangers" and "People who can whistle well" seldom if ever overlap.
I have not been able to ramify this observation. I have heard the occasional lout drive by with an explosive stereo bombarding the avenues with his musical tastes, but his tastes coincided with mine. So I regard it as a mere probability that those who play their car stereos at "setting eleven" [This Is Spinal Tap] will select truly awful music. So some people who play music that is amplified beyond all reason select music that should be heard loud and often -- say "Sympathy for the Devil."
Of course, I could use Haltom's Fourth Law to inflate Haltom's Fifth Law. Although it isn't true that "No One Who Sings in Public Can," I could force the proposition by denying the exceptions. Barring such Procrustean exertions, however, I must admit that I have heard people sing in public, even on street corners for change, who sing pleasantly. Whistling, by contrast, might as well be fingernails on a chalkboard or an operatic aria.
I have never heard a co-worker or a colleague whistle about campus in a pleasing manner. Indeed, usually the whistling is as pleasant as "overhearing" a conversation in an airport terminal. One boob screams into a cellular phone as if it were a tin can the vibrations from which had to reach out and tickle some other tin can across a cord; thank God that he is using a walkie-talkie style phone so that we may all hear the interlocutor's responses re crab lice, death threats, or car racing -- the usual topics of the loudest talkers. As Bill Maher has observed, included among these aural oafs are many folks who are incensed that the FBI or CIA should monitor their phone calls. These oafs should worry not. Let one agent overhear them in a terminal and the oaf's phone number will be taken off any watch list lest those listening file for workman's comp.
I cannot explain why Haltom's Fifth Law should be so. Perhaps many tin-ears whistle when they are happy and their good humor deafens them to the foul airs they issue.
Maybe the bombardiers are trying to drown out the meanness and repetition in their lives, a la the dwarves before Snow White.
Just whistle while you work / Put on that grin and start right in to whistle loud and long /
Just hum a merry tune / Just do your best and take a rest and sing yourself a song /
When there's too much to do / Don't let it bother you /
Forget your troubles / Try to be just like a cheerful chick-a-dee /
After all, many colleagues act as if they work the salt mines, so maybe they believe that they do.
However, this explanation does not fit the most prominent faculty whistlers. They do no work, so how could they be whistling to make more bearable that which they never do? Maybe they would be explained by an alternative hypothesis from The King and I, another song in another movie for which I do not care:
Whenever I feel afraid / I hold my head erect /
And whistle a happy tune / So no one will suspect I'm afraid. /
While shivering in my shoes / I strike a careless pose /
And whistle a happy tune / And no one ever knows I'm afraid.
The result of this deception / Is very strange to tell /
For when I fool the people / I fear I fool myself as well!
Coming Soon -- Haltom's Six Law: Those who are committed should be.
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