Man Up

We’re suffering an epidemic of childishness.

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263
Sen. Ted Cruz. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Dear Reader (Including those of you getting a bit too excited about photos of Trump getting arrested and the thought of him mastering the art of brewing toilet wine),

I’m sure you remember—because who could forget?—that great moment in American history when Sen. Cory Booker heroically took on the political system, risking everything in an audacious act of rebelliousness against a calcified and unresponsive establishment.

Or at least that’s the story he wanted people to believe.

The details are incredibly boring, so I’ll be brief. During the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, Booker released some documents about Kavanaugh that he claimed were supposed to be confidential under Senate rules. But the maverick just didn’t care! He was releasing them anyway, literally daring the Senate to expel him for his free-spirited ways while insisting to anybody who would listen, “I am breaking the rules!”

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  1. Avatar photo
    Td12212

    Texas is attacking this problem by abolishing tenure for professors. An interesting move since most of the research dollars and most of the prestige associated with that university are associated with these tenure track faculty. These faculty are going to up and leave to states that do no have this restriction and will take their research funding with them.

    Imagine if they'd done this 4 years ago ? All the new mRNA vaccine tech, the new solid state battery tech and other such fundamental research would come from someplace else other than UT Austin.

    I bet drag shows will be gone though!! :-\

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    Ben Connelly

    “ And in a republic, leaders are supposed to be grown-ups who make adult decisions and adult sacrifices in order to hammer out what’s best for society. We don’t have a republic, we have a giant, squabbling mosh pit of excessive democracy, where being an adult is decried as elitist and authoritarian while childishness passes for heroism. And no one dares tell voters to put away their childish things.”

    This is top-quality G-file stuff right here.

    Of course, I agree entirely with your points, Jonah. The idiotic need that every fiction writer has to “break rules” and be transgressive really annoys me. What are they supposedly transgressing at this point? Everyone has some need to pretend they grew up in the repressive days of yore where their teachers and parents made the Victorians look like libertines, and that we’re only now beginning to “fight the patriarchy” (or whatever BS thing). Adults and people in positions of authority are allergic to being authoritative and that has negative effects for everyone they’re supposed to be leading.

    At the same time, reading this, I’m thinking, “Welcome to America.” As you well know, Jonah, America has had an element of this spirit going back to the very beginning. Tocqueville wrote about it. It was nothing new in the 1960s. And, on the whole, I’d rather have a stubborn “you can’t tell me what to do” streak (even when it’s annoying) in my fellow countrymen than an innate obedience to authority. At least it’s a hedge against tyranny.

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    Matt Sherman

    As a librarian I will back up Jonah on the banned book gripe, it is stupid and ignores a lot of history of book bans to make political points. Heck, ALA is basically an arm of the Democratic Party and has stupid high dues, so a lot of librarians don't even bother joining anymore as they are clearly not a good value. Also, that over inflated view of the field that Jonah mentions is not uncommon of members within the field. Though I will push back on the underappreciated point. We are generally not well paid for the amount of experience and education/training needed for the work and libraries are commonly looked at by our institutions as a place to try to cut for funding shortfalls, even though we support every other department within our organizations and often many members of the communities and fields that we are part of. Also, any of us would be sitting on a fat stack of cash if we had a nickel for every time someone asked us how we still had a job because Google exists. That is a level of societal dismissal that, when combined with the relatively poor compensation and departmental funding, leads folks in the field to be frustrated and rightly underappreciated.

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      Ben Connelly

      I went to a bar trivia where some local librarians talked a bunch about banned books and gave us banned books pins as a prize for winning (which of course my team did because my friends and I read a lot of books). Apparently the most banned book in 2021 was Gender Queer, and I assume “banned” means it was removed from a school library which I don’t define as a ban. Anyway, I plan to collect a bunch of books by various people who have been canceled and take a picture with the books and this pin (which is of course rainbow colored and says “I read banned books”).

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  4. Iowafocus

    One of my Very Favorite Ever Jonah essays.

    Amen, brother

    Dittos

    Word.

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    Matmos

    I was at a talk at an elite university a year ago, by a famous professor who I greatly respect from another elite university, in front of an audience of students who were getting a degree that would be worth a mint on the job market. And the professor started talking about "the people in power" doing this or that. And all I could think of was "you mean someone besides the people in this room?" So, yes.

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    Napalaska

    Is it me, or does the photo at the top somehow capture the . . . essence of Ted Cruz? Makes me want to give the pic to my students and have them write a thousand words to answer this prompt: Tell me about this man.

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  7. Bkamena

    A brilliant column.

    And yet the thing I'll remember most is the Clinton reaction to an orgy.

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  8. Genehoward92603

    I have read and appreciate your columns and this is one of my favorites. So well said!

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    BrandonAlleman

    As someone who leans more left, I am constantly annoyed that so much of the left considers rebellion and acts of principled signifying bravery to be the taking of a picture of oneself wearing a slogan shirt or standing next to a slogan.

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  10. Deodand

    It's a bit hard to understand the transition from some good points about childishness and fake rebellion to... Mr Cruz. I'm not sure how he fits in: he said he was powerful, and that it was a victory for free speech. Maybe it wasn't a good idea, or he's a bully, or it isn't really free speech, or it wasn't really an "investigation."

    But how is it childish or fake rebellion?

    It comes across as Mr Goldberg getting in the swing of a good column and then throwing in some unused unrelated material he had on hand, just to get in a dig at Mr Cruz. Odd. The article itself doesn't really seem to justify the reference. Maybe I'm missing something.

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