The Clashes of Cultures: Joni and the Smirk Boy

It’s not easy being a man in 2019. Then again, it’s certainly not easy being a woman in 2019. Heck, as a species, we all have our struggles.

And yet, when we imagine the hobgoblins and dangers in the woods that face us, it’s abundantly clear that the Big Bad Wolf isn’t our nemesis. Watch out for Red Riding Hood. As Pogo would put it, we have met the enemy and they are us. And if it’s hard to be a woman or man, it’s much harder to be a teen.

I was thinking this week about media and our knee-jerk reactions to the news based on two touchy recent stories:

• Kentucky high school students wearing MAGA hats face off with Native American Indian elder.
• Iowa junior Sen. Joni Ernst alleges she was abused by her former husband.

The second story took me back to my graduate school days. I earned my master’s degree in 1990 from the University of Missouri-Columbia (go Tigers!). It took several years—I was employed while working on the degree, had an employed spouse who was also in graduate school, and we were parents of five young children.

Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst talks with the Des Moines Register editorial board in 2018--about 4 years late. She didn't speak wit the board in 2014 when running for Senate, which was a terrible thing to do. Des Moines Register image by Rodney White. Downloaded from Desmoinesregister.com.

Anyway, I recall one copy editing class I was in during the late 1980s. We met for classroom discussion about once a week, and the rest of the class consisted of copy editing at the Columbia Missourian. While I was in that class, the mayor of Columbia filed for a divorce—and the local media’s reaction caused a bit of a dust up.

The Columbia Tribune had not given the story much play. The Columbia Missourian, published by the journalism school, in contrast had reported it as front-page news.

And in the copy-editing class, the good liberal future journalists were all on the Tribune’s side. It was easy, at the time, to say that the liberal perspective was that personal sexual and marital behavior was a private matter, not fit for public consumption. I was the lone dissenter among students—and luckily, as it turned out, the professor was partly on my side. I pointed out that seeking a divorce means filing a lawsuit with a court asking for a change in your legal status—it’s not an inherently private act, in fact, it is inherently a public act. To not report the divorce was to ignore a public act by arguably the most prominent local person.

The professor agreed with my point but still thought the morning paper had over-played the story. And, frankly, I would not disagree with that, either—my point was the story deserved to be covered. Whether it should have been on page 1 is another issue.

Anyway, City View, an alternative newspaper in Des Moines, reported earlier this week on new information from court papers filed by Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa. Her husband had filed for divorce months before, and the settlement was finalized earlier this month. The paper got hold of court documents in which Sen. Ernst alleges her husband was physically abusive to her.

And after that became public, Sen. Ernst further disclosed that she was raped while in college.

Well—what are news outlets to do? The court papers that the newspaper uncovered were quickly sealed, and Sen. Ernst said she thought they were private in the first place.

I can’t fault the paper, nor other outlets, for reporting the story. But I also want it to fade quickly. Not because abuse in marriages or rape are issues that should fade quickly—but because I don’t want Joni Ernst to unduly suffer. While a divorce is a public act, I would rather that the light of public attention be shed elsewhere than on details of what went on in a sexual assault victim’s life or in the life of an allegedly abused spouse.

Sen. Ernst could do some good in the future by talking about these issues publicly—but I think that should be entirely her choice. And yes, I know there is a husband involved in the divorce, but the allegations he has made against her are not at the same level.

Gail Ernst and Joni Ernst during her successful campaign for U.S. Senate in 2014. Image for The Gazette by Stephen Maily, downloaded from thegazette.com 

I’m not a political fan of Joni Ernst. She is allied with a president I loathe and is a leader in a party that has long lost its way as the voice that seeks to conserve what is best in our culture and democratic republic (that, to me, is what a “conservative” ought to be). But on her divorce and rape, I’ll give her a pass. What happened to her in college, what she experienced in her marriage—I’m willing to turn the other way. Parts may leak into the news—a divorce is not a private act and she herself disclosed the rape—but I hope we as an audience can give her some space.

As to the second story, no, I am not going to take time to view all the recordings and come to a conclusion about who the heroes and villains are. What is clear is that the story is not clear—the MAGA-hat wearing Catholic students behaved badly, as did a crazy group of black “Isrealites.” Beating a drum and chanting and walking into the student crowd may be viewed as peaceful prayer, but it would give me pause if I were there.

But I will weigh in on some aspects of the story. Most of all, it illustrates our unfortunate tendency now to make instant snap judgements based on initial social media posts. A few years ago, Jon Stewart on the Daily Show correctly criticized the Obama administration for firing Shirley Sherrod, an African-American USDA official falsely accused of racism via a doctored video released by a right-wing web site. As Stewart noted in 2010, the then secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack—former governor of Iowa—jumped to a conclusion before the facts were in.

National Park Service image. Near Abe, some bad behavior.

Also, I am curious about the thinking of the chaperones. Why allow a high school group to don politically provocative garb on the National Mall and react with “school chants” when provoked? I think part of the dynamic was the Covington Catholic High School students were in town for a political protest—the March for Life had taken place the day before. But they weren’t at the mall for a protest, and they did not react well when provoked.

But there are so many “on the other hands” here. On the other hand, the National Mall is an appropriate venue for political expression.

On another other hand, MAGA hats are provocative symbols. The wearing of those hats may have initiated the unfortunate chain of events—the students were heckled by an odd African American splinter group, and I’m sure the red MAGA garb was a bit like, well, a red flashing light.

On the other hand, the Native American elder who approached was trying to pray and chant and interject himself to tone down the situation. On the other hand, what are teens supposed to think when a drum beating, chanting man walk up to and through their group? On the other hand, standing in his way and smirking at him does mean you owe him an apology, and your parents ought to be adult enough to clearly give you that message.

On the other hand—so many other hands. There is a lot that bothers me about this whole thing, including that it too uncomfortably fits into a long-term pattern of white people so easily dismissing and disrespecting brown indigenous people. But mostly that we’ve so quickly joined sides.

Are you on team MAGA or team Native American? I have more respect for the Native American elder and little patience with smirking MAGA boy, but bottom line: Team neither.

There was noise and fuss on the National Mall. Several people behaved badly. But I would like to let it go. Attacking the school or Catholic education or whatever—we are keeping the knee jerk reaction alive. I don’t want Smirk Boy to be on national TV or to be held up by a dysfunction and delusional president as some short of MAGA hero.

But please, let’s hesitate, at least a little, before we trash a teen. Those of us on the left grow extremely angry when the right wing attacks the Parkland survivors as “crisis actors.” I know that this isn’t an analogous situation—the Convington kids were behaving badly and the Parkland kids were not—but there is at least this: Let’s hesitate. There are kids involved.

I teach young adults at a university. Now and then, one of them does something awful or says something hateful or whatever.

If it’s a crime, there must be consequences. But if it’s a young jerk being a young jerk—well, I have learned over the years that today’s freshman becomes tomorrow’s senior, and the few years that pass in the blink of an eye to me are enormously filled with change and growth in their lives. If a student flunks your class in fall and takes another of your classes in spring, you have to let them have a clean slate. You have to allow for the possibility that something good may have happened in their life over Christmas break—maybe their heart, like the Grinch’s, grew three sizes. It’s doesn’t usually or always happen, but I’ve seen it often enough to know that it can happen.

At their age, for better or worse, they can be a different person tomorrow. I suppose that’s true of us all, but it’s truer of teens and young adults.

So let’s let it go and try to let them grow. They may become MAGA monsters, but they may not. I hope that they get better guidance from adults than it appears they have been getting lately—but I doubt my blog or any social media or resulting media attention will contribute much to that.