You didn't listen to me, and now Kyle Rittenhouse looks like he's never going away

& a long dissent to my view on "The Problem of Whiteness."

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12/6/22

Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above.

Kyle Rittenhouse feeds off your contempt. Withhold it.

Every few days now it seems I read another story about perpetually aggrieved attention slut Kyle Rittenhouse.

• Kyle Rittenhouse meets with House GOP members (Nov. 17)

• Kyle Rittenhouse Marks Thanksgiving Promoting Violent Video Game Starring Himself (Nov. 25)

• Kyle Rittenhouse Insists Girlfriend Skyler Bergoon 'Not a Gold Digger (Nov . 28)

• Twitter Drags Kyle Rittenhouse For Appearing To Compare Himself To Jesus Christ (Dec. 1)

• Kyle Rittenhouse goes viral after asking if Twitter files will reveal 'hidden censoring' against him (Dec. 5)

The attempt by my friends on the left to turn the pipsqueak wannabe into a symbol for all that is wrong with our nation’s gun laws, with our self-defense laws and with white vigilantes was always doomed to fail.

I told Tribune readers this a little more than a week after Aug. 25, 2020, when he shot and killed two men and injured a third during street clashes in Kenosha.In “Here’s why Kyle Rittenhouse … is likely to get off” I took a layman’s look at the relevant videos from the scene and wrote:

Did the teen willingly put himself into a fraught milieu and illegally, allegedly, risk a horrific escalation of that danger by carrying a gun on the scene? Yes.

Do I support that? No. I’d like to see open carry in public spaces by civilians of any age banned.

But under the current weapons and self-defense laws, will these killings result in prison time for the shooter? … I doubt it. …

Kyle Rittenhouse is going to walk.

But between then and the time he was formally acquitted in mid-November 2021, both ends of the political spectrum did their best to turn Rittenhouse into either a murderer or a martyr, vastly ramping up the symbolic significance of his trial. He was neither. He was a goofball with a gun who used that gun to defend himself when attacked, as the law allows. Rather than fecklessly demonizing him and playing into the hands of indignant, self-pitying gun enthusiasts, the left should have kept his name out of their mouths and used the story as a springboard to agitate for changes in the open-carry law.

If you’re interested in more of my thinking on this, see “Thoughts and observations about the Kyle Rittenhouse trial,” (PS 10) and “Some takes on the hot takes on the Rittenhouse verdict,” (PS 11), neither of which went over particularly well with my ideological allies. For words I fear I must now eat, see “Signs Kyle Rittenhouse intends to fade away” (Picayune Plus, Feb. 1, 2022).

It’s easy to see why he rushed into the arms of those who wanted to embrace him.

Yet he emphatically told NewsNation’s Ashleigh Banfield that he has no interest in politics and believes his story “should never have been used as a cause” for any political agenda. He expressed his support for the Black Lives Matter movement and said he wants to live a “quiet life,” studying nursing or, lately, the law in online college courses. He also suggested that he might grow a beard and lose weight to become less recognizable.

I took it as a good sign Friday that Rittenhouse’s attorneys and prosecutors reached an agreement to have the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratories destroy the AR-15 rifle he used that night. This was in line with Rittenhouse’s stated desire that the weapon not become a symbol or trophy.

Oh well. Today he’s planning a YouTube channel to promote gun rights, suing various media outlets for defaming him (while fighting a civil suit against him), teasing a run for Congress and otherwise staying in the spotlight.

I do truly appreciate the irony of me suggesting we agree to ignore him even as I write more than 600 words about him today, but that’s where we are.

The left’s hatred is his oxygen. Forget him, and don’t forget that.

Notes and comments from readers —lightly edited —- along with my responses

Some of these messages are in reference to items in last week’s issues of the Picayune Sentinel.

I have added some more “final scores” from Northwestern football games to last week’s issue in response to suggestions from readers.

Larry H. — In your discussion of the proposed class at the University of Chicago titled “The Problem of Whiteness,” you argued that the title is unnecessarily provocative to conservatives. I find your argument both ahistorical and problematic in terms of academic inquiry.

As you mentioned, “problem” is used here as a synonym for “area for inquiry.” You wrote that you think whiteness is a valuable area of academic inquiry and I agree with that. The history of this field of inquiry goes back to W.E.B. Du Bois as far as I am aware, and it has a rich tradition of documenting how whiteness is assumed as the default in American culture and history. Race is a social construct meaning there is no biological basis for it, but our culture defines whiteness associated with skin color, but even that is malleable — the idea of whiteness has changed over time from being applied just to Northern Europeans to including Southern Europeans, the Irish and some residents of the Middle East. Jews are sometimes considered white and sometimes not. I mention all this primarily to offer just a bit of the background to the subject and the context where the course comes from.

Where our disagreement seems to come from is whether the course title is provocative, and I simply don’t think it is. In the context of the approximately 150 years where whiteness as a concept has been studied, the construction of discussing it as the “problem” of whiteness has been used for decades. I don’t know when it was used first, but I can think of sources that take it back 60 to 70 years at least. Courses with this title or very similar titles have been around for 50 years.

More than that, the “problem of…” construction is quite common in discussions of race and ethnicity. For example, Justice Brandeis gave a speech called “The Jewish Problem,” in the early 20th century.

Calling the use of the “problem” here provocative suggests that the instructor chose the title of the course to tweak conservatives. But the title has been used for years (with more complaints about it over the last 15 years). Those threatening the faculty member are either completely ignorant of the history or are purposely obtuse. Either way, blame falls on their ignorance, feigned or not. The instructor in this case is teaching an upper-level course that fits within the context of a field with a rich history of using the “problem with…” construction.

Some will ask, why not just write an awkward academic descriptive title as is the custom for many if not most classes. But this question from the right is not asked in good faith. If the instructor chose a bland title, do you believe that conservatives would not attack the content and the syllabus? We have an entire movement attacking critical race theory which is often closely related with the study of whiteness. Chris Rufo, the guy who started the moral panic over CRT has admitted the label is being used to describe anything related to diversity and inclusion.

My concern about labeling this as provocative ignores history and context, and also allows people to treat this as a both-sides dispute. The right-wing nut jobs threatened violence, but the instructor was asking for it and is extreme as well. But nothing about the course title, description, or reaction from the faculty member suggests she is a radical or that she was trying to tweak conservatives.

Finally, the attacks on the class are likely spearheaded by racists who argue that race is more than a social construct and that there is a genetic basis for race. The idea that race has a genetic basis has long been falsified. There is a small, but influential group of academics and pundits who insist this is a legitimate argument despite the evidence and they benefit from trying to treat this as a serious disagreement between the positions when one has evidence (social construct) and the other does not (genetic).

It may be true that “the problem of whiteness” is an old and widely understood concept in the academy, and it may also be true that those who brought this issue to the fore at UChicago knew this and were trying to incite people who didn’t know that.

But it is definitely true that social context changes the meaning of terms and expressions. And it’s not unreasonable to suggest that “the problem of whiteness” falls differently on the ear in this era of heightened racial reckoning than it might have not even all that long ago.

Don’t get me wrong. Identifying white privilege and exploring its mutating causes and effects is important. Repairing the harms done by those identified as white is an urgent matter. But beginning a constructive conversation with those resistant to the very idea requires a more effective opening gambit than a course title that, in the common vernacular, implies blame or inherent fault.

Sure, liberal academia can congratulate itself on the formal accuracy of “the problem of whiteness,” but why? Why not title the course, “the problem of racial identity”? Or maybe even something slightly more dry, along the lines of “the causes and effects of racial identity in 21st century America”?

Several readers have noted that a course titled “the problem of Blackness” would never fly at any college or university, even though that “problem,” as you would call it, is just the other side of the coin.

Justice Louis D. Brandeis’ 1915 speech was titled “The Jewish Problem: How To Solve It,” and was delivered to a council of reform rabbis. He stated the “problem” quickly: “How can we secure for Jews, wherever they may live, the same rights and opportunities enjoyed by non-Jews? How can we secure for the world the full contribution which Jews can make, if unhampered by artificial limitations?”

That is far from the “problem” of whiteness that the UChicago course will attempt to address.

Your defense of this terminology reminds me of those who defend “retarded” as a term to describe those with intellectual disabilities. Technically and historically it’s accurate. Sure. But usage and context have altered the word’s impact and it’s now considered an unacceptable insult. Other words and expressions that have devolved also come to mind. Not using such terms isn’t a concession to both-sidesism but at least in part a desire to focus conversations without inflaming passions.

Jake H. — Boy, do I agree with you about soccer and football. The former is by far the most tedious popular sport to watch, and the latter is the most engaging. American football is certainly the most interesting of the many team sports premised on the fundamental battle analogy of advancing to the opposite goal. Every play is a mini-drama, an occasion for both elaborate strategy and visceral physical clashes, both team coordination and extraordinary individual skill and precision, both bursts of frenzied activity and legalistic regulation -- all of which is pretty easy to see and grasp for even the casual, untutored observer.

Several readers compared soccer to the metric system — the rest of the world loves it but we just don’t. The difference is that soccer is worse in most ways than American football, while the metric system is better in nearly every way.

Bob H. —Please give your moralizing on the topic of gambling a rest. I disagree with your analogy to cigarettes. Can both cigarettes and gambling ruin your life? yes. Will repeated gambling kill you? Unlike cigarettes, no. Do you oppose all so- called “vices” with the same vigor as you oppose gambling? There will always be people who abuse vices, and generally they will be in the minority. I'd rather legalize vices [including sex work], and advertising for vices, have reasonable laws and reasonable enforcement, and let adults make their own decisions. Some adults will make bad decisions - such is life.

You mischaracterize my concerns about gambling as “moralizing.” As I understand the moral objection to gambling, it’s the idea that gambling is rooted in the soul sapping quality of people getting something for nothing; with no effort or without the traditional sacrifices associated with gain. Shortcuts, this thinking seems to go, result in a toxic lack of attachment to work and effort upon which society depends.

I’m not in that camp. My concern is only with the general, long-term effects of legalized gambling on all of us, particularly the non gamblers who may pay the price in increased social pathologies. Any “moral” objection that’s not rooted in pragmatism of this sort strikes me as definitionally invalid.

I’m no philosopher, clearly, but questions of “right” and “wrong” are often associated with the question of “what if everyone did it?” or “what are the general negative impacts of permitting such behavior?” Which are, at heart, practical questions that need not ask us to cite some arbitrary “moral” authority such as, say, scripture.

That’s one reasons I thought the “moral” objections to same-sex marriage were such utter bunk. If every adult were allowed to marry the person they loved and wanted to spend their life with, that was, and is today, a manifestly good thing.

I think easy access to assault-style weapons is practically wrong, but I wouldn’t invoke the squishy concept of morality to defend that point of view.

One of my less popular opinions is that the “moral” objection to abortion rights is rooted not in an abstract concern with fetal rights but in an objection to sexual activity unmoored from the intent to procreate, which some feel is damaging to society as whole. I doubt it’s coincidental that those who hold more conservative views about sexual behavior tend to be more likely to oppose abortion rights, in other words.

Playing the “moralizing” card doesn’t advance the debate in any way.

David A. — Well, hardy, har, har. Some people got taken in by a tweet written in the voice of a fake Kindergarten teacher. But in today’s totally weird society in which a female U. S. Supreme Court Justice claims she can’t say what a woman is because she’s not a biologist, the idea that a kindergarten teacher forces her students to choose new pronouns and say “gay” instead of “God” during the Pledge of Allegiance is totally plausible.

And it pales in comparison to the many people who were taken in by the false accusations that our former president was a Russian asset and that he paid a prostitute to urinate on him on a hotel bed on which the Obamas once slept. Or in comparison to the intelligence agencies’ misleading reports to a compliant media establishment that the Hunter Biden laptop story — now authenticated and widely recognized as true -- had “all the hallmarks of Russian misinformation”?

Both of these incidents arguably crippled one presidency and intentionally affected another presidential election in what is supposed to be a representative democracy with free and fair elections. Instead of trolling people on the other side of the aisle, perhaps people could stop hating on each other long enough to recognize that what we are doing is hastening the demise of what, for all its faults, could actually have been a pretty good system under which to live.

“What is a woman?” is simply a gotcha question designed to tickle transphobes. Is this person a woman?

What about this person?

The first is a trans man, the second is a trans woman. Ponder this all you like and then submit your definition of “woman” in the comment thread.

Trump just acted like a Russian asset, siding with Putin over our own intelligence agencies. And given how the Russians did try to put the thumb on the scale for Trump it wasn’t the least far-fetched that they might have planted the nothingburger of a story about Hunter Biden. In what way was Trump’s presidency “crippled” by investigations into his ties with Russia? Where did he lose a single Congressman or Senator in a legislative vote?

Susan M. — At my request I was given a subscription to The Picayune Sentinel last year for Christmas. I would like to cancel the subscription. I am not a Twitter user and so much of your text focuses on tweets. Also your story about the World Cup and soccer as a sport was disgusting. I am very disappointed that you do not inform readers how to cancel. I fear you will automatically charge the credit card used.   Please advise how to cancel my subscription.

Sorry the PS didn’t live up to your expectations! Here is the link for cancelling a paid subscription. There is a general “unsubscribe” link at the end of every newsletter as well. Substack handles all the business matters and if you or any other readers have a problem and the help page doesn’t resolve it, let me know and I’ll attempt to help you resolve it.

Nancy G. M - I definitely will renew my paid subscription to the Picayune Sentinel. It has been a huge compensation for your disappearance from the Tribune, especially since you often include a side scoop of Mary Schmich as well. Please continue publishing forever!

My impression is that the free Thursday edition may be forwarded to a friend, but that the Tuesday subscriber edition ought not to be. Or is it ethical to send the friend that Substack link online perhaps after it's a week or more old? And given that my husband shares the funds that pay for my subscription, may I in good conscience forward to his e-mail a Tuesday edition to illustrate a point we're discussing?

I appreciate your kind words and I appreciate your asking. I'm more than happy to have Tuesday editions — mailed only to paid subscribers — forwarded immediately. I’m most concerned with expanding my readership.

EIghteen tickets left to Songs of Good Cheer this weekend — come join us!

At this writing there are 10 individual tickets left for Friday night’s Songs of Good Cheer holiday caroling party at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Three on Saturday night and five on Sunday afternoon. (Saturday afternoon is sold out) No two open seats are together, sadly, but as my co-host Mary Schmich notes, those who have come alone to the festivities have reported having had a great time.

And you can always check with the box office to see if there are any last-minute returns that come available.

Ya gotta see these tweets!

I often run across tweets that rely on visual humor and so can’t be included in the Tweet of the Week contest (the template I use for that poll does not allow me to include images). Here are a few good ones I’ve come across recently:

Vote for your favorite. I’ll share the winner in Thursday’s main edition.

There’s still time to vote in the conventional Tweet of the Week poll!

Thank you for supporting the Picayune Sentinel. To help this publication grow, please consider spreading the word to friends, family, associates, neighbors and agreeable strangers.

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