During my daughter's swimming practice tonight, I did what was expected of parents during the season which is to accomplish various tasks to maintain our facility and run the mostly volunteer organization. Our swim club recently moved from an area high school to a middle school but the custodial services were left to us.
Since we had a recent meet, I was charged with cleaning up the spectator area. The benches needed a good wiping down and the floors needed sweeping from the popcorn kernels and other candy wrappers after a typical sports event.
The following graffiti was seen in the back row scribbled on the floor from eras past. The fascinating categories were "cute boys," "ok boys" and "ugly boys."
Further down the floor was a list of boys that were "hot but assholes."
Grady, Eddy and Ashton were the culprits of this unilateral adjudication from what I can only presume to be a girl and her cadre of discerning and snarky friends.
I couldn't help but reflect on my own middle school, high school and college years about these differentiated groups and implications for our ongoing national discussion.
The current SCOTUS candidate came into his Senate hearing several days ago with what was admittedly a "guns blazing" approach. He depicted himself as a work hard play hard student athlete who lifted a lot of weights and admittedly a keg or two or one hundred. His contemporaries included prolific pukers based on a verified source document but he denied the overall volume of underage drinking in his testimony using the shield of typical adolescent antics and period movies. Per his testimony and subsequent corroboration, he liked (and still likes) beer... but was this affinity (and denial of blackouts) enough to convict him for lying under oath? The burden of proof is not there and a distraction to the primary issue.
The quintessential questions are drawn from the floor of this middle school: Where did you stand in the hierarchy of cliques and how does it affect you now in your current social class? What did you do with this position in your respective caste? Were you the John Belushi character in Animal House, Spicoli from Ridgemont High, or the Geek, Jock, Princess, Weirdo or Bad Boy from the Breakfast Club? What do your yearbook pictures and narratives say about you? What did you do with your shot, as the popular Hamilton musical asks?
Just like Molly Ringwald has come forward to regret moments depicted during the popular movie, Sixteen Candles, men and women alike should take pause and recall their own roles and actions during their youth. In truth, the best representation of our ongoing debate is that our SCOTUS candidate has discovered his career is being upended due to the threat to the opportunities and entitlements for which he had "busted his butt" his entire life, a life my middle school mystery writer labeled a typical hot asshole and his destiny. His raw male anger during the recent testimony is actually the manifestation of him (and his entire socioeconomic class) reacting to why anyone would call into question how his own personal end (confirmation to the SCOTUS) cannot be justified by the standard means (professional performance, presumed privilege and partisan promotion). Unfortunately for him and his supporters, neither he nor his POTUS nominator had reckoned with the powerful external movement of the revenge of... no, not the nerds but... the woman.
The ultimate power of the #MeToo movement is that women may now speak out about their own truth that, in this case, is counter to the established presumption of privilege enjoyed for so many generations by men with the imposed silence and compliance on supple and pliable women, women, who in retrospect, actually lived in fear and silent suffering. Our own president is an admittedly "ugly boy" who lacked discipline, forcing his father to send him off to military boarding school. Even by his senior year, he was still portrayed in his yearbook as a Lady's Man, prescient of a future of having three different women for wives and multiple other affairs during his various marriages. When it appears he may not get his way with the current nomination process, our President recently doubled down by lampooning the accuser by overtly mocking her challenged recall of the summer of 1982.
My own personal life includes a mix of 80's and 90's stereotypes including the nerd, the geek, a party animal and even an outcast. I also saw firsthand the effects of institutionalized partying, especially in college, that manifested in tacitly taking advantage of women, particularly via the protected fraternity system. One fraternity member friend of mine suggested at one time a woman's egress from frat row the night or morning after should be a walk of pride instead of a walk of shame. Granted, his viewpoint was not representative but certainly present. Following my return from an overseas semester and exposure to alternative educational environments, I was sickened by the run-up to pledge week and bold enough to publish an anonymous letter in the school paper urging college freshmen to reconsider their initiation into Greek life. This admittedly subversive approach was addressed the following year when I participated in an open debate around the desired social life we should see for our campus ethos.
As we reflect on our personal experiences or previously assigned roles of social heros versus misfit zeros, we need to come to grips, as a country, with what the cliques and stereotypes say about our adolescent past and hopeful future. A blatantly partisan, conspiracy-laden judge nominated by a brazen misogynous, wannabe President is certainly not what I would hope for my girls and our nation's narrative. Different reactions from the candidate during his testimony or different reactions by his nominator during a recent rally could have revealed true leadership. Instead, I see two troubled silver spooners (hot but asshole and ugly, respectively) who assumed they would always get their way, sheltered inside an environment where humility and gratitude are not required to dine at the table of plenty.
Regardless of the truth, temperament and potential bias should matter, especially when we are pondering the importance of who should be on the SCOTUS grounded in the rule of law instead of the winds of huffy rhetoric. A true investigation would include a more transparent process of vetting witnesses and finding facts, an undertaking certainly not pursued under the current circumstances. An America that is great deserves people who are great to lead them. What choice will leaders in the Senate make? For this scenario, I can only pray that some Senators don't throw away their shot.
