Commentators, politicians, and people of every stripe have started yet another predictable cycle bemoaning the recent downturn in civility, particularly as it pertains to the national political dialogue.  They claim that shouting has replaced rational debate; sound bites have replaced intelligent discourse; partisanship has replaced compromise; and confrontation has replaced deference.  Many point to the anonymity of the internet, where flaming and trolling are valued more than contributing to and participating in the community.  Others point to the breakdown in traditional family values and the slow, steady decay of public institutions where respect, courtesy, and manners once reigned supreme and uncouthness was regarded as the province of the lower, uneducated classes and something to be shunned.  Still others point to the associated rise of popular music, television, and movies that celebrate rudeness and elevate vulgarity to an art form on equal footing with poetry and the great classics of literature.

Well, fuck them.  At long last, I say!  Random acts of incivility are the last true and honest expression of the human spirit in our politically correct age of un-enlightenment.  Of course we no longer debate issues in an open and rational manner.  Agreeing to disagree has been substituted for reasoned debate to the point that if you tell me a woman should be stoned for not covering her face in public because your faith says so, I can’t call you a backward savage because I’m expected to understand rather than condemn.  And no wonder since we’ve replaced the god of reason with the twin gods of multicultural tolerance and consensus.  Today, every child is a special snow flake, every life is precious, every point of view has merit, everyone’s a winner, and all voices deserve to be heard and have a seat at the table.  We have become, as our own Matt Cale is fond of saying, a bunch of sentimental grandmothers offering fake sincerity in place of honesty.

We’ve been raised, conditioned, and taught conformity in our reactions, not the rules because somewhere along the way the rules themselves became sexist, culturally biased, xenophobic, and oppressive.   Since when did pointing out asshole behavior become worse than the offending behavior itself?  Some selfish prick, full of entitlement and who has been taught that he’s above the rules because he’s a special individual, is in the self-checkout express line at the supermarket with a full fucking cart and suddenly I’m the asshole if I say anything?  What the fuck?  Not only have we sacrificed the normal rules of behavior on the altar of civility, we have replaced them with far more irrational rules that designate too many areas of debate and behavioral reactions out-of-bounds.   We swallow our emotions, dance around issues, and walk on egg shells for fear that someone somewhere might get their feelings hurt if we make a judgment.  “Can’t we all just get along?” has become the guiding principle that has turned us all into a bunch of sniveling little pussies.

We may very well look back at Joe Wilson shouting, “You lie!” from the floor of Congress as our generation’s “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going take it anymore!” moment.  A spontaneous instance of incivility in which two words conveyed more honesty than any speech delivered in that hallowed institution within my lifetime.  Of course Wilson is full of shit and an asshole to boot, but his behavior, like that of his fellow Right Wing town hall disrupters is not cause for alarm but cause for celebration.   The recent spate of alleged incivility has torn away what remained of the Republican Party’s respectability, exposing them and their supporters as the racist, classist, uneducated, fundamentalist, corporate cocksucking assholes that they really are.  At long last – public validation of what we only dared to whisper among close friends and like-minded associates for fear of being branded as intolerant.   Democrats, too, should prepare themselves for a maelstrom of criticism for their own collective pussification and compromise brought about by their position as a constant bottom boy in the D.C. orgy of special interests.  At least the Republicans are butch enough to actually do some pitching instead of cowering on all fours playing the submissive with a welcoming ass.   One can only hope that the long-simmering passions of the Left will at long last shrug off the shackles of civility and pacifist non-confrontation and opt for an in-your-face, sarcastic, and caustic style of mean-spirited ridicule, like Barney Frank’s response to one of the town hall downies.  If we can’t drag these people and their ideas from the shadows of tolerance, then we will taunt them kicking and screaming into the light through open confrontation.

We are on the cusp of a magical time when the stars align, the heavens open, and the people of this country might just awaken from their anesthetized slumber of apathy masquerading as consensus and shout in unison with one loud voice, “FUCK YOU COCKSUCKER!”    It doesn’t matter who that cocksucker is because your cocksucker may be different from my cocksucker, whether it’s the fundamentalists who have been allowed to use the law to deny equal rights to others based on their own narrow, twisted version of morality; the race-baiters who have used our collective guilt to avoid addressing their own community’s long-standing and culturally toxic problems; those who march in gay pride parades dressed in leather chaps carrying signs that decry gay stereotyping; every Asian who has ever sat behind the wheel of a car; third generation immigrants who demand bilingual classes for their fourth generation immigrant children; women who complain about the glass ceiling from the comfort of the home they won in their divorce, along with full custody of the children and weekly alimony; teachers, medical professionals, and parents who make excuses for their asshole kids by claiming they have learning disabilities or ADHD; white people; corporations who cry poverty and expect public bailouts for their own piss poor management decisions; or idiotic G20 protesters who smash the windows of a Subway store because they think they’re sticking it to The Man.

So, let it out.  Scream it from the rooftops.  Don’t wait your turn.  Forget about censoring yourself or moderating your ideas.  Flip someone the bird.  I’m an asshole, he’s an asshole, she’s an asshole, we’re all assholes.  Wouldn’t you like to be an asshole too?  To hell with civility!  For fuck’s sake, just be an asshole.  Trust me, you’ll feel better.

TAGLINE:
When the Communists and Socialists invade, they are our only line of defense. WOLVERINES!!!

ENTIRE STORY IN FEWER WORDS THAN ARE IN THIS SENTENCE:
White people can’t really march either.

HOMOEROTICISM:
Grand Old Party, indeed! One of the chief organizers and speakers of the event was none other than Dick Armey. Members of this movement call their events “tea parties,” and they all gathered in the tip of the shadow of the most phallic symbol ever erected to chant, sing, and focus on one man’s giant, black cock. Even Gay Pride parades can’t hold a candle to the sexual frustrations of these teabaggers who have flung themselves from the closet of patriotic male-love into the open for the entire world to see. They love America, Ronald Reagan, and Glen Beck goddammit! And they don’t care who knows it! But even sexy bald eagles, dead presidents, and weepy commentators took a back seat to the real star of the show and subject of fawning adulation, tumescent cocks, and welcoming open mouths – their very own Joe Wilson, who’s outburst of, “You lie!” has become this movement’s, “You complete me.”

CORPSE COUNT:
There were no actual physical deaths, although I did spot several old, winded white men and heard ambulances rushing by, so hope springs eternal. However, one could not turn around without being confronted with the corpses of Reagan, Adams, Jefferson, and Schiavo. No, the only true death to be witnessed was that of Republican ideology. For all the rhetorical bluster that this march on Washington signified a middle class uprising surfing a new wave of Conservativism and populist anger, it felt more like the last gasps, gurgles, and moans of a terminally ill people raging against the dying of the Right.

It would be easy to dismiss these people and their collection of half-baked prejudices and Reagan-worship masquerading as ideology as ignorant and out of touch. Of course they are. Their complaints represented the best/worst of a long-since debunked mythology of yesteryear. Their heroes are either long dead or morally bankrupt and disgraced by their inability to abide by the Puritanical code of conduct expected by their supporters. Instead, they are left to worship petulant Congressional brats and a former beauty queen with the toxic appeal of a fart on a long, crowded elevator ride.

But instead of writing them off, noting the time of death on the certificate, and moving the fuck on, Democrats, and even Obama himself, continue to offer CPR and administer shocks in a misguided effort at bipartisanship. JUST LET THEM FUCKING DIE ALREADY! They have already said that they don’t want the government involved in their end of life decisions, so just walk away. For the love of all that is good and righteous in this world, do not fucking resuscitate.

HOW BAD WAS IT REALLY?
As political theater, it was highly successful. There were laughs aplenty as participants mugged and posed for the cameras carrying signs with handwritten instances of sharp and insightful political wit. As a political movement, it was an abject failure. It was an odd intellectual (not really) cornucopia of Reagan conservatives, pro-lifers, 9-11 Truthers, Ron Paul supporters, anti-corporate free marketers (yeah, really), and Lyndon LaRouche douches. Sure, Glen Beck and Dick Armey were able to mobilize thousands of disaffected Fox News viewers in an amazing display of Right-wing diversity, with participants ranging from middle-aged and white to old and white, with a smattering of twenty- and thirtysomething whites who forced their 2.5 white children to march for causes they can’t comprehend while wearing political shirts they probably can’t even read. Having your kids listen to a message from the President telling them to stay in school is considered an unrepentant and insidious kind of indoctrination, but decorating your child in the latest Hate Speech apparel is apparently A-OK.

Crowd estimates range from 12,000 to hundreds of thousands. It may be difficult to accurately gauge the true number as most participants marched down to the Congressional grounds, saw that there were no seats or shade, realized they would have to stand and listen to speeches, said “Fuck it,” and decided to head to the nearest bar to stuff their faces and watch college football. These people’s commitment to their cause can be measured by the equal number of yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flags leaving the rally as those that continued to fly on the Capitol grounds.

The Teabaggers appear to have only three solutions to their multitude of complaints – 1) Impeach someone; 2) Stop government spending; and 3) Accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior. Sure, they have no problem with going to war under false pretenses, deregulating a financial market to the point of outright criminality, or having an unelected and unaccountable private insurance company making medical decisions, but the mere suggestion of helping the poor or implementing government regulation in any way, shape, or form will flip them out enough to waddle on Washington. And where is their indignant rage at the unchecked, deficit ballooning, multi-trillion dollar giveaway that has been Iraq and Afghanistan? The same people who bristle at the idea of increasing the minimum wage by $.25 or extending unemployment benefits by an extra week consider the unchecked, deficit-ballooning, multi-trillion dollar giveaway that has been Iraq and Afghanistan as perfectly acceptable. But suggest that government, as the major consumer and purchaser of health care, should be able to negotiate lower prices and suddenly you’re a traitor and a Communist who should be strangled with a copy the Constitution by the resurrected corpse of John Adams, which, quite frankly, isn’t very Christ-like of them.

POST-MORTEM ONE-LINER:
As I was walking back from the rally, a lone Teabagger marched down the sidewalk toward the rally, shouting, “Thank you, Patriots. You are relieved. The second wave is here.” That’s right…a one-man relief team. This is what we on the Left are afraid of? Really?

STUPID POLITICAL CONTENT:
Jesus. Where to begin? Socialism is bad. Taxes are bad. Obama is Hitler. Obama is Stalin. Obama is Osama bin Laden. Obama is King George III. Obama is Karl Marx. Obama is the Antichrist. Obama was born in Kenya. Obama is a Muslim. Obama should be impeached. Obama should be hung. Taxes are bad. Obama is going to enslave me and force me to perform late term abortions on the elderly then euthanize them. God hates fags. God hates abortion. God pretty much hates everything that doesn’t revolve around being a white Protestant. Taxes are bad. Nancy Pelosi is the Devil. September 11th was an inside job. Obama is responsible for the Somali pirates because he bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia. Impeach Congress. Impeach Pelosi. Barney Frank is immoral. We need to end the Fed for some reason. Taxes are bad. Corporations are bad. Corporations are good. War is always the answer. People who advocate universal health care are worse than pedophiles. Taxes are bad. Wilson/Palin 2012.

NOVELTY POLITICAL CONTENT:
At tie between:

The H1N1 flu is just a New World Order media controlled and contrived smoke screen to frighten people into getting the vaccine. The flu vaccines are actually a secret government plot to experiment on an unwitting public because they contain CIA developed mind control substances aimed at turning our children into subservient lackeys of big government spending by weakening their immune system and making them more susceptible to socialism. And, no, I’m not making this up. A woman and her kid were actually handing this out on the Metro to a mind-boggling collection of nodding heads and “I knew it” looks.

Yosemite Sam is an evangelical Christian. I shit you not.

WHAT YOU LEARNED:
Conservatives of this ilk are our Native American population circa the late 1800s, pushed to ever-shrinking fringes of a land they used to call their own, completely surrounded and outnumbered by the Calvary of equal rights. Their way of life is being slowly crushed and replaced by the new Manifest Destiny of social liberalism. One can only hope that as history progresses, it will also repeat itself, resulting in Conservatives being forcefully herded into their own semi-autonomous reservations scattered throughout the Bible Belt, filled with evangelical churches instead of casinos. And heavily taxed to subsidize gay marriage and provide free abortions on-demand. That is, if Democrats don’t fuck it up.

SPECIAL RUTHLESS DATA:
Number of times you thought the Metro train would derail: 4
Number of times you thought, “Please, God, don’t let me die with all these Republicans”: 4
Number of times you thought it would be less embarrassing to die on the toilet or be found hanging from a doorknob with your cock in your hand: 4
Number of times you had to suppress laughing out loud at the conversations you overheard: 996
Number of National Park Stamps you collected for Cale: 8
Number of times in the last month Cale pestered you for said stamps: 1
Number of black participants you saw: 1

Smug, know-it-all, self-righteous prick acts like the stereotypical ugly American tourist by ordering everyone around and contributing a nonstop running commentary on all things esoteric, always looking for the opportunity to critique and correct the native population’s interpretation of their own history and events.

Tom Hanks’ character, Robert Langdon, is still grinding a 400 year old axe against the Catholic Church for silencing Galileo and chiseling the penises off of statues. But apparently, he has no problem with their more recent transgressions related to pedophilia and their stance on birth control and abortion. No, better to take the Church to task for something they can’t change and which has no relevance whatsoever to the real world problems of today. In this sense, his character is the consummate academic.

Tom Hanks’ hairpiece is just as equally smug, especially after having gone on what I assume is a Jenny Craig diet for hair, and slimming down dramatically from its appearance in The Da Vinci Code. Tom Hanks’ gut simply repeats its previous performance from A League of Their Own and the first part of Castaway.

Oh, the plot revolves around some priest who is pissed because physicists working on the Large Haldron Collider Project have the audacity to call the residual anti-matter created by their experiments the “God Particle,” which he interprets as an attempt by science to lay claim to the miracle of creation at the expense of God. So, in order to rally the knuckle-dragging faithful in that glorious march backwards away from knowledge and progress, he orchestrates an Illuminati threat by kidnapping the four potential papal candidates, stealing a vial of anti-matter, and threatening to kill each cardinal every hour on the hour before detonating the anti-matter bomb and leveling the Vatican while hundreds of thousands of the faithful are gathered in St. Peter’s Square awaiting the election of the new Pope. So, the Vatican calls in Dr. Smug to stop this devious scheme by trying to figure out…well…something having to do with the thousands of old churches that litter Rome like inner city liquor stores.

And why are these churches important? They have something to do with the Path of Light leading to the first Church of the Illuminati where Langdon believes the four cardinals and the anti-matter bomb are located. But Langdon and Hank’s hair are thwarted at nearly every turn by Stellan Skarsgard, playing the Swiss Guard version of the stupid 80s Action chief, and by a nameless hitman whose efficiency at killing without remorse is matched only by his inexplicable refusal to just put two into the back of Langdon’s head and one into Hanks’ hair and just get on with the plot. Langdon and his useless female physicist sidekick match wits with the killer in a race against the clock to locate and save the four kidnapped cardinals and the stolen vial of anti-matter. Unfortunately, the academic hero and his plucky gal Friday spend the bulk of their time in the Vatican archives reading and ending up in the wrong place after misinterpreting all of the clues, resulting in the death of three of the four papal candidates and the destruction of irreplaceable manuscripts, relics, and artifacts. Perhaps the Vatican should have called Inspector Clouseau instead.

But enough about the ridiculous plot. The real question is does the movie live up to the controversy created over the last couple of weeks by the Catholic Church’s criticism of the movie and author Dan Brown specifically? The answer, sadly, is no. But it’s not like the opportunity to drive a stake into the heart of religious zeal is absent, director Ron Howard just refuses to pick up the goddamn hammer and have a whack. At one point, Skarsgard’s stupid chief tells Langdon, “My Church feeds the hungry and comforts the sick. What does your church do?” This is the very definition of a softball question that Langdon should have hit well over the center field wall. But Langdon sheepishly looks away instead of choking up on the bat, squaring his shoulders, and replying, “Well, my church grows the food that feeds the hungry and find the cures that heal the sick, fuck you very much.” Instead, we get some half-assed bullshit message about how science and religion are really telling the same story but using different languages. Yeah, right.

While The Da Vinci Code was an autistic child, Angels and Demons is a full-blown Downer baby with fetal alcohol syndrome.

The San Francisco Chronicle, the Baltimore Sun, the Chicago Sun-Times,
the L.A. Times, and USA Today, along with other various media outlets
have reported on the lengths the U.S. military has gone to reach
recruiting targets in order to provide additional grist for the mills
of Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2004, the Pentagon published a “Moral
Waiver Study,” whose seemingly benign goal was “to better define
relationships between pre-Service behaviors and subsequent Service
success.” That study, along with lowering the bar on educational,
medical, and physical standards turned out to mean opening more
recruitment doors to potential enlistees with criminal records, no
education, possible mental health issues, and general fatness.

Between 2004 and 2005, there was a significant increase in the
number of recruits with what the Army terms ’serious criminal
misconduct’ in their background” — a category that included
“aggravated assault, robbery, vehicular manslaughter, receiving stolen
property and making terrorist threats.” In this one-year span, the
number of those recruits rose by more than 54 percent, while alcohol
and illegal drug waivers, reversing a four-year decline, increased by
more than 13 percent. The military’s own data has indicated that the
percentage of recruits entering the Army with waivers for misdemeanors
and medical problems has more than doubled since 2001. Under these
revised standards, the Army recruited 80,635 soldiers in 2006, roughly
7,000 more than in 2005. Of those, 70,000 were first-time recruits who
had never served before and 3.8 percent of them scored below the bottom
aptitude percentile level. In previous years, the Army had allowed only
2 percent of its recruits to have scores that low. Shockingly enough,
the limit has since been raised to 4 percent, the maximum allowable
level under Department of Defense rules. Of course, the Army, taking a
page out of the teacher’s union and other educational quality
apologists’ playbook, has maintained that good test scores do not
necessarily equate to quality soldiers and that test-taking ability
does not measure loyalty, duty, honor, integrity or courage.

It is within this context that HBO’s new documentary, The
Recruiter, is set and it is within this context that it must be viewed.
While the filmmakers go to great lengths to provide an apolitical,
non-ideological framework, the Dumb-ocles Sword of recent U.S. foreign
policy hangs heavy over the proceedings, which are punctuated by
sporadic radio and TV news stories concerning troop injuries and death.
Nowhere is this more poignant than an incident that claims the lives of
four reservists from the New Orleans town of Houma, where the
documentary takes place. It is in this rural, bursting at the seams
patriotic hamlet where we meet both the recruiters and the recruits
they “close” using tactics right out of Glengarry Glen Ross.

Chris – A quiet, overweight kid who, like John Candy in Stripes,
appears to be enlisting in the Army so he can get in better shape,
although it would not be a stretch to picture him as being more like
Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket. Not much is known or shown about
Chris beyond this point, other than the fact that he’s a child of
divorce with a stepfather who may or may not be abusive and/or engaged
in any manner with his stepson’s upbringing. Chris is perhaps the
saddest one of the bunch – a lonely, fat nerd just looking for
acceptance and perhaps a little payback.

Lauren – A lesbian, gothic/emo, wigger basketball player, who says she
wants to join so she can earn money for art school. Her obese and
borderline abusive mother encourages her enlistment in hopes that the
Army will cure her daughter’s lesbian tendencies. Lauren likes to draw
pictures of dead things and people, chain smokes, dresses and talks
like a character from The Wire, and probably couldn’t find Iraq on a
map. Of Iraq.

Matt – Mr. All-American football player and all around jock with
daddy issues who, like his equally clueless teenage fiancé, appears to
be sold more on the prospect of creating an instant family courtesy of
free military housing and getting his truck paid for than recognizing
the grim possibilities of war. Matt is a true believer, through and
through, and a poster boy for Army recruiters.

Bobby – The Honor Student, with a school teacher mother and a
lawyer father. The only recruit from what appears to be an intact and
non-dysfunctional home. Bobby’s motivations are completely unknown, but
are speculated on by his father (bored at school, needs time off, wants
to serve like his father, grandfather, and other family members). Bobby
is quiet, reserved and has been pre-selected for Special Forces
Training. I found myself constantly asking why in the fuck did he
decided to go this route when in a sane world, he would be headed off
to college and four years of beer and easy pussy.

These kids, and their futures, are doggedly and relentlessly
pursued by Sgt. First Class Clay Usie, the Ricky Roma of Army
recruiters. Usie spends the vast majority of his time staking out high
schools and high school gatherings like a modern day Wooderson. But
Usie sells death and dismemberment instead of organizing beer busts and
runs to Austin to pick up Aerosmith tickets. Usie is the A-number one,
biggest cock on the block, soldier of the year who believes in God,
family, and country – in that order. His job, apart from conning dumb
kids and their friends into joining the Army with promises of relevant
training, good pay, and exotic adventure, is to prepare the suckers he
reels in for the rigors of basic training. But make no mistake, Usie is
a salesman first and a soldier second. And the first rule of being a
good salesman is that you never sell the product, you sell yourself.
Usie is the kind of guy who will meet you at 5:00 a.m. at the gym to
work out, will talk endlessly about himself and his accomplishments,
will cajole you into inviting your friends to your little workout
sessions, will serve as your big brother, your father, your uncle, and
your best friend, if it means that you will sign away your life on the
dotted line.

I had a friend who, shortly after graduating college, somehow
became involved with Amway and was immediatly ostracized by our group
of friends because we didn’t want to hear a sales pitch every time he
was around. It wasn’t that we didn’t like him it was that he just
couldn’t help himself. He had been totally brainwashed into the
American dream of earning vast amounts of quick money by pitching to
his friends and family – the soft targets. It is this search for the
soft target that drives Usie and his fellow recruiters. The normal,
educated, ambitious, and well-adjusted need not apply. Like the Moonies
or Heaven’s Gate, the Army cult seeks out the maladjusted, the lonely,
the ones seeking any kind of guidance and direction as long as it comes
with a sense of belonging and escape. They target the ones with family
problems, especially the ones from single-mother homes. They target the
disaffected, the directionless, the angry, and the outright dumb.

That these kids don’t fully understand what they are getting into is a
theme you hear repeated throughout the documentary. You hear it from
their parents, from some of the recruiters, and from the instructors in
basic training. You even hear it in the way these recruits repeat the
military propaganda that glamourizes military service. All of this begs
the question why, if these kids can’t or don’t fully appreciate what
they are getting themselves into, are they allowed, or in some cases,
encouraged, to enlist in the first place? Bobby’s father tearfully
tells the camera that he would feel like a hypocrite for discouraging
his son’s enlistment since he, himself, served. But harsh reality and
truthfulness is what these kids need, particularly during a time of
war. But in today’s context, preying on a seventeen or eighteen
year-old’s naďvité is the only way to fill the ranks.

However not all of Usie’s recruiters have the brass balls required for
such a high powered human sales position. One recruiter who appears to
have fallen victim in the past to the same line of shit that he’s
selling today, is Willie Loman to Usie’s Ricky Roma, but without the
delusions of grandeur. While he never explicitly admits it, he
obviously knows that what he’s doing is wrong and does everything he
can within reason to sabotage himself and his recruitment efforts. The
only honorable man present, he can no longer cope with the guilt of
selling young men and women a coffin disguised as money for school or a
trade. His heart just isn’t in it anymore after seeing the horrors that
await these kids in Iraq.

The last part of the documentary follows three of the four recruits
through basic training (Chris was shipped out earlier than the others
due to high casualties). Whether or not it was the intention of the
filmmakers to “rush” through this part of the feature is unknown, but
it does capture the almost hurried process of basic training, with an
emphasis on the word, “basic.” Recruits do calisthenics, march,
wrestle, fire guns, graduate, and are then shipped off to die, that is
if they don’t succumb to a panic attack when being issued their
uniforms and skivvies and coming to the realization that life as they
know it is now over. Only Bobby appears to receive anything remotely
approaching combat training. After graduation, Matt and Lauren return
to Houma on a one-month leave before shipping off to Iraq. Matt spends
his month getting married, with Usie as his best man and substitute
father. Lauren returns to her rural shack, her lesbian lover, and a
month of moping and complaining over her ill-advised decision to enlist
and expressing genuine surprise that the Army doesn’t offer art
classes.

A concluding epilogue tells us the fates of these characters, but I
will conclude with an epilogue of my own from the San Francisco
Chronicle:

In the latter half of the Vietnam War, the U.S. military started to
crumble from within and American troops began scrawling “UUUU” on their
helmet liners — an abbreviation that stood for “the unwilling, led by
the unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful.”

With a growing majority of Americans opposed to the war in Iraq and
even ardent hawks refusing to enlist in droves, new policies creating a
lower-quality officer corps and the Pentagon pulling out ever more
stops and sinking to new lows to recruit and train troops, a new
all-volunteer generation of UUUU’s may emerge — the underachieving,
unable, unexceptional, unintelligent, unsound, unhinged, unacceptable,
unhealthy, undesirable, unloved and uncivil — all led by the
unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful.

Welcome to Frederick Douglass High School, the second oldest black school of its kind in the United States. Born out of the separate but equal educational system in the early part of the 20th Century, its most famous alumni include former United States Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and jazz great Cab Calloway. Frederick Douglass High School also boasts a 66% uncertified teacher ratio, a less than 25% graduation rate, fewer than 10% reading at appropriate grade level, and only one student out of the entire school who passed the State of Maryland algebra exam. The perfect companion piece to Season 4 of The Wire, this new HBO documentary shows the viewer a year in the life of an inner city high school, and while the setting is Baltimore, Maryland, the same school, faculty, students, parents, and administrators exist in places like Philadelphia, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Newark, and most likely within your zip code if you live within the continental United States.

“BELIEVE” reads a painted banner hanging over the doorway to Frederick Douglass, but “Abandon all hope ye who enter” would not be out of place. The clean, modern, and surprisingly graffiti free hallways betray the sheer hellish nature of this institution and those who wander its halls. Attending class is the exception; achievement outside of the music program and a few individual students is non-existent; and morale, like whites and middle class blacks, has long since fled the area. Apathy and frustration reign supreme here, signified by the stark emptiness of the auditorium on Parents Night and the sight of teachers sitting alone in their classrooms waiting for that face-to-face meeting that will never happen. “Three parents showed up, so that’s a good night,” says 9th Grade English teacher, Mr. McDermott. Another, older teacher reminisces about the days when parents and their kids would have been lined up down the hall waiting to speak with their child’s teacher. Now, one to three parents is the new standard, measured against the high water mark that was five parents in a single night two years ago.

And why should anyone expect the kids to act any differently when their parents refuse to be engaged in their child’s education? At one point in the documentary, the principal and the school’s resource officer go to the home of one student who is habitually absent to speak with her mother. Now, keep in mind that this happens during a weekday. The principal and resource officer get to the home and, of course, the girl and the mother are both there. They proceed to ask the mother if she knows that her daughter has been missing so much school and why. Well, the girl is sitting right there…at home…on a school day…at the table with her mother. It’s fucking obvious that she knows and just doesn’t care anymore. It’s also obvious that the mother is either a recovering addict or jonesing for another shot. Another example is one 17 year old 9th grade multiple repeater who has been placed in remedial classes, but doesn’t want to go. They state that his mother doesn’t think he belongs in remedial classes either even though he’s a 17 YEAR OLD 9th GRADER! Just like the teachers and administrators, the parents have lost complete control over these kids. Worse yet, they’re just as apathetic about it as the kids. Not to mention the fact that when I say, “parents,” I mean mothers, because the fathers have long since vanished from the scene. That is, when it’s not a grandmother or aunt that’s the official guardian, a point that’s rather sadly hammered home during the principal’s graduation introduction when she welcomes the, “parents, grandparents, and legal guardians,” to the ceremony. “You made it!” she says, and yes these kids are survivors, but only temporarily.

While the subtitle reads, “A No Child Left Behind Report Card,” very little time is spent either supporting or condemning this policy. Instead, NCLB as a public policy is relegated to almost footnote status. Just like the Court’s mandate of “all deliberate speed” in Brown v. Board of Education, NCLB is just another in a long line of mixed bad educational reforms – full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing in the face of urban demographics and poverty. One could legitimately argue that NCLB’s lofty standards of proficiency are a good thing for schools. After all, why shouldn’t schools ensure that the maximum number of students in its care actually demonstrates learning and that the teachers they employ are qualified to teach? Surely, having some goals is better than just continuing to hand out assembly line diplomas to functional illiterates by unqualified people off of the streets. Then again, when the dual specters of funding reduction and the loss of local control are attached to meeting those standards, the Devil is not only in the details, he’s in the state legislature advocating for these standards to be repealed. The counter, and equally legitimate argument, is that NCLB is too stringent and doesn’t provide the necessary financial incentives to implement the policy. At the end of the day, the problem with meeting or failing the NCLB standards is that no one is to blame and everyone is to blame. Everyone is a victim – the students, the teachers, the administration,
the state legislature, the business community, colleges and universities, parents, society, the country, and future generations. Excuses for failure take precedence over solutions for success, but in the end, it all seems so irrelevant and hopeless, as no well-meaning policy could ever hope to address the issues facing Frederick Douglass. The system is too far gone and the culture is irreparably toxic. The mythology of and ethos of victimhood is so ingrained that when the black referee and the black scorekeeper of a basketball game make a dubious call that results in the star player fouling out of the semi-final against another all-black high school, one player unleashes a rambling screed in the post-game locker room about how this was just another example of the city trying to keep the black man down, force him to sell drugs, profit from his labor, and put him in jail. The coach, a police officer at the school, attempts to regain control by pleading with his players to not let this be about more than basketball and to use this as an opportunity to grow, but even he knows the score. The mythology and ethos runs too deep. Later, when some players meet with an Upward Bound college coordinator to discuss how to package themselves to recruiters despite their abysmal top SAT score of 480, they’re told to focus on the essay and explain the hardships and trials they’ve experienced. Never mind the fact that 99% of them are reading and writing at a 3rd or 4th grade level, and don’t bother with SAT assistance. The solution is found, and reinforced, once again in being the most attractive victim.

Any and all rays of hope are depressingly fleeting. Sure there are one or two success stories, like the two senior boys – one who excels in debate, the other in music, and the one girl who appears to be excelling in the school’s music production program despite looking and sounding exactly like Snoop from The Wire. But for the most part, nobody gets out alive. Mr. McDermott, the 9th Grade English teacher at first appears to be an energetic, vibrant, and creative force in the classroom. He has a tenuous amount of control on his class and appears to be well-liked, which is all the more surprising due to the fact that he is young, white, and in his 3rd year at the school. However, at the end of the first semester, he resigns from his position. It had been “the year that I stopped seeing progress in kids,” he says as he’s packing up, “the year I stopped finding the little joys.” The 9th Grade Spanish teacher, a young white girl on a two-year assignment through Teach America, which places recent college graduates in inner city schools, is in her first year at Frederick Douglass, and based on the lack of enthusiasm displayed by her students and the already visible frustration on her face, will probably not let the door hit her in the ass once her contract is up.

Which brings up another interesting point about the documentary that makes it essential viewing – the obvious disconnect between the teachers in the classroom and the administrators in the front office. In a very telling piece of editing, the despair felt by the teachers at having only met one or two parents on Parents Night is contrasted with the enthusiasm of the principal, Mrs. Grant, who upon hearing that 105 parents signed up for the PTA exclaims, “that’s wonderful – what a success this night has been!” Mrs. Grant, ever the eternal optimist, marvels endlessly at the small victories (and who can blame her when these victories are few and far between), while appearing completely oblivious to the hardships and struggles facing the teachers under her direction. Nowhere is this more apparent than during a meeting with the faculty about their mid-year evaluations, where her admonition that this meeting is not, “about complaining,” is quickly trumped by one senior faculty member who forcefully reminds her that he only has 16 textbooks available for a class of 24 and that no one can take the book home. How, then, is it fair to evaluate him based on how well his students learn when they lack even the basic capability for doing homework assignments? Over and again, the teachers talk about scrounging supplies and textbooks from friends and sources inside the school system – meeting people at unlocked back doors in the night to score the most recent edition books and supplies like junkies. But would new books and supplies really matter? The sad truth is these kids are fucked because education just isn’t valued by anyone in their peer group or their family. Everyone’s self-esteem is so fragile that even a peer’s minor achievement of learning to read or do math is seen as a personal threat or attack. Sure, there are some authority figures who attempt to serve as a positive example, but they don’t live in the same daily environment as the kids do; they can’t really relate; and they can’t honestly compete with the prevailing culture.

Not only do the teachers lack the training and supplies necessary to teach, they are also stymied on their judgment and grading come graduation time by a system that is far more interested in statistics than in whether or not the child is prepared. Mrs. Grant, the principal, states that the teachers are encouraged to provide make-up exams and additional assignments to help students graduate on time. The teachers tell a different story, claiming, to a one, that this “encouragement” is actually an unofficial requirement. If a student asks, the teacher must allow them. Hell, even if they don’t ask, the teacher must come up with a list of options for the student to select from. However, whatever anger or resentment the teachers may have had regarding this policy has been replaced with resignation. As one teacher says, “What are they learning if they stay here another year? It’s all in the way your morals handle it, I guess.” One statistic mentioned in the beginning states, less than 10% of the students come to Frederick Douglass High School writing, reading, or performing at the appropriate grade level. Which begs the question, what are they learning before they get to high school? How did they get this far and, exactly, where will they go from here? The answers to these questions are all, I imagine, as equally disturbing and depressing as this film.