Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

Read These Too:

InstaPundit
USS Clueless
James Lileks
Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Secular Islam
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue
Ravishing Light
Rosenblog

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Wednesday, June 30, 2004
15:22 - Nice stops at midnight	(top)
Remember when we were all schoolkids? I do. It wasn't all that very long ago. I remember more about those days than, perhaps, I expected to at age twenty-eight. Certainly more than I imagined I would after all the stuff that's happened in my life that I never would have predicted when my world consisted of the rust-stained drinking fountains and the painted-out lower panes of windows at my shabby middle school in Redwood Valley. Remember what was important about school? Maybe I'm just projecting�maybe this is just my oddball experience, but I did have classmates, and I did pay attention to how they thought and acted. What was important in school, aside from our own internecine loyalties and pop-cultural interests, was the teachers. Which teacher did you get? Is the teacher nice? I remember niceness in teachers being paramount on the radar of third-graders. Would you get one of the teachers with the glowing reputations�a two-syllable, easily memorized name? A sunny smile? Someone who talked to the kids in a musical singsong, who gave us breaks and treats unexpectedly? Someone who was lenient on misbehavior, who encouraged the kids to operate in the class on their own terms? Someone who made sure everyone in the class was learning at the same pace, and would slow things down in order to let everyone catch up? ...Or would you get a teacher who wasn't nice? Someone who ran the classroom according to strict rules, who would send you to the principal's office as soon as look at you (or wave a yardstick at you while shouting)? Someone who snarled gruffly and was hard to please, who demanded punctuality and obedience and never offered up a pleasant surprise? Someone who graded harshly, but insisted that students excel on their own merits and held up the top-achieving students as trophies to the school? We always wanted niceness in our authority figures. It was safer; it meant less work; it meant less hassle; it meant things were more pleasant. Small wonder that we should look for the same qualities in the people we elect to lead us, then, once we grow up, eh? If that's what we can call what we do. After all, what can one say about a society that values the same characteristics in its leadership as it did in its elementary-school teachers? Lenience on crime. Folksy language and bearing. A sunny smile. A sense of humor. A two-syllable, easily memorized name. Unexpected treats and breaks. Holding back the achievers so the slower kids can catch up. Talking down to us like we're children under the care of a nanny. Some schoolkids eventually do seem to grow up, and recognize the value of a hands-off, withdrawn leadership who outlines a vision and a goal, but demands that we all get there under our own steam; who is unforgiving of shortcomings, but greatly honors those who manage to make it to greatness. More of us, we come to realize, have the power to make it in this world than we did to be the smart kids in school; and we react with revulsion when, instead of being forced to read and decipher Shakespeare as we were while growing up, today's public-school pupils are fed poems by Tupac Shakur: One poem is "Dedicated 2 Me." Another is "Dedicated 2 My Heart." There's one "4 Nelson Mandela" and another "2 Marilyn Monroe," which laments: "They could never understand what u set out 2 do instead they chose 2 ridicule u." Another Shakur opus is titled "When Ure Hero Falls." Still another muses: "What Is It That I (insert pictograph of an eyeball) Search 4." �A dictionary, perhaps? �In riveting prose that presumably rivals Frost or Longfellow, Shakur brags that he is "more than u can handle" and "hotter than the wax from a candle." Edgar Allan Poe had Annabel Lee. Shakur had Renee ("u were the one 2 reach into my heart"), April ("I want 2 c u"), Elizabeth ("the seas of our friendship R calm"), Michelle ("u and I have perfect hearts"), Carmen ("I wanted u more than I wanted me"), Marquita ("u were pure woman 2 me"), Irene ("I knew from the First glance that u would be hard 2 4get"), and Jada. �Proclaiming his love "4 Jada," Shakur pays gallant literary tribute to the object of his desire: "u bring me 2 climax without sex." �Lord Byron, he wasn't. It's a nice teacher who'll play Pok�mon with his or her students. But that's not a characteristic that, when we from our adult perspectives see it in our government, our public school officials, or our President, we treat with a great deal of respect. This isn't the place for nice. This is the world of grown-ups, and demanding that our leaders be as nice as the teachers who used to declare jumprope days and hand out candy is a sure recipe for ensuring that we remain a nation of children forever. (Horrifying link via Cold Fury.)