The Des Moines Register has a front-page story today about a financial settlement between an Iowa school district and a teacher it was trying to fire over a personal Facebook post. It ended on the right note but carries warning signs, especially in the context of other recent news.
Melisa Cook, a Creston High School English teacher, had responded to a family member’s post about Charlie Kirk, the Christian Nationalist conservative founder of Turning Point USA, after his shooting death. She called him a “terrible human being,” and wrote that though she didn’t wish death on anyone, his not being here “is a blessing.”
Yes, the wording was careless and insensitive, and she apologized for it. We can disagree with her language and timing. But a firing offense? Hell no.
In her federal lawsuit against the district, Cook called it retaliatory. A federal judge blocked her firing, citing her First Amendment right to speak “on a matter of public concern.” And this week, with a $145,000 settlement to Cook, who is resigning instead, the suit was dismissed.
But the attempt to strip a teacher’s livelihood over a post is another ominous sign of where we are these days, when certain parts of our history can’t be taught in classes and certain books can’t be kept in school libraries and certain people can’t be criticized without possible legal consequences. Charlie Kirk, after all, became famous for expressing his often hurtful opinions, advocating patriarchal marriage roles for women, and his calls for public burnings of the Gay Pride and Black Lives Matter flags among other things.
But if being callous about the killing of a prominent U.S. civilian is in poor taste, shouldn’t the U.S. President and his supporters be the first ones to emulate greater decorum? Donald Trump, probably Kirk’s biggest fan, has done the opposite.
After actor Rob Reiner and his wife Michele were found stabbed to death in December (for which a son of theirs has been charged) Trump used social media to blast Reiner. He blamed the death on what he called Reiner’s “massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” Asked later by a reporter if he stood by those words, the President again called Reiner deranged.
This president has two sets of standards: One for himself and those he considers his allies, and the other for his critics. And he’s shown he’ll stop at little, including prosecution, to punish the latter when he feels they insulted him. But for those he thinks have his back, no appointment may be too great — even if they’re underqualified.
Which leads us to another story in today’s paper, about James Comey’s latest indictment. A previous Trump administration attempt to prosecute Comey, his former FBI director, alleged Comey had lied to Congress and obstructed a congressional proceeding. But a judge tossed that out, saying the prosecutor, who was previously Trump’s personal lawyer, was unlawfully appointed for that purpose.
In the latest attempt, Trump’s team now wants Comey criminally charged for an Instagram post he made, of a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach. You can’t make this stuff up.
The shells were arranged to spell out “8647,” which some Trump supporters consider a veiled threat to get rid of Trump, the 47th president – 86 being slang for tossing out or doing away with.
Comey removed the post, but a federal grand jury in North Carolina has indicted him, claiming it was a coded threat to harm or kill Trump.
This president’s vengefulness would be laughable if it weren’t in such violation of free-speech rights. Now, once again Trump has set his sights on late night talk show host/comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who regularly pokes fun at people in power. In September, Trump called for his firing for his quips about Trump’s response to Kirk’s death. Under pressure from the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Disney-owned ABC suspended Kimmel. But he was back on the air after a public uproar over the attempts to censor him.
This time Trump’s ire was provoked by a sketch Kimmel did before the White House Correspondents Dinner last week, in which, posing as the host, he joked to Melania Trump, “Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.” Kimmel said the joke was about the Trumps’ age difference. But after a shooting broke out at the event, both Trumps accused him of encouraging violence against them and have called for his firing.
Watching these repeated attempts to silence and punish people because of the President’s thin skin is exhausting and dispiriting. A country that once vigorously advocated free speech around the globe is becoming hard to distinguish from some of the dictatorships I’ve been reading up on for an upcoming panel at Saturday’s Des Moines Book festival. There are authors who emigrated to Iowa, sometimes from post-colonial states, where corruption - including bribes to government functionaries, threats, retaliation and propaganda - was rampant. It’s haunting to see some of the same signals and patterns at play here.
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