I was surprised by how quickly
they broke me. I had thought I was mentally
tough, inured against arguments and criticism. It turns out that my toughness was a veneer. The Crowd Pleaser—you know him
as that guy who writes short stories and shuffles them off into the aether in
the vain hope of publication--had always been lurking close to the surface of
my soul, longing for the approval of his audience. And now, faced with a cavalcade of boos, he’s
sulking backstage, unsure of whether to venture out again, and unclear on where
to find a different crowd.
#
I was always a competitor as a kid, but never an
athlete. My venue has always been
competitive speech and debate. I was
very, very successful in high school, a two-time All-American and one of the
best in my generation in the state of Kansas.
I found in the community of debaters a set of kindred souls, people with
whom I could work in a spirit of mutual appreciation. After a mediocre college career and a brief
and disastrous foray into journalism, I pursued a teaching degree and became a
debate coach.
I’ve been both good and bad at my job; quite good at my peak
(multiple state champions and national medalists as recently as 2010) and quite
bad lately. The cutting edge of
competitive debate is forged at the college level. It tends to be a young person’s game. For a while, I was that young person. Later, I employed a few. But my grip on the intricacies of debate
theory slipped appreciably when postmodern philosophy and critical race theory,
as opposed to policy analysis, became pivotal to the game. Nor, as the demographics of my school
changed, were my students able to spend thousands of dollars on summer
institutes where they could learn from the top minds in the activity. So I dropped behind the curve. As I did so, I began to see the game with a
different set of eyes.
For as long as there has been competitive policy debate, there have been
outsiders within the broader community—kids whose skills, resources, time
obligations or commitment level didn’t make it possible to succeed in the elite
realms of the activity, where speech at upwards of 350 words per minute and
reams and reams of expert evidence are the norms. Their voice within the game is pretty slight,
largely because the game self-selects its participants after a certain
point. Very few people are willing to
stay around for a long time in the role of cannon fodder. Fewer still are willing to do this when the
activity becomes—and this is not too strong a description—vicious in terms of
individual behavior and interpersonal courtesy.
Rounds at the top level are judged by former competitors who care for
substantive argumentation more than for the norms of public discourse. The competitors who succeed in this
environment become tomorrow’s judges.
The spiral builds upon itself, until the elite rounds are in many cases
brutal exercises in toxic masculinity.
Much lip service is paid to stamping out the uglier side of the
game. Explicit sexism and racism are
rejected—the community is overwhelmingly politically progressive. But in the end, the norms are defined by the
survivors, and competitive rounds become increasingly unkind environments. Even elite talents leave—but once they’re
gone, their concerns by definition cease to matter.
As I became an outsider for the first time, I started to want to work towards
the creation of an environment in which more traditional, delivery-oriented
styles of debate could be rewarded—to create an enclave in which courtesy could
thrive alongside analytical rigor.
But I also wanted to recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of the
hardcore members of the Kansas debate community as they strove to win the state’s
first-ever national championship in policy debate—to honor the kid and the
coach I once was. And to that end, I
implemented several projects, such as the bid tracker which honors recipients
of bids to the DCI, Kansas’s elite debate event. And, more notably, the Kansas HS Debate
twitter feed, @KSDebate.
#
The concept of debate community within Kansas had always
been important to me. My most cherished
memory as a high school competitor was of the “War Room” at the 1989 National
Tournament in which Kansas teams which had formerly gone head-to-head joined
forces to elevate one of their own to the brink of a national title. In 2007 the experiment was repeated; I was
part of the operation as a coach and saw one of my own teams elevated into the
top ten and another school’s repeat the 1989 achievement by reaching finals.
The time seemed right to bind together the broader community in pursuit of the
top prize. Other coaches were better at
the tactical side of the game—sharing information, plotting strategies—so I
dedicated myself to creating a mechanism by which common achievements could be
shared in real time. Twitter was still
new at that time. @KSDebate was
born. The account served as a common
clearinghouse for results which were sent in by national tournament competitors
and coaches in real time. For the first
time, there was one place to go to know how all of “team Kansas” was doing.
As the site grew, it became a place to share results of important invitationals
as well—DCI bid qualifiers, DCI itself, the various state tournaments, out of
state “national circuit” events. Fans of
the activity had in most cases gained the ability to follow their own squads,
or those of their friends, through individual team Twitter accounts. Now, through the collective account, they
could follow other Kansas teams as well.
It did not occur to me, at the time, that people might not particularly
care to do so—I assumed that everyone was rooting for everyone else.
There is, of course, an old aphorism about what happens when you assume.
#
The issue that had ultimately proved fatal to my career as a
journalist was an inability to confine myself to the facts. In stories about people in panda suits
serving as school crossing guards, about social service outreach for the
hearing impaired, about mock elections for elementary school students, I was
constantly spicing up the writing through the insertion of material that made
the story feel more “complete” to me. It
was never anything so obviously unethical as a fabricated quote; indeed, I got
in considerably more trouble for quoting people accurately than anything
else. Instead, it was the “connective
tissue” of the stories—the supporting facts of news events that seemed
necessary for people to understand the events in question, and which I
therefore offered by way of explanation, only to discover that my assumptions
had been inaccurate. I had been
lazy. I hadn’t fact checked. I had allowed my desire to entertain my audience,
to be recognized as a “good writer,” to wreck me.
As a Twitter account manager, I was rarely factually inaccurate. But I was also unable to restrain my urge to
entertain. And entertainment, to me, was
pointing to what I saw as the flaws and foibles of the debate community.
However lighthearted my intent, people do not enjoy having their tournament
errors and political beliefs held up to mockery in an arena allegedly dedicated
to “building community”. Over time, I
received more than one “stick to the facts” response to these
commentaries. I ignored them. Grudges developed. I made enemies of whom I was unaware.
I was also making enemies on another front.
#
As my own squad descended into decrepitude, as the game left me further and
further behind, I became more and more concerned for the plight of those kids whom
cutting edge debate had also left behind.
Funny, isn’t it, how our circle of compassion manages to extend to
people like ourselves, but not an inch further?
The Debate Coaches Invitational meeting discussed the possibility of restoring
a “traditional” debate division for students interested in a moderate rate of
delivery and evaluation by parents, teachers, and other “nonexperts”. Preeminent in the rationale of the proponents
was an alternative to the casual cruelty which they—which WE—saw as common in
bleeding-edge policy debate. A broad
consensus initially supported the concept of a new tournament along these lines. The devil was in the details. Concerns about
what, exactly, the tournament would look like killed the plan. The coaches’ vote on the eventual formal proposal
was evenly split, and hence, the proposal failed.
A large number of coaches, myself included, were outraged by this. It occurred to me that it was unfair to ask
next year’s seniors to lose their opportunity at recognition so that the
coaches could feel 100% comfortable with the specifics of change. It struck me as a paradoxically conservative
behavior for such a politically progressive bunch—using fear of radical change
as an excuse to ensure that the fruits of success were concentrated in the
hands of their current owners.
I acted. I created a
social media group dedicated to the creation of a tournament to recognize
traditional debaters. A number of
coaches coalesced around the idea, and recognizing the increasing toxicity of
my own personal brand within the community (and my inability to work well
with others), I elected to step aside and leave the event in their hands. They’ve done quite well; the first
championship is a sizable event among excellent teams and will be contested
this coming weekend.
I did not understand how powerful the backlash against my
behavior would be. I cannot say in
retrospect that I shouldn’t have acted as I did, but I should have been smarter
about the anger I was generating. People
who’d held the monopoly on the recognition of “elite” debate in Kansas were
seeing their authority diffused, usurped by a new gang who couldn’t compete at
their game and who were, therefore, largely unworthy of respect. A couple of those who'd objected were elite coaches,
but a larger number were members of the college debate community--recent graduates who serve as assistant coaches and frequent judges, and who are in all reality the arbitrers of the “good”
within Kansas debate.
It is not without justification that they fill this role. The increased involvement of college debaters in the direct
training of high school debaters has been the one indispensable element in
the rise of Kansas debate to national prominence. Head coaches commonly defer to them in
questions of argumentative strategy and in-round behavior. The collegians do the job they are called upon to do,
and achieve the results they are told to achieve. They arbitrate the important rounds, and
decide what’s worthy of praise and what’s worthy of scorn. And as time goes by, our community becomes
more like theirs; closer to the cutting edge.
And the students, taught from their earliest days to revere
the collegians as role models and heroes, trained by them at summer institutes
and prepped by them for elimination rounds at in-season tournaments—well, the
students are THEIRS. They absorb both
the collegians' tactics and their politics, and above all their assumptions about the
good. They become the leaders of the
community, and the definers of what is in and out of bounds.
It should be stressed:
the collegians do none of this with the intention of gaining or wielding power. They do it for the same reason I did it at
the same age, and for the same reason I created the Twitter account: to serve their community. Theirs are the noblest of reasons.
But their definition of the community, I would eventually come to realize, were narrower than mine. And their norms were never my norms.
A couple of the collegians reacted to the creation of the traditional
debate championship with public explosions of rage, expressed in social media. A couple of others seethed silently and took
passive-aggressive swipes at the rationale of the event when the opportunity
arose. A few, I think, took note of me,
and of my role in the creation of this event and in social media, and wondered
why an old man whose time had passed was presuming to speak for Kansas Debate.
I wonder now if it was evident to others how much anger I
had created, how many people—students, college assistants, head coaches--chafed
at what they saw as my arrogance. It was
invisible to me. I thought I was serving
the community.
A more professional individual could have kept the plates spinning longer. Not forever, I don’t think, but for a while
longer.
But I am not, at my core, much of a professional. I had to express myself. I had to be The Crowd Pleaser.
#
My Christmas tweet at @KSDebate, since deleted:
“Merry Christmas! Remember, it’s
distasteful to respond to Santa’s “Ho Ho Ho” with a feminism K.”
Fairly innocuous on its surface, I think. And actually pretty clever, in a subtle way. It points to the inability of some
self-described feminists to distinguish actual oppression—including directly
sexist discourse—from harmless behaviors that share similar appearances. It's a behavior that produces a less effective feminism, one that comes across as spiteful and mirthless. And the best bit of the joke is: if you treat the joke as sexist, if you fail to understand how a guttural expression of amusement is not the same thing as a slur aimed at women, you give evidence
of the exact inability to make distinctions that the joke references. You make yourself the butt of the joke.
I thought so, anyway, I STILL think so, in fact.
But then, I saw the joke through a different lens than
others did.
Specifically: I didn’t see myself as a
patriarchal figure wielding arbitrary authority through the power of a Twitter
account, actively seeking to control and undermine other people’s
discourse. Those who DID see me that way
read the tweet…well…differently. With a
great deal of rage and anger. “Merry
Christmas to everyone but you! Choke on
it!” And plenty more, in the same vein.
I still did not understand how other people’s perception of
the power dynamics involved differed from my own. I saw myself as a minority figure challenging
a majority view through humor. I thought
I was the rebel alliance. They saw me as
the Death Star, out to kill feminism.
The intention of the account was to unify the debate
community. I was, instead, creating
friction and pain. On Christmas day, no less. That hadn’t been what I wanted. I deleted the Tweet to prevent others from
having their enjoyment ruined by it. To
those who were bothered, this wasn’t an effort at amelioration. It was an effort to cover up evidence of my
crime.
I took a break from Twitter to re-evaluate.
I would seek consensus the next time out. I would try to make reference to the common activity,
to the bond which, whatever our political and philosophical differences,
produced us all. To the history of the game
that made us what we were. For once, no
comedy. I would seek to restore
community.
#
New Year’s Day. A fresh start. And a post at another popular account asking
who should be inducted into a hypothetical Kansas Debate Hall of Fame.
Perfect. The history of Kansas debate is
kind of my specialty. I think it is probably
fair to say that I have studied it as thoroughly, and know it as intimately, as
any man living. I can tell you who won
the inaugural Kansas state debate championship in 1911. I can name every member of the five Kansas
teams that have contested the NFL national title. I had something to contribute here.
Moreover, I had been reading the online discussions related
to the baseball Hall of Fame, and the questions associated with induction and character. Do you let in the steroid cheats? What about the overt criminals and
perjurers? What case do you make to
exclude them in a world where Ty Cobb, an inveterate racist who once beat up a
double amputee, was a first-ballot Hall of Famer?
There were all sorts of interesting issues to be debated. Here we go!
Here’s my contribution. The first
of five posts: the coaches’ wing of the
Kansas Debate Hall of Fame as I’d envision authorities creating it.
All extraordinarily successful coaches. Some of the I cut at the last minute were
those of legends.
The final name on the list is that of Richard Young. A good case can be made for him as the most
successful coach in Kansas history. More
than any coach in the state’s history, he won regardless of conditions. In western Kansas at schools with less than
200 students, at the state’s largest inner city high schools, and everywhere in
between—the state’s most consistent and inevitable winner.
And a convicted serial rapist of children whose conviction was later overturned
on a technicality.
Which was, in all probability, why he coached in so many
places. Why he couldn’t keep a job in
spite of all the winning. Unbeknownst to us all, he was being passed like a bad
penny from district to district by cowardly administrators who wanted him gone
but wouldn’t put themselves at risk of a lawsuit by telling the next set of
administrators why.
I suppose I could argue that I hadn’t been thinking of this
fact when I composed and narrowed my list.
But that would be a lie. I
had. I included him because I believed
that we were debaters setting the terms for a debate. I had provided a list of those coaches who
would have been inducted under the terms used by professional sports halls of
fame. But that had not been the prompt I
was answering. I had answered a prompt
that asked who I PERSONALLY WOULD INDUCT by saying I would induct Richard
Young.
The first person to reply to this tweet was, very possibly, the best assistant
coach in Kansas. One of those college kids, in fact. Assistant coach of his
own brother, who had won last year’s national championship—yes, after a hundred
years, Kansas debate had finally climbed that mountain!
The last name of this coach, and of his champion brother, was that of their father. Their father had changed his own name from “Young” because of the absolute havoc that Richard
Young’s behavior—including, according to trial testimony, incestuous homosexual rape—had
wrought upon their family.
The post I’d lightheartedly proffered for debate and discussion was predicated
on the greatest personal tragedy of this coach's father’s life.
“Utterly disgusting and indefensible,” he called it. And as I read, and realized, and felt my body
go numb in response, I could not disagree.
It could not possibly be the case, could it, that people who I’d been working
to serve for so long—the community I’d sought to build—thought I was celebrating
child rape? SURELY the context was
clear?
Well…I don’t have permission to post the responses. But you can go through them on your own, if
you wish, and count the likes.
I had, of course, failed to bargain with a number of factors. One of which is—and I will be blunt here,
because I will defend the truth of this argument to the death—is the very nature
of Twitter. When I initially joined it
with the idea of creating an instantaneous outlet for debate results, Twitter
was broadly seen as a means by which live news could be shared. Today, it is an integral part of the outrage
economy, and a means to generate support via virtue signaling. And oh, my, hadn’t I opened the door to
that. The counter-tweets went viral, and
the enemies of rape culture swarmed, eager to outdo one-another. There were a lot of good arguments about how
my initial post was Flawed and Wrong, some of which I myself quickly came to
endorse. But there was also a BLIZZARD
of virtue-signaling and like-trolling.
I had acted callously.
But I had relied upon the assumption that readers would assume my good
faith at the outset; that it would be understood that I was one of the “good
guys”. A guy who’d worked for seven
years to glorify the accomplishments of Kansas debaters, including and
especially women in the activity. I had
thought that was how I was broadly seen.
But I was wildly wrong. I had given too many people too many different reasons to question my motives. I was broadly seen
as a vainglorious popinjay with no meaningful recent achievements who wielded his
Twitter feed as a stick to hit kids with.
And in particular, I was seen by many among the college cohort as a
broken-down old-schooler who was engaged in an active attempt to undermine the
achievements of the state’s elite contemporary debaters.
And there would be no presumptions of good faith on my part.
None whatsoever.
“Rape apologist.”
“Racist.”
“Everything that’s wrong with Kansas Debate.”
And the poll, responded to by a healthy chunk of the community,
advocating my “removal” as sponsor of the Kansas Debate feed—the one I’d
created from scratch and built over seven years. I have no idea what that "removal" was supposed to entail, whether they had in mind some kind of impeachment procedure or whether they thought a twitter account was an actual physical location that I could be hoisted out of with a crane, or what. In any event, the proposition passed by a margin exceeding that of the Johnson-Goldwater election.
I was surprised by how quickly they
broke me. By how fragile I turned out to
be. By the descent of insomnia, and by how much I came to dread each new chime from
my cell phone as a tweet came in. By how
much I took all of it to heart—not just the rational objections, of which there were several but also the stuff that was just plain dumb: the ludicrous
overreactions, the assertions of hidden motives by people I’d never even met. I was surprised by what I saw, at the time, as the undoing of everything I'd sought to build, based on the inclusion of a single name in a single tweet.
I was wrong, of course. The tweet struck the match. But the kindling had been piling up for years.
The Crowd Pleaser had been present always, eager for
everyone’s applause. He had been sure
that his attempts at cleverness had been appreciated—not by all, maybe, but surely by most? In his version, others saw his antics as he saw them—as an effort to pay back and glorify the community that
had nurtured him, rather than as an artifact of ego.
Like a shitty journalist, The Crowd Pleaser invented
facts to suit the story he wanted people to buy.
#
At the end of the day, there was no possible way to recover even a semblance of
good faith. It all had to go.
You can read the post here,
on the site which I originally created to track the DCI bids of the state’s
most elite, modern, cutting-edge teams.
It went up a few hours after the initial disastrous tweet—long before
the majority of the tweet hurricane unfolded, but far too late to make any
difference.
I don’t have much to add to it. The reasoning of the tweet was dumb and
careless for the reasons listed. The
apology will be proffered. The relationship
to the broader community is changed in ways I cannot yet guess at, and the Twitter site is ended. The college kid who’s building a new site for the same purpose is
actually going to do a very good job, I think.
He’s always been invested the glory of the Kansas debate community and
worked to support it at every level, including those elements that don’t share
his stylistic preferences or ideology. And he's a smart kid. He’ll make better decisions than I did.
DCI is next week. I have to be there
because my novices are competing at an event at the same site. I have never in my life so dreaded the
prospect of walking into a building and looking people in the face. I don’t say this out of shame, because few of
my actions have actually been shameful.
They have, however, been delusional.
My eyes are open, and I dread what they’ll see—particularly when I see
my reflection in the eyes of others.
I don’t know what I do next. Debate in some form, probably. Certainly I want to teach young people how to
persuade and how to argue while at the same time rejecting spite, cruelty, and moral certainty. In spite of the letters and emails they’ve
received, my administrators seem inclined to keep me on as coach. Maybe I will have to build something
completely new. A new way of thinking about
debate. A new activity. A new community.
I’ll think on it. And, in my spare time:
more writing. Perhaps a tragedy, this
time. The story of a guy who sets out to
do good, but who’s undone by blindness to the flaws in his own nature.
But then, I've been writing that book for a long time.
