Why We Teach (or, Taking It For Granite, Part 3)

For the next couple of days, instead of teaching children, I shall go to Boston and take classes about how to teach children. Sort of.

It’s our state music ed association’s annual professional development conference. Every year I look forward to going. Not so much for the extremely-early-morning drive from central Massachusetts to Boston, which this year will be made that much more exciting by the incoming winter weather. In the last few years, the conference organizers have assembled more and more interesting slates of workshops and clinics and lectures. A dozen years ago, I used to find two or three sessions on each of the days of the conference that I really wanted to attend, but not much more. So I spent a lot of time perusing the vendors’ and exhibitors’ areas. Lately, I’ve been finding at least two and sometimes as many as four interesting-sounding clinics available during each of the seven hour-long time blocks per day set aside for those sessions. I have to figure out exactly when I’m planning to eat lunch tomorrow. Hmm.

But one other thing that I go to All-State for … is the opportunity to see / chat with / hang out with my music teacher friends, some of whom I only get to see once all year: at All-State. Either we’re geographically separated, or – as is usually the case with us music teacher types – our schedules are just busy enough (but not with conveniently-aligned busy-ness) that All-State is pretty much it.

And, more rarely but still often enough that I look forward to it, All-State provides me with the opportunity to see teachers with whom I used to work, or teachers who advised me during my graduate school work or my student teaching experience, or – and this is the really fun part – people who were my music teachers. I enjoy these visits; those particular teachers probably experience that lurch that goes with the thought, “I taught him middle-school or high-school music how many years ago?!”

Fear not, my former teachers: I’ve been a teacher long enough to have experienced that lurch, myself.

But it’s a good lurch, and it’s one that I’ve been caused to think about pretty often lately.

For most of my teaching career, I’ve taught at the secondary-school level, so seeing the difference between what my former students look like now, compared with what they looked like when they were in my classes or ensembles isn’t quite as much of a shock as it would be if I’d known them in kindergarten. Still, quite a moment.

When I got onto Facebook a few years ago, I didn’t really intend to be connected as a Facebook-Friend with any of my former students, and certainly not any current students. The latter still do not (and will not) adorn my Friend list; but I did invent a rule for myself that supposed that if one of my former students is THIS many years out of high school and looks me up, I’ll be happy to Accept Their Friend Request. I don’t go tracking down former students. It’s not an ego thing; I just felt that actively tracking down formers was a bit much – no matter how much I wondered what and how they were doing.

So, seeing online the activities and careers of former students (whether they’ve become teachers or musicians, or anything else) has been a neat thing. Some play in local bands … some anchor the news in far-flung places … some are pretty intense advocates for (and examples of) military spouses … and several of them do (or soon will) hold down teaching jobs. And I’ve been invited to three of my former students’ weddings. In all cases, I’m pleased to think I got to be one of their teachers. They’re fine folks.

If one of them comes back and visits me at school, I quite seriously tell them, “as happy as you seem to be to see me, I am at least three times as happy to see you.” Because, of their own free will, they decided that their educational experience with me meant enough to them that they wanted to set aside time to re-connect. That’s a big deal. And it actually helps me understand why my teachers said that sort of thing when I’d go back to visit them.

When I was in high school, I’d occasionally organize trips down to the junior high school – friends of mine and I would get one of our parents to drive us over, and then we’d descend on the classrooms of favorite teachers. Let’s go find Mr. Tornrose! Mrs. Lowe! Mrs. Luther! Mr. Lamb! Mrs. Minarsky!

It would be something of a crapshoot: sometimes they’d be in meetings, or conducting help sessions … but most times they’d be sitting behind their desks, grading papers or attending to similar necessities; and as soon as we burst into the room, they’d drop everything and chat with us for a while. Interestingly, even half an hour or an hour after their school day had ended, rarely would they have left the building. (We probably didn’t realize how much of a good influence they were on us, just because of that alone.) And 20 minutes or half an hour or sometimes an hour later, we’d still be standing, talking, remembering, laughing.

And again, we thought we were the ones who were really excited about it all. We were sure they couldn’t be nearly as excited as we were. As it turns out … we had no idea.

This past week, I saw one photo, posted online, that really got my attention. In it, an a cappella singing group full of graduate students (not even music majors!) was doing its thing, clearly having a blast. And when I looked closely, I realized that standing side-by-side were two of my former students – from two completely different parts of my teaching life. One had been a stalwart member of my first high school choral ensemble (and whom I was pleased to deliver to All-State Chorus rehearsals for two consecutive years, singing a different voice part each time). The other had marched with the college band that I directed a few years ago – I’d had no idea that she even liked to sing. And by some wonder of coincidence … perhaps! … they had ended up pursuing post-graduate study in the same education program at the same university (teachers! score!) and ended up within inches of each other, doing music for fun (again, score!).

They may not have any idea how big a grin that put onto my face.

So, another on the list of things never to take for granted: former students. Better than almost anything else, they’re a reminder of “why we teach”.

Language Barrier

[Ed. Note: The Management apologizes in advance for the approximately thirty-seven dozen references in this blog post, both in print and via hyperlinks, to “Star Trek” and “Star Wars”. This blog's author is a nerd.]

 

This week, I spotted an online question: what’s your favorite English accent? Half the responders thought the questioner meant “what’s your favorite accent from the British Isles?” and the other half thought he meant “what’s your favorite accent in which to hear English spoken?”  So I got thinking about both. What are my favorite accents, and why?

 

“It comes to pass oft that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would have earned him.” –William Shakespeare

“A great actor is independent of the poet, because the supreme essence of feeling does not reside in prose or in verse, but in the accent with which it is delivered.” -Lee Strasberg, acting instructor

“I personally am not conscious of my accent.” -Jared Diamond, American author and scientist

I live in New England, so I probably have a touch of New England in me, but I try to downplay it. If I catch myself pronouncing “there” as “thay-uh”, I stop and think, “no, no, no, no, no.” Why do I do that? Because I hate the New England accent? Hardly. But I try to be careful. Hmmmm.

Background: my standard line is, “my mother grew up in New Jersey, my father grew up in England; we moved to Massachusetts when I was a year and a half old: I got nothin’.” It’s mostly true, possibly thanks to the amount of time I’ve spend amongst people other than New Englanders.

Historically, I’ve been an accent sponge. My favorite story about this comes from my senior year in high school: our music ensembles traveled from Massachusetts to Quebec in the first half of a “home-and-home” exchange trip with high school musicians from Rosemere, a suburb of Montreal. We lived with the families of many of the Rosemere musicians, so for three days we were immersed in the accent of the area. Upon our return home, we jumped off the buses and were met by our parents… and after I spoke exactly five words to my parents, they were chuckling at me. “What?” I said. “You’ve been in Canada,” they said. “Well, yes,” I said, “what’s your point?”

In a really flat and nasal version of a Canadian accent, my Dad said, “You sound just like a hockey coach, eh?”

Oh fine. Guilty as charged. So I’ve got a pretty good ear… ease off!

 

So. Thinking about the various accents that have crashed down on me throughout my life…

[] The Boston Accent. Stereotypically, we pahk the cah in Hah-vid Yahd, but there are other elements to the thing that make it both charming and irritating. Depending on the speaker, the thing can make a person sound either dashingly Kennedy-politician-esque or as dopey as, well, Mayor Quimby of the Simpsons’ city of Springfield. I get a grand kick out of the “Car Talk” guys, but others may not. A college friend of mine from Pittsfield, out in the far west of Massachusetts, had (to my ear) very little of an accent, except that if she was talking about one-fourth of something, she referred to it as a “quotter”.

Well okay, I guess we’re working our way east to west in the United States, so…

[] The New York Accent. Or at least the New York City-centered one. If it’s a Brooklyn accent, to me it just makes everything sound funnier. Thanks, probably, to a combination of Bugs Bunny cartoons, the Marx Brothers and the Abbott and Costello “Who’s On First?” routine. As for the 1010-WINS radio news reader accent, the cultured Manhattan thing … that is a different thing altogether. Until Los Angeles became the entertainment production capital of the United States, a New York accent was the sound of entertainment. (Ever heard an World War II-era newsreel narrator? Check out the opening 20 seconds of any episode of the animated “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” shows for an attempt at the modern equivalent.)

As a close cousin geographically and sonically of the New York accent, the New Jersey Accent has no better proponent than my mother. Born and raised in New Jersey, she has taken no end of abuse from New Englanders (who ought to exercise caution when mocking accents) for her pronunciation of certain words. Because man’s best friend is in fact a Doo-awg.

[] The Pennsylvania Accent. I never knew there was such a thing until I experienced the work of a particular couple of band instructors in college. Then I figured it out, and then some. I still can’t reproduce it on cue myself, but every so often a hint of it slips out and I think, “oh – Pennsylvania.” Not to mention the Philadelphia schtick of a certain summer colleague of mine (which I suspect is a touch over-the-top… then I wonder if perhaps it’s not).

[] The Min-ne-SO’-ta Accent. If for some reason you think either the movie “Fargo” or Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion” crew are overexaggerating it, you need only listen to listen to national talk radio shows and hear “Ken from Minneapolis” … and holy smokes, it turns out they’re soft-pedaling it. Extra-credit proof: Michele Bachmann. In general, the generic Midwestern accent gets spoofed quite a bit … and some of that treatment might be at least a touch accurate. There are moments when a Midwesterner’s nasal, flat, wide “o lemme tell ya ’bout dat” is indeed as wide and flat as the Plains. Now, how is it that a Chicago native says “God” and a Bostonian says “guard” and they sound the same?!

 

“I used to say that whenever people heard my Southern accent, they always wanted to deduct 100 IQ points.” -Jeff Foxworthy, comedian

[] The Southern Accent. I take a risk by being a New Englander and commenting at all on the Deep Southern Drawl, I recognize that. Save your cards and letters for a more important issue, please. I like listening to Jeff Foxworthy’s stand-up act, and Minnie Pearl always cracked me up! When I make my voice into the southern college football referee – “we have holding! (holding! holding!) on th’ dee-faynse! (dee-faynse! dee-faynse!) Fifteen yards an’ an automatic firs’ down! (firs’ down! firs’ down!)” it’s out of a wish that all referees could sound that way.

But for every example of the Georgia-and-environs drawl that may cause its purveyors to sound less than fully connected with human intelligence, I would offer any speech by Roy Blount Jr. It’s more than just “ah do declare” and “frankly, Scah-lett, Ah don’t give a damn”. When one wishes to make a pungent point, there might be no better accent in which to do it.

[] The Texas Accent. Maybe the best one in which to exude swagger. As a political observer, I have had lots of opportunity to check out this version of English expression. To my ears, for every Molly Ivins, adding three layers of smart and funny to a phrase, there’s a Rick Perry adding three layers of dim. And then, for three added layers of greed and evil, watch the documentary “The Smartest Guys in the Room”, about “Kenny Boy” Lay and the other corrupt sons of guns of the Enron scandal, based in Houston. Phew. Swagger firmly on display, earned or not.

 

Now. As long as I had an English father, I figure that’s my qualification for examining accents from across the Pond – or perhaps my excuse. And I will limit myself to that. I truly would love to hold forth on things like the French accent (my first exposure: Inspector Clouseau!), the German accent (I first heard it up close from my Dad, while he was creating different voices for bedtime story characters: Dennis the Dachsund was from Munich, no doubt!), and the Russian accent (Ensign Chekov; did you really have to guess?) … I’m not knowledgeable enough. But the British Commonwealth nations? Them, I can talk about…

 

“Americans like the British kind of quirkiness and the strange accent. They find it kind of cute or something, with a certain charm.” -Nick Park, co-creator of “Wallace and Gromit”

If you were from England, and you spoke briefly with my Dad, he could tell where you came from to within about 20 miles. And apparently this is not uncommon.

 

“I learned to change my accent; in England, your accent identifies you very strongly with a class, and I did not want to be held back.” -Sting, lead singer/bassist, “The Police”

Well, heck!: “My Fair Lady” is a whole Broadway musical about how what you sound like can affect your public image, your prospects for career advancement, your economic status, almost everything about you, in England at least.

[] Many many English Accents, therefore: the Upper-Crust… the Cockney accent… the Midlands (the Beatles)… Ian Darke’s soccer calls… and a remarkable number of extremely local variants of each, and more. And that’s just within the borders of England, never mind the rest of the United Kingdom.

I always thought that “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” was just funny stuff; the more I look at it, the more I realize that those gentlemen’s ability to mimic regional accents did as much to sell their satirical commentaries on British life as the actual dialogue did. (Thanks to their “Holy Grail” bit about the Holy Hand Grenade, I cannot listen to the annual radio broadcast of the Christmas Eve service from King’s College without chuckling.) Although I must say that along with Peter Sellers’ Goon Show work, the Pythons made sure that I grew up thinking that anything spoken with any British accent was automatically funnier, too.

 

“I shouldn’t be saying this – high treason, really – but I sometimes wonder if Americans aren’t fooled by our accent into detecting brilliance that may not really be there.” -Stephen Fry, comedian

“I love my accent, I thought it was useful in Gone In 60 Seconds because the standard villain is upper class or Cockney. My Northern accent would be an odd clash opposite Nic Cage.” -Christopher Eccleston, actor

True fact: all the members of the Imperial military in “Star Wars” (the bad guys) spoke in English accents (except Darth Vader, of course). All the Rebels (the good guys) spoke like Californians. Eddie Izzard has commented very expertly on this. Some of the “Star Wars” hardcover fiction writers have actually come up with a cover story to explain this: the accent of a native of the planet Coruscant — the capital of the Old Republic and then the Empire — is basically that of the House of Windsor. The accent is very cultured, very refined (English!). The Emperor apparently had a spectacular anti-alien bias (i.e. anybody not human), therefore the Imperial Navy officer corps is dominated by humans, therefore all the officers are from Coruscant, therefore they all sound like that. Clever reverse-engineering.

Also: for one single scene in Episode IV, Princess Leia adopted an English accent. The rest of the movie, she was regular ol’ Carrie Fisher, and many of us out here in Audience Land assumed it was a mistake. One “Star Wars” novel has deftly suggested that Princess Leia was doing this to mock Grand Moff Tarkin (played by Peter Cushing, owner of one of the ULTIMATE upper-class British accents of all time). Imagine! Mocking the chief Imperial Governor, possibly the third most powerful man in the entire Empire, to his face! –Ah, but his revenge? He blew up her planet. Think before you impersonate, folks.

[] The Irish Accent. I know very well that there is more than one sort of Irish brogue. But the Irish accent that I am familiar with just might be the most musical, melodic accent I know. It seems to me that Irish-inflected speech can’t be done in a monotone.

[] The Scottish Accent. When this accent is done right (by a faker) or done at all (by a native speaker), it is unmistakeable, and to my ears, makes every word more funny, or passionate, or sarcastic, or heroic, –just MORE. My first exposure to a Scots accent, obviously, was James Doohan as Scotty in “Star Trek”. Clearly that was not the best way to start a meaningful relationship with a brogue: the rolled R’s, and the use of the word “aye” without “sir” behind it, were nearly all he got right, sadly. The practitioners that I’ve since experienced have been, well, Scottish: therefore clearly a bit more authentic. Folk singer Jean Redpath… comedian Billy Connolly… and Simon Pegg as Scotty in the 2009 re-boot of “Trek”, which has potential to re-define the character!

 

“I played a lot of leaders, autocratic sorts; perhaps it was my Canadian accent.” -Leslie Nielsen, actor

[] The Canadian Accent. I have Canadian relatives. When they visited my house when I was 13, that was when I really focused for the first time on how Canadians aren’t just far-northern Americans. My cousins were all full of those constricted vowels, and indeed, whenever I hear a hockey coach interviewed, I think fondly of them. Beyond the stereotyped yet ever-present “eh”, there are all kinds of curious and to my ear very flattened sounding things about a Canadian accent. One can forgive Mike Myers, or the fine SCTV gentlemen who brought you Bob and Doug MacKenzie, since they, um, are Canadian.

[] The Australian Accent. Oh my Lord. Isolate British citizens on a Pacific island for a century or two, and you end up with curious speech patterns like: the “ay” vowel sound has become an “eye” (G’day!); and an “ee” vowel sound has been tacked onto the end of every word which in print would otherwise appear to end in an “oh” sound. “Hello(-ee), is there a pho(-ee)ne boath neeah’-boy, do you know(-ee)?” Amazing. And Crocodile Dundee is just the tip of the iceberg. (“Oys-beug.”) It sounds like an English accent and a Boston Brahmin accent had a head-on collision.

 

“But I just know from experience that accent wise, even if you’re an accent genius, crossing the Atlantic is the hardest thing in the world either way.” -Hugh Grant, actor

By the way: we all think that our particular accents are neutral, because we’re around them so much. Therefore, as an American, I find it amazing that British, Scottish, Irish actors can adopt an American accent. To me, it’s as if they had to sand down what they start life with … into nothingness; like temporarily sandpapering the rough edges off a block of wood. So okay: actor Ewan MacGregor (Scotsman) can adjust his accent to sound like Sir Alec Guinness (not a Scotsman). But he can also adjust his accent to sound like an American fellow?! And Hugh Jackman is as Aussie as they come, but when he’s Wolverine in the “X-Men” movies, he’s definitely North American. How does that happen?

Well, obviously it does…

 

“I think it’s sort of a rite of passage for a British actor to try and get the American accent and have a good crack at doing that.” -Orlando Bloom, actor

“I think most British people who say they can do an American accent are so bad at it. I find it excruciating. I find it excruciating the other way around, too.” -Eileen Atkins, actress

One example of this is a BBC recreation of a Marx Brothers half-hour radio comedy show. British actors got close to decent impersonations of Groucho and Chico Marx, but not quite close enough. No blame, no shame: one of the great things about the Marx Brothers is that to imitate them well looks easy, and is very hard indeed. No doubt the British feel just the same way about Americans desperately trying to sound English (Kevin Costner and Christian Slater attempting the feat in 1991′s “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves”).

 

Anyway. If you’re looking for a slam-bang ending, full of philosophy and wise musings and clever ways to tie together toss-off phrases (a/k/a loose ends) from throughout this post … sorry. No such luck. I guess I’m just continually amazed by how many different-sounding ways there are to pronounce words from one single language. It’s a wonder anyone can learn English to start with (all the different version of plural noun forms alone would be off-putting… “you mean it’s mouse/mice, but house/houses? Box/boxes, but ox/oxen? Hell with this, I’ll go back to speaking Spanish”), and then on top of that, how many different accents and brogues are out there, lurking, waiting to confuse not merely the “English as a second language” contingent but people from our very own US of A?

Makes my head hurt. Meanwhile, I gotta go make some suppah, before I siddown and watch the Broons play hawkey.

Distractions

So a couple of weeks ago, the defending Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins were invited to the White House, so that President Obama could officially congratulate them on their ice hockey victory over the Vancouver Canucks last June, and also so the team could present the President with a Bruins jersey with his name on the back. Flash bulb, flash bulb, handshake, flash bulb, athletes in suits and ties, flash bulb, speech, flash bulb. A fluffy and fun tradition.

Goaltender Tim Thomas opted not to attend. Pressed to explain his decision, he denied that it had anything to do with politics – his, or the President’s, or anyone else’s. Multitudes of observers have begged to differ, but they were not inside Mr. Thomas’ head and so could only surmise about the subject. Attendance at the event was not mandatory, so no team rules or policies have been violated.

Some members of the media noted that Mr. Thomas’ politics were demonstrably right-of-center, and supposed that indeed, Mr. Thomas’ views might have had more to do with his absence from the White House visit than he was letting on.

Given my own views (demonstrably left-of-center), I had occasion to wonder: if my team had won something large and had been subsequently invited to be honored at the White House during the years of the Bush administration, would I have gone? Heck yeah, I’d have gone. Partly because during my eighth grade class trip to Washington, DC, I got into just about every building in town except the White House; so, a chance to make amends. Also, …it’s the White House! An important building in American history. My grade-school social studies teachers might have looked at me funny – “and you didn’t go?” Also, whoever is the President at the moment is (as Molly Ivins used to put it) “the current occupant” of the Oval Office. As a mentor of mine once said, “It’s not you, it’s the position.” It’s not Mr. Bush or Mr. Obama; it’s the Presidency. It’s a big deal.

(During my freshman year in college, my college band was invited to participate in Ronald Reagan’s second Inaugural. I went to school in Massachusetts, which does not exactly sport a reputation as a bastion of Republicanism. Some band members probably had voted for Walter Mondale instead. But it was the Inauguration, for heaven’s sake, and a pretty big honor for the band. We all went.)

This morning, I watched a local sports roundup show that revealed unto me an extension of this story: that Mr. Thomas’ politics have been on display to the world via his Facebook page since he joined, this past fall. And of course, members of the media weighed in on what this might mean to Mr. Thomas’ team, which lately has lost four of their last six games, scoring just ten goals in that stretch – and sporting a markedly increased goals-against average, which is a bigger deal to observers of goaltending. So, the question has been raised:

Are Tim Thomas’ political commentaries a distraction to his team?

During that broadcast, Bruins television play-by-play announcer Jack Edwards said that he believed that those comments were indeed a distraction to the team. He said so firmly and unequivocally. If you know Jack Edwards, you know that “firmly and unequivocally” is an accurate descriptor for just about anything he says; but I was struck by his (unequivocality?) within the context of most of the rest of the sports media articles I’ve read about this subject.

Many online columnists and radio personalities have opined that of course Mr. Thomas’ political commentaries are not a distraction to the team; the team is comprised of hockey professionals who will likely not be turned into hockey amateurs merely by their goaltender’s online postings. In one way, I find this an odd thing for some members of the Boston sports media to insist: if you listen to sports-talk-radio hereabouts long enough, you’ll find a lot of sports-talk-radio guys who agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Thomas’ politics. It can be a pretty right-wing place, consider we’re supposed to be talking sports here…! In another way, though, I find this a sensible notion: Mr. Thomas’ teammates probably already know his politics, because he’s been on the team for awhile, and as you may be aware, sports teammates do occasionally talk to each other off the field, court, or ice. I remember knowing people in my college band whose politics I did not agree with; but during halftime shows, I elected to remain in my assigned field-drill location even though it placed me (a liberal person) next to her or him (a conservative person). I don’t even know whether Mr. Thomas is the only conservative Republican on the Bruins’ roster. He may not be.

 

Curiously, the questions that have occurred to me since I heard Jack Edwards’ commentary have had less to do with politics than with issues of public expression.

We can extrapolate from the text of the First Amendment that we’re all allowed to express ourselves freely. The way my journalism professors interpreted this and expounded on it, Americans should be allowed to say or print what we like, as long as it doesn’t libel or slander others. If we care about civility in public discourse, other more lofty standards come into play, such as the unnecessary injury of others’ feelings, but some might see that concern as overly solicitous.

I am a Facebook person. I frequently post thoughts and opinions as Facebook statuses, much like Mr. Thomas has done. I am also a member of a couple of teams (teaching faculty, church staff). As it happens, I am not “Facebook-friends” with very many people from either community, which is an individual choice of mine; so a more limited number of my teammates have the opportunity to read my rants and raves on that platform, whether they are political or not (and often they are).

On the whole, my Facebook friends (mostly people with whom I attended junior high, high school, or college, or members of college bands I’ve worked with who have long since graduated) do understand what a serious AND silly person I can be.

But if I were Facebook-linked with a lot of my teaching teammates, I might be more cautious about what I post. (I very rarely post about my public-school teaching experiences on Facebook anyway, in case you were curious.) If I were connected with any of my current public-school students – which I am not, at all – I would absolutely be much more cautious, since as a teacher I have to “set the example”, and “a teacher is always on stage”. And I recognize that how I comport myself (live or online) can have an effect on my ability to develop or maintain a positive, productive, trustworthy environment in which to make church music. Some of my colleagues have created separate Facebook profiles for their personal selves and their more professional lives, the better to keep their interactions and their expressions directed toward the appropriate audiences.

I visited Tim Thomas’ Facebook page, and noted that it is viewable by the general public. He is a public figure, after all; and he’s in a business where an online presence not only reflects awareness of that public-figure-ness, but also is just one more tool in the publicity toolbox.

In my roles as public-school music teacher and as church choir director, I am perhaps not as public a figure as Mr. Thomas is. My Facebook profile is much more private than his, and as much as possible, I try to be in control of who in the world gets subjected to my silly or snarky or incendiary ideas. From this perspective, Mr. Thomas and I are not too similar.

But, since I established this blog seventeen months ago, and especially since my well-chronicled brush with a pack of young-singing-sensation-admirers, I have had occasion to think long and hard about the question of what I write or say publicly … and who could be reading it … and to what extent the things I write could positively or negatively affect readers’ assessment of me, or my work, or whether I’m an appropriate person to be doing the particular work I’m doing.

“I don’t think that when you become an athlete that you sign away your right to be an individual,” Mr. Thomas said, “and to have your own views and to be able to post them on Facebook, if you like.” It is true, however, that when you become a professional athlete, you do become a public figure, and with that status comes an added layer of scrutiny, no matter what you would like. Basketball star Charles Barkley famously declared that he did not want to be a role model. Bad news: if you’re a public figure, at least one reporter asks you a tough question, and at least one parent reads your postgame comments in the paper and decides whether you’d be a good influence on their kid.

In one sense, I’m thrilled that I’m not a public figure of Tim Thomas-grade – the media and the general public do not regularly discuss, analyze, dissect, and judge my job performance via newspapers, television and radio broadcasts, and the Internet. So I don’t have to deal with Fred from Scituate calling a talk-radio show and demanding that I take a pay cut because my beginner instrumentalists can’t play sixteenth notes yet, or that I shouldn’t be the choir director anymore if I don’t start programming more Mozart. And happily, due to union-negotiated contract stipulations, my employer can’t just put me on waivers. (At least not the last time I read the contract.)

[Although I will say that one topic for another post is … the ability of the media and the general public to pass judgment on the performance of educators even though they know just about as much about teaching as they do about professional ice hockey goaltending.]

Maybe Mr. Thomas’ teammates really don’t give a wet slap about his politics, if they even have his Facebook page bookmarked at all. Maybe the Bruins of February 2012 are not the Bruins of December 2011 because other teams have scouts that tell them how to counteract the Bruins’ current strategies; or because injuries pile up; or because every team (or band or choir), even the great ones, goes through bad patches.

When Mr. Thomas was questioned by one Boston sportswriter about his online expressions and their potential effect on his team, he curtly replied, “This is my job. Facebook is my personal life. If you guys don’t understand the difference between individual and job, there’s a problem.”

Fair enough. I would not always want my employer or my teammates to read my Facebook posts, just because they might have their suspicions that I can be pretty silly sometimes … confirmed. And keeping my personal life and my professional life separate has most often been a worthy strategy.

But I will suggest this. If your job includes being part of a team (and that team is invited to a public ceremony honoring its accomplishment), and if elements of your personal life appear to cause you to be less of a teammate than the rest of your mates (by opting not to attend that ceremony) … then, outside observers may misunderstand the difference between your job and your personal life (because even if the absence had nothing to do with your political views, outside observers have been known to put two and two together and get something that looks a lot like four) … and …

Yes, there may be a problem.

 

Postscript; or perhaps Appendix I:

On the day of the Bruins’ visit to the White House, possibly anticipating controversy over his absence from the event, Tim Thomas posted this on his Facebook page:

“I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People. This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers['] vision for the Federal government. Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL. This is the only public statement I will be making on this topic.”

Which is fine.

Until you dig a bit deeper into Mr. Thomas’ Facebook presence. He insists that his lack of interest in visiting the White House was bipartisan disappointment. When you visit his “photos” page, you find images that reflect not only a bit more partisan dissatisfaction; they reflect partisan disrespect, from the mild to the snarky to unvarnished name-calling.

(So … it appears that both Mr. Thomas and Arizona governor Jan Brewer want to shake their index fingers at the President. Say what you want about Gov. Brewer; at least she came to the meeting.)

This raises a different question than “do Mr. Thomas’ politics constitute a distraction to his team?” And never mind whether his politics are right-wing or left-wing. The question this postscript raises is, “is Mr. Thomas being honest with the general public and his fans in particular about his reasons for skipping the White House event?”