What's Good: Jul. 2, 2021
His name was Mike O'Malley.
Hello, good afternoon, happy Friday. I’m going to start today’s newsletter a little differently than usual.
Early Thursday morning, one of my favorite professors from college passed away. His name was Mike O’Malley, and he was - and is - very important to me. He was 63.
I met Mike when I took his class - “The Purpose, Structure, and Function of Education in a Democracy,” TCE 2161 - spring quarter of my senior year. But I had heard of him as early as my freshman year, and even before arriving on campus, because his reputation preceded him. In fact, he was legendary. In a Facebook group I administrate about posting funny quotes from Oregon State, there are posts about Mike’s classes and other musings going back as early as 2010, just months after the group was created. Every single post about Mike is filled with glowing comments insisting that anyone reading take his class. They’re right.
There were only a few classes at Oregon State that ever earned the fabled communal consensus of “you must take this class before you graduate.” Three come immediately to mind - Human Sexuality with Kathy Greaves, Native American Flute with Jan Michael Looking-Wolf, and Mike’s class. I had the great privilege of taking all three, and all three professors have well-earned glowing reputations. I am especially glad, though, that I saved the best for last.
After the first class session of 216, I introduced myself to Mike and let him know that I’d need to miss some days later on in the quarter because I had to fly to Chicago for admitted students weekend at the law school. I asked if I would need to do anything to make up the missed days. There was a half-second pause, as he processed what I had just said, and then his eyes lit up, and he shouted. “WHAT?!”
Anyone who has spent time around Mike knows the exact exclamation I’m talking about. It wasn’t anger - god, no. It was excitement; he was thrilled. And his next remark, too, was quintessentially himself: “You know, I had a feeling about you.” He had a feeling about a lot of his students. But he was always right.
And his answer was exactly what you would expect from him. Class be damned, I had better go to Chicago and have an incredible time, and come back and tell him all about it, and if I even dared to worry about classes while I was there, that would be what docked my grade. And how did I go about getting into UChicago Law anyway? Did I have lawyer parents or other family? No, I self-studied for the LSAT and looked it all up myself. “GOOD LORD!” Did I know what I was getting myself into? I mean, a little bit. HARUMPH! “Don’t worry, you’re going to learn a thing or two about Chicago before you leave.” And John Dewey, too.
For the rest of the quarter, Mike would work in references to Chicago early and often, and would hold me to a higher standard for answering questions and thinking critically in class - because he knew I could handle it, because he wanted me to succeed, and because he knew I was in for the ride of my life when I traded my state school stomping grounds for the intellectual and political challenges that come along with scrapping my way up to such a prestigious school - a law school, no less.
Mike was remarkably generous with his time. Beyond our conversations in class, he would make time to chat with me for hours every week about college, work, life, philosophy… everything you can imagine. He wanted to know everything about me. My goals and ambitions, my struggles and demons, my hobbies and passions. He listened with a passionate intensity, soaking up all the information I had to offer, and firing back with his own stories, theories, opinions, and advice. He was invested in me. Sure enough, after admitted students weekend, he demanded to see photos, and to hear stories, and to know “just exactly what kind of nonsense they’re peddling over there.”
Mike’s reading list for 216 is about as legendary as the class itself.2 One of the only assignments for the class is to read and review a book - any book, for the most part, so long as it has enough heft to make for a reasonable review. College students are not terribly good at selecting from a sea of infinite choices, so Mike maintained a list of recommended books for the project. It serves that purpose well enough, of course. But a large part of 216 involves talking about the “classic American canon” of literature and ideas taught from elementary through high school - and how much of it should be considered bunk by modern standards. The list was Mike’s canon. He would update it year over year, and on the day he introduced it, he would go through various entries and tell the stories of the students he had or people he met who persuaded him to put those books on the list. One of my crowning achievements from college is that I persuaded him to add two books to the list - Why Read and Why Teach, both by Mark Edmundson.3 I wrote my own report on Why Read, although I’m not sure I have a copy of it anymore. That he was persuaded either by my paper or my other enthusiasm for Edmundson’s writing is some of the highest praise he could have offered.
216 was an 8am class. It was when I took it, it had been for years before, and it was for years after. I think it might have been possible that he taught a few later sessions, but as a general matter you were going to get Mike O’Malley at 8 o’clock in the morning and you were going to be there with bells on. Not because he mandated that - he was deeply understanding of people being tired, or late, or whatever. No, you showed up early and attentive because every second of class with Mike was the best way you could possibly spend your time at all in college. Class was - all at once - a journey and a show, a seminar and a town hall. Mike would do some lecturing, sure, but that wasn’t what he was there for, and it was his least favorite part of class.
The room electrified even during his lectures. He spoke with a booming voice and a Boston accent that gave credence to his claims that he’d “seen some shit,” although you didn’t need to take just that word for it - he had plenty of stories to share. His favorite parts of class, though, were more Socratic. And he made sure I knew that’s what law school would be like, too. He would ask a seemingly innocuous question of the class to get people to raise their hands, and then he’d call on people and go back and forth with them about whatever the topic of the day was. Unlike law school, it wasn’t to quiz them on the material, it was to get their perspectives and hear their stories. Stories were crucial. They were the source of his magic. He would listen to you, understand you, and validate you, and then he would weave your story into the tapestry of stories across the whole class - both of what other students had shared and of what he wanted us to learn about philosophy, about life, about the way the world works. Mike was the best storyteller I have ever met.
The final exam for 216 is a paper. Over the course of the class, Mike would introduce his students to several different philosophies of education, and the students’ task for the final paper is to write their own philosophy, borrowing from or bickering with the existing schools of thought as they please. And so it came to be that I, the philosophy major on the verge of closing one chapter of life and opening another, was given the gift and the challenge of writing down what I thought it all meant. I wrote about becoming myself, and about how education has given me the tools to do so, and about how I might go about getting myself from where I was to where I wanted to be. I had done all of this before, in bits and pieces in other classes, or in journaling for my own purposes, but it was the first time I had been asked to do it to show it to someone else. And I knew that Mike would read it and really care about it, and that it would mean a lot to him, and that he expected great things from me. He had told me so every week since we had met. So, on the last days of finals, I sat down to pour my soul into a paper summing up my entire college experience. It was incredibly cathartic.
Graduation was not going to be the end of my relationship with Mike, though. Not if he had anything to say about it. (Of course he did.) We exchanged emails and Facebook messages and text messages back and forth over the summer, and then throughout my first year of law school. He demanded to be kept in the loop about how I was doing, what I was learning, and whether I was fighting off the urges to join the Federalist Society - he would be glad to come out and make sure I still had a bunsen burner stuck up a strategic orifice, as he liked to say. It wasn’t just talk, either. He came out to Chicago with his family in August of 2016 and invited me to have dinner with them and some other friends of his. He wanted to make sure I knew that wherever I went, there would be people to support me, even if they couldn’t be there in person all the time.
This is all more detail, and in a more long-winded fashion, than you might expect from a memorial. But this isn’t just my story - it’s the story of every student he’s ever had. I made a post yesterday about Mike’s passing in an Oregon State group that I administrate on Facebook asking people to share their happy memories of him. In just under a day there are already over a hundred comments - the post has been shared so much that it’s been seen by 16,000 people. Folks sharing their stories are a resounding chorus of how powerful his impact was on their lives:
“Mike was an absolutely incredible human being who could make you think like nobody else and make you feel so seen for who you were.”
“Mike’s class changed my life and the values and facts I talked about him with/learnt from him are things I still remember and try to pass onto others.”
“He was the best! He challenged me to try harder and think outside of the box. His class and charisma still inspire me to be the best teacher for my students every single day.”
“His class transformed my worldview.”
“He was a wonderful human who will be deeply missed. He had such a talent for helping his students to see the very best part of themselves.”
“Best professor I’ve ever had.”
“Full of humor, life, and just willing to extend a hand. He wrote me one hell of a letter of recommendation when I had asked.”
“One of the best and most impactful classes of my college experience.”
The fact that Mike’s class was so highly-recommended and broadly-taken wasn’t lost on him. He was acutely aware that for many of the students who came through his door, this might be his only chance to tell them stories, teach them ideas, and show them over the course of two and a half months that the world works quite a lot differently than what they had been raised to believe. He was so passionate about and invested in every single student of his because he wanted to reach through to them and help them think about who they wanted to be, not just who they had been told they should be. He knew that for many of them, it would be their first and only chance to have that opportunity. They might otherwise miss or dodge the chance and the challenge. While they were in his class, though, he wasn’t going to let them. He was wildly successful.
I had been making plans to visit Corvallis in the fall of 2020 when the pandemic hit. By this point it had been 5 years since I graduated from Oregon State, and I was beginning to miss my professors quite a lot. (I still do, and I still plan on visiting eventually.) I was especially looking forward to catching up with Mike. He was never the biggest fan of technology-based interactions. He was glad to use it when necessary, but he much preferred the kinds of connections you can only build in person. Understandably so. You’re missing out on the vast majority of what there is to love about Mike if you’re only seeing him through a screen or hearing him through a speaker. His presence was commanding and inviting all at the same time. Now, of course, it is too late. I’ll still visit, and I’d like to pay my respects when I have the chance to do so. But time marches onward, we can’t step in the same river twice, and no amount of wishing things had happened differently can change what’s done. What Mike would want, though, is for me to keep going. (Maybe after a little crying.)
Mike believed in me. He believed in all of us. May his memory be a blessing.
At the end of this post I’m going to upload a bunch of photos of Mike and his family. You can - and should - read his son Emmett’s thoughts here.4
Cathode ray tubes
I’ll be honest, it’s a little hard to write the rest of the newsletter after the above, so I might be a little short this week. Still, I have some good content for you, and I hope you enjoy it. Like did you know there is an ongoing war about pixel art:
Few role-playing experiences are as beloved as the original Final Fantasy games, which is why Square Enix announcing a new brand it's calling Pixel Remasters for the first six games was greeted with equal parts shock and horror. For every brilliant reinvention, like last year's Final Fantasy 7 Remake, you have these nightmarish updates to classics like Final Fantasy 6 that are so abjectly awful to look at that fans created mods to try and replace the visuals.
"That 2D-HD remake of Dragon Quest III is probably the smartest retro update they could've conceived!" said games writer and RPG podcast Axe of the Blood God co-host Nadia Oxford. "Why do they keep flubbing Final Fantasy? It boggles the mind. Square Enix works in mysterious, and infuriating, ways."
I thought this was super fascinating, and also there are a lot of beautiful images in there, so go on and click through.
Thinking out loud
I’m amazed this hasn’t gone viral already. A friend of mine sent me this website titled Ed Sheeran Is The Worst:
heyy
Ed Sheeran sucks. He’s been telling us this for years, but many of you haven’t been listening.
I promise it is worth your time.
Views from the sixth
New York Magazine has a story this week on how things went for Trump on Jan. 6th:
Seems like quite a few crazies,” said the president.
A little more than three weeks before rioters and revelers stormed the Capitol on January 6, several thousand Trump fans and fanatics gathered in Washington, D.C. There were the Proud Boys in elaborate dress, ZZ Top beards, and tie-dyed kilts — Enrique Tarrio, a Proud Boy organizer, got in line and took a public tour of the White House — who seemed to have appointed themselves Trump’s protectors and vanguard, as the Hells Angels had once done for the Rolling Stones. There were Trump impersonators and a wide variety of other made-for-the-cameras MAGA costumes. There were veterans — or people in military gear trying to suggest patriotism and firepower. There were older men and women, too — more Las Vegas than Altamont. Virtually all without masks.
“It’s like Let’s Make a Deal,” said Trump the next day to a caller, referencing the long-running game show from the 1960s — many of his references have never left this psychic era — on which audience members dressed up in foolish costumes to get the attention of the host.
Elsewhere, Day of Rage: An In-Depth Look at How a Mob Stormed the Capitol.
Pastel problems
This is a story about a dutch oven company:
As Black Lives Matter protesters flooded New York streets in June of last year, Great Jones cofounder Sierra Tishgart called a Zoom meeting with her cookware startup's eight-person team. She asked everyone to go around and share how they were feeling, a request met with uneasy silence. When it was clear that nobody wanted to speak, her cofounder and co-CEO Maddy Moelis pressed Tishgart to move on, employees said. But Tishgart persisted. "'No, I want us all to say how we're feeling," one operations employee recalled her saying.
The company's sole Black employee did speak up: She said she was extremely uncomfortable and asked if they could please move on. Then she broke down and began to cry.
On Instagram, Great Jones' brand projected a vision of warmth and community. The company's colorful Dutch ovens and sleek stainless-steel frying pans had become a millennial staple in recent years, and Tishgart had fashioned herself into a prominent founder and influencer in her own right — wedding in Vogue, apartment in Domino, skincare regime on Into the Gloss. As everyone sought to relieve their pandemic anxiety by stress-baking sourdough and sharing photos of fluffy coffee and shallot pasta, the image that Tishgart and Great Jones sold had never been more appealing.
Also more from Defector:
You may be wondering: Exactly how much business school acumen does one need when one is backed by literally billions of dollars in family fortune? By way of an answer, I bring you the following quote (emphasis added) from later in the story: “In February, Tishgart privately sent an email to the $3,500-a-month executive coach that the cofounders had hired ….”
Thank you for your application
You would think this is just a matter of professional courtesy:
Jacob Sutherland was taught by the Career Center at the University of California, San Diego to always write unique cover letters for internship and job opportunities. In his eyes, it’s just a best practice.
“(The Career Center) kind of said that it’s always good to write a fresh one because they can tell if you’re just filtering out language, so that’s just a personal thing,” Sutherland said.
So when he decided to apply for The New York Times Fellowship for the second year in a row, it was natural that he spent serious time on it. The fellowship consists of a yearlong stint at the Times doing the work of a full-time journalist. He sorted through clips to submit, rigorously typed a 650-word cover letter and edited it until his eyes couldn’t bear to look at the bright screen any longer.
His detailed efforts would lead to annoyance months later when he and numerous other applicants were scrolling through social media and came across a public announcement from the Times introducing the hired fellows.
Drip
The whole “guy does a scam on the internet” thing feels like it would be a solved problem by now, that people would be wiser about this sort of thing now that the internet has been public and popular for over 20 years. Anyway, no:
For Ramon Abbas, the Instagram influencer popularly known as Ray Hushpuppi, @hushpuppi, Hush, or the Billionaire Gucci Master, birthdays were always a time for reflection. Reflection and extravagance—but then, extravagance was Hushpuppi’s brand, a 365-days-a-year affair, a way of being. On Oct. 11, 2019, the day he turned 37, he was living in a penthouse apartment at the Palazzo Versace Dubai, with a private pool and hot tub on his lanai. A typical @hushpuppi post on Instagram, where he had more than 2 million followers, featured Abbas smiling in front of one of his Ferraris or Rolls-Royces, kicking back in his seat on a private jet, or exiting a designer store with a passel of rope-handled bags—#Hermes, #Fendi, #LouisVuitton. His look was always flawless: never the same outfit twice, #Gucci more often than not. You don’t become the Billionaire Gucci Master any other way.
Burnout go brrrr
Yes this all feels very familiar:
Ariane Ollier-Malaterre answered my call from Canada. "It's a holiday here today," she told me: The National Holiday of Quebec. She had the day off from teaching at the University of Quebec in Montreal's School of Management.
Never mind that Ollier-Malaterre studies the future of work, focusing specifically on how people set boundaries between their personal and professional lives. She was excited to share some of her research findings, and getting on a 30-minute call from home seemed easy enough.
This blurring of boundaries is a trap Ollier-Malaterre knows that others will fall into as well. She is especially worried now that many people are returning to the office after more than a year of working remotely. She keeps picturing a nightmare scenario in which employees commute to the office, spend a full day there, and then return home just to continue answering emails and calls.
“It’s all politics?” “Always has been”
Here are Leah Litman and Melissa Murray in the Washington Post to disabuse you of the notion, should you still have it, that this court is somehow apolitical and moderate. It is actually very conservative, thanks:
This Supreme Court term was significant mostly because of what the court did not do: The newly constituted 6-3 conservative supermajority did not use every case to openly and dramatically move the law rightward. Rather, in several important cases — including those involving the fate of the Affordable Care Act and the tension between religious liberty and gay rights — the court managed to resolve matters on seemingly narrow grounds and with broad majorities that transcended ideological differences.
But to call this term a model of judicial restraint — or even nonpartisanship — would be misleading. This is not a moderate or apolitical court. It is a reliably conservative court that, on occasion, chooses to act incrementally.
Characterizing this term as moderate would also overlook the profound impact of the court’s final two decisions, a pair of 6-to-3 rulings — one that hobbled what remains of the Voting Rights Act and another that lays a foundation for a seismic shift in campaign finance rules.
Pack the court, vote out the Republicans, etc. This is not going to get better unless we do something about it.
You deserve some good animal content
Have a good weekend.
Addendums
Quintessential Chicago movies. The cruelty is still the point. Flight Attendants Told Us The Wildest Things They’ve Had To Deal With.
Mike O’Malley, 1957-2021
I miss you, Mike.
Here’s the syllabus from when I took it.
Here’s a final copy of the list from this past quarter. Thanks to Ramzy al-Mulla for sharing.
Amazon tells me I have purchased each book five times. That number feels low.
I haven’t yet charged my tablet from college to pull notes from it. I was diligent about writing down quotes from Mike during class, and I’m hoping I have a bunch I can compile and share. So I might make another post about Mike, although separate from the weekly edition.