Published with permission of the author. A similar piece ran as an Op-Ed in the Rochester Post-Bulletin on March 29, 2022.

“I realized that bullying never has to do with you. It’s the bully who’s insecure.”
― Shay Mitchell

The Rochester Golf & Country Club surrendered to an online petition to cancel a forum on crime. By the gods, we’ll have golf without First Amendment peaceful assembly! What else to expect from people playing with tiny balls?

The Center of the American Experiment planned to host a Rochester forum on crime as it has in other cities. It was to be led by an ex-FBI guy and include our police chief and sheriff. The discussion was going to be about crime and ways our local law enforcement agencies are working to keep us safe.

What’s wrong with that? Our chief and sheriff seemed enthusiastic about participating. Anyone paying attention sees news reports of shootings and drug busts about every week. For those of us in Rochester for a while, things are not what they were. I was looking forward to the forum.

When I arrived, there were dozens of people outside locked doors. Local public officials Sheila Kiscaden and Shaun Palmer were among them. Each of them said the cancellation was absurd. (I don’t mean to put a word in their mouths but that was the gist of it.)

What happened?

A local crusader started an online petition to have the country club cancel the event because, she claimed, the Center:

1. is responsible for last summer’s activism at Rochester public school board meetings
2. celebrates negative public school outcomes
3. has a disagreeable mission

Unlike the crusader, I actually know something about the Center. It’s a Minnesota-based public policy organization that studies things like the economy and education. It’s been around for 25 years. The Center:

1. took no role in last summer’s RPS activism. The Center has studied and presented facts about our public schools that should alarm us all.
2. does not in any way celebrate bad public school outcomes. It discusses them and suggests improvements including more alternatives and competition to the public school system because alternatives can be better for some students and competition tends to make all players better.
3. has a mission to research areas of public policy and to propose improvements in those areas.

The crusader was incorrect on every count. Even if not, this was an event to which people were invited, at their own expense, and no one was forced to be “subjected” to it. The crusader and her ilk think themselves angels. They’re more like the nosy neighbor in Bewitched.

The Post Bulletin did two stories on the forum. The one prior to it was terrible. There was an unfounded claim against the ex-FBI guy the paper later retracted. There was plenty of local color lambasting the Center and its forum. There was no local color providing any counterpoint to the quoted ignorance. At least the piece after the cancellation included Center spokespeople.

So, about seven-10,000ths of the people of Rochester (or, really, who knows where) succeeded in canceling a contracted and paid-for event. They’re crowing but our republic is sobbing.

Cancel culture operates outside the realm of healthy and honest debate. It is the opposite of civil. It is selfish and dictatorial. The RGCC fell for it. Apparently, its leaders are no more sophisticated than nosy neighbors.

Ironically, the day the country club canceled the event, there was a shooting southeast near Olmsted Medical Center.

There will always be people who dislike anything, anywhere. Hey crusader: should everything be canceled, or just the things you don’t like?

And golf? Maybe tennis or pickleball is a better choice. Bigger balls.

—Bruce Kaskubar

UPDATE 31Mar22

This piece includes a link to the Post Bulletin article published just before the event was to be held. As of this update, it still exists on their web site but it was edited to exclude much of what was inaccurate or offensive. Here’s a PDF composite of old and new versions.

Original publication of this piece, in the PB, was delayed for a week or more due to an unspecified “situation” at the paper. Apparently, that delay was due to them working on a retraction published on March 29. To the PB’s credit, they had removed some of the inaccurate material by March 15 after their own investigation spurred by several readers, including the author.

This piece includes a link to the online petition that supposedly started the kerfuffle. The petition has disappeared from change.org. We have some screenshots but it can be found on the Wayback Machine.