By Michael Kaufman

Last week’s post about idiots (lovable and not-so-lovable) elicited a response from North Carolina via the Virtual Mailbag. It was from my old high-school friend Jonathan Kotch, whose valedictory speech at our graduation ceremony remains a happy memory. Jon departed from the script of a speech pre-approved by school officials and instead lit into them for stifling independent thinking and creativity among students and faculty.

His speech ruffled their feathers so much that Fordyce C. Stone, the superintendent of schools—and is that not just a perfect name for a superintendent of schools and maybe even president of  the American League?—called his parents later that day to see if they had any insights into why their son had been so ungrateful. After all, Stone said, he had gotten into Columbia, hadn’t he? (I’m sure the valedictory speech will be among the topics that come up later this month when a few friends from high school, some with partners or spouses, will be visiting us in Warwick.) I was at Kotch’s house when his mother took the call and I heard her tell the not-so-lovable idiot Stone that on the contrary, she was proud of Jon and that it was his own diligent work that had gotten him into Columbia.

If you go to the website of the University of North Carolina School of Public Health and look at Jon’s curriculum vitae you won’t see Oceanside High School listed there, or Columbia, for that matter. There’s just no room for them among the degrees, awards, publications, and academic appointments of Jonathan B. Kotch, M.D, M.P.H., F.A.A.P, Carol Remmer Angle Distinguished Professor of Children’s Environmental Health, Department of Maternal and Child Health, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“Actually,” wrote Jon, “they (the 7,000 pro-gun people who rallied in Albany against the new gun-control law in New York State) are all idiots. But you don’t know how good you have it in New York. In North Carolina the idiots are in charge!” He went on to explain that pro-gun state legislators “are trying (and are likely to succeed) in repealing the law that allows universities to ban concealed weapons (for that matter, any weapons) on campus. Just this week the police chief of our largest state university, N.C. State, testified at a legislative hearing that carrying firearms on campus would decrease, not increase, security. This is the same legislature that believes that it is possible to plan for the management of inlets, estuaries and ocean shorelines without addressing sea level rise (since global warming is a communist plot). Damn the facts, full speed in reverse!”

But, he continued, not everyone in North Carolina appreciates what the Republican-controlled state government is doing. “The NAACP has been coordinating demonstrations at the legislature on a weekly basis to protest cuts in unemployment benefits, health care coverage, public school funding, mental health services, and early childhood education while acting to limit racial justice in the criminal justice system, workers’ rights and voters’ rights. If I get arrested at the next demonstration on Monday I hope to bring my mug shots to the get-together at your house. Idiots indeed.”

Jon was indeed arrested and you can read all about it here: http://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2013/06/04/health-care-workers-join-protests-at-legislature/
To the rest of the world he is Jonathan B. Kotch, M.D, M.P.H., F.A.A.P., and one of the country’s leading experts in maternal and child health. To me he’s still and will always be the valedictorian.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.