Ponies Part Two

So the point yesterday was that, in the overall scheme of things LD, TOC does not loom particularly large. It is, for all practical purposes, an elite event limited to those who can afford to travel to bid tournaments, an expense which increases dramatically the further away one is from a debate "center" like the Northeast. While there is nothing wrong with being able to afford to travel to academic events—quite the contrary, it would be the norm in Utopia—it becomes increasingly difficult in tough economic times. In NY, for instance, school budgets are being slashed mercilessly thanks to a combination of national, state and local pressures. At our school, we've been talking about eliminating activities altogether (although not forensics, thankfully, aside from a 10% budget decrease). We are not alone in this. So where is the money coming from for those bid seekers? Well, it could be a poor school district and they're just plumb lucky. Or it could be a rich school district. Or they pay out of their own pockets. I have no figures on this, but logic favors the latter two over the first possibility, which would indicate that most people who travel for bids have more money to do so than people who don't travel for bids. Certainly people who travel for bids actually get bids, so if the logic holds, people who have more money to travel get more bids than people who don't. Life is not fair. And the people who can afford to get bids shouldn't be vilified for having resources. But we shouldn't lose track of the reality that the society of the bid getters comprises the well-to-do. (If the Urban Debate League, for example, supported LD, this would certainly no longer be the case, but alas, they believe in the Holy Grail of Policy.)

In a closed system, it wouldn't matter much who was going to bid tournaments and who was getting bids and who was going to TOC because only those in the system would know about it. But today, while it is still a closed system because of the finances, it no longer looks closed. Ten years ago TOC could pass rules demanding that debaters cut off their right foot, and no one would know and no one would care. Today, thanks to the shameless concentration on TOC as its Holy Grail, VBD has brought a glaring focus on TOC as if it actually mattered. Great googly-moogly, but now they're counting down the days! Throughout the year they track every TOC tournament, they list every TOC bid getter, they photograph them in all their TOC glory, they report every remark from the lips of the tournament's founder and director ("JWP announces new doughnut policy at TOCs!"). Since by default VBD is the synoptic nerve center of LD, whatever it is that they concentrate on becomes, by that same default, worth concentrating on. Having just had my brain fried by Jean Baudrillard, it is easy to use his analysis to understand that the relationship of a medium and the thing mediated get confused until the cause and effect don't matter because they can't be distinguished. The "difference" disappears. TOC is important because VB says it's important. VB is important because it is saying what is and isn't important. Objective importance gets lost in the shuffle.

While it will come as no surprise to anyone that I have reservations about VBD, I also like having a central debate site. And as I say, that has defaulted to VBD. It could have been anyone, but VBD got there, and there they are. They have cleaned up their act quite a bit during their time in the sun. I do use it personally as a news site; I'll check to see if something's happening that I ought to know about. Occasionally I'll read a thread, but only very occasionally, because they are populated mostly by a handful of the usual suspects with whom I have little interest in communicating.

But what we're talking about here is TOC. My bringing VBD into the discussion is simply to point out that, whereas once TOC operated in its own cocoon, today it operates in the public eye. An unblinking, adulatory, idolizing public eye. So whereas once, if TOC made decisions, if affected only those directly in the TOC loop, now those decisions indirectly affect all of LD. And beyond decisions, what happens at TOC does NOT stay at TOC. TOC, having become the Holy Grail of LD, speaks with the evangelical voice, both in its actions and its proclamations. The style of debate that wins TOC speaks to the LD community at large of what, presumably, the style of debate ought to be. The style of judging at TOC speaks to the LD community at large of what, presumably, judging ought to be. Ditto, the content of cases. Ditto, and perhaps most importantly, the attitude permeating TOC, speaking to the LD community at large of what the attitude of LD ought to be. Everywhere. Whether you're a TOC type or not.

And what is the attitude of TOC? Well, I am happy to see that, in the elimination of Mutual Judge Preference, the attitude is clearly agreeing with the idea that LDers ought to be able to adapt to judges, which is a basic tenet of public speaking, that speakers ought to gauge their audiences. Think of your best teachers. Have they made you adapt to them, or vice versa? Other questions remain, however. With the movement afoot to support an "educational" stance in LD (through the LDEP), the issue of where TOC stands on this becomes quite important. At least one advisory committee member of TOC is on the board of LDEP. Others have stood back for fear of being tainted as anti-progressive. The crucial issue will be, is TOC a tournament, and all it cares about is what every tournament cares about? That is, throw all that crapola about competition and great debate out the window and do the math on the entry fees and figure out where the University of Kentucky's debate team's funds are coming from. Is that what TOC is all about? That, and the careers of a handful of debate coaches who go home to their districts every year to sport their ponies to keep their own teams funded? If that is the case, again, that's not terrible. That's real life. But in the combination of TOC and VBD, where a so-called quest for the best can be transformed into a beacon for all that makes something like LD important regardless of competition, maybe there are higher goals. If TOC embraces those higher goals, we will all be proud. If they don't, we will simply go to the tournament (and all the bid tournaments) if we can, and if we can afford it, and we'll know, in our heart of hearts, that this isn't the end-all be-all of LD. It's just another tournament.

And where is that end-all be-all? If you have to ask me, you haven't been paying attention all these years.

---


Oh, yeah. This must be Wednesday, because a new Nostrum podcast has out. Check out iTunes or my podcast page.

And, in the annals of feline detente, the photo below says it all.