The Obama presidency has led the GOP to make verboten a series of policies it either pioneered or which at least some significant segments of the party embraced. So it’s not just that the GOP is living in the ‘past’. I agree with their stalwarts that this is a sort of misleading way to put it. But the ‘Iron Wall’ policy vis-a-vis Obama has put the party in a position in which it is quite hard to play in a national (as opposed to a midterm) election.
I say this ad nauseum: conservatisim never fails, it is only failed. The post-election discussion is already hovering around the idea that Mitt Romney was a bad candidate, that the GOP needs a better standard bearer or better messaging. This ignores the basic fact: the GOP needs new ideas.
Mitt Romney was not a great candidate (though he was also clearly the best candidate of the GOP field), but, in the end, what hog-tied him was the policies. Focusing on his lack of connection or robotic demeanor downplays that people rejected his ideas. I've talked about the Romney campaign's failure in transactional politics before. I think we can expect that on a larger scale, especially as the demographics of the nation continue to shift. Lindsay Graham was right: they're not making enough angry, white men anymore. And besides angry white men, who benefits from the current GOP platform? Pretty much nobody.
Selling that, selling racial and gender resentment, with a brown face or a female face won't solve the basic problem. When people hear about the ideas, they will recoil. This isn't a problem of marketing. It's a problem of the soul. The GOP needs to search for one.
I have been crazy-super-busy of late, but I did have time to see ARGO. Which is a pretty fine film, all told, despite the very bizarre choice of casting Ben Affleck as a man named Tony Mendez (it's funny watching the movie hold back his last name as long as it possibly can). Affleck is a confident, assured director, the movie looks good and the story is pretty compelling. It also fits in the sweet spot for "based on a true story" type deals: the story is new and unknown enough that the outcome is in doubt the whole time, even if you kind of know that it's not in doubt at all. The supporting cast, particular John Goodman, Alan Arkin and Scoot McNairy, is all grand. So...yay, good movie!
The moment was interesting not just for the failed gotcha, or the live fact-checking, but also because it offered a quick glimpse into the fevered world of the far right. Romney was caught completely flat-footed by the facts. He was totally convinced that President Obama hadn't used the phrase "act of terror." This is a shibboleth on the right, something that, over the last few months, has become an article of faith. Except for the fact that not only is not true, it's easy to show that it's objectively not true. And yet, conservatives believe it. In fact, it's so important to their beliefs that they're now engaged in semantic hair-splitting to back up their larger point: for some nefarious reason, the administration is invested in covering up the circumstances of the Benghazi's attack.
But, after seeing ARGO, I think there's a larger point about how government works, especially in regards to national security, to consider. Because this isn't the first time the charge of "shifting narratives" has come into play for the Obama administration: similar charges were made about the story of the assassination of Osama bin Laden. I think it's easy to lapse into cynicism and paranoia about all of this, especially after the Bush years and their vast politicization of the national security infrastructure (threat level Orange, anyone?), but, beyond that, there's the very real question of how much honesty does our government owe us, particularly about actions outside of our borders.
For those who don't know, Argo tells the story of the rescue of six US embassy workers and diplomats from Tehran after the fall of the Shah and the taking of the US embassy there, when 52 hostages were taken. The film does a great job of capturing the chaos and unpredictability of that time, both here in the US and in Iran. Revolutions are messy, sometimes scary things, as we all know, and the Iranian revolution was no different (for another great take on it, you simply must read/see Persepolis, if you haven't). At any time, the US diplomats in Tehran could be captured, killed, tortured. A CIA agent develops a just-crazy-enough-to-work plan to get the 6 diplomats, who are hiding in the residence of the Canadian ambassador, out: have them pretend to be a film crew, complete with a whole fake movie. The play is indeed just crazy enough to work and so it does...at great personal and professional risk for all of the CIA agents involved. And when it does work, their great job is celebrated in their office for a few seconds and then classified and buried. In the film, that indignity is compounded by the official cover story: that the Canadians (CANADIANS!) pulled it all off on their own. (In addition to the casting issue, there does seem to be some legit controversy about the portrayal of the Canadian ambassador who is mostly seen nobly cowering in fear.) It's grimly noted that, if the CIA had taken credit, the remaining hostages would have paid the price. So no credit was given, an award was given in a secret, private ceremony and then immediately taken back and not conferred until the '90s. There's a great, stiff-upper-lip, all-for-country feel to the latter part of the movie. They don't do it for the glory, these CIA agents.
I'm kidding a bit, but it does raise the obvious question about current events: is it really so implausible that the CIA (and the FBI, which is investigating the Benghazi attack) would want a false story about our working theory of the attack to be the "official" word? Let's say you're the person who pulled off a successful, well-planned and coordinated attack and you hear that we're looking at a disorganized spontaneous attack. Maybe you'd lower your guard a little bit and not expect to get caught. I mean, I just watch a whole lot of cop shows and this is a pretty common ploy. Let's remember that this is still the investigation of a crime.
But there is also the larger picture. A lot of the current dissatisifaction with the administration from the left comes in the realm of "national security," how wars are prosecuted and how the government decribes it. I'm not arguing that the government has complete latitude to tell its people untruths (again, see the Bush years for the worst of that), but...isn't there some room for, well, less than truthiness, in service of larger goals, that may not be obvious to us here? I can see how attractive the charges of "liar" are, especially to the GOP, whose standard bearer has, shall we say, a bit of a problem with that. But I can also see how compelling the desire to "get to the bottom" of things is. It's just not always appropriate. Argo hasn't really entered the political conversation (and it shouldn't...it's a pretty apolitical movie), but it does reflect our time. Carter lost the 1980, in no small part, because of his perceived weakness on the Iran hostage crisis. Having the Canadians take credit for a major coup must have added fuel to the fire, but still, they took the hit. I'm glad that the Obama administration is standing up with some passion (I don't think he needed an anger translator for that section of the debate), but I'd also like them to articulate a little more clearly how it fits into his vision of how government works.
In six months, if President Obama wins re-election, I will send these links to my liberal friends who don't understand why, after receiving a public rebuke at the ballot box, the right remains in thrall of the "crazies." They will wonder why there wasn't a purge of the fringe elements and why the congressional GOP, most likely a few members smaller, aren't moving to the center and compromising. These two articles explain why perfectly.
The first, the polling article (h/t Isaac), is basically gibbering insanity. But the kernel of it is this: any poll showing Obama with a lead is oversampling Democrats and therefore skewed and not can that poll not be trusted but the polling outfit is in the tank. This is the beginning of the "Obama stole the election" meme that we'll be dealing with. We got a small taste of that with the campaign against ACORN, but with no ACORN to blame, it will actually get larger and more elaborate.
The second, primarily about Sarah Palin advising Romney to "go rogue" (whatever the hell that means), is also indicative of everyone's old friend, epistemic closure. First off, it assumes that Romney's struggles have nothing to do with his policies and statements, but instead with how he's framed them, with the added implication that he's hiding some worse truth. We're talking about a candidate who has repeatedly implied that the US is on the path towards becoming Greece. I don't really seeing how he's underselling the state of our economy. (For the record, we are not in any danger at all of becoming Greece. Not even slightly.) In the world of dog-whistle, there is the idea that Romney needs to take the gloves off and start running Jeremiah Wright and birther ads. But more importantly, the machine is starting up with another hoary old chestnut: conservativism never fails; it is only failed. Romney, who advocates low regulations, low taxes on top earners, voucherizing Medicare, privatizing Social Security, turning Medicaid over to the states, a federal ban on abortion and marriage equality, self-deportation and war with Iran, is insufficiently conservative. If only he would publicly hold some conservative ideals and see how popular they would be.
The other part that amazes is this:
“They not only need to use [Ryan] out on the trail more effectively, they need to have more of him rub off on Mitt because I think Mitt thinks that way but he’s gotta be able to articulate that…. I think too many people are restraining him from telling [his vision],” Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker told a radio interviewer Friday.
Where’s the evidence of Romney’s so-called “bold choice” in picking Ryan? others ask.
“Even in Wisconsin, I think he’s being underused,” Charlie Sykes, the radio host who interviewed Gov. Walker, told Politico. “I guess what’s frustrating is especially now that we’re embroiled in this conversation about the makers versus the takers, where is Paul Ryan? He is eloquent, he knows the numbers, he can frame this in a very compelling way. The fact that he is not front and center on some of this is, I think, a lost opportunity.”
Um. There was a time that Paul Ryan has a chance to express his beliefs and ideas in a very public forum. Remember how that went? Remember this? Apparently GOP consultants don't. They seem to believe that Paul Ryan can be some kind of honest broker or straight-talker. This is simply crazy. And completely ignores reality. What kind of reckoning can there be when there is practically a cottage industry generating opinions that have nothing to do with reality?
So...remember this. Remember these stories when you're trying to understand what's happening in our politics.
I was thinking about posting a comment to Isaac's post here about believability and lies, but I decided to just do a separate post, because the issue of truth and lies is, well, important, especially in politics right now.
I have a few "libertarian" or "independent" or "apolitical"* friends in my FB and Twitter worlds (and I know we have a reader or two here from the right end of the spectrum) and I've noticed in recent weeks a common thread popping up. When the discussion about honesty in politics comes up, usually one of them chimes in with a dismissive post about how ALL politicians lie, so you can't trust anything any of them say at any time. This response usually comes up like this: a liberal or left-leaning person points out an outright un-truth that someone on the right has said, the "libertarian" says Obama lied about something, too and then it's pointed out that that "lie" isn't really a lie, then we get, "Well, everyone lies, so it doesn't really matter." Except it does. I think it matters a lot.
Isaac ends his post with this:
I guess the real question I have here amidst all of this is... how are we to determine what candidate statements we take seriously and which we don't? Obviously, I like Obama so I'm inclined to believe him. I don't like Romney so I'm inclined not to. But that seems a very poor way to go about judging this whole thing.
Here's the thing: it isn't really a matter of personal like or dislike. I'm a big ol' leftie, so I find Obama's arguments persuasive. I understand how someone who is right-leaning can find Romney's arguments persuasive. Those are things open to personal feelings. Facts, though, are not. When we're talking about whether or not something is true, it's pretty simple: it's either true or it's not. And that is often fairly apparent, if you take more than one second and do the minimum amount of research. Just Google it. And then (and this is actually key) read the things that come up.
The "independents" I'm talking about, as far as I can see, don't seem to want to do that. They make a statement, hear an alternate statement, then throw their hands up and walk away. That's also how our press acts. We're reaching a point, as many, many people have noted, where our political pundit class is helpless to confront outright lies. The push to remain "neutral" and "cordial" means not actually calling someone a liar when they are. But it also means that the very idea of lies has changed.
I'm not a Pollyanna. All of my life, politicians have bent, altered, sweetened, curved facts to fit the narrative they're selling. You couldn't quite trust what they said. In the most famous example ever, it depended on what meaning of the word is. They promised the moon, possibly knowing they can't deliver it. Okay, fine. Not exactly honest, but not lying. Not really. When people say Obama lied, they point to the claim that he created 4.5 million jobs, repeated regularly at the DNC. It's, at best, truthy. This is often paired with the Romney "claim"** that Obama has sought to waive work requirements for welfare recipients. By all objective measure, there is no truth to that "claim." It's an actual lie. Can we really say that both politicians are "lying?"
And yet...we do. Obama promised a number of things, particularly in the realm of indefinite detentions, Gitmo, Bush-era anti-terrorism policies and didn't follow through. Disappointing, yes. But not lies. Paul Ryan's RNC speech was full of statements that are objectively not true. Those are lies. There is a difference between those two. If we let liars continue to determine what is true, we do so at our peril.
*I use the quotes here because, in general, these people parrot right-wing memes and ideas, hold right-wing values, and yet claim not to be right-wing. I'm unconvinced.
**For obvious reasons, I refuse to honor that lie by using the weasel word "claim."
While I'm not wading into the very worthy conversation about the validity of comedy or tragedy, one thing that comes up often is why is there so little conversative comedy. The realm of satire seems to belong entirely to the progressives and the left side of the ledger. Last week, we had a pretty good example of this, and, I think, an object lesson on where conservatism loses its comedy mojo. Via Yahoo! News:
Two spoof Twitter accounts for President Barack Obama emerged from speeches at the Republican convention last week. The first, @FadedObama, was inspired by this line from Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan: "College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life." As of Tuesday afternoon, it had been mentioned on Twitter 182 times and attracted 194 followers.
The Yahoo! article says that the difference between the two was timing; the @FadedObama went up 13 minutes after Paul Ryan's speech while @InvisibleObama went up within seconds. Yeah, that may account for it. There's also a part of it about narratives: after Paul Ryan's speech, most of the conversation focused (rightly, I would add) around the many, many falsehoods and misrepresentations in his speech, not one small, throwaway metaphor, while after Clint's performance, well, the chair was the whole game, wasn't it? It was the key part of the event. But there's another part of this.
@InvisibleObama is funny. @FadedObama isn't.
I say this not as a progressive. I say this as a kinda-sorta funny person. I don't think there's any argument on this. Here's a typical @FadedObama post:
You know I'm going to fade. My hair literally faded during my first term
Actually, that wasn't fair. That was one of the funnier @FadedObama posts. I put my finger on the scale and it's still lost (sort of like arguing with an empty chair and losing, but I digress).
The @FadedObama Twitter feed is nothing but recycled Obama jokes and jabs: birther stuff, media star stuff, food stamp jokes, a Nancy Pelosi joke. Stuff that really only appeals to conservatives and re-inforces the conservative world view. And pretty much just stated outright. It's a collection of talk radio lines.
The @InvisibleObama feed? Yep, partisan jabs. But also a personality. And a personality that fits Twitter. The voice of @InvisibleObama is similar to the other Twitter faves, like @SarcasticRover: snarky, spiky and, well, sarcastic. But it's also a lot of regular comedy about being invisible.
Conservative comedy tends to be much more like @FadedObama: jokes that make conservatives laugh. Good satire, though, like good comedy, has further reach, builds better gags. Conservatives would do well to put comedy above party.
So, yeah, that happened. And yeah, we all watched it. Except for the folks who watched the US Open. And it was as bizarre, as unsettling, as disturbing as everyone said. When I watched, I was confused, certainly. And then I got the gag and it was...lame, yes. Occasionally funny-adjacent, with built-in laugh and applause lines. But mostly, I was confused. And I still am. I'll get to that in a second. It did, though, show the exact problems with the modern Republican Party and modern conservativism that I was talking about.
Let me be clear: I'm a fan of Clint Eastwood, as an actor and a writer/director. I get the complaints that people have about his recent work, but I still like him. I'm under no illusions about his politics, though and never have been. I thought I knew his politics pretty well, in a basic way: he's a moderate Republican in the classic modern mold. Pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-women's issues (relatively), environmentally conscious. And the record bears that out. He identified more as a "libertarian." Which is how most of my right-leaning friends identify and often with the same basic profile: to the left on "social" issues, big on a lack of government influence in their lives, hawkish on war. He's eschews labels and such, has endorsed Dems and Republicans, votes the person, not the party. And yet...he endorsed both McCain and Romney and, at the very least, agreed to introduce the guy who was going to introduce Mitt Romney at the RNC in a significant primetime slot. Why would he do that? I'm asking seriously. Mitt Romney is running as a pro-life, hard right on social issues, who is hawkish on war and "pro"-business. In terms of beliefs, there doesn't appear to be a lot of overlap there. What was Clint endorsing?
For the last few years, there have been near-constant conversations about the end of the moderate Republican, the person exactly like Clint Eastwood (and, frankly, like Mitt Romney of a decade ago). Giving a moderate a prime spot at the convention seems like the perfect time for a full-throated defense of moderate conservatism. Or at least to have a major American figure stand up and say, "I don't agree with Mitt on everything, but we share these values and that's important. This party can stand disagreement." That would have been an impressive thing that we'd all be talking about. Even if it wasn't about Mitt (pretty much like all of the other significant speeches), it would have been about something.
Instead, what did Clint say? A cheap joke about the "lefties" in Hollywood. An Oprah joke. A Biden joke. Jabs about Obama being a hypocrite, an attorney, his inauguration. A complaint about Obama not closing Gitmo. A complaint about trying terrorists in civilian courts, followed immediately by noting that Obama doesn't actually do that. A complaint about Obama both not bringing the troops home from Afghanistan AND about Obama setting a date for the troops to come home. He did also note that 23 million people are out of work. That was largely it. And the crowd ate it up. Seriously. I watched it and they all loved it, every second.
What does that say about what's important to the Republican Party. Not policies, reality, the problems facing the country. Jokes and jabs that get laughs and cheers. Substance-and logic-free attacks. And attacks that are mostly about things that are about how Republicans feel about things. Even if the bit had worked perfectly, cleanly and clearly, it doesn't seem like the substance would have changed.
I can hear the arguments winding up right now. "But...it's the convention! It's a big show! It doesn't mean anything!" Except...it does. Because the question still stands: why would Clint appear here? Why would he want to endorse someone who doesn't agree with a number of his beliefs? Why would he stand on a platform that calls for the outlaw of abortions, gay marriage and critical thinking? (No, really, the GOP platform speaks out against critical thinking.)
Parties are supposed to be about the things you believe, the way you want the world to be. Does Clint want to live in Mitt's world? Does Mitt want Clint to have a say in his? It doesn't seem like it.
But Mitt was glad to trot out a cardboard cut-out of a tough guy to make jokes and throw cheap shots and pretend that it's tough talk. And Clint was certainly happy to go along with it. I'm willing to bet that, for Clint, it had to do with the Super Bowl Chrysler commercial, which, in conservative circles, was seen as an endorsement of Obama. (Odd enough that we get the whiplash of Obama both being blamed for not keeping a factory open and for being blamed for saving Detroit in the first place, all by people who claim that the free market should have no interference from the government.) It doesn't strike me as impossible that Clint felt his brand was damaged by the Chrysler ad and wanted to make peace. Maybe not. Maybe he just wanted to do it.
Either way, given a national stage and audience, he opted for nastiness and cruelty, for an incoherent litany of things that largely add up to "We don't like you, President Obama." And his party loved it. Because, at the end of the day, modern Republicanism is defined by that: they don't like things. Period. They don't have solutions to problems, they don't have answers to questions. They're trading on dislike, disdain and anger. Lindsey Graham said as much. It's a party of pure id.
The other moment that should define the Republican Party was this:
That is the modern Republican Party. Doing something about global warming is a silly, silly notion that has nothing to do with helping your family. Which should come as a surprise to the good people of Louisiana. And Tampa.
Jamelle Bouie nailed the line of the night about Clint Eastwood: "This is a perfect representation of the campaign: an old white man arguing with an imaginary Barack Obama." I say take it one step further: Clint Eastwood's speech was the perfect representation of our politics. Tearing down someone who believes most of the things you believe in defense of someone who looks like you and makes you feel better about yourself. It's not a good place for us to be.
I've largely avoided political talk around here because, well, I find myself alternating between depression and anxiety as the Silly Season unfolds. But, after the Ryan pick, the Niall Ferguson article, the Todd Akin mess, the welfare flap, the serial mendacity of Mitt Romney, and after a few months of watching the politics unfold in the single worst arena for discussion, Facebook, I feel like I need to say something. And I think we need to face something.
The Republican Party no longer exists. Not as a political party. Conservatism no longer exists, not as a governing philosophy. It's a marketing campaign.
But Romney's in a tough spot, because he doesn't have much of anything to trade in exchange for votes. He meets a struggling firefighter, but Romney can't promise to boost salaries for first responders, because the his platform calls for the opposite. He meets struggling college students worried about tuition costs, but Romney can't promise more Pell Grants or expanded access to student loans, because he fully intends to end the federal government's role in helping young people afford higher education.
This continues today. Outside of the very wealthy, there is nothing in the Romney-Ryan budget that helps actual people. It includes less money for public services, less money for student loans, less money for healthcare, less money for just about everybody, except the very rich. It's tempting to think that the Republican Party is the party of the rich, but that's not really true, either. Because the rich will hurt, too.
This matters for artists, too. When pressed to say what he plans to cut in order to balance the budget, Romney goes after the NEA (and Amtrak and PBS). Which is ridiculous because those programs make up a miniscule part of the federal budget. This is not a serious plan for deficit-cutting. And, if you are among the super-rich, you're more likely to enjoy and support the arts. Which means your opera, your symphony, your theatre will want more money from you. Yes, you'll get a tax break on it, but it's still money out of your pocket.
A couple of things about all of this: it does no good. Slashing funding for education, tecnnology, scientific research, health care advancements, none of that actually makes America stronger. It's counter-productive to Romney's "rebuild" America rhetoric. It also doesn't actually make the deficit any better, since it includes massive tax breaks. It's also, all of it, largely unpopular. The American people are a confused, difficult people to govern. The number one thing on our list to cut to balance the budget, foreign aid, is just about the smallest drag on the budget. We don't want to cut the other stuff, but we want the budget cut. It's a hard row to hoe, I get that.
But what the GOP and the Romney campaign are doing isn't threading the needle. The Obama budget tries to do that. What the GOP and Romney campaign is doing is, well, A) lying. Straight-up lying to the people they met. And B) marketing to a demographic, not serving a constituency.
The Romney campaign's rhetoric of "freedom," "accountability," "ending bureaucracy," "rebuilding America" is pitched perfectly to attract a certain kind of voter, to make a segment of the population feel like Romney is one of them and has their concerns in his heart. He's not and he doesn't. Like McDonald's pandering to a community struck by obesity and diabetes, he's offering people the worst possible choices and presenting them in coded ways that make them think he really knows them.
This extends to modern conservatism, which has morphed into a cult that believes government should be small enough to fit in a woman's uterus or a gay person's bedroom, that believes that any restriction on the 2nd Amendment at all is an assault on the Constitution, but invasive searches of certain segments of the population are totally fine. Who exactly are they serving? Whose best interest? Again, it's tempting to say "straight white men," but, as was pointed out during the debates on the Montana abortion law, the lack of available abortions means, if you knock a woman up, you have to marry her (or at least take care of the child). We like to say it's a party of business, but global warming, a lack of immigrant labor, products that sicken and hurt your customers are generally not good for business in the long run. Like lowering taxes by cutting services, eventually, this costs you.
But hearing it makes a certain population feel good. I'm not going to get into psychologizing that part. But it does. They listen to this rhetoric and feel good, good about their lives, their choices. So they vote for it. From 2000 to 2008, we saw how that worked out. Hell, we're still seeing how that's working out, since the same people are basically in charge of our government now, no matter who is in the White House. They're calling the shots and are still calling the shots on the basis of what makes their audience feel good, not what's actually good for them.
For a while now, I've been referring to the GOP as the Party of Your Asshole Uncle. "Pissing off liberals" has been a major part of their raison d'etre since William F. Buckley's days. Which is, I suppose, fine...if you're a jerk who likes needling your city mouse brother and his kids at Thanksgiving. It's not really when you plan to lead a country of 300 million people. To do that, you need a governing philosophy. Not a bunch of slogans and cheap jokes. Until the Republican Party can actually come up with a governing philosophy that makes sense for an incredibly wealthy, increasingly diverse, unimaginably powerful and influential, modern nation of 300 million people, I don't think they should be treated as a serious party.
I haven't written much about politics here lately. That's partly due to the personal stuff going on in my life. But it's also partly due to what Nate Silver notes here: in terms of the presidential election, nothing much is changing. It remains a close race, with some structural advantages given to President Obama and some structural disadvantages clinging to Mitt Romney. Oh, there are dust-ups and whatnot, but when the dust settles, nothing has changed.
Obviously the fall presidential election is massively important and, maybe even more obviously, presidential politics are not the only significant politics happening. But they take up a lot of oxygen and every single twist and turn is reported breathlessly. So now we get a half a news cycle about the NAACP booing Romney, followed by half a news cycle of when did Romney leave Bain, when it will probably be time for more shenanigans about Eric Holder and the completely fabricated "Fast and Furious" mess or some other foreign policy "gaffe." It all feels a bit like wheel-spinning to me.
We're waiting, waiting for the actual campaign, for the debates and, in a way, for the day itself. There don't seem to be a lot of convincable voters out there, so the question that looms seems to be who will get their voters out. And, more disturbingly, how many of them will actually be allowed to vote. It's also intriguing/disturbing how little policy seems to actually matter in an election everyone acknowledges as important. Maybe it will in the fall. Maybe not. It just feels like a long way to wait.
Somewhat apropos of Isaac's last couple of posts on trolling and bad public behavior, there's this thing thathappened with Daniel Tosh. For those who don't know (or are allergic to clicking), Daniel Tosh is a comedian who is most known for making fun of people on the internet, usually using fairly "edgy" jokes, i.e. basically saying semi-racist/homophobic/sexist things with a wink. Tosh has a history of making rape jokes, including this wonderful bit. At a recent show, he started in and a blogger who happened to be in the an audience member shouted out that rape jokes are never funny. Which, of course, inspired Tosh to make rape jokes at the woman in question. She left feeling threatened, mortified and upset and tried to get her money back. A friend of hers blogged about it on Tumblr* and this set off a Tumblr/Twitter storm and eventually, Tosh kinda sorta apologized.
Like I said, Tosh has a history of this kind of stuff and I have at least one close friend who's been waging a campaign against him for years. After this, she literally unfollowed any friend on any social media platform who "liked" Daniel Tosh. Which seems pretty reasonable.
But. Hearing about it, made me think of this:
I had actually just re-watched this and was struck again by it. Now, as I've mentioned here before, I'm a huge fan of Louis C.K., his comedy, his show, his whole thing he's got going on. This is also, obviously, a staged event (the actress there is, of course, the amazing Megan Hilty, late of Smash), not an actual person. But he does A) make a rape joke, B) an AIDS joke and C) wishes her dead. For talking during his show. The great coda after gives some explanation for the vitriol...but does that correct it? Also: this episode aired nearly two years ago. I don't recall there being any backlash, any demand for apologies or explanations. In part, I think Louis C.K. gets a pass because his comedy isn't usually offensive and, again, this is fiction, not an actual person. But it's an insight into the psyche of a comic. Which is a pretty dark place.
Let me be very clear: I'm not defending Daniel Tosh. What he said and much of what he does is disgusting. Same goes for a lot of comedians who play the game of "edgy" material when they seem to mean exactly what they say. But I wonder if the Louie bit above lives in that land that Isaac mentioned here: this comes from someone I admire and like. Does it make me a bad person to laugh at it? Does it make Louis C.K. a bad person? How do I decide that Louis C.K. gets a pass, but anyone who likes Daniel Tosh isn't someone I want to know?
If I'm completely honest, I'm not sure.
Update: And then I wandered over to Twitter to find that two comedians I much admire, Louis C.K. and Patton Oswalt, have both jumped in this to defend Daniel Tosh. So...it just gets thornier.
*Updated for clarity. It wasn't a blogger, but a friend of the blogger.
Man, this post is way, way, way overdue. I actually meant to write about this stuff on the blog about a month ago, but events kept getting in the way. And then I meant to write it last week, but there was too much stuff going on. And then I meant to write it yesterday, but by then, I was tired from everything else. Today, though, today is quiet and relatively peaceful and I have some time to myself. So here it is.
I've left New York City.
On Tuesday morning, I got on a plane for Los Angeles. I'm writing this from my sublet in central L.A., sort of Thai-town, sort of Little Armenia, sort of Los Feliz, if any of those words mean anything to you. They mean only a little bit to me right now. But mostly they mean "home."
So how the hell did this happen? Like Hemingway's quote about going broke, gradually and then suddenly. I've been kicking around making this move for a while now. My reasons are about one-third professional, one-third personal and one-third that place where the personal and the professional overlap and become the spiritual.
On the professional tip, I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that I've felt fairly frustrated by the NYC theatre scene. I've been banging my head against its doors and ceilings for nearly two decades now and, honestly, I'm tired. I'm tired of busting my ass, gathering resources, calling in favors, stretching fifty-cents to make a dollar and then at the end of it, having a lot of bubkis to show for it. That's overly harsh. Let me soften it a bit: I don't know what else to do. One of the reasons I've been largely absent on this blog for the last few months has been an absolute torrent of work. I stepped down from the leadership of The New Black Fest and basically did project after project. Between about last November and this spring, I wrote two full-length plays (one a three-act bear), a longish one-act and two ten-minute plays. One of the ten-minute plays received a full production and three week run. The other ten minute play had a quick and dirty production for one night in a bar. The longish one-act got about a week of rehearsal, then a one-night presentation. About a month later, we got another whack at it, with another week's rehearsal and three performances, in a semi-staged manner. The two new plays got a few hours of rehearsal and then one-off readings. I also got a workshop presentation of another full-length play, a week or so of rehearsal for that, two performances, semi-staged. Oh, and a friend of mine who runs a community theatre in Rochester put together a reading of a group of my short plays. I think I'm even leaving some things out...Wait, I am. I also wrote a short holiday-themed piece for a reading series and two short pieces that I read myself, one at another reading series and one at a special event honoring a friend and colleague. Basically, from November until May, I had a deadline every week. Most of the work I did I consider some of my best. I grew as a writer. And many of these events were well-attended and well-received. All of which is, and should be, satifying enough. I'm doing better than a great number of writers I know and I am blessed for the opportunities I have. But.
My disdain for soccer is well-known amongst my friends. In particular, I'm dismissive of soccer because of the possibility of a 0-0 tie. That can't be a satisfactory result, no matter how brilliant your defensive plays are. As I joke (and I may have even stolen this joke from someone), those guys ran around for 90 minutes and I scored as many goals as they did. And I just sat here drinking a beer.
By the same logic, the guy at my local bar who sat there, every night for the last seven months, drinking cranberry and vodkas had as many productions as I did. I was just more winded.
At a certain point, you start thinking it's you. I can say all I want about structural this and structural that, and none of this doesn't mean those imbalances aren't true, but there's a certain point where you have to consider that nobody here really wants you. Or you don't know how to make them want you. And if that's the case, why keep digging this hole? I'm careening into my late thirties. If there's time to make a change, it's now.
I've always tried to be honest about my skills and abilities: I can write some pretty good dialogue, turn a good phrase here and there, and make a pretty decent joke. I prefer naturalism and realism to experimental theatre. I like contemporary stories, usually with a "ripped-from-the-headlines" feel. I'm attracted to the worlds of genre fiction, but I like tweaking it ever so slightly. The current trends in theatre run pretty much counter to all of that, unless you're a big enough name or can land a big enough name to make it to Broadway. I don't come with the kind of pedigree that opens doors on its own. I've felt stuck in a limbo. And sometimes, even my closest friends and colleagues have basically said, "You should be writing for television, not theatre." Generally in nicer terms than that. So...I may not actually be a playwright.
And if not, well, then, why not try my hand at another medium? At another city? So, to paraphrase the single worst phrase in modern sports history, I'm taking my talents to Venice Beach.
Please don't see this as "taking my toys and going home" or slinking out of town away from a trail of failure. I don't. I see it as a moment of clarity. I think I know what I'm doing, maybe for the first time in a decade. That's a good thing.
Personally...I've never lived more than an hour and a half from New York City. While those kind of roots are comforting, they can also hold you back. I wanted to see who I was without the back-drop of New York around me. Especially before I could never get out, never live anywhere else.
And thus and so, Flight 1691 brought me here, to a neighborhood that is really nothing like anything I've known. The closest equivalent is the farthest reaches of Queens, but that doesn't cover it. It's all just so slightly foreign. Mostly in good ways. I'm starting to like it.
A few nights before I left, I got some friends together at a bar and one of my closest friends and colleagues came by. The bar was in my old neighborhood of Inwood and he came all the way from the depths of Brooklyn, and so had to leave on the early side for the two hour ride back home. Right before he left, someone played Bruce Springsteen's gorgeous anthem "Thunder Road." And we belted it out lustily. This song fit my spirit and the time just perfectly. New York isn't exactly full of losers, but the feeling of breaking the bonds that hold you back and leaping out into the free air, that is what I felt. What I'm still feeling. I want to leave you with that. Even though I'm not leaving you at all. I'll still be sending dispatches from L.A. I do plan to take a whack at theatre out here and I know you're all just dying to hear more about TV writing. But for right now, close your eyes, listen to The Boss and think about driving down a sunlit road, the top down and a bright clear sky above you...
Via the always handy You've Cott Mail comes a point/counterpoint that really highlights why conversations about art, commerce and the generation gap really don't go too far. Emily White, a 21-year old intern, writes an essay on why her generation, which loves music, will never buy albums, most because they've never bought albums. They've shared music, traded music, bought songs on the internet and, yes, illegally downloaded them. But her entire music experience has been digital. She offers her vision of what her generation would want:
What I want is one massive Spotify-like catalog of music that will sync to my phone and various home entertainment devices. With this new universal database, everyone would have convenient access to everything that has ever been recorded, and performance royalties would be distributed based on play counts (hopefully with more money going back to the artist than the present model). All I require is the ability to listen to what I want, when I want and how I want it. Is that too much to ask?
In response, David Lowery, of Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, at the Trichordist launched this...well, you can really only call it a screed. He starts off saying he's not trying to "shame" or "embarrass" White. Then proceeds to wag his finger at her for about a million paragraphs. He throws out nearly every possible reason a young person wouldn't want to pay for music and just demolishes them. By the end, he's invoking the Occupy movement and telling her to donate to the American Heart Association in Alex Chilton's name, because she name-dropped Big Star. One of his major rhetorical flourishes is to say that White owes two grand to the artists in her collection and compares that to the cost of a laptop, or a monthly Metrocard or a college education. He hits your heart strings by talking about two impoverished artists he knew who took their own lives, which he apparently blames solely on 21-year olds downloading their music. It is quite the barbaric yawp of a blog post. It's also pretty wrongheaded.
Emily's piece is discussing one thing that Lowery turns into another, seeming to have only read the headline. She doesn't say she's never bought music; quite the opposite, she makes a point of saying that. Yes, sharing music with your friends is still illegal, but mostly David is railing against the piracy industry. Which isn't her point at all.
Emily is talking about creating a different model for a generation whose experiences are radically different. When she's talking albums, she's talking a physical CD bought in a brick-and-mortar store. She doesn't seem to have any objection to paying for music, or to making sure that artists are fairly compensation. The compensation structure of the music industry isn't her subject. The way young audiences enjoy and experience and, yes, purchase music is. David completely ignores that and kicks around a whole bunch of strawmen.
He wants to talk about compensation structure and rail at Emily (and her generation) for a kind of moral turpitude. It's immoral, he says, not to care about the plight of artists. Most of me agrees with him. But I think he's going after the wrong end of the stick here. Emily doesn't say anything about not caring about the fate of artists. Again, she notes that she'd like a system that compensates artists more than the current one. David mentions nothing at all about creating a new system. For all of his passion, details and breakdowns, he's trying to tell Emily, someone who sees the immorality inherent in the system and wants something different, that no, she should be supporting this system.
If I were Emily White, I would feel shamed, embarrassed, scolded and kind of angry about Lowery's piece. I certainly wouldn't want to engage him any further because, plainly, he's not actually listening to me. He's so invested in the way things used to work that he can't even imagine a different way of working. So we can't talk about that, we can't discover that. This conversation will go nowhere. Which is a shame. Because, like many industries, the music industry needs to re-think its model. You can't do that when even the iconoclasts, the rebels are standing atop the barricades shouting "STOP!"
Ultimately, as Carey and others point out in the comments, it's really more a question of education and "cultural" literacy: our new writers (and, by implication, our younger audiences) are writing in a vacuum, not in response to the great works of literature. In the past, writers were steeped in the Great Works of the Great Writers, but now, in the push for the new and relevant, the classics are lost, kept out of the conversation. She calls for a space where new works and old can be presented alongside of each other.
Lauren's response, like my initial one, comes from the place of a the beleaguered playwright: let's not focus on old, dead white guys. Plus the basics of modern drama come from the classics, so we're "in conversation" constantly. One point that I like is that the time is always now: the classical writers wrote for their present, in a language that their audience could readily understand. Why shouldn't we do the same? Now, obviously, Carey isn't saying that we shouldn't. But that's the larger underlying point, isn't it? Who are we in conversation with and what are we saying to them?
Ultimately, in a way, Carey's piece is a lament for the loss of the importance of the classics in the modern world. Classical plays are trotted out for "prestige" productions featuring name actors or for "revinvention" to "translate" them to a modern audience. New plays exist in a wholly separate sphere, unconnected to the classics. Modern audiences, looking for new work, and, in general, having no relationship to the classics, are being deprived a connection to that history, a connection that could be reinforced by theatre. She articulates a lovely vision here:
What if schoolchildren truly had access to the tools it takes to read, perform and understand Euripides, Lorca, Kalidassa, Brecht, Shakespeare, Lope de Vega and the plethora of other dramatic texts we have all but forgotten (not just Western drama, but world drama). Would it not give us a deeper sense of history, a more nuanced view of justice, a richer palate of formal possibilities, a wider range of styles to choose from beyond television realism? Wouldn't the new plays that emerged end up being more complex, more interesting, more formally bold?
Fair questions all and questions that get asked time and again. Won't we be better if we stay connected to the classics?
First, I want to note a couple of things: As Carey laments for a stage that connects new plays to classics, well, there just happens to be one here in NYC: Resonance Ensemble. That's their whole mission. Next time she's in NYC, she should swing by and talk to them about how they do what they do. Also, there's the Harlem9, a collective of theatre companies of color who are gearing up for their second annual 48 Hours In Harlem event, with new ten-minute plays responding to classics of African-American theatre. And then, right in SF, there's the Magic Theatre and Luis Alfaro, who is single-handedly updating the Greeks, it seems. This conversation is happening more, I think, that we know.
But the larger question, to me, is still: why? Why is it important to connect to these works? I don't mean this as a flippant, contrarian response. I'm really asking. Because the underlying reality of Carey's post is that American culture has moved pretty sharply away from the classics, for better or worse. While we retain some of the broad strokes, a modern audience doesn't have the same knowledge bank that they did in Shakespeare's time or even in the earlier part of the 20th century. You're better off referencing Bugs Bunny or The Godfather (though, honestly, with the short lifespan of things now, you might as well stick to Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers and Analyze This). Before everyone's knickers get in a twist, I'm *not* drawing an equivalence between Bugs Bunny and Shakespeare (or, more appropriately, Friz Freleng and Shakespeare). Actually, I'm more comparing Oedipus and Bugs Bunny. Or G.I. Joe. Or Star Wars. This isn't the newest thought on the block, but the level of recognition, the place of importance, the connection to the zeitgeist, these bits of pop culture ephemera are our mythology. The trick is how to use it and embrace it, incorporate it into the conversation.
There are many, many people in the field, critics and artists both, who will, of course, say that Oedipus is a deeper, richer, and essentially more valid figure than Bugs Bunny (or Superman or Frodo) and we should be in the business of bringing that richer figure to the audience. I'm on board with that....to a point. Because we don't want to be in the business of being bad teachers, making art an "eat your vegetables because they're good for you" experience. There is an interplay to be found between the cultural touchstones of the audience you want to reach and the Great Stories. That's the role of the artist, the role that Shakespeare filled. His plays are full of contemporary references and in-jokes, alongside classical figures and myths. That's the goal. Which, ultimately, both Carey and Lauren are on board with. So yay! We're all on the same page. Which is actually kind of nice.
I've been thinking a lot about the future. On a lot of different axes. And I've been thinking about theatre. One of the reasons I've been largely radio-silent lately is that I was very busy. I got pretty lucky and had a nice run of readings, workshop presentations, commissions and whatnot to keep me on my toes. It also kept me out of theatres, mostly, at rehearsals or facing looming writing deadlines. So, to be honest, most of my theatre experience of late has been second-hand: reading invites on Facebook, hearing reports from folks who've seen shows, etc. I'm not proud of it. In fact, in many ways, I feel rather embarrassed by it. This is my chosen field, after all, and most of these shows involve friends and colleagues. I should show up to them, if only to insure that they'll show up to see my work. Plus...this is a tough business and we should all be there for each other. So, to everyone, I apologize.
That's part of why I haven't been writing about theatre much here lately. The other part is...what would I write about? Seriously. What's going on that requires comment, discussion, dissection? There was the Guthrie contretemps, but that seems to have resolved itself nicely. The NY theatre season announcements have actually been fairly delightful, intriguing and interesting. My bugaboo of diversity seems to be satisfied for the large part, really. We're in award season and I've been quite pleased to see some good friends and colleagues win awards and accolades. The Tonys, as indicated by Isaac's post here and the New York magazine articles he links to here and here, seem to have caused some consternation about musical theatre...but the unspoken word there seems to be "Broadway." As far as I can see, musical theatre is doing pretty well: some very exciting playwrights are creating musicals, a lot of the major Off-Broadway houses have new musicals in their next seasons, people are still making them. Honestly, the same goes for new plays. It seems like, for the time being, we've hit some sort of equillibrium: there are new plays by exciting new writers planned, the indie scene here in the city feels really coalesced and connected in many ways, and lots of communities are coming together and connecting. Again, this is just a cursory glance, as I pull my head out of my own, um, trench, and look out over the field. I'm sure I'm missing things, or ignoring things, or failing in various ways that will rapidly be brought to my attention.
So the question that comes to me is: what if this is it? A lot of us invest a lot of time in being semi-professionally upset about things. We want change! We want it now! What if, though, there won't be any significant changes? What if the new movement in theatre is here, it's now established and this is it? We've landed at Steady State: Broadway is a place for mass entertainments at a price set for tourists, Off-Broadway and the regionals will continue to cater to an aging, upper-middle class audience with the occasional feint in the direction of diversity, the indie scene will remain largely segregated by class, race, gender and sexuality with occasional cross-pollination, and theatre will, in general, continue to hover in this place, this narrow, wobbly space between being a luxury good for cultural elites and something that connects to a wider audience. What if that's what we can expect for the duration? It does seem fairly resistant to change. Oh, we have our little flare-ups, dust-ups, scandals, donnybrooks, but pretty quickly, order is restored. The natural order of things re-asserts itself and the whole system spins on.
This also happened. The Obama campaign launched "The Life of Julia" to highlight what the administration has done (and has been trying to do) to improve life in this country. It is, fairly obviously, also a campaign targeted to women (though not as much as you would think...I'll come back around to that). The Right went, well, ballistic, which means that it's probably pretty effective. This piece, by Dana Loesch, in particular, is illustrative of a couple of interesting things about this moment, both in politics and in culture.
The first this is something that Steve Benen has been talking about a lot this week: transactional politics. Loesch's assault on the Life of Julia consists of a heady blend of high dudgeon, outright lies and a constant attack on the policies of the Obama administration. What I find fascinating is that it completely ignores the other side of the ledger: what would would Mitt Romney (or any Republican president) actually do. Obama's Life of Julia is helpfully pegged along with that counterpoint; for every policy stated or enacted by the administration, there is an accompanying note about how a stated policy of Mitt Romney would undo it. Loesch's piece is full of scare tactics about the administration's actions (or potential, somewhat made-up actions), but virtually nothing about what Mitt Romney would do. If I was an undecided voter and I read this, I would know nothing about what Mitt Romney is planning to do, except that it's the opposite of what Obama has done. And I'm not even talking about general ideas of policies. I can't find a single, affirmative Romney-centered point in the whole thing. In fact, the closest she comes is, well, a prevarication: she attacks the administration for referring to the "Romney/Ryan budget," making a snide comment about Mitt Romney not being a senator. But Mitt Romney has said he'd enact the budget. And he's the other candidate running. So...unless you expect that he's lying about his intentions, it's fair to link him to that budget. In fact, that's just about all we have to go on in terms of what he would do, if elected.
What is Mitt Romney offering women? Or, really anyone. We don't know. Or rather, we do know, he just doesn't want to own up to it.
The other thing that I find interesting here is that this campaign is largely seen as an open plea to women. Loesch certainly goes deep on that one with her high dudgeon, complaining that men are totally absent from the picture and that Obama is implying that women can't make their own decisions. Even about abortion, which, apparently, is strictly enforced on all people at all times. (Yeah, I don't get that either.) Take a second and swing on over to the official site. Go on. Go click around. Look at the various milestones and events of Julia's life. By my count, there is exactly one and a half that are female-centric: the reference to the Lily Ledbetter act and the way it talks about having a child. All the rest would be exactly the same if it was The Life of James, instead of the Life of Julia. Julia here is an everyperson. That seems to have gone completely unnoticed, but I think is significant. The graphic requires a bit of empathy. Which seems to be something else the conservatives don't like. Or can't really do.
If you don't know the backstory, Ted Nugent, professional crazyman, said a few weeks ago that, if Obama was re-elected, in a year, he'd be in jail or dead. This was met with some criticism and a little bit of concern from the Secret Service. After that, a gig that Nugent had on an Army base was canceled. He's been trying to rehab his image since then and did the morning show appearance above. Which won't do much for his image.
What I think is important here is a similar mindset to what Rachel Maddow ran into from Alex Castellanos on Meet The Press on Sunday. In that instance, Rachel stated a simple fact: women make less than men. Castellanos simply said, "No." He followed up with some dissembling, but the heart of his argument was that women do not make less than men. Ted Nugent has a long history of saying crazy things and taking stances that are clearly to the extreme right of the American populace. What sets him off here? The suggestion that he is not a "moderate" and that his preferred candidate, Mitt Romney, will need to appeal to moderates (a legitimate concern). Like Castellanos, Nugent rejects basic, obvious facts and observable reality to go on a tirade that implies that his generosity makes him "moderate." (Though, in his rambling, it also seems to imply that it makes him extreme.)
I highlight this, not because it's a conservative acting like a buffoon, but because, based on the GOP primary, a significant portion, if not an outright majority, of conservative voters seem to feel like Ted does here: their views and lives are NOT extreme, even when they believe the most bizarre, extreme things (like the government is coming for their guns). These ideas, to them, are obvious, common-sense things. When I think about that, I get very concerned about our country and about democracy.
I'm surprised honestly at how hard this one hit. But I'm sitting here crying. For real.
Beastie Boys started out as a novelty act but quickly grew into one of the most influential, surprising, exciting and entertaining musical acts of their generation. Plus they were fucking bad ass. This one just...hurts.
When I read Tom's essay, I knew it would be controversial, and allow a lot of people to thump their breasts in outrage. But it amazes me how easy it is for people to thump, and how hard it seems for them to do anything that might change the status quo for the better. Tom and I have been putting statistics out there year after year showing the problem, and everybody nods and then goes back to figuring out how to use Twitter better. Any suggestions that might lead to change is greeted with "concern" or dismissal, because change might "hurt" some people or institutions that people aspire to, or worse might impact our own career. But those statistics that Tom puts out there aren't made up. So we have two options: accept them as permanent reality, or do something that leads to change. And my experience is, for all the chest thumping, people lack the courage and desire to change anything.
There is a documentary called "The Essential Blue Eyed," which revisits the teacher who did the experiment with her elementary school students where blue eyes were embued with all the negative stereotypes usually applied to African-Americans. At one point in the documentary, she is addressing a gathering of teachers, and she says, "Stand up if you would like to change your white skin color for black." She waits -- nobody rises. She then says, "That means that you know what's happening, you know it's wrong. So why aren't you doing something?"
So yeah, the quotation asks you to do something. Something more than sighing and expressing your oh-so-enlightened sensibilities. So let's see it. Let's see a suggestion for change that actually is radical enough to address this imbalance. Let's see YOU suggest something, instead of simply picking the holes in the ideas of others.
There is an essay about race and privilege that defines "prejudice" as something that happens at the level of the individual, and "racism" as something that happens at the level of the system. It is possible to benefit from racism even if you aren't prejudiced. That's where we're at now: we have a theatrical system that is racist, elitist, and urbanist. The author says there are three categories: "active racism," "passive racism," and "active anti-racism." Active racism is exemplified by the KKK and others who actively do racist acts. Active anti-racism are people who seek to intervene and actively counter-act racism. And Passive racism are people who don't do anything racist, but they just go along. The analogy is to the moving sidewalks in airports: racists walk fast forward, anti-racists walk fast backwards, and passive racists stand still but are moved along by the escalator. The latter is what most theatre people are -- passive racists/elitists/urbanists. And until they get off the schneid, then Tom's analysis is spot-on.
So, Scott, you know I have a fair amount of respect for you and your work. But I'm calling bullshit on this. Absolute, obnoxious, pointless, self-aggrandizing bullshit.
What have I been doing? This. This. This. For the last two years, it's been my pleasure and honor to help build a theatre collective that is actively connecting black artists with a black audience that is dying for theatre. I have watched our audience and impact grow. I've seen, actually seen, with my own eyes, the impact we have had. That's what I've been doing. It's one of the reasons my posting here has been light. I haven't been talking about the changes I want to see. I've been making them. So before you get up on your high horse, open your eyes and see things beyond your narrow, narrow sphere. People are working, working rather hard to make our theatre stronger.
They exist. In droves. I've seen them. I've met them. They've asked me for more work, more plays, more great theatre. No, they're not going to Broadway, because Broadway is showing them nothing about their lives. That's what theatre is for, right? To hold a mirror up to nature. If it's not doing that, why not go?
What Tom did does not. It does nothing to make theatre in this country stronger, to move the ball forward. And it is not controversial, brave or insightful to say that theatre is the province of white people only. It's racist. Period. And if you can't see that, you, my dear friend, are one of those people on the escalator, blindly going through life without actually looking around.
If Tom had said, well, poor people don't really go to Broadway, therefore theatre's not for them and we should stop trying to create theatre for them, you'd be up on your high horse. But no, he just confirmed for you something you think is possible: that black people just don't get theatre. It's their fault. Not yours. So forget them. Leave them to their physical sports and their hip-hop, while we live the life of the true mind. Oh, we don't mean to say that they're not smart enough to understand and appreciate Shakespeare...but they're not.
The people I know, black, white, Latino, Korean, Chinese, Filipino, Jewish, mixed race, they're all working their asses off, trying to make better theatre, make stronger, smarter theatre. You know who's in the way? People who think like you and Tom. People who think that theatre is really only reserved for a certain chosen few, whether they're chosen by wealth, location, education or race. It's all the same prejudice. It's rank and that's what's killing our theatre.
The other reason I haven't been posting a lot is because I just plain got tired of having this fight. Tired of trying to explain that diversity is important to people who clearly don't actually give a crap about racism or equity or diversity. Tired of people like you and Tom and others, who stick your fingers in your ears and ignore any evidence that shakes your worldview. When people try to confront you about it, you accuse them of being careerist or urbanist or elitist and reject it. You're no better than climate change skeptics. The world is falling apart around you, but you don't want to actually do anything about it. Or rather, you just want to help people who look like you. Everyone else can burn.
If Tom had actually raised a question or started a conversation about modes of theatre, about cultural changes, or even about the effectiveness of marketing to people of color, then we could have a conversation. He didn't. And so we don't get to have a conversation. We're just yelling at each other. I didn't want to get angry about this, but, congrats, Scott, you made me angry. Hope you're happy. And before you even say that you weren't talking about me, you came here to say it. You posted it here. Not on Twitter. Not on your own blog. Maybe you're talking about someone else. But you were talking to me. Okay? So this is what you get back.
Is anyone going to ask him about the underlying premise of his quote? Nope. Is anyone going to ask if it's a dog whistle, a pandering play on older white Americans fear of losing "their country?" Nope. Is anyone going to note that, while it's not literally a KKK slogan, it's essentially the same? Nope. The substance doesn't matter, not a bit. Hell, even the misunderstanding doesn't really matter. What matters is that Mitt Romney got mad that his vaguely racist stump rhetoric got called out and MSNBC decided that it was better to just apologize.
Seriously. Louis C.K. is pretty much just kicking ass and taking names right now. If you don't know who Louis is, well, you better learn. Right quick.
Today, he contributed to Reddit's series of question and answers threads called AMAs. And continued to be just freaking awesome. Louie's been a real hero of mine since I read this interview in the Onion's A.V. Club. I love Louie, but reading about how he got the show is a pretty inspiring thing:
So I didn’t really want to do it, because I really didn’t want to struggle. Also, he said he wanted me to use the same sort of material I was going to use for—I said I wanted to do a sketch show, and he said “No, we want you to do what you do onstage, which is talk about being a dad and stuff.” And I was like “Well, that’s got a high price tag on it over at NBC. They’re offering to pay me half a million bucks just to write the thing, let alone the cost to make it.” So he called me at home and talked to me for about three hours about his model for making television. And he said, “We just take a little bit of money and we throw it at somebody who is funny. We can do this without asking anybody, we can make this deal right now. You don’t have to pitch anything, and I’ll just write you a check, and we make a pilot.” And I said, “The only way this is interesting to me is if you literally wire me $250,000. I’m pitching you what the show is about. I don’t want to write a script for a pilot, and I don’t want to show you anything until it’s finished. So if you give me $250,000, I’ll give you a pilot in two months.”
Pretty damn awesome. Especially because the show he created is a singular, lovely, funny, painful thing. It's one of the best things happening on TV right now. and it's a product of Louie's singular vision.
And then there's this. The guy recorded his own comedy special. And he's selling it himself. You give Louie $5 and you get the special. No middle-man, no distributor. It's a pretty sweet deal. And he says if it makes money, he'll make a movie. He'll also buy a house. Because you're giving your money directly to the guy.
For the last couple of years, we've been talking about different models for artists, about the lack of control and security, about gatekeepers and moderators and blah blah blah. Maybe the models we're looking for are already out there. He's an artist who is controlling content and people are falling over themselves to give him cash. He's critically acclaimed, an Emmy nominee, and he's doing it without worrying about the gatekeepers. Part of the key is that, at every step of the way, he was ready to just walk away. That's key. If you need them more than they need you, you don't get to write your own ticket.
So I tip my hat to you, sir. Louis C.K. is my spirit animal.
For various reasons, I have found myself surrounded by 20-somethings of late. I swear I'm not seeking out their company. They just keep popping up. Honest.
One way they've shown up in my life is through teaching. I've been teaching a section of Intro to Playwriting at NYU's Playwrights Horizons Theater School this fall. It's been a really fun and interesting experience. My teaching/mentoring experiences have generally either been with high schooler or with post-graduate semi-professional writers. It's been a while since I worked on the college level, so that took some adjusting. My particular group of kids have been...well, honestly? Great. They've been great. Smart, attentive, inquisitive, just the right amount of cheeky and disrespectful, diligent and unexpectedly passionate. I say "unexpectedly" not because they're young (they're mainly second-year students), even though they are, but most of them are not playwrights (at least not currently). They're young actors and, let's be frank, young actors tend to be pretty passionate about just one thing: being a young actor. These kids, though, have taken to the world of playwriting and the playwriting workshop with gusto. It's been pretty gratifying.
But now, I'm reaching a bit of a tender point: the post-mortem class. Our final session of the year, we're going to have a good old-fashioned "rap" session (Does anyone, anyone at all still call them "rap" sessions? Anyone?) and talk about the class, what they learned, how they experienced it, what I can improve on, etc. But I also want to talk to them about theatre, about the field they're heading into, the world they'll be heading into, what they can really expect. I want to talk to them about the absurdly high unemployment rate for artists in general and theatre artists in specific. The incredibly low chance of "material" success in the arts (however you want to define that) ahead of them. I've grown to think of the "If you love anything else, go do it" speech I'm pretty sure we all got at one point or another is a hoary cliche, but...I want to tell them something. I may not ever see any of these kids again and I want to give them something.
What would you say? What advice/counsel/words of warning or encouragement would you give a 19-year old theatre arts student who has just completed their first official playwriting course?
When I read Tom's essay, I knew it would be controversial, and allow a lot of people to thump their breasts in outrage. But it amazes me how easy it is for people to thump, and how hard it seems for them to do anything that might change the status quo for the better. Tom and I have been putting statistics out there year after year showing the problem, and everybody nods and then goes back to figuring out how to use Twitter better. Any suggestions that might lead to change is greeted with "concern" or dismissal, because change might "hurt" some people or institutions that people aspire to, or worse might impact our own career. But those statistics that Tom puts out there aren't made up. So we have two options: accept them as permanent reality, or do something that leads to change. And my experience is, for all the chest thumping, people lack the courage and desire to change anything.
There is a documentary called "The Essential Blue Eyed," which revisits the teacher who did the experiment with her elementary school students where blue eyes were embued with all the negative stereotypes usually applied to African-Americans. At one point in the documentary, she is addressing a gathering of teachers, and she says, "Stand up if you would like to change your white skin color for black." She waits -- nobody rises. She then says, "That means that you know what's happening, you know it's wrong. So why aren't you doing something?"
So yeah, the quotation asks you to do something. Something more than sighing and expressing your oh-so-enlightened sensibilities. So let's see it. Let's see a suggestion for change that actually is radical enough to address this imbalance. Let's see YOU suggest something, instead of simply picking the holes in the ideas of others.
There is an essay about race and privilege that defines "prejudice" as something that happens at the level of the individual, and "racism" as something that happens at the level of the system. It is possible to benefit from racism even if you aren't prejudiced. That's where we're at now: we have a theatrical system that is racist, elitist, and urbanist. The author says there are three categories: "active racism," "passive racism," and "active anti-racism." Active racism is exemplified by the KKK and others who actively do racist acts. Active anti-racism are people who seek to intervene and actively counter-act racism. And Passive racism are people who don't do anything racist, but they just go along. The analogy is to the moving sidewalks in airports: racists walk fast forward, anti-racists walk fast backwards, and passive racists stand still but are moved along by the escalator. The latter is what most theatre people are -- passive racists/elitists/urbanists. And until they get off the schneid, then Tom's analysis is spot-on.