The Straphanger's Guide to the Galaxy

Within the Law

2014-06-01T12:47:00.000-07:00

The Metropolitan Playhouse is a cultural gem of the Lower East Side and it's latest show Within the Law by Bayard Veiller doesn't disappoint. I've had the pleasure of seeing a lot of great theatre at the Metropolitan and this is one of the best pieces I've seen. The cast is superb. The wardrobe is impeccable. And the play highlights this year's theme of Justice as good as any.

I say this with nearly every review but the attention paid to costume design makes a world of difference. Sidney Fortner did an amazing job of whisking us back to a more dapper time and it really enhances the work of these great actors and the story they are telling.

Along with that are the really impressive sets that Alex Roe designs. Metropolitian Playhouse has one of the smallest stages you'll find in the Off-Broadway world and yet because of their incredible artistic skill it always feels immense. There were four major scene changes that were carried out nearly flawlessly and it really is amazing what they are able to do in that space.

The cast was superb. I'm continually amazed at the level of talent that comes through the Metropolitan Playhouse and this show was no different. It's a really big cast for such a small stage with thirteen actors. No matter how small the role each and every actor really brought their A-game. Deb Radloff (Sarah, Fanny, Thompson) stood out for her ability to transform between the various characters she played and even the changes within character from a tough street-talking young woman to a sophisticated and classy woman of the highest order. And funny! Numerous times she had the audience in stitches. Elisabeth Preston, in lead role as Mary Turner was also a joy to watch. She was simply captivating as Mary Turner constantly out-smarting people who thought they were better than her. I really could go on about every member of this cast and how good they were but suffice to say that in a theatre that constantly has great casts this is one of the best I've seen.

This was the opening preview and there were a few glitches but they were all pretty minor. The only thing that really stood out as needing attention is a scene in which Christian Rozakis (Joe Garson) is showing Elisabeth Preston (Mary Turner) his revolver with the silencer. For some strange reason he tells her to turn away and then points the gun at her back and fires. Ostensibly this was to show her how quiet the gun was so it was confusing why she had to turn away and even stranger that he basically shot her in the back. I'm guessing this was a small mix up with blocking that will be fleshed out in future shows but I thought I'd mention it nonetheless.

Metropolitan Playhouse has created yet another great show with a superb cast that keeps great American theatre alive and well. It's the one theater I always feel confident in telling friends and tourists about because so much love and effort is put into each and every performance.

The Liberal Narrative is Dead

2013-05-10T08:35:00.000-07:00

Amitai Etizioni's recent article in the Atlantic, "The Liberal Narrative is Broken, and Only Populism Can Fix It," highlights so much that is wrong with the so-called "liberal narrative" and really begs the question: Is it something we really want to fix?

Etizioni begins in liberal land where we are all either liberals or conservatives. There are, to be fair, people referred to as moderates, but they just haven't figured out whether they are liberals or conservatives yet and don't really count. More people self-identify as conservatives, according to Etizioni but they are "operational liberals":

...studies show that the majority only subscribe to conservative philosophies but they are 'operational' liberals. The majority support gun control, the social safety nets, climate protection, and many other liberal programs. As long as we remind the people of what the government really does, they will vote liberal.

Here's where it gets tricky for liberals. What exactly woudl qualify as "voting liberal" anyway? Our last liberal president was Richard Nixon, but that doesn't fit the liberal narrative where liberals are supposed to be Democrats. So Etizioni has to perform some mental gymnastics here:

This lovely thought does not have a leg to stand on, because people cannot vote for these programs. Instead, they must cast one vote that covers all the various programs and issues -- domestic and foreign -- before them.

In other words, it's complicated. No need for Etizioni to dwell on the fact that the Democratic Party has consistently betrayed it's working class base, gutting and destroying all of the liberal programs mentioned earlier. It was, after all, Bill Clinton who passed the union destroying North American Free Trade Agreement while destroying aid to dependent families. Now Obama has his site on the last vestiges of the New Deal: Social Security and Medicare. But nevermind that. It's just complicated.

Etizioni goes on to highlight the popularity of populist ideas found in movements like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. He even claims that 1 in 10 Americans support both the Occupy and Tea Party movement. So if so many people support these movements, particularly the Occupy movement, why did it do so poorly? Etizioni is kind enough to provide us with the answers:

First, because it had no clear narrative and was mainly an expression of a very diffuse sentiment; second, because it mixed populist with liberal messages; third, because it was unclear who the bad guys are -- Wall Street? The bankers? The one percent? The System?

Apparently Etizioni is big on narratives. Strangely absent from his analysis is the nationally coordinated crackdown of the Occupy movement. The eviction of Occupy Wall Street here in New York City was carried out in the middle of the night by a para-military force that aggressively kept journalists from even covering what was going on. According to Etizioni, however, all we needed was a better narrative to avoid being beaten and arrested by the police for excercising our First Amendment right to peaceably assemble.

Like his first point the rest of it is complete nonsense. We didn't mix messages. Occupy Wall Street offered a place for people to bring their grievances and be heard. Rather than beg corporate politicians to fix things we took matters into our own hands, feeding each other, educating each other, and housing each other. In a few short weeks Occupy Wall Street was feeding more people than any soup kitchen in the City.

In response to Etizioni's last point the answer would be "all of the above." Yes it's the bankers and Wall Street and the 1%. But above all that--and this is the hardest thing for liberals to understand--it's the system. A system developed, in the words of James Madison, "to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority." In other words, to protect the 1% from the 99%. Our first Chief Justice, John Jay, was a little less eloquent when he said, "The people who own the country ought to run it."

That's what drives me crazy when liberals like Etizioni always talk about "returning the government to the people." When was that? From the very beginning only the propertied aristocrats (the 1%) could even vote. When was this mystical time in liberal land? Apparently it was far more recent that I'd realized:

The next step, a major first step to return the government to one for the people, by the people, is actually a relative easy one to outline: rolling back the negative impact of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.

This is a popular meme with liberals. Somehow the relatively recent Supreme Court decision Citizens United is when we lost our so-called democratic government. Like most things liberals believe, it's simply not true. Perhaps the most well known scholar to tackle this problem is professor Thomas Ferguson out of the University of Boston, who developed the investment theory of party competition:

The theory states that, since money driven political systems are expensive and burdensome to ordinary voters, policy is created by competing coalitions of investors, not voters. According to the theory, political parties (and the issues they campaign on) are created entirely for business interests, separated by the interests of numerous factors such as labor-intensive and capital-intensive, and free market and protectionist businesses.

In other words, long before Citizens United, the 1% of been unduly influencing our government. As John Dewey famously quipped, "Politics is the shadow cast by big business." Citizens United didn't fundamentally change anything; it simply codified long-standing practices by the 1% to use their inordinate wealth to direct the state to attend to their interests.

The liberal narrative is not dead because it's too abstruse. It's dead because it's simply not true. It doesn't reflect reality. This system isn't corrupt. It's not broken. It's working just fine, in the interests of the 1%, the way our founding fathers intended. You could roll back Citizens United today and it would do nothing to mitigate the immense inequality in this country; and, as historian Howard Zinn often said, "political rights without economic rights is meaningless."

The Occupy Movement didn't "sputter out." It was stomped out by the heal of our so-called liberal president in a nationally coordinated atttack. Yes, the paramilitary goons managed to destroy our camps, but they didn't stop the movement. People all across the planet haven't given up fighting for a better world and there are plenty of examples like Occupy Sandy, Debt Strike, Occupy the Pipeline, and the current fight here in New York City to keep Cooper Union free. Does that sound like a movement that sputtered? Or does it sound like a movement that has grown and evolved despite the immense repression it has faced?

Liberals like Amitai Etizioni will never get this because their professional careers depend on it. The liberal narrative, if anything, is about celebrating this unjust system and convincing people that we can somehow reform it. Convincing people that voting will somehow fix this keeps them from actually engaging in important political work in their work place, homes and communities. But liberals are also realizing it's getting harder and harder to profess those so-called liberal values while your party systimatically dismantles them. Let's hope the liberal narrative is dead.

The Straphanger's Guide to the Galaxy

Within the Law

The Liberal Narrative is Dead

An Open Letter to Car Owners in New York City

Citi Bike Scam

Anarcho-Terrosism?

Links & Stuff

Look for the Helpers

The Technology of Surveillance.

Reflections on the Boston Bombing

On Killing

Bullet Catch

Moves

BYOB Painting Lounge

The Effectiveness of Stop & Frisk

NYPD Terrorists

Tipping

Taiko & Dance 2013

Obama Vs Bush

Korea and the Media

Operation Iraqi Liberation Ten Years Later

Ecstatic Music Festical

Bears

Brooklyn Unplugged At Franklin Park

One-Third of a Nation

One-Third of a Nation