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Today's
Stories
December
4 / 6, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Politicize the CIA? You've Got to
be Kidding
December
3, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Lie Then Escalate
Ben
Tripp
Fun With Boycotts: How to Shop in a
Time of Crisis
Joe
Allen
Murder in El Salvador: the Assassination of Teamster Organizer
Gilberto Soto
Matthew
B. Riley
Human Rights Court Fails Lori Berenson
Meir
Shalev
In the End, It is the Violin that Wins
Bob
Wing
The White Elephant in the Room: Race and Election 2004
Christopher
Brauchli
When McCain Bit His Tongue
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
The EU, the US, Israel and Iran
December
2, 2004
Tito
Tricot
No Justice in Chile: I'm a Torture
Survivor in a Country Where Torturers Still Run Free
Behzad
Yaghmaian
The Murder of Theo Van Gogh and Muslim Migration
Dr.
Susan Block
Lana and Me: Meetings with Remarkable Apes
Frank
/ Chowkwanyun
Liberalism and Its Bounds
Lee
Sustar
Standoff in Ukraine: the Bad v. the Corrupt
Patrick
Cockburn
Another Grim Record in Iraq
Mark
Engler
Seattle at Five
Michael
Donnelly
Something Stinks in South Bend: the Firing of Tyrone Willingham
Nate
Collins
The Bay Area Mall on an Ohlone Burial Grounds
Saul
Landau
The Assassination of Danilo Anderson
December
1, 2004
Phillip
Cryan
Associated with Whom? Rightist Bias
in Wire Coverage of Colombia
Dave
Zirin
What's the Matter with "Leon"?:
Budweiser's Racist Commercial
Ghali
Hassan
Iraq's Health Care Under the Occupation:
200 Children Die Every Day
Donna
J. Volatile
Beware Western Nations Threatening "Democracy"
Patrick
Cockburn
How Saddam Tried to Arm the Insurgency
Nick
Meo
Chemical War Over Afghanistan
Mike
Ferner
The Battle of Toledo
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Shame and Determination on Global AIDS Day: 40 Million and Rising
Kathy
Kelly
Looking the Other Way: the Real Crimes
of the UN in Iraq
November
30, 2004
Jennifer
Van Bergen
The Veil of Secrecy
Toni
Nelson Herrera
Meeting Kurtz: When Art is a Crime
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Bush Delusions: Successful at Incompetence
Patrick
Cockburn
The Insurgency Strikes Back: There Are No Safe Havens in Iraq
Chuck
Munson
WTO Protests Five Years Later: Seattle Weekly Trashes Anti-Globalization
Movement
Adam
Williams
Citizenship Sold: Back to Business in Indiana
Gregory
Elich
A Dangerous Turn in the US Plans for
North Korea
Website
of the Day
Read Lynne Cheney's Lesbian Novel Online!
November
29, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Blowback in Ukraine: The Hand of
the CIA?
Omar
Barghouti
"The Pianist" of Palestine:
Roadblock Concerto at Gunpoint
Mike
Whitney
The US Media and Fallujah: How to
Market a Siege
Uri
Avnery
The Abu Mazen Style: "Give Me
Some Credit!"
Matt
Vidal
Globalization and Economic Inequality: a Look at the Numbers
Patrick
Cockburn
An Interview with Iraq's Foreign
Minister
Alan
Farago
Sex Change and Salvation: God, Girly Men and Endocrine Disrupters
Justin
Huggler
Bhopal 20 Years Later
Antony
Loewenstein
How Australia Reported Arafat's Death and Legacy
Gary
Leupp
Ukraine: Poll Results Aren't the Real
Issue
Website
of the Day
Mosul: Images from a Kill Zone
November
27 / 28, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Torture & Neo-Liberalism with
Sycorax in Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
What Happened to O'Reilly's Loofa?
Fred
Gardner
Ashcroft v. Raich: Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court
Kathy
Kelly
What We Can Control
Diane
Christian
The Other Cheek: "Empire Doesn't Analyze, It Acts"
Gary
Leupp
One More Neocon Target: South (Yes, South) Korea
Lenni
Brenner
Equality and Rights of Return: Jefferson Instructs the New York
Times
Ron
Jacobs
Death Squads and Iraq's Elections: the Mysterious Murders of
the AMS Clerics
Joshua
Frank
An Interview with Kevin Zeese on Nader, Kerry and the ABB Crowd
Toni
Solo
The Murder of Danilo Anderson
Saul
Landau
Fallujah, the 21st Century Guernica
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Matthew Shepard Case 6 Years Later: Why Hate Crimes Laws are
No Cure for Homophobia
Justin
Taylor
Empire's Lawless Opportunities
Amos
Harel
The Case of Captain R.
Walter
A. Davis
Tabloid Justice
Stephen
Hendricks
God's Kind of Men
Poets'
Basement
Albert, LaMorticella and Ford
November
26, 2004
Peter
Feng
Gavin Newsom: Man or Machine?
Greg
Moses
It's the White Vote, Stupid
Liaquat
Ali Khan
The Devil's Work: Bush's Minority Appointments
Michael
Mandel / Gail Davidson
Why Bush Should Be Banned from Canada: a Memo to the Ministry
of Immigration
Dave
Lindorff
Nation of Sheep, Turkey of an Election: Urkrainians Show the
Way
Gary
Corseri
When Black Friday Comes...
Paul
Craig Roberts
Whatever Happened to Conservatives?
Website
of the Day
Iraq Pipeline Watch
November
25, 2004
Willliam
Loren Katz
Giving Thanks to Whom?: "Thanks
to God We Sent 600 Heathen Souls to Hell Today"
Mitchel
Cohen
Why I Hate Thanksgiving
Mike
Ferner
An Uncommon Mom
November
24, 2004
Gila
Svirsky
License to Kill: the Example of Violence
is Set by the State
Winslow
T. Wheeler
The
Other Mess in Congress
Christopher
Brauchli
The Company He Keeps: the Syndicate of Tom Delay
Dave
Lindorff
Double Standards on Exit Polls: Hypocrisy Sans Irony
Ron
Jacobs
The Occupation of Iraq is the Root of t he Problem
Ken
Sengupta
Witnesses: War Crimes in Fallujah
Diana
Barahona
The Final Holocaust or Why I Voted for Ralph Nader
John
L. Hess
Safire the Shameless
Jason
Leopold
Did Harvard Hire (Another) War Criminal?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Mark of McCain: the Senator Most Likely to Start a Nuclear
War
Map
of the Day
Now and Then: 2004 v. 1860
November
23, 2004
Forrest
Hylton
Bush and Uribe at the Beach
November
22, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Fight Night in the NBA: Selective Outrage
in Detroit
Paul
Craig Roberts
On to Iran: We Won't Get Fooled Again?
Michael
Mandel / Gail Davidson
Why Bush Should be Banned from Canada
Kathie
Helmkamp
Our Son: a Marine Who Won't Kill
Ken
Sengupta
The Triangle of Death: "This is Now the Most Dangerous Place
in Iraq"
Mike
Whitney
Greenspan's Hammer
Roger
Burbach
Why They Hate Bush in Chile
Website
of the Day
Fed Up with Government Lies and Corporate Spin?
November
20 / 21, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
The Poisoned Chalice
Todd
May
Religion, the Election and the Politics of Fear
Abbas
Ahmed Ibrahim
The Horrors of Fallujah: a First-Hand Account
Kevin
Zeese
Mishandling Nader
Landau
/ Hassen
After Arafat
Tom
Barry
The Vulcans Consolidate Power: The Rise of Stephen Hadley
Fred
Gardner
Pot Shots: Ask Dr. Todd
Justin
E.H. Smith
Triumph of the Will: the Sequel
Carl
Estabrook
Where We Are Now
Gary
Leupp
Imperial History-Making vs. Reality-Based Thought: a Dialogue
Dave
Lindorff
Apocalypse Soon
Jenna
Michelle Liut
Plans Colombia and Patriota: Wanton Wastes of Money, Manpower
and Lives
Mickey
Z.
The Granma Moses of Radical Writing: an Interview with William
Blum
Greg
Moses
The Same Old Struggle Against Imperial America
Sharon
Smith
Abortion Rights and the Election: What Now?
Ron
Jacobs
Sandwiches and Car Bombs
Ben
Tripp
Raising d'Etre: Finding Money in Hollywood These Days
Richard
Oxman
Basketbrawl Two Pointer: Iraq Rules!
Gilad
Atzmon
Politics and Jazz
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Albert, Ford, & Anon.
Website
of the Day
Voice of the Forest
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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Weekend Edition
December 4 / 6, 2004
Bashing the Gay Play
No
Angels in America
By
RICHARD OXMAN
Kushner's title tortures me. Not just
because over 80% of Americans believe in angels, but because
they think it's possible for anyone/thing to be looking over
their shoulder --on the order of the Rocky Graziano sentiment
in "Somebody Up There Likes Me"-- now that we've become
The Torture Capital of the World. (1)
I've had many close friends
die of AIDS. Some --grotesquely disfigured and screaming at
the south and clutching at the north-- in front of my eyes.
But victims of AIDS, including their loved ones...even if they're
Americans, can and do support torture and other abominations.
About a decade ago, Intiman
Theatre produced "Angels in America," playwright Tony
Kushner's epic "gay fantasia on national themes."
The much-celebrated play, divided into two three-hour segments,
has won multiple awards and honors, including two Tonys (one
for each section) and a Pulitzer Prize. In fact, it was named
one of the top five Tony Award-winning plays of all time! Kushner
shared that honor with Arthur Miller, Edward Albee and O'Neill.
For those into trivia, you
can guess the names of the other plays (Marilyn's ex got two!).
And speaking of trivia, I'm writing this article 'cause I just
saw the HBO version of Kushner's work...and I'm appalled at the
trivial way in which political talk was treated in this overly-praised
piece. (2)
I can look the other way with
Tennessee Williams' creations being ignored vis-a-vis the "top
five," but I cannot keep quiet about Angels' indiscretions
(dis)respecting political talk...because it is so common...and
so dangerous.
The play is "fabulous"
in rising high above the pathology, demographics and therapies
associated with AIDS (underscoring that each and every one of
us is a literally fabulous creature), but escaping the
limitations of the medical and social sciences is not enough...if
an American pathology is perpetuated.
I speak of our collective attitude
toward political talk. We like to patter on, but we insist upon
keeping the peace (pathetically) between us. Let's not spill
any organic lemonade during intermission.
There's plenty of politics
interweaved with the issues surrounding AIDS and other gay-related
problems in the play, but it's the general attitude toward broad
political discourse that's wanting. Quite infuriating for Kushner
to talk in platitudes at the end of his Perestroika segment...and
plant vague seeds that won't offend anyone on the left.
It's the old balancing act (requisite for success on Broadway):
Louis: Whatever comes, what
you have to admire in Gorbachev, in the Russians is that they're
making a leap into the unknown. You can't wait around for a
theory. The sprawl of life, the weird...
Hannah: Interconnectedness...
Louis: Yes.
Belize: Maybe the sheer size
of the terrain.
Louis: It's all too much to
be encompassed by a single theory now.
Belize: The world is faster
than the mind.
Hannah: You can't live in the
world without an idea of the world, but it's living that makes
the ideas. You can't wait for a theory, but you have to have
a theory.
Louis: Go know. As my grandma
would say.
This is not Joe Papp. This
is pure pap. The talk about Zionists and Palestinians at the
very end is more of the same. And, once again, all discussion
is cut off before it has a chance to embrace anything substantial.
There's a superficial softbelly-solidarity that's safe for commercial
consumption here.
It's all like the end of a
PBS discussion where one has listened to three "experts"
on a given subject, and comes away with the feeling that it's
"all one half a dozen of one, six of another."
Angels allows for ranting about the ravages of AIDS, but it can't
get itself to risk losing...its audience. Just imagine one of
the PBS participants leaping across the desk, and grabbing a
guest by the throat screaming "I will not allow you to RATIONALIZE
torture!"
An uplift is provided by lifting
something from the minds of audience members. Their discriminatory
powers. They have been conditioned --through the course of the
play (and within the society in which they are imprisoned, the
stage on/at which they are brainwashed)-- to reduce all political
talk to their particular corner, their narrow concern, and chalk
all else up to..."if we have time...when it's
convenient...within the prescribed limits."
When Belize (my saftig
favorite), the former drag queen, says
"Well, I hate America,
Louis. I hate this country. It's just big ideas, and stories,
and people dying, people like you.
The white cracker who wrote
the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word
'free' to a note so high nobody can reach it. That was deliberate.
Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me."
... he's/she's uttering some
gorgeous dramatic poetry.
But the catch is that Louis
("people like you") hold too much sway in the play/for
the day. His spoken politics is carefully juxstaposed with the
obligatory activities/dialogue directly related to AIDS...so
that it comes off, most of the time, as...not as important.
And it is significant that
Louis is the character who could not care for his fallen lover,
ran from his moral/ethical potential/obligations. Political
talk is associated with THAT.
Louis-like behavior can plague
us all, but it must be called for what it is when it rears its
ugly face.
When Kushner concludes on his
very positive notes concerning how everyone will become "citizens"
and "the Great Work" will begin, he neglects the fact
that increasing numbers of Americans are placing their parents
in horrific old age homes...and the like. That within and without
the Gay Community, trends that contradict the playwright's optimism
are spinning...not even "forward" (as per Prior's final
speech)...but out of control.
Kushner would have us bust
out into a rendition of some Hair-like ditty in lieu of
lambasting the Louises that line the country's spine, up and
down, coast to coast.
When Harper's vision of human
and planetary healing is expressed:
"Souls were rising, from
the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who had perished,
from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up,
like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning.
And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles
and formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom
oxygen molecules, of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed
them, and was repaired."
We have dramatic poetry on
the order of Tennessee Williams, and a message that must warm
the hardest of hearts, inspiring hope.
But Kushner is making a mistake
by invoking a vision of existence beyond the plague here. As
it distracts from earthly obligations/urgency...drawing our minds
into, and blending all by some medieval mode/injunction that
what's here and now cannot be confronted, should not be confronted
with more mundane manipulations, more than a mystical attitudinal
set.
Ultimately, he has created
a realm in which those plagued by AIDS can survive in all important
senses...at the expense of dispensing with the fire needed to
fight The Earthly Powers on larger issues.
Tony's angels do not angst
about anything (else) like they do respecting AIDS. Nothing
on the level of lesions, certainly. That wouldn't please the
God of Entertainment.
It is an attitude --consciously
created or not-- that dominates life in what's left of/in America.
And it keeps people (albeit, working feverishly in their isolated
corners) from moving in solidarity on any macroscopic level.
With any urgency.
At the very end, Prior, the
diseased angel ("almost done"), reassures the audience
that the horizon is ringed with a nimbus of a glorious future,
but it must ring hollow for any activist who has been on the
streets, and ventured beyond The New York Times.
Arnold Weinstein, in an otherwise
brilliant rundown of "Angels in America," says
"Kushner's play reworks
all the motifs...in the plague-text, from Sophocles through Defoe,
Camus and Bergman.... But in Angels in America, what was
discrete in the other texts seem is now revealed in its 'fit,'
its coherence. All of these texts seem to tell us that an epidemic
ushers in some dreadful truths about sexuality, identity, and
political order, but these truths remain murky. In Kushner's
play, it all comes together with brilliance and chutzpah...."
(3)
I agree with the statements
respecting sexuality and identity, but I have deep reservations
concerning the "political order" point.
Whereas Kushner would have
us believe that AIDS and the Gay Movement constitute a revision
of America's experience, I submit that they are a fringe phenomenon
--albeit, extremely significant, deserving and replete with parallels/lessons
that we should pay attention to-- and have evolved to the point
where gays (and lesbians) can feel quite comfortable in confining
their activism to purely gay issues.
That's as suicidal a position
as assuming The Position in The Baths.
Talk about our Common Denominators
of Enlightened Self-Interest remain...without legs. We are all
crippled by the microscopic concerns of our little corners.
And like Estragon and Vladimir in Beckett's Waiting for Godot,
we never get past the verbal resolve to "go."
If Love is letting go of Fear,
than, surely, Radical Change is rooted in letting go of the individual
lesions that plague us individually (exclusively), and focusing
on what's caused The Disease for us all. (4) We must not torture
ourselves any longer remaining in denial.
If it's not derived from the
Wrath of God, then we can be sure solutions are to be found on
terra firma...far from the footlights.
And on that count, Camus' The
Plague, Bergman's The Seventh Seal, Defoe's A Journal of the
Plague Year, Dickens' Bleak House, and the ancient Sophocles'
Oedipus all offer more.
There are virtually no angels
in America beyond the Broadway types that put up the moolah for
that insatiable Moloch, entertainment. (5)
NOTES:
(1) It's not just the recent
developments regarding institutional
sanctions, as the country, obviously, has a longstanding
pattern of "looking the other way" respecting torture
practiced at home and abroad. Definitive documentation on this
point provided upon request.
(2) Of course, it's wonderful
that the main subject got such great exposure, and --certainly--
there were elements that were handled beautifully. The message
that we are "fabulous creatures each and every one"
is gorgeous. But to say, "not a single thing about Angels
in America is anything less than perfect" is going
a bit far. For the trvia teasers, email me.
(3) Arnold Weinstein, A Scream
Goes Through The House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life
(New York: Random House, 2003), p. 274 and p. 287.
(4) It's one thing to cling
to the notion that "all politics is local," but one
always has a choice of what to focus on within that realm...that
might impact more fundamentally than the corner stop sign. If
one has limited heartbeats to spend on activism, which is the
case for most of us. For instance, consider the following (culled
from the December 3rd Democracy Now! Headlines):
"BBC Reveals NYC Tests
HIV Drugs on Kids
A nine-month-long BBC investigation
has revealed that the city of New York has been forcing HIV positive
children under its supervision to be used as human guinea pigs
in tests for experimental HIV drug trials, in some cases against
their will. All of the children in the program are under the
legal guidance of the city's child welfare department, the Administration
for Children's Services. Most were living either in foster care
or independent homes run on behalf of the local authorities,
Almost all the children are believed to be African-American or
Latino. One New York social worker told the BBC she had never
been informed that the drugs she was administering to children
were experimental and highly toxic. Jacklyn Hoerger said, "We
were told that if they were vomiting, if they lost their ability
to walk, if they were having diarrhea, if they were dying, then
all of this was because of their HIV infection." In fact
it was the drugs that were causing many of the problems. The
BBC identified pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline as one of
the companies that provided drugs for the tests."
If one is going to work on
behalf of AIDS-related issues in NYC, one can choose to make
certain that someone is held responsible for the above...for
starters.
(5) Moloch was a Canaanite
deity referred to in several books of the Old Testament, to whom
worshippers sacrificed their children. Anything that has great
power and demands torturous sacrifice can be described as a Moloch.
See Ginsburg's Howl for starters.
Richard Oxman, former Professor of Dramatic Arts,
is living in Los Gatos, California, and can be reached at: dueleft@yahoo.com.
Weekend Edition
Features for November
27 / 28, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Torture & Neo-Liberalism with
Sycorax in Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
What Happened to O'Reilly's Loofa?
Fred
Gardner
Ashcroft v. Raich: Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court
Kathy
Kelly
What We Can Control
Diane
Christian
The Other Cheek: "Empire Doesn't Analyze, It Acts"
Gary
Leupp
One More Neocon Target: South (Yes, South) Korea
Lenni
Brenner
Equality and Rights of Return: Jefferson Instructs the New York
Times
Ron
Jacobs
Death Squads and Iraq's Elections: the Mysterious Murders of
the AMS Clerics
Joshua
Frank
An Interview with Kevin Zeese on Nader, Kerry and the ABB Crowd
Toni
Solo
The Murder of Danilo Anderson
Saul
Landau
Fallujah, the 21st Century Guernica
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Matthew Shepard Case 6 Years Later: Why Hate Crimes Laws are
No Cure for Homophobia
Justin
Taylor
Empire's Lawless Opportunities
Amos
Harel
The Case of Captain R.
Walter
A. Davis
Tabloid Justice
Stephen
Hendricks
God's Kind of Men
Poets'
Basement
Albert, LaMorticella and Ford
|