The politically correct chickens are coming home to roost in the Orwellian world of the organized left’s free-expression-stifling speech codes.
To paraphrase Martin Niemöller’s famous admonition about complacency with totalitarian fascists: “First they came for Rush Limbaugh and called his satire racist, and I didn’t speak out because Rush Limbaugh is a conservative. Then they came for Dr. Laura and called her commentary racist, and I didn’t speak out because Dr. Laura is a conservative…”
Well, this time they came after a high school drama program in far-from conservative Westbury, CT. The Arts Magnet School in that city planned a production of August Wilson’s 20th century classic “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” until the district’s Superintendent, David Snead, tried to pull the plug because the play’s characters use the word “nigger”.
First, a little bit about the play and the playwright. August Wilson was arguably the finest American Playwright of the past thirty years. His monumental “Pittsburgh Cycle” of plays (of which “Joe Turner” is a part) represents a canon of literary and historic significance that will be studied and performed for centuries. The group of plays include the Pulitzer Prize winning “Fences” (1987) and “The Piano Lesson” (1990) – yes, two Pulitzers three years apart . All but one of the ten plays are set in the same neighborhood in Pittsburgh and focus on the African-American experience throughout the 20th century. Each of the plays take place in a different decade, “Joe Turner” representing the 1910’s and primarily focusing on the experience of Southern Blacks’ migration to urban Northern cities looking for economic opportunities and promises of a more tolerant environment.
It’s obvious at this point, to any reader with a basic high school education, that it would be impossible to truthfully tell the stories that Wilson does in these plays without the word “nigger” escaping the lips of his brilliantly drawn characters. Of course, if the reader happens to have more than a high school education, or worse, an advanced degree in education and school administration as I’m sure Mr. Snead possesses, you’re probably tossed into a vicious conundrum, torn between the virtues of artistic freedom and politically correct “sensitivity” to “hate speech” language codes.
So, Mr. Snead did what educated, tolerant, quasi-fascists always do: He tried to use his power to silence what he personally found objectionable. Even better, he used race-hustling activists as his shield against criticism. “The use of the N-word is something all civil rights leaders around the country want us to stop using,” Snead said. “I don’t think we should be doing anything to encourage our students to use it.”
Thankfully, the school board that hired Mr. Snead (and now should fire him) saw fit to take up the issue in a public hearing this week and over-ruled the over-zealous Mussolini-wannabe. The show will go on. And, to the great credit of the vastly left-wing theatre community, much support and advocacy was provided by producers, directors and writers who saw this move for what it was, a repudiation of the basic tenants of free artistic expression, and a not-so-veiled suggestion that future plays should be careful not to use language that “civil rights leaders” might find objectionable.
But, this story should not end here. This can be a “teachable moment” for Americans who still find it challenging to remember the latest politically correct way to refer to their neighbor who happens to be a 2nd generation son of a Chinese mother and Guatemalan father (hint: you call him an American).
Left-wing activist groups like Media Matters and Al Sharpton’s National Action Network seek to silence voices like Dr. Laura and Rush Limbaugh under the guise of politically correct language codes that they invent and enforce to fit their needs. It’s the classic “Al Capone” approach to political activism. They can’t defeat Rush on intellectual grounds. They tried and failed miserably to defeat him with competing left-wing radio programming. So now, they lie about Rush’s supposed racism in an attempt to have the FCC remove him from the air.
Soros-funded Media Matters openly brags about forcing Dr. Laura off the air (although she’s now thriving on Sirius/XM radio) because she dared to use the same word found in Mr. Wilson’s play. And one can argue that the political and artistic goal of Mr. Wilson’s use of “nigger” is in perfect harmony with Dr. Laura’s use.
So, what’s a lefty to do? The same left-wing groups who fought to allow high school productions of “Rent” to go forward despite reasonable protestations from parents over its glorification of drug-use and sexual behaviors not suitable for many fourteen-year-olds are now forced to choose between those same free-speech standards and the argument they continue to use to justify silencing conservative commentators on radio, television and the internet.
It’s very instructive for all Americans to witness these events and to bear in mind one inescapable truth: Whether it’s re-writing Mark Twain or passing laws against the use of cross-hairs on a map or banning a classic play by one of our country’s greatest writers, the knee-jerk instinct to silence speech is consistently and insidiously coming from the political left.
I pray that soon, artists in our community will start re-examining why they continue to align themselves with these speech-squelching totalitarians instead of the freedom-loving center-right Tea Party that they often find so abhorrent. They better wake-up soon. Remember, Niemöller’s famous statement ends with: “Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
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Enjoy this excerpt from August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” as your Sunday Matinee from Big Hollywood: