This is odd, but fascinating. Most people probably won't watch it, but it's worth knowing about. The Goodman Theatre in Chicago is one of the legendary regional theater companies in the United States, even winning a Tony Award for that. Because of the coronavirus, they -- like other theaters -- have closed down for the time being. But the Goodman announced something unexpected yesterday -- they said that would would stream one of the recent, acclaimed productions online. The show is 2666, directed and co-written by their artistic director Robert Falls, who won a Tony Award in 1998 for directing a revival of Death of a Salesman. This production is very long -- divided into five parts, running about six hours. I assume was done over two nights. This is how they describe the play -- This epic stage adaptation of Roberto Bolaño’s internationally acclaimed novel is now available online for free, unlimited streaming. A soaring adaptation of Chilean-born author Roberto Bolaño’s masterpiece, 2666 begins with a group of hapless European academics hot on the trail of an elusive author—a search that leads them into the dark heart of a Mexican border city where the murders of hundreds of women remain unsolved. This story gives way to a surprising, panoramic portrait of the 20th century that spans more than 100 years and jumps from Spain to Mexico to Germany and beyond, illuminating the power of literature to reflect and transform the world. An unflinching look at the nature of evil, 2666 is an ambitious new work unlike any other theatrical experience. As I said, I don't expect most people will watch this play, but it's highly worth checking out at least some of it, if only to get a rare chance of seeing something from the Goodman Theatre, let alone something this acclaimed.
You can find it online here.
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I intended to write about this a couple of weeks ago. As it happened, other news stories took over the headlines, so I put this aside.
It's not especially newsworthy today, though it's still of value and not unimportant for later on as the general election nears. And in some ways it may even be far more important in November than now. It was an article in Raw Story I saw which reports that -- "A Republican-friendly pollster has found that Democrats are crushing the GOP among suburban voters on health care, which just happens to be the main issue cited by voters in the 2018 midterm election that swept Democrats into control of the House of Representatives. "The Washington Examiner reports that a poll conducted by GOP firm Echelon Insights on behalf of political nonprofit organization N2America has found that 'suburban voters prefer Democrats over Republicans by 20 percentage points on healthcare, an issue they rank higher than the economy, and by more than 15 points on prescription drug pricing.'" The article concludes -- “'Forty-eight percent of suburban voters are highly worried’ about losing current federal insurance protections for preexisting medical conditions,” the Examiner reports. “Trump has worked hard to counter Democratic claims that he would repeal this regulation, which was codified under Obamacare, a law the president is still vowing to undo.” The point is that for every election issue on the table, Democrats should pound, pound and pound home health care. And this the case was before the health pandemic spread. It's near-impossible to imagine that health care won't just be more important in the general election, but overwhelmingly more important. And it's not a case of whether it should be "Medicare for All" or "the Public Option" or "expanded Obamacare" or... well, pretty much anything. It's a case that -- Democrats want to expand national healthcare coverage in some way... and Trump and Republicans want to end it. And if Republicans try to deny it, then they have to explain the lawsuit that Republican states have instituted and that the Trump administration supports which would effective crush the Affordable Care Act. That's the point Democrats have to make over and over and over and over and over and over... "We want to expand national healthcare coverage, and Trump and the Republicans want to end it. Period. Full story." And you repeat that over and over and over. This was true several weeks ago. It's even more critical today. It will be consequential in November. If there's an upside to the coronavirus (there isn't), it's that Randy Rainbow is stuck inside and has the time to wrote more song parodies than usual. This one is terrific -- not necessarily his best rhymes, but the words are a hoot and some real laughs from the production values. Plus, it has a bit of a different focus than most, this time sort of somewhat on him. If you can't quite put your finger on the song it's parodying, though it sounds familiar, the original is "Go the Distance" from the Disney film, Hercules, with a score by Alan Menken and David Zippel.
And an addendum to clarify. By "these things," I don't just mean the coronavirus. I mean ALL of "these things" that Trump and his team keep relentlessly saying "Nobody knew" about. Starting with "Nobody knew fixing healthcare was hard." EVERYTHING KNEW. Except the willfully ignorant. Or liars.
Bandy Lee is a psychiatrist at Yale University and a violence expert. In her brief Twitter-bio, she describes herself as "Violence expert and forensic psychiatrist of 20 years, uninvolved in politics until politics invaded her area of expertise."
Six years go, two years before there was a thought of Trump in the White House, she had done a research study of violence. She decided to bring it to more public attention on Sunday because she saw a comment from one of her social media followers about how a Democratic president would have responded to the coronavirus crisis differently than the Republican in office. Unlike other people who may have had the same random thought, Dr. Lee had had the expertise to check it out. In her response yesterday, she gave a cursory overview of the results in a series of tweets. I selected a few, and will let her speak for herself, since she does it so much better. And to repeat, this was not done as a way to condemn Trump, since it was completed two years before he took office. What it does, though, is confirm the legendary adage by historian George Santayana, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." You can find the full study here.
For those here who don't want to read the full research study -- which I'm going to guess is pretty much everyone -- this is the opening Abstract introduction to the paper, with its summary of Objectives, Methods, Results and Conclusion. I don't expect many (as in perhaps any) to read through all of even the Abstract, but I include it here so that you can at least see the foundation of what Dr. Lee was seriously dealing with. ABSTRACT As has been widely reported, the Trump administration shut down the Pandemic Response unit in 2018. And not longer after, they didn't renew the cuts of $8.5 billion to the CDC's budget for infectious diseases. You may have thought that that was about as bad as it could get and couldn't get any worse. Though, in fairness, at this point with the Trump administration, you probably are well-past that kind of limited thinking.
Yes, it can get worse. And did. Of course. This is TrumpLand. It turns out that the CDC had an epidemiologist on the job in Beijing, Dr. Linda Quick, who work it was, specifically, to detect disease outbreaks in Asia. The Trump administration fired her in July, 2019, just months before the coronavirus broke out. You can read the full story here from Reuters. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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