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Richard S. Beam

58   Some Thoughts on Shakespeare's Birth/Death Day 2016

4/23/2016

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Today is the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, the man many believe to be the greatest poet/playwright of the English language.  Okay, some would say of all time and in any language, but I think that MIGHT be a bit over the top.  Although, I have to admit that, I AM rather fond of a good deal of Will’s writing.  It also happens that tomorrow is also the 452nd anniversary of the day which has been assigned to his birth.  (He WAS baptized on April 26, 1564, [which we can establish from church records] so the date is reasonable, but not proven.  After all, record-keeping then wasn’t quite the obsession which it is today).  I suppose that the question which might occur to a reader is; Who cares?
 
Well, obviously, I do, or I wouldn’t bother to write about this occasion.  I remember that in the spring of 1964 (the 400th anniversary of Will’s birth), while I was an undergraduate at Indiana U., the Theatre program focused the entire spring season (3 productions) on Shakespeare’s works.  I remember working on sound for the production of The Tempest that spring and I think I also ran sound for The Comedy of Errors.  I confess that I don’t remember what the other production was that spring, but I know it was a Shakespeare play, although I wasn’t in the cast or crew.
 
I think it’s a bit sad that there doesn’t seem to be much evidence (at least which I have found) of theatre programs, or even theatres, making much notice of today’s event, which, I believe, is somewhat sad.  I think the day is of some importance  So, the obvious question is; Why do I think so?
 
One, I don’t believe, anyone can deny that the plays and poems of William Shakespeare have had an major impact on Western civilization since the time that they were written.  They are widely known, referred to, produced (both on stage and in film), studied and argued over today and have been since the time of their creation.  Among the huge number of books about him and his works is Stephen Marche’s book How Shakespeare Changed Everything, which suggests that his influence has been greater than that of any political or religious leader of all time.  I won’t go that far, but I think one could make that case.  No, I’m not going to make this all “scholarly” and fill this entry with quotes from “learned” sources.  If you wish to argue about the ultimate impact of Shakespeare and his works, I’d suggest that you read some of the many, many books on the subject and draw you own conclusions.
 
One question, which I can’t ignore (although perhaps I should), however, is the question of; “Who was Shakespeare?”, a question which seems to worry a fair number of people.  Since roughly the middle of the Nineteenth century (Note: nobody much even thought about this until then), there have been something like 80 different candidates (including several groups of folks) proposed as the “true” author of Shakespeare’s works.  A fair number of people, including Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Henry James, Sigmund Freud, Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles have all expressed real reservations about the idea that “that man from Stratford” actually wrote these works.  Even a fair number of well-known actors and other theatre folk (including some alive today and known for performing in these works) have at least suggested that “he” couldn’t have written them.
 
Personally, I think that the arguments (and I have read a fair bit about this question) just don’t add up, although some are quite ingenious.  I won’t repeat them here, if you’re interested, they are widely available for you to read on your own.
 
It’s worth noting that very few of these “anti-Stratfordians,” as they are known, are really scholars, although a few, legitimate institutions have gone so far as to create programs and degrees regarding the “Shakespeare question,” which seems to imply that it’s legitimate.  
 
While I disagree in the legitimacy of the question, I can’t prove anything, any more than they can prove theirs.  Still, I’m not going to wade into the many arguments.  Others (many of who are established, reputable scholars) have written at great length about what they see as the flaws in these arguments.  Again, there’s plenty to keep one occupied for a long time.
 
No, I’m not going to rehash all of this stuff.  There is, however, one point, which seems relevant, which I haven’t encountered.  Others may have advanced it, but I haven’t seen it in anything I’ve read.  It’s not based on facts (a weakness, I admit), but I find the logic inescapable.  That is what I call the “conspiracy theory” argument. 
 
Not the theory that the “anti-Stratfordians” have that advocating the “man from Stratford” as the author is really a conspiracy of English professors and Stratford business interests to deny credit to the “real” author (fill in the one you choose).  No, I’m speaking of what would have to be the most successful conspiracy theory in the history of the world; the one which set up William Shakespeare of Stratford-Upon-Avon as the author of the plays and poems which have come down to us as “Shakespeare’s Works.”  Let me explain….
 
If, as the anti-Stratfordians would have us believe, someone else (be it Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, or one of the other candidates) really wrote these works.  (I should mention in passing that Oxford is probably the leading candidate today, advocated by many people and supported in the movie Anonymous and other places, but he is NOT the only choice [see above]).  Anyway, IF, as Anonymous, and other sources suggest, Will Shakespeare was merely a mediocre actor (and something of a fool) who was used by Oxford as a “front” because a member of the nobility couldn’t let it be known that he was writing plays for the common stage, then I don’t understand how it would have worked.
 
After all, If Will was the boob he is made out to be, wouldn’t somebody have noticed?  We know that there were a fair number of people who knew him.  Among others, his fellow actors and (eventually) shareholders in the Lord Chamberlain’s (later the King’s) Men.  Some of these same people also were fellow investors in the Globe and the Blackfriars Theatres.  They HAD to have regular contact with Shakespeare, as they worked with him on a daily basis.  There are references to Will as an author by other authors of the time, as well as by the general public.  As a member of an acting company which we KNOW toured, he had to have had contact with many people of a wide variety of social ranks, including people with really good educations.  There were folks in Stratford who MUST have known him and who made statements regarding his wit, etc.  He was even, eventually, made a “King’s Man,” as a member of the company sponsored by King James which made him a “Groom of the Chamber” and required to do a number of things for the king, himself.  Since some of his poetry was published during his lifetime, it seems likely that there was also some contact between Will and various people in the printing business.  We know he engaged in a number of lawsuits, so Will had to have had some contact with lawyers, as well.  We know he lived in various rented rooms in London during at least part of his time there, so he must have had contact with those people, too.  If the theory is correct, he fooled them all.  I think that would have to make him either the actual author or the greatest actor of all time.
 
Just think about it.  If this theory is true, for about 25 years he fooled everyone he had contact with into thinking he was a highly successful author.  He died in 1616, yet it wasn’t until close to 1850 that anyone suggested that Will Shakespeare wasn’t the author of the poems and plays which appeared over his name.  That’s 230 some years of success with the conspiracy to make people believe that this “front” was the actual author.  In fact, the conspiracy still works because there are many well-educated scholars (I’m not including myself as a significant scholar) who are still convinced that he actually wrote these works.
 
Given the number of people who he had to have contact with, to say nothing of those who had to know him well as a colleague, etc.; does it seem probable that NO ONE would have questioned his authorship until well over 200 years after he died?  That doesn’t seem likely to me.  That’s not any sort of proof, of course, although I think it’s at least as sound as some of the arguments I have read which claim to “prove” that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare.
 
Whoever created these works, their influence has been profound.  If someone wants to believe that someone other than Shakespeare wrote these works, that’s his/her right.  It doesn’t change the actual works a bit.  I may think you are incorrect, but I will admit that I can’t prove it.  But, I don’t think anyone can prove differently.  I doubt that ANY actual solution will ever be proven.  I’m not sure that it really matters, except that I was raised and trained to seek the truth, at least as far as it can be known. 
 
I don’t expect to convince anyone.  That’s not important to me.  I’ve just taken this opportunity to try to explain some of my thinking about what I think is an interesting question.  I still firmly believe that the world is a better place because these works exist and I suspect that I always will.
 
‘Nuf said.
 
LLAP
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57      Shakespeare’s Birth/Death Day Anniversary and some thoughts on The Taming of the Shrew

4/18/2016

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It will shortly be the 400th Anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare.  As it will also be the 452nd anniversary of what we believe to be Shakespeare’s birth (actual day uncertain, but it’s also St George’s Day and it is reasonable), it’s got me thinking about Shakespeare, not that that’s too unusual.
 
We went up to Midlands University a couple of weeks ago to see a collection of scenes from various of his plays (including a couple of songs from Something Rotten).  It was fun.  I was fairly impressed by a few of the scenes and enjoyed even the ones I thought could have been improved. 
 
One of the scenes I enjoyed the most was from The Taming of the Shrew, a play I am very fond of.  It made me think about a paper I wrote for a class for Gerry Kahan while doing my doctoral work at UGA.  In it, I tried to argue that the play wasn’t as misogynistic as many people have tried to say it was in recent days, that it was more a meeting of two people who were meant to be together, but have trouble realizing that.  Dr. Kahan felt that I was wrong, although he assigned me a decent grade because I made a fair argument.  Then, about the same time as I saw the scene at Midlands, I read Garry Wills’ Making Make-Believe Real: Politics as Theatre in Shakespeare’s Time, which I found most interesting; in part because of his take on Shrew.  (See, in spite of the fact that I have reservations about turning Shakespeare over to literary scholars [see entry #52], as the grandson of an English professor, I do respect scholarly work and think it can help us to better understand the plays.  I just don’t think that’s the be all and end all of the works, especially the plays.  Perhaps someday I’ll comment about some of the commentary I’ve read about the Sonnets.
 
Anyway, on pp. 44-49, Wills gets into a discussion of Shrew, which he gets into through some discussion of Sonnet #130.  I like this a lot as I have always had doubts that writing a play suggesting that the proper treatment of a woman was to beat her into submission would have been unwise (to say the least) during the reign of Elizabeth I.  Anyway, rather than try to summarize Wills’ points, I just scanned them and include them here.  The following are pages 44 – 49 from Wills’ book, including his brief discussion of Sonnet 130.
 (This is all a direct quote, format changes are difficult on Weebly)

While Shakespeare observed the codes of courtly love in most of his sonnets, he could, when he wanted, pungently mock it:

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;                                                                                      
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;                                                                                                    
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;                                                                                 
 If hair be wires, black wires grow on her head;
                                                                          
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,                                                                                        
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
                                                                                                 
And in some perfumes is there more delight
                                                                                      
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
                                                                                   
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know                                                                                    
       
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;                                                                                             
I grant I never saw a goddess go;                                                                                                 
           
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.                                                                           
And yet, by heaven I think my love as rare                                                                                  
As any she belied with false compare.

The closing couplet of a Shakespearean sonnet has never delivered a more striking jolt.  The insult poem is finally revealed as a love poem, The “love as rare” makes us look back on all the “false compare” and see it was already preparing to reveal the truth behind such lines as “ I love 
to hear her speak.”  The airy nonsense of hyperbole yields to the earthy reality of those climactic monosyllables: “when she walks treads upon the ground.”  Some have a dream in the sky.  He has a reality on earth.  So the sonnet ends up being an antilove love poem.  Henry V says the same thing in smaller compass when he tells Lady Katherine, “If thou canst love me for this, take me; if not, to say to thee that I shall die is true; but for thy love, by the Lord, no; yet I love thee too” (H5 5.2.149—52).

The Taming of the Shrew
This profession of true love underneath the mockery gives us a clue to a play that most disturbs people in our feminist era.  Discussion of The Taming of the Shrew now circles angrily or warily around the issue of misogyny, alternating indignant condemnation with uneasy exoneration.  I think the best approach to that touchy problem is by way of Sonnet 130.  Petruchio’s tool for taming is not what many truly misogynist works of the time drew from folklore – imprisoning, torturing, whipping, crippling, putting in the stocks, imposing a horse’s bridle or saddle.  Petruchio’s weapon of choice is -- courtly love!  Where she rails, he extravagantly praises, using all the genuflecting tropes of courtliness.  She slaps him, he embraces her.  He compares her to Dian (2.1.258-59).  Her curses are for him sweet singing, her frowns are morning roses sweet with dew (2.1.171-73).

            Grumio is wrong to say that his master will be as curst as she, trading rant for rant (1.104-10).  All those who have Petruchio carry a whip or use it on her are just as egregious.3  There is nothing more boring than the brute-on-brute wrestling match of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor -- as if they were still playing Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? -- in Zeffirelli's production.  Ann Thompson rightly prefers John Cleese’s insouciant approach, all the while blowing Kate verbal kisses in Peter Hall's version.4
            The anger Cleese puts on is all directed at others, whom he takes to be insulting his goddess, offering her inferior food or clothes.  By doing so, of course, he satirizes her own beating of her sister and her servants -- a sign of her changing character comes when she pleads that he stop beating the servant (4.1.156).  Petruchio with his buckler is Quixote rushing to the defense of his Dulcinea.  This is how he spirits her off after the wedding:

                                    Grumio,                                                                                                   
Draw forth thy weapon--We
are beset with thieves!                                                           
Rescue thy mistress, if thou be a man!                                                                                  
Fear not, sweet wench, they shall not touch thee, Kate;                                                               
I'll buckler thee against a million! (3.2.234—38)

(Cervantes, too, was mocking the lunatic hyperbole of courtly love.)
            The greatest trial of Katherine is her disorientation when everything Petruchio does, he "does it under name of perfect love" (4.3.12).  Barbara Hodgdon points out that Petruchio is not the lion tamer of modern whip wielders but what he calls himself, in a long simile (4.1.190-92), a falcon--gentler.  Hodgdon quotes early books of falconry, including one by Simon Latham:
As Latham explains it, taming a hawk is not a one-way street,
for it required that the falconer suffer the same hardships as the bird-going without sleep, watching for at least three nights, or until the bird stops her "bating"-beating her wings in order to free herself from the jesses restraining her legs . . . Not only does the falconer speak a language of love, but Latham advises him to stroke the bird gently with a feather and to "lure her using your voice, with a bit or two of meat bestowed on her . . . for that will make her eager, and to love your voice."5
Ann Thompson notes that Petruchio shares Kate's deprivations of sleep and food.  He denies Kate meat because it is not good enough for her but denies himself because it makes him choleric: "And I expressly am forbid to touch it, / For it engenders choler, planteth anger" (4.1.171-72).

            (Cleese does the sleeplessness well but slips when he later chews on a morsel of meat.)  Petruchio is undergoing trial along with Kate.  Appropriately, Kate in her final speech of allegiance will praise the man for going off on labors, like knights sent out by their ladies:

                        one that cares for thee,
                                                                         
And for thy maintenance commits his body                                                               
To painful labor both by sea and land,
                                                                          
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold
                                                       
Whilst thou li'st warm at home, secure and safe. (5.2.148-51)

But of course she, not the knight, is the vassal at the end swearing allegiance to her lord.  In other words, she now uses the language of courtly love.

            It puzzled Kate that Petruchio acted "in the name of perfect love.”  Can he mean it?  This is the first time Kate has ever heard the language of love.  Dare she believe it?  (Sarah Badel plays the early scenes, before Cleese shows up, as a hysterical expression of a woman starved for love.)  Shakespeare was good at showing men and women who engage in competitive insults while they are steadily, under it all, falling in love with each other – Beatrice and Benedick, Rosaline and Berowne, Kate—Petruchio is the capping example of this love-in-enmity.  Cleese and Badel begin the process in their earliest fencings.  Cleese, like many others, does a meditative" double take" on the second line of "Thy virtues spoke of and thy beauty sounded- / Yet not so deeply as to thee belongs" (2.I.192-93).  And Kate pauses, puzzled, at hearing some of his praise (she has never heard this before).  The normally voluble woman is left speechless when her father, at the end of this first en-counter, joins her hand to Petruchio's in the betrothal ceremony, with Gremio and Tranio as witnesses.  She says nothing at all as her hand is taken (2.1.307-9).
            The speech that bothers moderns is Kate's preachment to her fellow women on devotion to their lords.  This is certainly far from modern language.  But Thompson and Hodgdon argue that it was far from the normal profession of women's subjection in Shakespeare's day, too.  That was normally theological, based on the prescribed homilies for the marriage service, stressing Bible themes of women's essential inferiority, the very stuff of John Knox's trumpet blastings.  One of the two homilies collected by Elizabeth's great theologian, John Jewel, counseled women not to protest if their husbands beat them but to take it as God's chastisement (as "patient Grizel" did in Chaucer and Boccaccio).  The preacher tells the bride: "If thou canst suffer an extreme husband, thou shalt have a great reward therefore.  But if thou lovest him only because he is gentle and courteous, what reward will God give thee therefore?  . . .  I exhort the women that they would patiently bear the sharpness of their husbands."6
            The homilies also advised subjects to submit to rulers even when they made unjust demands.  Kate, by contrast, talks of mutual duties in the language of what Thompson calls "a civil contract."7  Hodgdon notes that the report of the off-stage wedding of the two does not mention the marriage homily, which means that in effect Kate is delivering the real homily in her infamous speech -- and effectually defying church law, which prohibited women from preaching.8
            What neither Thompson nor Hodgdon emphasizes is the fact that the speech is an expression of courtly love.  Kate swears allegiance to liege lord and “sovereign” (5.2.138-47), as a knight would to his midon, his master-mistress, his prince.  And a knight's obeisance is not degrading but ennobling.  Kate is using the same courtly language Petruchio had used of her, when he used it feigningly.  She, by using it sincerely, retroactively makes his protestations come true.  She makes his make-believe real.  He really was praising her beauty, if not her temper; but now she makes her temper praiseworthy, matching it to his first praise: “Say that she rail, why then I’ll tell her plain / She sings as sweetly as a nightingale” (2.1.170-71).
            The way the two work together against the other pairs of lovers shows that they have become a team.  Lucentio had used the flowers of courtly rhetoric to woo Bianca, but they had not fused them together as closely as Petruchio and Kate have bonded.  The first couple has the “false compare” of Sonnet 130, and the later the “love as rare.”  These two, when they walk, tread on the ground.  Fully as much as (or even more than) Beatrice and Benedick or Rosaline and Berowne, these two are clearly made for each other.  To quote Thompson once more: "By most standards, including feminist ones, Petruchio is a more interesting and challenging, possibility as a husband than the Orlandos and Orsinos of this world, just as Kate is a more interesting wife than Bianca."9 

            To confirm Thompson's words, a maverick feminist has written:
(this is a quote from another source)
Kate is a woman striving for her own existence in a world
where she is a stale, a decoy to be bid for against her sister's
 higher market value, so she opts out by becoming unmanageable, a scold.  Bianca has found the women's way of guile and feigned gentleness to pay better dividends; she woos for herself under false colors, manipulating her father and her suitors in a perilous game which could end in her ruin.  Kate courts ruin in a different way, but she has the uncommon good fortune to find Petruchio, who is man enough to know what he wants and how to get it.  He wants her spirit and her energy because he wants a wife worth keeping.  He tames her as he might a hawk or a high mettled horse, and she rewards him with strong sexual love and fierce loyalty.  Lucentio finds himself saddled with a cold, disloyal woman, who has no objection to humiliating him in public.  The submission of a woman like Kate is genuine and exciting because she has something to lay down, her virgin pride and individuality: Bianca is the soul of duplicity, married without earnestness
or good will.  Kate's speech is the greatest defense of Christian monogamy ever written.  It rests upon the role of a husband as protector and friend, and it is valid because Kate has a man who is capable of being both, for Petruchio is both gentle and strong (it is a vile distortion of the play to have him strike her ever).  The message is probably twofold: only Kates make good wives, and then only to Petruchios; for the rest, their cake is dough.10

           The history of this play’s performance after Shakespeare’s time is mainly a chart of its coarsening.  Physical mayhem replaced verbal fencing.  It was forgotten that the contrast between Petruchio and Kate is – like that of Rosaline with Berowne and Beatrice with Benedick a verbal contest.  Kate can beat her sister or a servant, but she must find words to deal with Petruchio.  The emphasis on mayhem was accelerated when Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, in their I929 movie, used the knockabout antics of silent film.  Pickford at one point knocks Fairbanks unconscious, so he must show up at the final banquet with his head in a bandage, and Pickford mocks him by delivering her last aria with a demonstrative wink to the ladies in the audience -- a device that became as standard in later performances as were the whips she and Fairbanks wielded.
            For many years the physical struggle was one in which Petruchio humiliated Kate, whipping her, throwing her over his shoulder and toting her around like a sack.  In the modern feminist era, Kate humiliates Petruchio, spitting on him, kicking him in the testicles, throwing him with judo moves.11  Productions that omit such mayhem are now criticized for “expunging all the fun," or "foisting gravity" on the play.12 Productions using a modern setting give us a gun-toting Katherine -- Tracey Ullman's 1990 Kate shot the gun in target practice.  (Ullman also put her hand under Petruchio's foot only to tip him over.)13 The play is now staged as a form of martial combat.  There is even an escalation of weapons: Mary Pickford knocked out her Petruchio with a wooden stool, Elizabeth Taylor did it with a warming pan.
            All this is justified, according to Elizabeth Schafer, since the play has a “sado-masochistic subtext” (that wonderfully all-permitting “subtext”).14  She even likes the 1995 production with Kate as "a dominatrix, agreeing to be dominated for the sexual fun of it." So precipitous can be the descent from courtly verbal fencing to various kinds of mudwrestling.  This physical violence comes from people who will not let language take the lead, and especially the language of courtly love -- a convention explored, exploited, inverted, and finally vindicated in a play as sly as Sonnet 130, a play in which make-believe love finally turns to made-believed-in love.

(End of quoted material)
I think that rather closely follows my thinking about the play and suggests that a good deal of the “scholarship” about the play is probably based on just the reading of the words, but without close enough attention “to reading the play.”  I have use that sort of phrase before, in my teaching, because I have always felt that a play is a good deal more that just the words on the page and that it’s not enough to just read the pages, but one has to trust the words as a guide for what the playwright meant for the play.  I think that far too many productions (of many playwrights, not just Shakespeare) don’t sufficiently trust the words to mean what they say.  I have never felt the were intended to just provide raw material for “auteur” directors to create the work which THEY want, rather than the play the playwright wrote.  If one doesn’t wish to do the playwright’s work, they should write their own.
 
Anyway, that’s what I think.  I look forward to reaction…
 
LLAP
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56 Racism, Bigotry: Signs of the Times?

4/4/2016

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I saw an Associated Press story in our local paper not long ago which touched on the difficulty the city of New Orleans is having finding (and keeping) a contractor to dismantle a number of statues of, and memorials to, some heroes of the Confederacy.  As I understand it, the City Council (which is reported to be mostly [or all?] African-American) wants these things removed, but the contractor hired to do the job has quit due to threats, vandalism, etc., from some people who object to that idea, including some who have engaged in these acts while wearing symbols identifying them with the white supremacist movement.
 
The same day (Holy Saturday, 2016), there was a story about an email threat sent to the Omaha Islamic Center which read: “your so called peaceful religion just killed more innocent people. we think its is now time to fight back starting with you. believe it. see you in hell.”  (The quote is correct as reported, spelling errors included.)
 
I refuse to even discuss the racist, biased and bigoted remarks which have been made by some of our current crop of political candidates.  I do have to admit that the North Carolina General Assembly coming together in an “emergency session” to pass a law (which the Governor was quick to sign) overruling a local law in Charlotte banning discrimination against LGBT people, preventing ANY local government from attempting to pass similar anti-discrimination laws, mandating that gender on birth certificates are the only acceptable standard for determining who can use which school bathrooms, and (just as a by the way) disallowing a city to establish a higher minimum wage than the state’s, seems like something of a new level of social engineering for governing bodies dominated by people who have done nothing but complain for many years about the need for getting “government” out of the lives of private citizens.
 
I think the crux of the problem is that I just don’t care for stupidity.  The Civil War was, in fact, about the right of the individual states to determine their own course, as opposed to having a dominant national government.  Yes, the institution of slavery formed a significant part of the issue, but it was, certainly, NOT the only one. 
 
Let me explain the history, as I understand it.  After a brief period with the government established by the “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union,” which didn’t work very well as the national government had, essentially, no ability to actually do anything, we established the Constitution, which created a national government which COULD actually function.  As the country developed, the issues of Sectionalism, Protectionism, States’ Rights, and Slavery became more and more prominent in the national consciousness and the reaction of some states (who felt they were being mistreated) was to decide that they had the right to secede from the “Perpetual Union” which had been established as early as the Articles.  When the other states objected, we found ourselves in a civil war.  (A most ironic term as there has never been anything “civil” about any war.)  This is the version of US history I learned in Junior High and I’ve not found convincing evidence to change my opinion that this is correct.
 
This suggests, at least to me (an admittedly Northern bred, white male) that it’s a bit overly simplistic to simply write off the Confederacy as a pro-slavery movement and that anyone who suggests that there were, in fact, honest differences of opinion as to the purpose and function of government and the rights of the states is, almost certainly, not correct.  While it seems unpopular nowadays, the whole notion of politics is, in fact, to get as much as you can of what you want, by letting the other guy get something, too.  In other words, what politics is all about is all sides getting enough out of the deal to be only reasonably unhappy.  No side “wins,” but no side really “loses,” either.
 
The recent movement, which I’d like to think I understand, to remove all traces of the heritage of the Confederacy as “racist propaganda,” seems a bit unfair and counter productive.  The fact is, that these ARE reminders of our history.  Not all history is pleasant.  I think that, since the Ku Klux Klan and some other white supremacist organizations, have been allowed to appropriate the Confederate flag, which was actually the flag of the Confederate Army of Tennessee (which was similar to the square flag of the Army of Northern Virginia), as symbols of their anti-Black, pro-white (hence racist) causes, it’s probably wise to accept that flying this flag is likely to lead to an impression of support for these causes.  That suggests that removing it is probably a good idea, unless you wish to demonstrate support for the ideas it has (unfortunately) come to represent.
 
I’m not so sure that removing statuary and other memorials to individuals or groups of soldiers who fought for the Confederacy makes the same sort of sense.  A tribute to the “local boys” who died in the war is probably as appropriate in the states of the former Confederacy as it is in the states of the Union.  If we aren’t going to object to Grant’s Tomb, we probably shouldn’t object to memorials to Lee.
 
I don’t like racism.  Whether it is practiced by “White Power” extremists or any other group, I find it offensive and distasteful.  I have often heard that there is (or at least was), a good deal of racial bias within the “Black” community based on favoring some skin tones as “better” than others, etc.  Not being a part of that community, I can’t really say, but there does seem to be some belief that some folks aren’t “black enough” to count, so they are at least somewhat discriminated against within the “Black” community.  We, as a society, have established fairly strict legal criteria based on “blood percentage” as to who qualifies as a member of a “Native American” tribe.  (As a digression, I find it sad that we have come to use that expression to refer only to those whose ancestors came here in pre-Columbian times.  The term “native” usually just means “born there.”)  We haven’t even attempted to define what it really means to be “Black.”  Early attempts to suggest that just one drop of “Black” blood was enough to define someone as “colored,” seem unwise since there is considerable evidence to suggest that there were, in fact, a very large number of slave women who had children by whites, so there is, in fact, some “Black” heritage in a very large number of “White” folks, especially among those whose families date back to the Southern and Mid-Atlantic areas from before the Civil War. 
 
All things considered, racism seems counter productive.  Humans have much more in common than the differences introduced by race.  Yes, there is the, apparently normal, tendency for animals to wish to associate with those they perceive as “like” themselves, but the differences are, in the long run, pretty superficial.  Unless you want to be known as a bigot, I’d suggest not playing the “race card” as if it really mattered very much.
 
Of course, racism isn’t the only form of bigotry which has become pretty common in recent years.  Islam has become a fairly common target, probably due to the fact that some terrorist groups claim that they commit their horrific acts in the name of their religion and try (sometimes successfully) to use an extreme form of their religion to recruit members.  Of course, one doesn’t have to look very far into history to find that religion (at least extremist religion) has been an excuse for terrorism for a long time.  Just in recent time, we can find examples of Catholic/Protestant extremist violence in Ireland and England.  Catholic/Buddhist violence was a part of the war in Vietnam and many of the major European wars since the Reformation had some important religious component.  That’s to say nothing of the Crusades, which were justified by the “need” to protect the Christian Holy Land from Islam and Judaism, or the Holocaust against Jews and the Bosnian conflict involving Muslim Bosniaks vs Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats.  Even within religious groups we can find conflicts between Sunni and Shiite Muslims and other conflicts, even within Christianity and probably other groups as well.   
 
I see that, once again, ABC-TV showed The Ten Commandments on Holy Saturday this year (why do they always show this movie about the “rescuing” of the Jewish people on the eve of Easter?), which reminds me of the fact that the Israelites conquered the Canaanites because “God gave this land to the Israelites,” even though there were others living there at the time.
 
I’m pretty sure that most wars have at least some religious component or excuse, so the idea of using the notion that “my” religion is better, right, correct, proper, etc., and anyone who differs with me is wrong, incorrect, improper, or otherwise not worthy of being respected has a long history in human relations as a cause of bias and bigotry.  After all, if they got that wrong, there’s really no hope for their being fully human.
 
The same sort of logic (?) has become applied to the LGBT, especially in recent years.  This seems to me as the “purple monkey” sort of argument.  I seem to remember in a basic Psychology class (I think it was) hearing about an experiment where a fully functioning member of a group of monkeys was removed, had his fur dyed purple (I think it was purple) and was reintroduced to the group, which promptly killed him.  Why?  Probably because that monkey was now “different” from the rest of us, so he must be a danger.  The same logic could well be the root of racism and other forms of conflict.
 
As a member of an educational theatrical community, I have worked with and taught many LGB people.  I’m less sure about T people, because it really never came up, at least to me.  In fact, the whole topic rarely came up unless the individual brought it up him/her self.  As long as the person could get the work done, their sex life just didn’t seem relevant, at least to me.  I confess, that I never wanted to pry, although I did try to be available and non-judgmental if a student wanted to talk to someone.  I may have come off as not caring, although that wasn’t the case, I just didn’t think it was my job to interfere with their private life any more than it was right for them to interfere with mine.  Still, I did become aware that some of my students were LGB.  In the world of the theatre, that’s not particularly surprising, but it that world it’s not very important either.  As long as you can do your job while at work, it’s really not very important.
 
That’s not the same as in the “civilian” world.  There, for reasons that I can only equate to the “purple monkey” syndrome, sexual preference, orientation, etc. is a big deal and anyone who is seen as “different” is likely to suffer at least some embarrassment, harassment or worse.  Why?  Probably because most of the time they are outnumbered and folks can use religious intolerance of the “other” as an excuse to justify bigotry against the LGBT community.  Yes, most religions don’t support homosexuality very well, but I suspect that’s because the purpose of sex “should” be to procreate more little “what ever you ares” so that OUR religion will become stronger and more able to fight off the attacks of “those others.”
 
All things considered, I think it’s too bad that all too many people are (apparently) so insecure as to feel that they can only be made “better” by trying to make others “less.”  That seems to be what racism and other forms of bigotry are really all about; they are the same behavior as the schoolyard bully just raised to a level of (somewhat) greater sophistication and rationalized through the lens of “I’m right, so you have to be wrong!” 
 
It’s stupid, that’s what it is!  It comes from a lack of knowledge and an insistence that I HAVE to be the one who is “right” and there can only be one of us!  I fail to see how that can ever lead to progress of any sort.  If we are going to ever achieve any sort of better world, it’s going to have to begin with an acceptance of the fact that we really aren’t all that different and the only way to make things better is to grant the “other guy” the right to be, believe, behave, whatever, a bit differently from the way I do.  That’s not the same as saying that his way is better than mine, or that he/she is entitled to “facts” which are just opinions.  But, as long as that person leaves me alone, I should leave him/her alone, too.  After all, their mere existence isn’t hurting me.
 
I suppose that I am being hopelessly naïve and optimistic, but I think the world just might be a better place if we, collectively, got off of our high horses and left others alone a bit more.  It probably won’t happen that way, but it sure would be nice to give it a try.
 
LLAP
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