Red
Alert for CounterPunchers!
Annual Fundraising Appeal
We interrupt your regular reading
habits to bring you the following important announcement: CounterPunch
needs your financial support!
We're not in the habit of making
idle threats and this isn't one. Either we meet our fundraising
goal of $60,000 over the next three weeks or we'll be forced
to drastically curtail the operation of our website. It's near
the end of our year and the wolves are gathering at the door.
CounterPunch's website is supported
almost entirely by subscribers to the print edition of our newsletter.
We don't clutter the site by selling annoying popup ads. We tried
getting money out of Google, but they gave us the boot. We aren't
on the receiving end of six-figure grants from big foundations.
George Soros doesn't have us on retainer. And we don't sell tickets
on cruiseliners.
The continued existence of
CounterPunch depends solely on the support and dedication of
our readers. And we know there are a lot of you. We get thousands
of emails from you every day. Our website receives nearly 100,000
visits each day-and those numbers grow by the month. Of course,
all these readers chew up a lot of bandwidth and that costs money.
Through the Iraq war, the daily
traumas of the Bush administration, hurricanes, earthquakes and
the disappearance of the Democrats, many of you have found a
refuge at CounterPunch and made us your homepage. You tell us
that you love CounterPunch because the quality of writing you
find here every day and because we never flinch under fire. We
appreciate the support and are prepared for the fierce battles
to come as the Bush administration expands its wars abroad and
at home.
Unlike many other outfits,
we don't hit you up for money every month ... or even every quarter.
We only ask for your support once a year. But we when ask, we
mean it. Please, make a tax-deductible donation
to CounterPunch today or purchase a subscription
and a gift subscription or a crate
of books as holiday presents.
To contribute by phone you
can call Becky or Deva toll free at: 1-800-840-3683
Onward,
Alexander, Jeffrey, Becky and Deva
Weekend
Edition
November 4 / 5, 2006
Light Opera for a Dark Time
The
Beastly Bombing
By Dr. SUSAN BLOCK
Current American politics are so drenched
in blood, so rife with cronyism, so dripping with über-religious
hypocrisy, so enmeshed in greedy, screw-the-public self-interest,
the movers and shakers are more like grandiose characters in
a light opera than serious leaders on the world stage. This why
Julien Nitzberg's delightfully outrageous operetta "The
Beastly Bombing: A Terrible Tale of Terrorists Tamed by True
Love" hits so many of the right notes for our war-torn,
terror-riddled, god-inflamed, bombastically beastly times.
Why am I writing about this
obscure original operetta? Because the other night, I went to
see it. And I was delighted to discover a play after my own Ethical-Hedonist-Secular-Humanist-Bonobo
heart, tossing a motley bunch of murderous terrorists, heedless
warmongers and ditzy drug addicts into an operatic mixmaster,
and baking them into a pie of bonobo love, all with absurdist
plot turns, fanciful lyrics, humanistic but politically incorrect
sensibilities and a very catchy tune. It's an operetta, a theatrical
form I used to adore when I was a kid singing my head off in
summer camp plays, but which quickly became uncool with the rock,
punk and hiphop revolutions. Now with "Rent" and "The
Producers," operettas and musicals have again become très
cool.
"The Beastly Bombing"
begins with two Timothy McVeigh-inspired white supremacist terrorists,
Patrick (Jacob Sidney) and Frank (Aaron Matijasik) proclaiming
their love for America in Gilbert-and-Sullivanesque song, with
a touch of Bertoldt Brecht, a dab of Tom Lehrer and a spritz
of Mel Brooks, as they set about "expressing" their
feelings by bombing the Brooklyn Bridge. Unbeknownst to them,
two similarly whacky singing al-Qaeda terrorists, Abdul (Andrew
Ableson) and Khalid (Russell Steinberg), are also planning to
blow up the BB, singing just as heartily of their deep love for
American values and the promotional use of gourmet explosives:
A delightful little bomb
A fine and lovely fuse
Could quietly with great aplomb
Help propagate our views
Into this den of rampaging
testosterone and hair-trigger technology prances a set of drunken,
drug-addled "First Twins," Elyssa (Heather Marie Marsdan)
and Clarissa (Darrin Revitz), two well-heeled, extremely loaded
young debutantes that bring to mind those other fun-loving First
Twins, Jenna and Barbara Bush. Of course, Elyssa and Clarissa's
Dad, President Dodgeson (Jesse Merlin), is the most deluded,
narcissistic, bomb-crazy chickenhawk in the cast. He enters singing:
I am the bravest president
Who ever here a night has spent
As the White House resident
With the people's great consent
By god, I have been heaven-sent
Sing fa la la la fa la la la yay
I am the bravest president
Of the USA
Knowing little, caring less,
That's the secret of my success
The more you know, the less you do.
The more you think, the more you're screewwwed!
I'm an active president who likes to act,
That's why I say "fuck all to the facts!"
I can dance all night even with a corn,
I can shake hands with people who are lowly born,
At a military funeral, I can make believe I mourn,
I can even stay soft while watching really hot gay porn...
This last line was especially
fun for us, as Mr. Prez chose my attractive companion upon whom
to simulate receiving a blowjob. Much more satirical hilarity
and rousing orchestral harmonies ensued. Operetta is such a happy
art, especially in the hands of funsters like Nitzberg and his
musical partner-in-crime and operatic revolution, Roger Neill.
Other stand-out scenes include
the President's tenderly romantic Pas de Deux with a devoutly
gay Jesus Christ (Michael Edwin Stuart), and the loving moment
when the white supremacists, Arab terrorists and President realize
they share a common hatred of "the Jews." An Orthodox
Jew (Alex Resnick) is also lampooned for his hatred of "secular
Jews," and an altar boy-molesting Catholic priest (Curt
Bonnem) wearing a raincoat over his frock coat and red frilly
panties, officiates over the jailhouse weddings of the terrorist
couples who, under the gentle guiding influence of the First
Twins' stash of E, fall passionately in love with each other.
Then there's my favorite ditty, the Happy Bombster President
singing about his deep abiding love for the handsome white-sheeted
Princes of Saudi Arabia:
Some say about terrorism I'm
a fraud,
'Cause I love, I love, I love the royal house of Saud.
When I see their princes, I just applaud,
Oh I love, I love the royal house of Saud . . .
Fellas can drive but not the broads,
Oh I love, I love, I love the royal house of Saud.
Of course, this is a LIGHT
opera, so nobody actually gets killed, not onstage anyway. When
one of the drugged out First Twins warbles that she's sooooo
happy, she's seeing fireworks, President Daddy enlightens her
that these are no mere fantasy fireworks, but real American bombs
dropping on Japan (for the answer to "why Japan?" see
the play). It ends on a high note of fatuous harmony, with all
bombers falling in love with each other, kissing, hugging and
hallucinating. On the surface, it's a beautiful bonobo ending,
though the reality --bombs,
bombs and more bombs to come --ticks
away just below the Ecstasy.
Special kudos go to Amit Itelman,
artistic director of the Steve Allen Theater where "The
Beastly Bombing" is currently being produced. Other Hollywood
venues had turned it down; Julien reports that Stephen Schwartz,
composer of "Pippin" and "Godspell," called
it the "most morally unredeemable musical he had ever read"
and tried to prevent it from being produced. The Steve Allen
Theater building is also home to the good atheists at the Center
for Inquiry West, and had opened its arms to Bill Maher's "Hollywood
Hell House" just after the "Politically Incorrect"
host was fired by ABC in 2001 for saying that the 9/11 terrorist-pilots
were "not cowardly (as President Bush had then described
them)Staying in the airplane when it hits the building. Say what
you want about it. Not cowardly," as opposed to American
fighter pilots who were "lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000
miles away."
"I do not relinquish--nor
should any of you--the right to criticize, even as we support,
our government," Maher also said. "This is still a
democracy and they're still politicians, so we need to let our
government know that we can't afford a lot of things that we
used to be able to afford. Like a missile shield that will never
work for an enemy that doesn't exist. We can't afford to be fighting
wrong and silly wars."
Well, we are still fighting
wrong and silly wars. In fact, we seem to be fighting wars that
are more wrong, sillier and deadlier than ever. Most American
politicians, despite the burgeoning anti-war spirit of the people,
seem determined to continue to fight these wrong and silly wars
for the benefit of their patrons, the war profiteers. So what's
a concerned citizen to do? Might as well have a good laugh about
the whole mess at a politically incorrect operetta like The Beastly
Bombing, bounce your bottom to the bounceable tunes, and maybe
even get inspired to make love or fight (but no bombs, please,
we're peaceniks!) for a better more bonobo world.
What
You're Missing in Our Subscriber-only CounterPunch Newsletter
A Special Investigation:
China's Mass Murder for Body Parts
CounterPunch
outlines the terrible evidence that thousands of Falun Gong members
have been killed to supply China's body parts trade with the
West. Larry Lack reviews
the evidence and explains why the US government is keeping its
mouth shut. CounterPunch
Online is read by millions of viewers each month But remember, we are
funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition
of CounterPunch.
Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter,
which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or
by making a donation towards the cost of this online edition. Remember contributions
are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
