Global

Liberals in the United States are relatively educated, yet extremely inarticulate when it comes to Trump, his budget proposal, or the U.S. military.

There was something delightfully refreshing about the March 23 champagne gala at the Barnsdall Gallery Theatre in Hollywood that kicked off the 24th annual Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival. This brainchild of LAWTF co-founder and President Adilah Barnes places groups that the entertainment community often overlooks or downplays front and center, where they belong: The female of the species, with a special (although not exclusive) emphasis on women of color. In particular, as program notes state, “multicultural and multidisciplinary solo performers from around the globe.”

[NOTE: This review contains PLOT SPOILERS.]

The response to Trump and his polices are flying fast and furious from the creative community. Only two months into his presidency and Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning playwright Robert Schenkkan’s Building the Wall imagines Trump’s plans to “solve” the “problem” of the millions of undocumented immigrants living in America in this world premiere ripped from the proverbial headlines. ​

The entire one act two-hander takes place in the visiting room of a prison where Gloria (Judith Moreland), an African American history professor, has received hard-to-get permission to interview Rick (Bo Foxworth), a Caucasian, tattooed inmate in an orange uniform. (I guess orange really is the new Black!) The play opens with lots of back and forth: will he/won’t he? talk about what sounds like a heinous crime Rick has been convicted of and may face the death sentence for.

There’s a lot of talk these days about the “Deep State,” especially among supporters of President Trump, some of whom believe that this Deep State is working hard to destroy anyone loyal to Trump, both inside and outside of the government, and ultimately, Trump himself. General Flynn was forced to resign after a media scandal surrounding his contacts with Russian ambassadors – a scandal which, by most accounts, was highly exaggerated. After Flynn’s resignation, prominent neoconservative and NeverTrumper Bill Kristol tweeted:

We have a president who is belligerent towards Iran, who is sending “boots on the ground” to fight ISIS, who loves Israel passionately and who is increasing already bloated defense budgets. If one were a neoconservative, what is there not to like, yet neocons in the media and ensconced comfortably in their multitude of think tanks hate Donald Trump. I suspect it comes down to three reasons. First, it is because Trump knows who was sticking the knife in his back during his campaign in 2016 and he has neither forgiven nor hired them. Nor does he pay any attention to their bleating, denying them the status that they think they deserve because of their self-promoted foreign policy brilliance.

A footnote to the City of Charlottesville's courageous passing of a resolution this week asking Congress to move money from the military to human and environmental needs, rather than the reverse, was the cowardly abstention of Mayor Mike Signer from the vote.

I don't always agree with the other four city council members on everything, or even know enough to have an opinion on much of what they do, but they have all repeatedly been willing to stick their necks out for things they apparently care about for moral reasons. Even Council Member Kathy Galvin, who in my view marred Monday's resolution by adding to it some nonsense about U.S. troops fighting to protect you and your rights (even as we're poorer and have fewer rights with every new war started and never ended) believed things had gotten so bad she would vote aye.

(The Council would have passed the resolution 3-0 without the rah-rah-troops bit that garnered Galvin's vote. I asked Council Member Kristin Szakos whether she herself believed that bit, and she said she imagined most of the troops did. By that logic, the City Council should also declare climate change to be a myth and angels to be real.)

This U.S. premiere at Long Beach Opera is no hagiography of one our country’s most beloved folklore and pop culture heroes. Based on Peter Stephan Jungk’s novel, composer Philip Glass and librettist Rudolph Wurlitzer’s ironically named opera The Perfect American takes an often scathing look at animation icon Walt Disney (baritone Justin Ryan). When thinking of “Uncle Walt,” as he was rather euphemistically dubbed (and I should add marketed), color pops immediately to mind. From his classic cartoons such as 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to the 1960s TV series Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, a richly vivid palette of hues has long been associated with this pioneer of motion picture cartoons and theme parks.

We committed a quiet little war crime the other day. Forty-plus people are dead, taken out with hellfire missiles while they were praying.

Or maybe not. Maybe they were just insurgents. The women and children, if there were any, were . . . come on, you know the lingo, collateral damage. The Pentagon is going to “look into” allegations that what happened last March 16 in the village of al-Jinah in northern Syria was something more serious than a terrorist takeout operation, which, if you read the official commentary, seems like the geopolitical equivalent of rodent control.

The target was “assessed to be a meeting place for al-Qaeda, and we took the strike,” a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command explained. The strike involved two Reaper (as in Grim Reaper) drones and their payload of Hellfire missiles, plus a 500-pound bomb.