Posted on 01/29/2011 7:03:30 PM PST by FortWorthPatriot
Less than a month after the Leftwing in America blamed conservatives for the Tucson shooting and demanded 'civility' in political discourse, a children's play in Montana called for the beheading of Sarah Palin.
The play, which was presented at the Missoula Children's Theater in Missoula, Montana on January 23, was a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's 'The Mikado.' But the play's director decided at the last minute to add a bit of 'humor' to the production by including a scene which called for the beheading of Sarah Palin.
Although the production was presented before a predominantly liberal crowd, the scene prompted the following letter to the editor in the local newspaper, the Missoulian:
Open letter to MCT director Curt Olds:
First I would like to compliment you and the entire staff of “The Mikado” on the beautiful sets, costuming and professional performance we experienced on Sunday, Jan. 23. However, I must call you on something that was inserted into the play which I am almost positive was not in the original book.
The comments made in such a cavalier and oh-so-humorous way were uncalled for. Now, I realize you play to a mostly liberal audience in Missoula and so, I am sure, felt comfortable in your calling for the beheading of Sarah Palin. I am painfully aware that most in the audience tittered with laughter and clapped because “no one would miss her” but there were some in your audience who took great offense to this “uncivil tone” about another human being.
We are in the midst of a crisis that took place in Tucson where many started pointing fingers at that horrible right wing with all their hatred and targeting and standing for the second amendment and on and on and on. So, here we are in a lovely play with beautiful voices serenading us and we have to hear that it is okay to call for the killing of Sarah Palin because we don’t like her and no one would miss her. Unbelievable.
As a professional you should be ashamed of yourself, the audience should be ashamed of themselves and I am ashamed of myself for not standing up and leaving at that very moment. I would like to see an apology from you not because I want to hinder free-speech but for the hypocrisy this so clearly shows.
No doubt the minions of the Leftwing will justify the scene on the basis of it being 'art' and 'fiction,' just as they did when Hollywood produced a movie about the assassination of George W. Bush, who was a sitting President at the time of the film's release.
However, what if the subject of the play had been, say, the beheading of Barack Obama? Or the rape of Michelle Obama? What if a Hollywood production depicted Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid being blown apart by the bomb of a terrorist?
Would the 'civil' Leftwing justify such depictions in the name of 'art' and remind the country that, after all, it is 'only fiction?'
Such an assertion is laughable. The Left, the mainstream media, the talking head pundits on TV, and Democrats in Congress would be calling for endless investigations into to whether or not the producers of such horrid depictions were co-conspirators in a homegrown terrorist plot.
Yet so far, no one from the Left has yet to decry the film depicting the assassination of George W. Bush, nor has there been one bit of outrage from the Leftwing concerning the despicable and highly suspicious addition to an innocent play which subjected children to a call for Sarah Palin's beheading.
Civility?
Just tried to get through to the Missoula police department. No answer. They must have banking hours.
It’s disgusting how they would have it as a “joke” to behead anyone..if they had said this about Michelle Obama can you imagine what would have happened..the damn school would have been shut down. I don’t care if this kind of stuff has been going on for years, but to poke fun at Sarah Palin being beheaded, I don’t find any of that funny..Didn’t Glenn Beck say that Montana is full of commie rats..I think its their headquarters or something
“I managed to avoid watching the Nick Berg beheading but I didn’t manage to avoid the audio.”
How awful, I feel bad for you. I have a friend who’s been a cop and is now close to retiring from the fire department. He’s a tough cookie and has seen about anything you can imagine, but once he told me he watched that on the internet, then rather quietly added, “I wish I hadn’t.” That’s something I’m sure he’ll never be able to forget.
We’re up against such evil most people can’t (or won’t try to) wrap their minds around it. But we’d all better wake up as a country, get educated and fast.
The hypocrisy and evilness of the liberals are beyond the comprehension of decent human beings - they are almost a different species.
He’s just pissed off that he’s in Montana and longs to be in SF, MANhattan or Chicago. (Can’t blame him given his bad dye job.)
If the commies are all in Montana, I’m hoping
that means they’re leaving Washington State?
I FOLLOW PALIN!
She’s the only one leading?
Sherm,
A couple of notes. The lyrics you posted were modified just a bit from the originals to avoid offense. The second verse originally began with:
There’s the nigger serenader, and the others of his race,
Changed for obvious reasons... But I also see that the comment about the ‘lady novelist’ is in there. Indeed, that is original. Later that was changed to the ‘prohibitionist’ to avoid offending other sensibilities.
>> I am grateful that you let us know how you felt….and that you have the right to do so….that you helped secure the right to do so.
Sarah’s son is active “securing the right” to let that jackass express the idea of beheading his mother. /s
The reply is hogwash. Terri should have condemned Curt’s promotion of murder.
Forget the Middle East. The real war is with these haters
They're libs. What more needs to be said?
They do Fiddler on the Roof....I wonder if they changed the Pogroms into a good thing?
The left is the most vile people in the world. So filled with hate that they fail to see that they are the main supplier of it.
Going by post # 32, it IS for children to play in.
Equating decapitating someone with excessive cell phone usage or impolite driving is ludicrous. No doubt the writer had to search long and hard to come up with even a poor justification.
is this like an extension of Hamas kindergartens in Palestine?
More evidence to my theory that leftists are pure evil vermin who should never under any circumstances be treated like human beings. These things are not capable of being anything else and they are corrupting children.
I fully support doing to leftists everything they wish to do to Sarah Palin. It’s only fair...
The next leftist I meet will be treated with unimaginable cruelty.
“Is it a means of desensitizing kids to the slaughter of human beings?”
Liberalism has two primary goals: 1. promotion of selfishness 2. devaluing of humanity and non-leftists in particular.
In Washington DC, children as young as 9 are already being taught that it is acceptable to kill an infant.
I can think of a great lie right now: “We included that line as a reflection of modern day political incivility. Even though our staff are not at all right wing, we were appalled at the irrational and absurd accusations sent at Sarah Palin after the Tuscon tragedy. We used our artistic license to satirize the situation and express the absurdity of modern day political discourse.”
That took all of 10 seconds to think up and no apologies for getting caught.
"The Mikado" is, first of all, not a children's play. It's a very sophisticated musical satire of Victorian England, under the guise of a fairytale sort of fantasy Japan (all things "Japonaise" were very fashionable at the time).
The scene in question is the Lord High Executioner's Song - "As Someday It May Happen" (a/k/a "I've Got a Little List"). The Mikado ("ah! Mikado!") has decreed that anyone who flirted would be put to death, so everybody has been condemned. The Lord High Executioner - Ko-Ko - was a common criminal who was given the job because he couldn't execute anyone before he executed himself, so nobody could be executed. "And we are right, I think you'll say, to argue in this kind of way; and I am right, and you are right, And everything is quite all right as right can be!"
Ko-Ko is played by the comic tenor, always a little fussy character who's played for laughs (at least in every G&S except "The Yeoman of the Guard"). George Grossmith created the role, and Martyn Green and John Reed were able successors. He trips over his enormous axe, bumbles around, and is obviously incapable of executing anybody.
Ko-Ko enters and explains that he's very happy he doesn't have to execute anybody, but should he ever have to, he has a little list . . . (here there's a bit of stage business where he lets go of one end of an enormous scroll and it rolls into the pit). The song is a list of all sorts of people who commit social solecisms and annoyances, and obviously it's not a call to execute anyone.
There are no names named. The whole point, when Ko-Ko gets to the politicians (as he does in the last verse) is that you don't NAME them:
And apologetic statesmen of a compromising kind,
Such as -- What d'ye call him -- Thing'em bob -- and likewise Never Mind
And 'St-'st-'st and What's his name, and also -- You know Who,
But the task of filling up the blanks I'd rather leave to you
For it really doesn't matter whom you put upon the list,
They'll none of them be missed, they'll none of them be missed!"
It's traditional to update this song, since what was topical in Victorian England is pretty much unintelligible now. Some G&S companies in recent years have had fun almost naming various politicians -- the Stratford company in Canada at one point had Ko-Ko sing, "and then there's a Prime Minister (but not perhaps his wife)" while Pierre Trudeau was PM.
But one doesn't name private citizens, and one doesn't NAME them, if you see what I mean.
So what the director did was out of bounds, but not as horrific as the headline and story make it seem.
Here's the D'oyly Carte (the original G&S company) in the 1992 production, with Fenton Gray as an appropriately (and outrageously) wimpish Ko-Ko. He reminds me of Rick Moranis in "Spaceballs":
(You can hear the tail end of "Taken from the county jail, by a set of curious chances".) He zings only one identifiable politician, and not by name.
Now you see why I'm not all exercised about this?
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