Quote of the day: The trouble with Republicans? They've got no principles, and haven't had for most of a century—except maybe for this one

"Half a century ago, red was the nastiest cussword in the right-wing lexicon. Today it's the symbol of right-wing voterhood. Half a century ago, Republicans made great political hay out of a Democratic administration's having 'lost' the giant country they invariably referred to as 'Red China.' Today, they're all running eagerly to make deals with the same government to which we 'lost' it. That's the trouble with Republicans: They have no principles, and haven't had any for most of the last century. What they have instead, of course, is the love of weaponry, the desire to destroy, at whatever cost. Unmistakably, that's the unconscious agenda behind George Bush's unnecessary war in Iraq, and his new nuclear game of chicken with Iran. In the dark recesses at the back of the Republican mind, the lap-dissolve succession of mushroom clouds that closes Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove is the happy ending devoutly to be wished."

Wow!

it would be natural to assume that the writer of the above must be one of our leading political commentators. In fact, it's Michael Feingold, the lead theater critic of The Village Voice, reviewing a revival of Heinar Kipphardt's 1969 "documentary play" In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer. The play dramatized the 1954 hearings that sealed the public doom of the charismatic left-leaning physicist who oversaw the development of the atom bomb and then became a public pariah, not for his past political views, but for his growing horror at what he had done and his considered appreciation of the horror of nuclear weapons.

These days I read hardly any theater criticism--or music criticism or movie criticism. Not because I don't believe in the practice of these crafts, which in fact seem to me desperately important (although you could argue that considering the nature and quality of the current offerings, how important is it really to say anything about them?), but because the practitioners have become so abysmal. Not that there was ever a "golden age" of criticism, but it used to be that in every field there were a few people you could read and not come away dumber than you were before you read them.

Every once in a while, I do pick up a copy of The Village Voice—and I mean literally "pick up," since at least in New York you pick it up free, just like those free "shoppers" you get out in suburbia. As it happens, The Voice itself is another institution that once loomed large in my life but has sunk into near-irrelevance, so I rarely bother to route myself past one of the places where I can pick one up.

But the other day I did pick it up, and whenever I do, I remember that Michael Feingold is still writing theater criticism for the old rag. When I started reading Michael 30-some years ago, he was already distinguished by the depth of his knowledge of theater, his passion for the subject and understanding of its place in the world at large, and the incisiveness and readability of his writing.

Note that I didn't include in that summary anything about being "political," unless you count the part about his understanding of the place of theater in the world at large. Of course, if you're an engaged, sensate citizen of said world, it has to be the central subject of any art that's produced, and you can hardly help but be political. As you may have noticed from the opening of his review of Oppenheimer.

I hope you'll read the whole review, for the pleasure of seeing how an actual theater critic can work. For example:

"Tracing the hearings' path to this foregone conclusion [i.e., the panel's ruling that the Atomic Energy Commission had been justified in revoking Oppenheimer's security clearance], Kipphardt's play resembles a horrifying game of hide-and-seek. With the possible exception of Oppenheimer himself, all the characters know exactly how things must turn out. But the predictability is, in a sense, its own surprise. Watching while the government witnesses quibble, the prosecutors slant questions, the defense lawyers bitterly voice their sniping objections, we sit in an agony of tension, waiting for someone to speak out against the idiotic charade, to tell the government that it's wasting a precious human resource."

I should warn you, though, that if you read the review, and if you happen to be within striking distance of the play, you're likely to feel the need to see the damned thing—something that never happens to me with all those other phony-baloney theater (and music and movie) critics. Curse you, Michael Feingold!