The image problems of leadership

 culture  No Responses »
Apr 152012
 

In an Op/Ed piece in The New York Times called “Working and Women,” Frank Bruni adds his two cents about Hilary Rosen’s super gaffe about Ann Romney being a stay-at-home mom and never working.  There’s been a ton of commentary about this, mostly about how stay-at-home moms deserve more respect.  Bruni talks about his own stay-at-home mom, and I feel great love and respect for my stay-at-home mom, who ultimately needed to become a working mom because the family’s financial situation demanded it.

For me, this whole debacle comes down to something much more deeply rooted: class and socioeconomic status (SES).  Bruni acknowledges this in his op/ed, but he doesn’t spend enough time digging into the issue.  Let’s face it, Romney and Obama don’t have much clout with the middle class.  Both are h0pelessly aloof when it comes to people outside of their privileged worlds, and they and their families are easy targets for anyone looking to paint them as inaccessible, misinformed, or out of touch.  The diversity of the “American experience” has intensified over the last century, but our leadership has not shifted as quickly.  Privileged men, and now some women, still make their way to the top of the food chain, while the “99%” largely feel stuck in the mire.  Whether that’s entirely true is difficult to tell, but a person’s perception is her/his reality, and that reality does not help either candidate’s relationship to the majority of the US population.  Hilary Rosen’s comments about Ann Romney also come from a liberal, educated viewpoint that places value on certain kinds of experiences and ways of being.  This is a problem, and Bruni scratches at that as well.

US elections have been and will continue to be unfortunate reminders for the majority of the American people that leadership comes from privilege.  The mythology of the American Dream tells us that upward social mobility is achievable in the American meritocracy, as long as we work hard enough.  Lately, that’s not been the case for a large majority of the electorate.  Fewer and fewer people believe the myth, and probably with good reason.  Until a leader comes along who really acknowledges that in an honest way, the image problems will continue and comments like Hilary Rosen’s will continue as well.

Someone’s finally attempting to play some hard ball

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Sep 192011
 

With the emphasis on “attempting.”

Barack Obama revealed his deficit plan today in a speech in the White House Rose Garden.  The New York Times reports that Obama is seeking $1.5 trillion in tax increases on the wealthy and corporations.  Of course, Republicans screamed “class warfare” which sounds like a white person yelling “reverse racism.”  I love how these people in positions of power appropriate the language of the oppressed to describe their positions.  Makes absolutely no sense at all.

Who knows how any of this will ultimately affect the deficit reduction plan that needs approval from Congress by December 23?  I’m much more interested in the fact that Obama stated that “he would veto any approach that relied solely on spending reductions to address the fiscal shortfall.”  Increased taxes need to be part of the plan.  Essentially, he’s thrown down the gauntlet, playing hardball if you will, a move that I expect the President of the United States to make much sooner than three years into this presidency.  The news article states that Obama’s threat provides a clear position that can help to fuel his run for re-election.  Fine, but I’d rather leave the re-election out of it.

I understand that Obama’s strategy of playing the middle on policy is what he said that he would do during his first campaign.  Break down party lines and work across the aisle.  Lovely sentiment.  Where’s the tambourine?

Very little of his approach has worked so far, so I think it’s time that he opened a can of Ronald Reaganesque Whoop Ass and started to lead.   Make these statements, stand by them, and face the music.  If he keeps letting John Boehner and the House control the discourse, we might as well cash in our chips and go home.

The citizens of the United States are looking for leadership that has immediate, recognizable results.  The vast majority of people do not seem to respect intellectual discourse, rational thinking, or future planning.  They want action, and they want it now.  Personally, I’d prefer a more thoughtful approach to all of this, but not at the expense of having to listen to sheer idiocy all the time from a growing number of politicians who disrupt forward motion with their ineptitude.  If this is a democracy, it’s time to give it to people the democratic way.  Let majority rule.  We’ll see how the majority feels about democracy after they’ve had it good and hard.

Let the games begin.  No Nerf Balls allowed.

Stop bullying: it’s not brain surgery, people

 culture  3 Responses »
Sep 142011
 

In yesterday’s New York Times, Erik Eckholm shed some important light on a community in Wisconsin struggling with bullying and homosexuality.  Here’s the article.  The Anoka-Hennepin School District has faced eight student deaths attributed to suicides over the past two years, and it’s believed that four of those students who killed themselves were struggling with issues of sexual identity.  District policy states that teachers must remain neutral on issues of sexual orientation, which means that teachers cannot discuss or mention sexual orientation in any way.  Many teachers and administrators contest that this is preventing them from stopping the bullying in their classrooms and schools.

The district’s neutrality policy ties the hands of the teachers, people who spend more time with young people than a parent actually does, at least on a typical school day.  Last fall when a rash of student suicides gained national attention, I thought about the responsibility that a teacher in a classroom has to prevent students from being bullied or feeling unsafe because of anything other than the learning that needs to happen.  This school district, which sits mostly in Michele Bachmann’s congressional district, has silenced the leaders and the facilitators; therefore, there’s no way to model acceptable, humane behavior around difference as it pertains to sexual identity and gender expression.

As a middle school and high school student, I can honestly say that I did not really understand my sexuality, but many boys around me certainly thought I was different and used words like “gay,” “fag,” and “homo” to describe me.  One guy in particular, who I think is a minister now (lovely), used to constantly ask me if I believed in gay rights.  I would say I did because I was trying to be accepting of others, and then that just made things worse for me.  I was naive and pretty stupid when it came to protecting myself.  I had been taught not to fight, and I was terrified of getting into trouble at school.  The “derogatory” words and the questions were painful and difficult to get out from under.  When I tried to talk to people about this, I was most often told to just “let the comments roll off my back.  Be the bigger person.  They’re just jealous.”  These pieces of passive advice did not help me in the least, and ultimately just magnified how badly I felt about myself.  I know that the people offering these pieces of advice meant well.  I also now recognize that I must have been a confusing young adult to offer counsel to.

Thankfully, I had a couple of teachers who would help me and tell me that these guys who were giving me a problem were jerks.  Side note: the irony of so much of this is that now some of these guys want to be friends with me on Facebook.  I wonder if they actually think that I forget the names that they used to call me.  Or if they even remember using those words to describe me.  Double the irony when I see that that they now have kids of their own.  I wonder if their kids are being bullied or are bullies.   But I digress.  The point here is that I had a COUPLE of teachers who helped me.  In large part, these teachers were female.  The male teachers, particularly where the harassment was the worst, like gym class, were unhelpful, and I felt sometimes were even contributing to the bullying.  And this didn’t stop with teachers.  I played on a local soccer team for a number of years, and the verbal harassment was often the worst at those practices, where a coach was someone’s parent and did nothing to stop the verbal bullying.  I remember one moment in particular.  I was in the 7th grade, and we were having a team scrimmage.  I played right wing on that team.  I was dribbling the ball, and across the field, the left winger yelled something like, “Pass, the ball, Fag!”  Nothing happened to that left winger, but I rode my bike home that evening feeling pretty awful and wondering why this guy would call me this name.  And also wondering why no one did anything to come to my defense, especially the coach.

Here’s another example.  In the summer between my junior and senior year in high school, I was selected to attend New Jersey Boys State.  This was supposed to be some great honor, sponsored by the state VFW.  Boys in my class were interviewed and then we were selected as delegates by the local VFW.  We had to go to Rider College and spend a week electing two houses of a state congress and a Boys State governor.  We all had to wear the same clothes, literally march back and forth to meals, and live in hot, stuffy, dorm rooms with an assigned roommate.  I became the Election Board Official for my dorm city, and the VFW mentor, Norman, tried to get me to participate beyond counting votes.  I couldn’t quite get myself to participate fully in the shirtless pissing matches that were going on in the dorm common room, so I stayed in my room and read To Kill a Mockingbird.  So gay…

One evening, the various dorm cities came together for a primary vote, and the Election Board Officials had to count the votes by a show of hands.  We were in this lecture hall, and I was standing in the aisle, and these boys were trying to give me false numbers, as a way to throw the vote.  They kept calling me “fag” and “homo” and trying to intimidate me so I would report different numbers than the counts indicated.  There were adults around, but no one did anything to stop the name calling.  In retrospect, I find it ironic that a state program meant to teach civic responsibility would allow this kind of blatant harassment of another student.

These are just a couple of examples where I think that adults failed to help a young person who was being verbally bullied by his peers.  And I wasn’t even identifying as gay at those points in my life.  But for some reason, we have allowed these words and this kind of harassment to continue and to be “ok.”  I know from people who live in my hometown that bullying still exists and that adults still aren’t doing anything about it.  And for me, this spells trouble.  Why are teachers, school administrators, coaches, Sunday School teachers, and anyone else working with young people not held accountable for protecting a young person’s right to dignity?

Regardless of what Michele Bachmann and her posse have to say about homosexuality, I’ve got news for all of them.  Gay people are not going away any time soon.  Even if they believe that gayness is some kind of genetic mutation, we’ve got generations to go before that mutation works itself out of the gene pool.  It’s like having an appendix, people.  Accept that it’s around, and stop worrying about what’s for.  Homosexual behavior will not disappear as long as sexual desire exists, and gay identity is creeping closer and closer to the center of our culture.  If you stop and think how many “gay” things everyday people do now, you’ll realize that what I say is true.  I have four letters to say: “YMCA.”  This song happens at every hetero wedding I’ve ever been to, yet it’s SUPER GAY.  Heterosexuals LOVE to appropriate gayness, and I LOVE it.

So, I didn’t tell my tales of bullying woe to get any sympathy.  I don’t need anyone’s sympathy.  I’m happier than I’ve ever been, presumably gayer than I’ve ever been by some people’s standards, and my life is pretty great.  However, I shared those moments to illustrate that ADULTS need to step up here.  ADULTS could do a lot of good work around stopping young people from bullying each other.  ADULTS, regardless of what religious beliefs they have, could encourage young people to stop judging and pouncing on difference.  When an adult is in a position of power or authority over a gr0up of young people, s/he needs to model the acceptance of difference.  If we really live in the United States and believe in all the hoo hah of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, then ADULTS better start to model that, and remind young people that the LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL at the end of the Pledge of Allegiance includes the DIFFERENT kids in the classroom.

This community in Wisconsin is just the beginning.  Michele Bachmann better get her act together and stop wiping about this.  And Barack Obama too.  And all the rest of these so-called leaders.  Basic human rights, people.  Basic human rights.  It’s not brain surgery.  And the toilet paper rolls are empty.

US Leaders: Keep the drama on the stage

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Jul 272011
 

As a working theatre maker and a teacher of theatre, I’m really tired of people trying to do my job.  The Great Debt Debate is just one more moment in recent American political history where our national leaders are working harder to make this situation dramatic than they’re working to solve the problem.

I teach an introductory theatre course for non-majors at NYU, and in one of the first classes, I define theatre as any live event where A performs B for C.  My graduate professor Harley Erdman used this definition, and he attributed it to Eric Bentley.  Theatre plays out on a daily basis right in front of us if we use this definition.  Endless possibilities emerge, and my students and I often discuss how political rallies and speeches can qualify as theatre under this definition.  I blogged a bit about this before when Obama spoke so eloquently and thoughtfully following the tragedy in Tucson earlier this year.

At this point though, using theatre to think through what’s happening with this debt debate feels really irritating.  I love good theatre, but I don’t like theatre when it’s happening in a situation where it doesn’t belong.  The over-the-top performances that are happening around Washington are embarrassing and wasteful.   The energy that politicians expend thinking about how to up end one another in public appearances and statements released to the media could be energy used to actually solve this problem.  A friend of mine said that he thinks that Boehner and Obama had this whole thing solved back when they played golf together, and I wouldn’t be surprised.  Our national leaders seem to be engaged in the same dramatics as the New York State legislature when they finally voted on marriage equality last month.  The urge to draw all of this out and make it dramatic is not working for the American public.

I wonder what it used to be like when leaders could work without the onslaught of 24-hour news outlets constantly asking them for statements and questions.  I think the media complicates all of this.  I’d venture to say that democracy works the best when the public has less information.  I know that sounds crazy, but we don’t trust our elected officials because we know every move they make, personally and professionally.  We judge, we critique, and we contribute to the dramatics.  Maybe if we stopped feeding the media hype beast, the drama off the stage would die down, and these elected officials could fully focus on their jobs rather than the immediate ramifications of their salad choice at the cafeteria to their approval ratings. Not to mention making clear, thoughtful decisions that could save the country’s financial situation now and in the future.

Let the theatre people make the drama, friends.  Stay off the media stage and do your job.

Our national leaders need to join Wipers Anonymous.

 culture  No Responses »
Jul 232011
 

So once again the talks surrounding the US fiscal crisis broke down last evening with Obama and Boehner hurling strong phraseology at each other, placing blame, and spinning their wheels.  Media outlets are reporting that the “silent majority” is dissatisfied with the job that our national leaders are doing.  One poll reported 80% of Americans feel this dissatisfaction.  We’re not talking about party lines here.  We’re talking about people feeling like their elected officials don’t deserve to get re-elected.

This debt ceiling-debt reduction thing has gone on entirely too long.  Our “leaders” are digging in their heels, in the name of protecting the American public’s interests, when in fact, I think that most of them are more worried about getting re-elected so they can continue to be “in power.”  Some of this is supposedly democracy at work.  I’m at the point now where I’m losing faith in democracy.

I think that most of these leaders are card carrying members of something I call Wipers Anonymous, or WA for short.  You know that expression, “Shit or get off the pot”?  Well, our leaders are doing neither of those things.  They seem to be paralyzed and wiping continuously. Digging for the proverbial gold, one might say.  Posturing, blaming, criticizing, all with their pants and skirts around their ankles and mummified in Charmin.  God only knows how much TP they’ve gone through on Capitol Hill.  And I think that Obama must have a trail of it following him through the White House, and it’s not just stuck on the bottom of his shoe.

I’m not going to pretend that I understand all of the dynamics of our national debt.  Nor am I going to suggest a solution.  But that’s not my job.  We’ve elected these people to lead the country, and they’re doing a shite job of it.  Both parties have lots of answering to do, and while Obama seems to be trying valiantly to lower the debt and not default, clearly something is keeping him and our congressional leaders from getting on the same page.

Maybe the Gang of Six will come through.  Maybe someone can Roto-Rooter a way through all of the TP stuck in the drains from all of the wiping, and finally something will get done.

Stop wiping, people!  Membership to Wipers Anonymous is officially closed.

 

Where’s the gray in the American Crayola Box?

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May 052011
 

I keep asking myself this question since the US media outlets began announcing that President Obama was preparing to make a special statement.  Ironically, I was watching Donald Trump start to rip Star Jones a new one on “Celebrity Apprentice” (which I never watch), and the first ticker break came through at the bottom of my television screen.  Then my boyfriend texted me saying that he was waiting for the President to speak before he went to bed.

Obama’s announcement of Bin Laden’s death came as a surprise to me.  I knew in the back of my mind that the US government still wanted to find him, but I didn’t worry about his whereabouts or what he’d been up to.  I’ve lived in New York City for almost twelve years, so the threat of a terrorist action has been part of my life here since 2001.  I don’t let it stop my day-to-day actions, but I’m aware that I choose to make my home in a city full of soft targets.  I live just a few blocks from Union Square (a major subway hub for seven trains), and then about two miles from Times Square and Ground Zero.

Sunday evening’s announcement and the subsequent celebrations broadcast by the media left me feeling more than unnerved and confused.  I watched the reports and followed some comments on Twitter.  My colleague Bryan tweeted that he was feeling uncomfortable with the scenes of celebration over Bin Laden’s death, and he retweeted some others expressing similar sentiments.  I went to bed feeling less alone about my views, yet still unsettled by the scenes of Americans celebrating someone’s death, even if it was Osama bin Laden.

Details about the killing of Bin Laden have come to light over the past two days, and those details seem to be changing moment to moment.  As I check in with various news outlets throughout the day, I can’t help but wonder why the US couldn’t get the details clear before saying anything specific.  Couldn’t the President have announced Bin Laden’s death and then shared specifics once they were verified by multiple US sources?  I was particularly upset to learn that children were present in the compound in Pakistan as the raid unfolded.  Equally disturbing is the digital sequence created by ABC News that shows a woman lunging at Navy SEALs, indicating her “reason” for being shot in the calf.

And now the country’s leaders engage in a debate over whether to release graphic pictures of Bin Laden’s corpse.  Sarah Palin tweets that Obama should stop “pussy-footing” around and release the pictures.  In a moment when a lot of people are expressing pride about being an American, I’m not feeling so proud.  Privileged to live in a democratic republic like the US, yes, but not particularly proud of how some of my fellow citizens are behaving.

CNN and The New York Times reported today about why college-aged young people led many of the public celebrations.  The Times article by Kate Zernike cites that these young people have grown up with the image of Bin Laden as the most evil person in the world.  Hence, the need to celebrate his death on Sunday evening.  However, I was also struck by the article’s mention of Neil Howe’s comment that this generation likes to see things in polarized terms (my words), meaning that evil is evil and good is good.  There’s no room for anything in between.  In other words, shades of gray are not so prevalent in the Crayola Box of Life for this young generation.  I would take this a step further and say that this sentiment is true for many Americans regardless of age.

Seeing the gray in a situation allows us to have compassion and empathy for the experiences of others.  Over the last three days, I’ve spent time thinking about how the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 might be feeling about the end of the decade-long hunt for the man who instigated the murder of their relatives. I also think about my brother-in-law, who spent a year in Iraq with the Army reserves, once the war in Iraq began.  He and countless others have invested time and energy into protecting our country from people like Osama bin Laden.

Yet I’ve also found myself thinking about what those children in that compound must have seen and heard as the helicopters came over the 13ft walls.  Or what they must have thought as the gunfire started and people were killed.  I shudder to think that it was happening in front of them, just like the fall of the Twin Towers happened in front of so many young people here in New York City.  And then I think about the woman, supposedly one of Bin Laden’s wives, who rushed the SEALs.  Really?  Really?  Was her action out of a sense of duty to a terrorist or out of a sense of love for her husband?  We won’t ever know.  But these are things I’m thinking about, the gray moments in these situations.

A friend told me that he posted an MLK quotation on his Facebook page in response to the celebrations, and someone accused him of being pro-terrorist.  I say it again: Really?  Really?

This is what I mean about gray Crayons in the Crayola Box.  There are multiple perspectives to every story and every situation.  Just because I consider these perspectives does not make me a terrorist sympathizer.  It makes me a human being committed to dialogue and understanding.  Maybe if we tried to think through actions like celebrating Bin Laden’s death with a little more sensitivity, we would avoid undoing the positive effects of the death of a terrorist who has directly or indirectly killed thousands of people.

When we publicly celebrate a death and chant things like “Osama Osama hey hey hey goodbye” I don’t feel like we’re living up to the ideals of our supposedly superior American society.  Actually, it just makes me feel embarrassed to be an American.

Where have all the adults gone?

 culture  1 Response »
Apr 282011
 

It’s a been awhile since I posted here, as the month of April somehow got away from me.  This marks my attempt to get back on track.

Since the first rumblings of the “birthers,” I’ve been fascinated by how low people will go in order to undermine the strength of a particular candidate for the “highest office in the land.”  Of course, there are examples of dirt digging and mud slinging in every campaign process, but the fact that almost three years later the issue continues to re-surface makes me feel a bit like we’re on the playground at the jungle gym arguing over which girl is Sally’s best friend.

The fact that Barack Obama had to release his birth certificate yesterday and that Donald Trump held a press conference to claim his role in that process just makes me wonder how much lower the country’s leaders are going to go in this next presidential campaign.  Those of you who have followed this blog know that I’m not an Obama disciple.  However, the amount of valuable time and energy that people, namely Republicans and conservatives, have spent on this birthing issue illustrates just how dire things actually are in this country.  To think that the “intelligent” and “rational” people who are supposed to be the leaders of our country are baiting people around Obama’s citizenship and using that to further undermine his reputation calls into question what democratic representation should be accomplishing.  I do not claim to be the smartest girl in the class; I stopped thinking that a long time ago.  However, I do think that I tend to consider very carefully how people present information, and I’m not convinced that a vast majority of Americans necessarily do the same.  Hence, the danger zone created by our national leaders.  The either/or mentality that these men and women are spewing right now is epitomized by the current budget crisis on a macro scale and by this birth certificate crisis on a micro scale.  Yes, people are reaching across the aisle.  Yes, maybe the birthers have been silenced with the release of the certificate.  But how did we get to these points in the first place?

My message to our national leaders in this moment: put on your big boy and big girl pants, stop sniveling around the jungle gym about Sally’s best friend, and start spending time being the intelligent, rational adults that we need to represent us.  Otherwise, we’re going to be witnessing the rapid deterioration of the United States of America right before our eyes.

Girl Power. Literally.

 culture  3 Responses »
Mar 192011
 

Once again the ladies of the Obama administration flex their power and help influence foreign policy and a changing global landscape.

The New York Times reports today that President Obama changed his position on intervention in Libya as a result of three powerful women in top positions in his administration.  From the article:

“The change became possible, though, only after Mrs. Clinton joined Samantha Power, a senior aide at the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had been pressing the case for military action, according to senior administration officials speaking only on condition of anonymity. Ms. Power is a former journalist and human rights advocate; Ms. Rice was an Africa adviser to President Clinton when the United States failed to intervene to stop the Rwanda genocide, which Mr. Clinton has called his biggest regret.

Now, the three women were pushing for American intervention to stop a looming humanitarian catastrophe in Libya.” [my emphasis here]

You can view the full article here: http://nyti.ms/hxXs85

I don’t claim to understand all of the dynamics of the crisis in Libya, although I do know that I’ve been hearing Muammar el-Qaddafi’s name as a potential and/or real hazard in the Middle East since I was a child watching World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.  I tend to want the US take more of an isolationist position on foreign policy, but it seems that we’re not the only country entering the fray on this one.  And Qaddafi needs to be controlled.

However, what I appreciate about this article is that we finally have a chance to see the powerful impact that women have in a presidential administration.  Yes, Madeline Albright.  Yes, Condolezza Rice.  I know that others have blazed a trail. But read that italicized sentence again above.  Not men.  No Biden.  No Cheney.  No Rove.  No Gates.  The three women. And good for President Obama for listening.  Amen.

The debate about a woman leading the free world as President of the United States used to revolve around a woman’s supposed inability to remain rational and not get emotional in moments of crisis.  We’ve come a long way in that debate, largely because women like Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power illustrate that they have intelligence and the guts to go along with it that allows them to contribute to the tough decision making.

 

 

Civics and Theatricality

 culture  7 Responses »
Jan 132011
 

I find myself in a hotel room in Miami, Florida writing this very first entry to my new blog, part of my 2011 goal to develop a writing habit. I’ve been struggling to get started, facing the fear of thinking that I have to say something new and innovative with every post that goes up on this bloody thing, and I’ve decided to just write and see what comes up.

I’ve been watching the coverage of President Obama’s speech in Tucson this evening, as part of the memorial service for the victims of the shooting last Saturday. I was traveling as the speech was happening, so I’ve only seen sections of it replayed on AC360 and on ABC News, but as I’ve come to expect, Barack Obama did not disappoint on the theatricality. My boyfriend texted me saying, “He is too young to be an elder, but he speaks as one,” and I think he’s got an excellent point. I would just amend the statement to say, “He is too young to be an elder, but he can certainly play one on TV.” Barack Obama is an effective speaker, one who easily moves audiences, to the point of raising suspicions in me during his 2008 campaign. Because I direct actors and write plays, I understand the mechanics of using words and their delivery to evoke an audience response. As a result I’ve often felt that Obama could be a little “smoke and mirrors.” I doubted his sincerity at times, because I could “see” the mechanics of his theatricality. I wondered at how so many people could be pulled in by his “performance,” and I worried that we were all being fooled. Why didn’t more people see what I was seeing? During his 2008 campaign, I chalked it up to people so desperate for change that they would gladly drink whatever Kool-Aid he was serving regardless of the consequences. Ironically, I think that many of these people who downed the cherry-flavored shot are now the ones who are hypercritical of Obama’s less-than-left position. I, on the other hand, have come to appreciate the President’s ability to deliver the message of the moment.

As I watched the excerpts of his speech this evening and listened to his vocal inflection and observed his physical gestures, I could see all the trappings of a very fine performer. The pundits wondered whether all of the moments of audience cheering and clapping during what was supposed to be a memorial service were appropriate, and I thought that was an interesting evaluation by three men who clearly had never attended any kind of funeral service that included a revival element with a preacher. Barack Obama used theatricality quite effectively to help people to mourn and to allow them to reconnect with feelings of pride about their community. Some cultures believe that death warrants a celebration, and I think that Obama found a way to locate that celebratory element and link it to the rejuvenation that many feel the United States needs in this moment. And not just because of one shooting massacre in Tucson. We have a lot of work to do, and Obama gave us all a little spanking without the sting that usually goes along with it.

After seeing these sections of the speech this evening and listening to the commentary, I’m not so suspicious anymore. Obama is embracing a longstanding tradition of using theatricality to illuminate civic responsibility. The Greeks did it with the stories of Oedipus and Clytemnestra and Orestes and Medea, people who committed acts that then needed to be judged based on the standards of their community. In Ancient Greece being a good citizen meant going to see these stories performed as tragedies and then thinking about the consequences. Shakespeare did the same with his history plays. He examined past rulers through a critical lens, and he used their stories to comment on the political upheaval in his own time period. Theatricality and civics have gone hand in hand for centuries because human beings need some kind of catharsis to truly understand what it means to be a citizen within a community. Tragedy forces us to see ourselves and those around us again, and that reflection of self wakes us up and creates empathy. Obama understands that, and he’s relying on the power of that empathy to instigate change. His theatricality may be calculated, but it’s warranted. It took me awhile, but the smoke and mirrors are gone, and I get it. And in this moment in particular, I’m appreciative.