I’m a comedian and television producer by trade — and a passionate history buff by avocation.
I don’t call myself a historian. I haven’t devoted enough years in research libraries or earned an advanced academic degree – but I’ve read enough history to know that we Americans are living in a perilous moment in time.
Right now – in the 2020 Presidential election — the future of our democracy is in the balance.
Check out historian Jill Lepore’s recent article in The New Yorker and Yale professor Timothy Snyder’s recent booklet, On Tyranny.
Lepore and Snyder teach lessons Americans must learn.
Putting these two distinguished historians work together with the everyday evidence available on objective newspaper front pages and TV news broadcasts, it’s clear that the election and maladministration of Donald Trump is as dangerous and pivotal a moment for American Democracy as we’ve experienced since 1776.
Let me count the ways…
Just like the Nazis rounded up “the other” in concentration camps, so has the Trump regime locked immigrant Central American families in makeshift camps – and put their children in cages.
The architect of Trump’s awful, inhuman border policy is his close aide Stephen Miller — an abominable, heartless white nationalist.
Think right wing autocracy can’t happen here?
Read Timothy Snyder’s short and powerful book – and you’ll be shaken to your democratic core.
It CAN happen here.
We can see the potential death of democracy in the feckless cowardice of the Republican Senate. By acquitting Trump of his obvious high crimes against the constitution, they bent their knees like the fearful, faithless German legislators who paved the way for Hitler’s rise to tyrannical authority.
And the world reaped the whirlwind.
Today – it’s not just American government in the balance.
It’s human survival.
Trump says climate change is a hoax.
Trump put a coal industry hack in charge of the EPA.
Trump has put a private industry fox in every public agency henhouse.
Trump is putting bootlicking lackeys in charge of the intelligence agencies.
Trump’s Justice Department under William Barr is enthusiastically investigating Trump’s perceived enemies.
And the spineless GOP legislators are letting Trump do it.
We can’t let them get away with it.
I’m a comedian — but I’m not joking. It’s not an exaggeration.
Our democracy is at stake.
This election year, our American democracy is at stake.
We’ve all got to Vote Blue – No Matter Who!
Please pass along…
I have been in love with the improvisational comedy revue format for more than 45 years. Improv comedy has been the guiding light of my life.
Most recently, I collaborated as a writer, performer and director of my 23rd comedy revue – celebrating 40 years of Practical Theatre Company comedy with “Big Holiday Bag O’ Fun” at Studio5 in Evanston, Illinois — ringing in New Year’s 2020 with music and laughter.
But going back two decades to 1964, I remember my mom staying up after work to take notes on each episode of the edgy, erudite TV comedy revue That Was The Week That Was— because dad was working the night shift at Reliable Spring in Cleveland.
I was just 8 years old, but I recall staying up late with my mom as we watched the show each week, and she took notes on TW3 for my dad.
Check out the cast and writers for TW3: Buck Henry, Paul Sand, Comden & Green, Henry Morgan, Alan Alda, Elaine May, Mike Nichols, etc.
My high school theatre director Mary Ann Zampino asked me, a callow high school junior, to join her hip, funny, and far more sophisticated friends to join the cast of an adult cabaret sketch show called Goodtimes.
Goodtimes director Jane Van Bergen was the only woman who ever directed me in a comedy revue. Our three man and three woman cast was the most gender-balanced in a comedy revue I’ve ever been in.
I’ve argued for the The Doobie Brothers in the past — so, right on! Go, Doobie Brothers! And I love Nine Inch Nails (for inspiring Johnny Cash alone), the Notorious B.I.G. (a seminal hip-hop godfather) and T. Tex (so much love for Marc Bolan’s groovy, grungy, proto-New Wave guitar sound) “Get It On”, etc., though he had only a few giant Top-40 hits.
When I first wrote the history of The Practical Theatre for this blog, I finished by saying, “The Practical Theatre in Chicago in the 1980’s — that was Brigadoon: a magical place that existed for a brief time and vanished. And I got the girl.”
That was true. I did get the girl. And because I emerged from that life-changing experience with Victoria Zielinski as my wife and collaborator, the Practical Theatre was ultimately due for a renaissance.
Inspired by the classic work of Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Vic and I began improvising extended comic scenes in our kitchen, including…
That leap of faith launched a tour that took “The Vic & Paul Show” to Chicago’s Prop Theatre and Mayne Stage in Rogers Park, to Cleveland’s 14thStreet Theatre — and iO West in Hollywood.
Then, Vic and Dana and I spent a solid year writing new material for “The Vic & Paul & Dana Show.” We were delighted that Steve Rashid and Rockin’ Ronny Crawford joined us for a Hollywood run at iO West in November 2015.
“Big Holiday Bag O’ Fun!” is a compendium of The Practical Theatre’s funniest sketches, dating from our “Mee-Ow Show” days at Northwestern University to “Bag O’ Fun” – our first improvisational comedy revue staged in the summer of 1980 at Evanston’s Noyes Cultural Arts Center – through “The Vic & Paul & Dana Show”.
If you haven’t gotten your tickets yet for The Practical Theatre Company’s Big Holiday Bag O’ Fun at Studio5 in Evanston, Illinois — now’s the time!
Playing their third holiday run at Studio5 in three years, writer-performers Victoria Zielinski, Paul Barrosse and Dana Olsen anchor a “Big Holiday Bag O’ Fun”– with music by jazz maestro Steve Rashid and his Studio5 All-Stars.
The Bottom Line: What All Patriotic Americans Must Agree Upon.
Progressives.
Liberals.
Sane Republicans.
Patriotic Americans.
However we define ourselves on the political spectrum — or whatever easy political label we’re comfortable with – can we all agree on the following statements?
Do you agree with these statements?
Every Democrat (except, perhaps, Oligarch Bloomberg) would agree on these things.
So, vote what you know in your bones to be right.
Donald Trump, the horrible GOP Mango Mussolini, doesn’t give one tiny shit about any of the things listed above.
But every Democrat agrees with nearly everything on the list.
So…
VOTE BLUE – NO MATTER WHO!
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Filed under History, Politics, Random Commentary, Uncategorized
Tagged as 2020, Bernie Sanders, Democrats, Election 2020, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Mayor Pete, Trump