Thespis Journal

If you talk with undergraduate and graduate students at most universities today, you’ll find that they are often the vicitms of “diversity” and “multicultural” training that over-rides the core training of every academic discipline. Liberal professors, bent on indoctrinating students in a socialist, European view of the world, place their political agenda above the rigorous study of Psychology, history. medicine, engineering, or the performing arts.

The Univeristy of Michigan at Ann Arbor has been one of the strongest advocates for the liberal dogma of diversity training. Nearly every student graduating from this school located in the “Athens of the Midwest” graduates with a degree in multi-culturalism and a minor in their chosen degree field. Although the voters of Michigan deceided by a 58% margin to end all racial preferences and use of quotas in the state, the Univeristy of Michigan is posed to continue their system of quotas and racial preferences.
From the New York Post: (more…)

Betty Comden, half of the great lyricist team of Comden and Green, died on Thursday in Manhattan. Comden and Green worked with great composers like Leonard Bernstein, Cy Coleman, and Jule Styne and collaborated on musicals for the stage and for the screen. “On The Town,” “Bells Are Ringing,” and “Singin’ In The Rain” are among her most famous shows.

After graduating with a degree in science, Betty Comden strove to find work as an actress. During this period, the late ’30s, she met Adolph Green (b. December 2, 1915, the Bronx, New York City, New York, USA, d. October 24, 2002, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA), who was also seeking work in the theater. Unsuccessful in their attempts to find acting jobs, Comden and Green formed their own troupe, together with another struggling actress, Judy Holliday. In the absence of suitable material, Comden and Green began creating their own and discovered an ability to write librettos and lyrics. At first their success was only limited, but in the early ’40s they were invited by a mutual friend, Leonard Bernstein, to work on the book and lyrics of a musical he planned to adapt from his ballet score “Fancy Free.” The show, in which Comden and Green also appeared, was retitled “On the Town” (1944), and became a huge success; Comden and Green never looked back. “On the Town” was followed by “Billion Dollar Baby” (1945, music by Morton Gould), the flop “Bonanza Bound” (1947), and an assignment in Hollywood for the musical films GOOD NEWS (1947), THE BARKLEYS OF BROADWAY (1949), ON THE TOWN, and TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME (both 1949).

Eventually, Comden and Green created the lyrics and/or libretti for more than a dozen Broadway musicals. They teamed with composer Jule Styne to add key songs to Mary Martin’s memorable Peter Pan (1954), including “Never Never Land” and the hilarious “Captain Hook’s Waltz.” With Styne, they created Bells Are Ringing (1956) for old friend Judy Holliday, giving her the touching “The Party’s Over” and the catchy hit “Just in Time.” The same trio wrote the modestly successful Do Re Mi (1960), which included “Make Someone Happy.” In the 1960s and 70s, Comden and Green toured in several versions of their delightful two-person show. They won Tonys for the book and lyrics of Jule Styne’s Hallelujah Baby (1969), the only time Best Musical went to a show that had already closed.

Comden and Green Homepage

Lyrics from the 1955 Broadway Musical: Bells Are Ringing
The party’s over
It’s time to call it a day
They’ve burst your pretty balloon
And taken the moon away
It’s time to wind up the masquerade
Just make your mind up the piper must be paid

The party’s over
The candles flicker and dim
You danced and dreamed through the night
It seemed to be right just being with him
Now you must wake up, all dreams must end
Take off your makeup, the party’s over
It’s all over, my friend

The New York Sun regularly provides great coverage of the serious performing arts community for Manhattan and the metropolitan area. Today there is a fascinating article on the backstage work at the Metropolitan Opera House. The inside, detailed coverage is unique, and similar in style to the great arts coverage available in the New York Times.

“Just seconds after the matinee showing of “La Bohème” at the Metropolitan Opera last Saturday, a crew of stagehands began dismantling the magic.

Neither Marcello, played by Peter Coleman-Wright, nor Mimi, played by Angela Marambio, had slipped through the curtains for applause when the stagehands split apart the set’s Parisian roof apartment and began carting it away section by section.

It was 4:30 p.m., just three and a half hours before “Madama Butterfly” was set to play for its last night of the season. In that time, the two-story sets of “La Bohème” had to be stored for Monday’s show and the stage transformed into yet another illusion of time and space.”

The whole piece is well worth your time.

From the recent XHS Production of The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail

From the recent production of “The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail”

Check out the open trackbacks at Stop The ACLU

The wonderful and talented New York Post columnist John Podhoretz has a detailed analysis of the election exit polls, and it isn’t good for conservatives. All conservatives should wake up and realize that the next few months are critical in setting up for success in 2008. There are several key passages, but the whole article is worth reading.

“There’s no good news whatever for Republicans in the exit polls or anywhere else. The talk that they suffered at the polls this time because GOP voters were disenchanted by the party? Nonsense: By all accounts, more than 90 percent of Republican voters cast their ballot for GOP candidates and turnout was high. GOP voters didn’t revolt against the Republican Party. Independent and conservative Democrats did. This is a very big deal, because it discredits or revises the governing voting theory of the Bush years. Karl Rove argued that the number of genuinely independent voters whose ballot choice is up for grabs every year has shrunk almost to nothing - 6 percent to 8 percent. Thus, the best way to win wasn’t to appeal to the independents but to wring every last vote out of GOP-aligned folks who might be too busy or too distracted to go to the polls on Election Day.”

“Conservatives will be arguing over the meaning of the defeat and how to change things for the better. But we need to understand a key aspect of the defeat - a cultural aspect.
For decades, Americans whose lives did not revolve around politics believed that Democrats were trying to use politics to revise the rules of society - to force America to “evolve” in a Left-liberal direction.
They didn’t like the bossiness implied by this attitude and they were appalled by the unintended consequences of the changes instituted by left-liberals, mainly when it came to confiscatory tax policy and the refusal to maintain social order and safe streets. These consequences were marks of profound incompetence in the management of the country, and the Democrats were punished for it.
But over in the past few years, Americans began to get the sense that Republicans had become the party of social revision - that it had allowed its own ideological predilections to run riot and that a new form of political correctness had overtaken the party that had seemed more sensible and more in line with their way of thinking.”

Republicans better get a clue and return to the fundamentals of their party. It has been said before that republicans are more effective as an opposition party. We will begin to see what develops in the next few weeks. The Republicans also need a strong, articulate, charismatic leader. I hope that we are not entering a liberal era. Republicans made the mistake of thinking all things conservative would rule after the 1994 election-reight before Bill Clinton was elected to his second term. Issue by issue, this is a largely conservative country, but weak conservative candidates will not win.

It’s time for the next Ronald Reagan to arrive on the scene, and I don’t see one on the horizon.

The post election political situation in Washington DC and in Columbus, Ohio has been more interesting than the dull and lackluster campaign season. Usually, when one party wins a landslide in an election, the platform of the elected party appears on the horizon as the winds of change bring in the man on the white horse. Since today’s democrats did not put forth any unified campaign positions, and are generally at war with each other (witness the Murtha debacle of this past week in the House of Representatives), there is no clear direction for the democrats to pursue as they now must share power and finish their incessant complaining about everything. The shrill tones of their daily grumbling have sounded one too many futile tone clusters of obnoxious opposition. It seems that these democrats may not know how to share power.

Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina summed up the Iraqi War situation on the Sunday prior to the election when she said that the “democrats appear to be content with losing in Iraq.” While no one with any political savvy thinks that the voters endorsed the Pelosi/Murtha “cut and run” strategy, Pelosi vigorously promoted Murtha as her first salvo in getting America out of Iraq immediately. Pelosi says we are losing. She is content with losing. Surely, rationale minds in the democrat party will reach the conclusion that the United States of America can not leave Iraq to the terrorists and allow fascism to spread over the entire Middle East.

President Bush has said that the only way we can lose is to not finish the job. Surely, even liberals must realize that American must finish the job. The United States must finish the mission in Iraq.

As the democrats scramble to figure out what issues they won on, nothing will happen in Washington. Democrats will likely turn on each other, and wait to see what direction the Hilary wind blows.

In Columbus, it will be in interesting to see if Ted Strickland can govern on the mandate to get rid of every republican-especially Bob Taft. My guess is that most of the liberal interest groups will be very disappointed in Strickland’s ability to enact any of the socialist, leftist agenda they think that he was elected on.

In the next eight to twelve months, liberal gloating will turn into liberal drivel, confusion, bitterness, and a long list of liberal complaints about everything. These liberals don’t know how to lead. I’ve heard that they are counting on meeting Jack, Nancy, Ned, and Sherrod in Okinawa for a drink as soon as the troops are re-deployed there. If the troops never make it, what will these liberal elitists think of their own leadership? Perhaps the house will follow the moonbat of the month, Dennis Kucinich in stripping the troops of their funding now.

The warring democrats don’t have long to finally develop a platform (besides minimum wage increases and immigrant amnesty) to get party unity and make use of their victory. Watching them squirm as leadership is foist upon them will be the best game in town for the next six months.

Wake Up America, Is That What You Thought, Hot Air. Check out Captain’s Quarters.

 You might remember our post on Reid of the Ritz.  The next two years are going to be very fun!

Juan Williams, celebrated liberal of NPR and Fox News, recently confirmed that CNN is “in the tank” for the liberal democrats. The most biased curmudgeon and champion moonbat of CNN, Jack Cafferty, provides daily evidence of the ridiculous bias. This week, he called President Bush arrogant for having the nerve to re-nominate John Bolton to be the ambassador to the United Nations. In a twisted reinterpretation of the results of the election, the foolish Mr. Cafferty seems to believe that President Bush has forfeited his right to fulfill his constitutional obligation to fill this position on which the senate has previously refused to act.

The daily drivel from the liberal media doesn’t get much worse than this. Scott Whitlock brings us the details.
Jack Cafferty: “After the Republicans got the stuffing knocked out of them in the midterms last week, President Bush wanted to make nice. So he had these little sit-downs with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the new powers in Congress, and talked about how they were all just going to get along. That tired old phrase bipartisanship was heard over and over again, as it always is after somebody get’s dusted up at the ballot box….And as proof that [Bush's] arrogance was not lost in the election, he wants Congress to pass legislation legalizing the NSA spy program, the one that’s already been ruled illegal by a federal judge. That’s not going to happen either. Great idea though, right? You do something illegal, you just get your toadies in Congress to pass a law saying that it’s legal. Same thing they did with the violations of the Geneva Conventions.”
So, in Cafferty’s world, It’s Bush that has to be bipartisan, not Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi. Quite a convenient situation, for the Democrats, that is.

It is terribly unfortuante that any of our nations citizens would regard CNN as legitmate news coverage. Some one must be fudning this liberal propaganda to be able to keep it on the air.

Well, well, well. It has been very interesting to watch these liberals in action. Pelosi blundered in her first effort at leadership by backing Murtha over Hoyer and then getting defeated in her own caucus by a landslide. Now, Pelosi plans to continue her petty attempts at leadership by deposing Jane Harmon as chairman of the intelligence committe and replacing her with representative Alcee Hastings-an impeached federal judge. The American Thinker has more.

“There have been but 17 federal officials impeached by the House of Representatives since 1787 when the framers included the process in the U.S Constitution. Of these were two presidents, one cabinet member, one senator, and one Supreme Court Justice. The remaining defendants were all federal judges, seven of whom were subsequently convicted by the Senate and removed from the bench. Statistically, in a field of thousands of past and present federal judges, this represents quite the rare and dubious distinction, indeed.

And yet, one of the mere 7 federal judges in American history to be so dishonored may well be Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi’s choice to chair the vital House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The Intelligence Committee’s oversight umbrella covers such agencies as the CIA and the FBI, as well as the Departments of Defense, Energy, Justice, State, and Homeland Security. Simply stated—there exists no Legislative assembly in the country whose decisions and recommendations have a greater impact upon our safety and survival as a nation.”

The news conference held by Pelosi and company on Thursday afternoon was hilarious. Pelosi brought an unusual spotlight to Murtha at the expense of of any new agenda items that the democrats might wish to promote. The entire focus was on Murtha and the leadership fight.

The fact that Pelosi and her liberal colleagues are totally self-absorbed will play out as a major issue as the next few weeks unfold.