Politics as Theater

Following up on last Friday’s blog piece, it turns out Stacy Keatch had a heart attack on stage which prevented him from delivering his lines in the one and only Chicago staging of “Pamplona”, a one man show at the Goodman theater about Ernest Hemingway. 

Keatch reported he felt “like this great fog had come over me.  It was the most bizarre moment of my entire career.”

He didn’t make it halfway through the production.

“…I was hoping that I was just in the middle of an actor’s nightmare and that I would soon wake up and find myself back in the position where I knew what I was doing again.”

Chris Jones, a theater critic who saw Keatch’s on stage breakdown and wrote the June 9 Chicago Tribune article I am paraphrasing as we speak, described the performance as “akin to being lost inside a labyrinth and unable to find any way out.”

“I was very much aware that I was in a state of repetition.  Hemingway’s problem of what word to put on the page intersected with mine, which became how to find the next line,” Keatch said.

When asked he would have stopped what seemed to be an endless loop of lines had the Goodman not stopped the show, Keatch responded

“No.  I don’t believe I would.  I would have kept on going and going, trying to find myself back in the play.  I was relieved to be released from my duties.”

Keatch is going to try it again, he hopes, in 2018.  I’m going to let the Goodman keep my money till then.  I’m determined to see this play.

John McCain had a similar experience at the Senate hearings when he questioned Jim Comey.  He was trying to make some kind of comparison between the Hillary Clinton investigation, which is finished, and the current hearing on Russian influence in our 2016 election which is just gearing up.  It didn’t make sense.  Credit Jim Comey with being gracious and refraining from asking Sen. McCain what the hell he was trying to say.  I sure couldn’t tell. 

That’s a shame too because this is a time when we need sane, balanced, conservative Republicans to get very involved in this topic and carry out their role as protectors of the country rather than political hacks.  This past week reminded me of the Watergate hearings that wre broadcast in 1973.  I was finishing up my assignment as a student English teacher under Harry Adrian and John Duffin at OHS, living with an old lady on the east side who I chose from an approved housing list given to me at the office, and grading papers while watching Sam Ervin and the crew question Nixon aides on her fuzzy color TV.  The Watergate hearings were a long and drawn out process, occurring in Nixon’s second term.  News of the investigation simmered on the back pages of the nation’s newspapers.  Only the most careful readers of the Washington Post and New York Times knew what was happening.  And then it burst onto network TV.

We didn’t have social media back then, the internet, fake news, a whole host of current complicating factors.  But as I watched those hearings, my respect for the office of the President of the United States steadily fell.  Nixon and his staff stonewalled, went into crisis mode, did anything and everything they could to retain power.  It didn’t fall apart until Republican support for their own Republican president crumbled.  Supporting Nixon became politically poisonous for Republican Senators and Representatives protecting their own careers.  I wanted to think it was about the good of the country, but I’m not sure it was.  However in the end the system worked. Nixon,  in an attempt to influence his election over George McGovern, a contest which was never in doubt, authorized clumsy political dirty tricks  on his Democratic opponents, and then covered them up.  In his final days, he read the writing on the wall, previously stalwart Republicans abandoning him, and resigned before his looming impeachment. 

That’s why we need John McCain and his friends in the GOP to look at this thing clearly and objectively.  The Democrats will certainly push the agenda, but it is likely the Republicans will make the difference in the end.  Let’s hope Senator McCain comes out of his fog as did Stacy Keatch.

Finally, my favorite quote from this morning’s news comes from Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner.  He dismissed as a “sham” hearings held by the Democrats who took testimony from those most affected by the Illinois budget impasse, those served by private social service agencies funded by the state.  These people include parents of handicapped children, victims of domestic violence, troubled young people, the homeless, the addicted, low income senior citizens.  I quote the Governor now from a Trib article written by Kim Geiger and Monique Garcia.

“They are…I think, taking advantage of those who are being hurt.  We know, it’s a tragedy. We know who’s being hurt.  My heart’s broken by the human service agencies, the social service agencies, many of which my wife and I have been supporting ourselves for years, they are being hurt, Our universities are being hurt, our schools, so many people in Illinois are being hurt by no balanced budget.”

I have to say I continue to be amazed the Governor can say these things with a straight face.  He’s been saying things like that for two years now, AS IF THERE IS NOTHING HE CAN DO ABOUT IT.

The theater that is Illinois politics rivals the Goodman, perhaps even the silver screen.  It’s like “Groundhog’s Day” down there in Springfield.  While Democrats hold hearings around the plight of those served by social service agencies Rauner runs endless TV commercials set in someone’s tricked out woodshop, wearing a flannel shirt, waving around a roll of duck tape, and trumpeting a property tax freeze, when there are no assurances we can or will fund our schools any other way.  He’s trying to do too much, and by holding out he does nothing.  Representative Greg Harris (D) introduced a bill earlier in the session which would provide relief to those very social service agencies.  It was also passed in the Senate.  The Governor won’t sign it.

Who is taking advantage of those who are being hurt?  Both parties must get off the public stage, get back to Springfield, and pass a budget that stops the bleeding.  If Rauner can make progress on his political agenda more power to him.  But holding out for the whole deal is, at this point, folly.  As a London pundit described Great Britain this morning, the day after their calamitous election: 

“It’s a mess!  A pig’s breakfast!”

That’s describes Illinois to a T.   Stop posing and acting out your partisan political roles.  I think we’re running out of time.