Censorship in New York

Something has gone wrong in America. Seriously wrong. For those of you who are too busy making ends meet, stop for just a while and consider the fate of the play “My Name is Rachel Corrie”. A full account is given by Philip Weiss of The Nation: Too Hot for New York

This is just a small play, but it is a big example of the way in which American values have eroded. Across the board from corporate ethics to the surreal nonsense [my apologies to Andre Breton] being acted out in Washington we are faced with a reversal of values and a willing ignorance of the facts. Where once we might have seen Americans clamoring to advance free speech, now we see a play that was acclaimed in Europe and even Israel abandoned before it was even staged because of its content being too sensitive for American tastes. Or prejudices.

We now are someplace where we delight in deriding the perversity of strict Islamists parading and protesting the publication of satirical cartoons, and yet where we cannot stomach an “unacceptable” viewpoint.

That place is where politicians declaim corruption while still accepting bribes; it is where religion is beyond the critical pale even as it enters the political arena; it is where corporations speak of valued customers even as they stain the environment and produce shoddy goods or services that only an advertising shill could take pride in; it is where homeland security is about neither our homeland nor security; it is where we are urged to take responsibility even as those urging us duck their own; it is where we turn our backs knowingly on the tired, the poor, and the vulnerable even while we conduct our annual parties to celebrate our pretense to be on their side; and it is where we declare ourselves free even as we allow our freedoms to be taken away all in the name of protecting that very freedom.

How very Lewis Carroll. How very Surreal. How very pathetic. And how so, so sad.

So this is where we are. The reality of our lives is that we don’t want reality to matter lest it mean we have to recognise the degree to which we have trashed the legacy that once was here. There are no excuses: this is our mess.

Let’s clean it up. And let’s start by getting that play on stage even if we think it offensive. Because that’s free speech. That’s the moral high ground. And that’s where America belongs.