I have been taking the weekend in NY to visit family and was finally able to catch that Tony award trap Billy Elliot. Yes, it’s great fun if you can manage to get past the ritual Thatcher-bashing, which resembles Bush-bashing and dominates the beginnings of both acts of the show. In fact, they’ve one-upped the Bush-bashers by floating a Thanksgiving Day Parade-size balloon of a monstrous Lady Thatcher replete with talons over the finale of the opening number of Act II. My eleven-year old daughter asked who it was and I explained it was a very mean lady who maybe wasn’t so bad in the end. (Kidding.)
Anyway, my two or three year belated review: Choreography by Peter Darling – A+, direction by Stephen Daldry – A, book and lyrics by Lee Hall – B and music by Elton John – myeh. (No Crocodile Rock rocking here). What was most interesting was watching the New York audience react approvingly to the silly “Broadway” politics while the real action was going on in DC, largely – scratch that, entirely – behind closed doors. I tried to catch up unsuccessfully during intermission on some iPhone apps and had to call PJTV exec prod Owen Brennan after the show to get the skinny.
I gather the deemy-seamy thing that none of us had ever heard of before failed and the poor Congress critters now actually have to vote in plain view – that is if they vote. Well, we will know Sunday – or we won’t. It could go on for years, for all we know. I mean – why stop now? Why not health care debates until the next millennium? Y3KHC? Can you imagine life without a healthcare debate? We’d all be suffering from healthcare withdrawal. Let’s hope the new bill provides for insurance for Healthcare Debate Withdrawal Syndrome (HDWS). It’s a natural. Are you listening, Henry Waxman? At some point, though, if we’re lucky some patriotic citizen will stand up in the balcony of the House, yell “Basta de Pelosi!” at the top of his lungs, spray the whole place with Botox-laced tear gas and put us all out of our misery. I bet even the Democrats would be grateful. Maybe especially the Democrats.
Meanwhile, see you tomorrow at the healthcare debates.
Margaret Thatcher is the devil to the looney left, which unfortunately seems to be running Britain into the ground, just as Bush is to the American species. I wonder how many Brits remember what she did for their country or has the brainwashing taken over. They are quickly losing their history faster than we are and they have so much more to lose. I forget how many schoolkids do not know who Churchill was but it is a frightening number.
The American Right has a disturbing tendency to uncritically valorize Churchill and Thatcher while at the same time enjoying the happiness of never having to experience either up close and personal. Churchill was an aristocratic Imperialist bully and died in the wool Tory reactionary who switched parties in the most unprincipled fashion for personal advancement. It is little wonder that the vast majority of his parliamentary contemporaries distrusted him as a vile opportunist.
Yes, he had a “good war” or at least afforded a lot of other poor buggers the opportunity to have one, but he ended up, as a result, losing the Empire he so valued and handing over without a murmur to Stalin the very country for whose freedom he waged the war in the first place.
As for that venomous creature, Margaret Thatcher, I think Roger sums her up perfectly as “very mean lady who maybe wasn’t so bad in the end”, though that was a result of her talented cabinet managing to curb the worst excesses of her distressing – and distressed – personality.
American Conservatives tend to rank the above pair with Ronald Reagan which does a great disservice to the late and great President who was a man of genuine decency and high principle, dedicated to the welfare of his country and the good of the world and devoid of the raging narcissism that so warped the likes of Churchill and Thatcher, not to mention FDR, LBJ, Richard M. Nixon and William J. Clinton. I pass over the present incumbent in DC in whom narcissism is an essential feature rather than a destructive bug.
The ahistorical left forgets that Churchill was a committed liberal and a supporter of the concept of a “floor” beneath no subject should be allowed to fall. He also supported free trade and changed parties on principle. The Tories never considered him one of them and if you had read some history of the 1940 period, you would know that.
The ahistorical left also forgets that it was the Labour party that insisted it be Churchill be PM after Chamberlain’s government fell and the war time coalition government was formed. The Tories wanted former Nazi sympathizer Lord Halifax!
If Thatcher only succeeded because of the depth of talent in the Conservative party, how come they floundered so badly once they pushed her out?
“Yes, he had a “good war” or at least afforded a lot of other poor buggers the opportunity to have one …”
Oh dear. Read a little of WW2 — and perhaps what Winnie was saying a decade or so before that — eh? Standing alone against the axis when his cringing countrymen finally saw his warnings as correct just doesn’t cut any ice with you compared to all that … opportunism! And that terrible aristocratic bullying!
You covered all the knee-jerk epithets except forgot to throw in “fascist” — but I suppose that would be a little unfair, given how the war turned out. Weird that you laud Reagan, who had a bust of Churchill installed in his offices. Might want to ponder why ol’ Dutch did that.
Throwing Churchill out after WWII was a continuation of the march to National Socialism that the Brits started in the 30s, but were forced to suspend for the war that got started by Hitler, considered to be one of their own who just went terribly nuts.
Churhill’s warnings in the 30s were a replay of his pre-WWI warnings which also went unheeded. His WWII service was a replay en grande of his WWI service.
Yes, read some real history, and stop getting it from Hollywood.
As for that venomous creature, Margaret Thatcher, I think Roger sums her up perfectly as “very mean lady who maybe wasn’t so bad in the end”, though that was a result of her talented cabinet managing to curb the worst excesses of her distressing – and distressed – personality.
Baseball is the greatest game in the world. I’m excited about the new season. Should be fantastic.