Met at Mary Ellen's last night and it was another long, long night. Didn't get home until 11:00 and to bed until midnight. My script was well-received and we went through the whole thing, but I have a bunch of re-writing to do. Some of the ideas and suggestions are good, others I'm not so sure of, but generally, I think it was worthwhile to get input from the players.
We looked at Mary Ellen's outline for her Jersey Devil piece, too, and kicked around a lot of ideas. I enjoy these creative sessions, just wish they weren't so far away and continue so late. Tonight, the first meeting for Hedda Gabler (to be staged in November) isn't until 8:00, but at least it's nearby in the old municipal building.
Wider: I'm slipping in one of those I-don't-always agree-with-him Fred Reed columns in his "Fred On Everything" blog. Here, he points out the inconsistencies of Israel and some Jews on aggression (okay for us, an abomination for them). He notes that the generally recognized high intellect of many Jews doesn't lead to a realization of the inhumanity of aggression, but:
"Intelligence does allow the fabrication of high-sounding motives. Thugs simply hit people on the head. It is a straightforward and honest undertaking. The smart come up with grand justifications. Americans had Manifest Destiny and now have Spreading Democracy. Israel says its settlements have the right of “natural growth” or, in German, lebensraum. All these amount to 'I want it. Give it to me or I’ll kill you.'
I agree on this one, Fred. All aggressors bastardize their language to promote the idea--so successful in the U.S., too--that it's okay to slaughter "the others."
2 comments:
George Orwell, from "Politics and the English Language:"
"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them."
Orwell said that was true in "our" (his) time; I'm pretty sure times haven't gotten any better since then.
Amen, brother.
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