By Daniel Greenfield -- BombThrowers——Bio and Archives--June 7, 2017
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When a rodeo clown wore an Obama mask, Democrats and the NAACP wouldn’t stop until he was fired. The Department of Justice’s community organizers were sent in over an Obama outhouse float. But now that a Republican is in the White House, assassination fantasies are fun again.
And once you’re butchering the Bard, why not also butcher the president. Combining Julius Caesar with a Trump critique is perfect. Lefties get the moral superiority of pretending that their Trump hatred is a deep critique of authoritarianism and populism followed by the frisson of a stand in for the man they hate being stabbed to death.
Shakespeare in the Park, an annual summer program by The Public Theater that puts on plays by William Shakespeare in Central Park, kicked off May 23 with a performance of Julius Caesar.
But this rendition of Shakespeare’s tragedy comes with a twist — Caesar is played by a character that bears a striking resemblance to President Donald Trump. The Public Theater’s website states that “Shakespeare’s political masterpiece has never felt more contemporary.”…The description also notes that a “small band of patriots, devoted to the country’s democratic traditions, must decide how to oppose him.”Wink, wink. The left is unambiguously meant to see itself in the material.
Twenty five or so audience members rise up to play the mob. The climatic battle at Philippi has become a contest between black-suited, helmet-wearing, shield-yielding riot police pushing back “Resistance” protestors.The incitement really isn’t subtle. Or the agenda.
Brutus’ wife Portia (Nikki M. James), Cassius (John Douglas Thompson) and all the other conspirators are African Americans.Of course they are.
Shakespeare in the Park’s Julius Caesar, also a Public Theater production, features Caesar supporters in red caps, and Marc Antony is played by a woman in a pantsuit. Calpurnia, Caesar’s wife, has a distinct Slovenian accent.It’s bad Shakespeare, but good lefty bait.
Laura Sheaffer, a sales manager at Salem Media who attended a performance of Julius Caesar on Saturday, first described the the Trump-inspired performance during an interview with Joe Piscopo on AM 970 THE ANSWER, the audio of which you can hear below. “The actor playing Caesar was dressed in a business suit, with a royal blue tie, hanging a couple inches below the belt line, with reddish-blonde hair — just like Trump,” Sheaffer told Mediaite. According to Sheaffer, the actress playing Calpurnia bore a resemblance to first lady Melania Trump — replete with a “Slavic accent.”
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Sheaffer also noted that in the scene, the actor playing Trump Caesar steps out of a bathtub stark naked, which she said struck her as disrespectful, and a “mockery of the office of the President.” In the next scene the Trumpian Caesar is attacked by the Senators and stabbed to death as an American flag hovers overhead, according to Sheaffer. “They had the full murder scene onstage, and blood was spewing everywhere out of his body.” “To be honest I thought it was shocking and distasteful,” Sheaffer continued. “If this had happened to any other president — even as recently as Barack Obama or George W. Bush — it would not have flown. People would have been horrified.” “I mean it was the on-stage murder of the president of the United States,” she said.I’m sure they’ll be packing lefties in on the leaves. This article first appeared at FrontPageMag.
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Daniel Greenfield is a New York City writer and columnist. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and his articles appears at its Front Page Magazine site.