“Sister Amnesia’s Country Western Nunsense Jamboree!”
What a neat name for a musical theatre production, I kept thinking, as I was reading, in the Daily Post, about actors and production crews finding “red state rules a tough act to follow.” Bruce Alpert’s article, that initially appeared on Kaiser Health News, described what it takes to play before a live audience, as the cantankerous COVID pandemic continues to hang around.
Speaking of something behaving cantankerously, lawmakers in Wyoming’s Republican Party voted “to stop recognizing Liz Cheney as a Republican,” because Congresswoman Cheney has spoken out about what’s being described as the January 6th insurrection.
Isn’t that like declaring someone a non-person? Like they used to do — or are still doing — in nations under the rule of authoritarian leaders?
Maybe it was the old Soviet Union, that did that sort of thing? Or maybe it was juntas, in other parts of the world, where folks, saying things that authoritarian rulers didn’t like, were left out in the cold — were banished — so to speak.
But now, this is happening in Wyoming, which, by the way, is known as ‘the Equality state?’
I have such fond memories of Wyoming, seeing Yellowstone National Park, when I was a kid.
And while I may not see eye to eye with Rep. Cheney, this whole thing seems so nonsensical. Or… is that ‘nunsensical?’
Call me old-fashioned, but isn’t it better when folks can talk things out… and work together… and just get along?
And call me naïve, but why, in a nation prizing freedom and democracy… and free speech… is it becoming par for the course to be at each other’s throats, all the time? To be sworn enemies of one another, just because we disagree on some things?
Hearing, the other day, that some Republicans are gleeful about inflation, because a Democrat is in the White House? That they’re rooting for the economy to crash and burn? Does that make any sense?
Winning and losing… maybe we’ve got to rethink that…
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.