Celebrating in these difficult times is hard. We’re still in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic. Thankfully, vaccines are being approved and the beginning of the end of the devastation of Covid may be in sight. Coincidentally, we are also just now being delivered from the most backward-leaning presidency in our history. Celebrating our emergence from a dark place is not only essential but necessary.

How do we do that? How about with a joyful hand-clapping gospel song from South Africa? As somebody on YouTube wrote, “The only good thing to remember in 2020 is this song.”

Jerusalema is a phenomenon: More than 266 million people have viewed the video. This exuberant song, sung in Zulu, is the brainchild of South African DJ and record producer Kgaogelo Moagi, better known as Master KG. The vocalist who powers the song is Nomcebo. When the song was released in late 2019, it was an immediate success in South Africa.

However, it was a video uploaded to YouTube by Fenómenos do Semba, an Angolan dance troupe, in February 2020 that gave impetus to the worldwide embrace of Jerusalema, the dance. That video pushed Jerusalema to unprecedented international success. The Angolan dance video set in motion something called the #jerusalemachallenge on YouTube, followed by the #JerusalemaDanceChallenge on TikTok. Groups of people from all over the world began to upload videos emulating the Fenómenos do Semba dance moves. This music has brought people together in celebration during a pandemic. No easy feat.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, this irrepressible track has captivated audiences all over. Jerusalema has been the number one song in Belgium, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Romania and Switzerland. Frontline workers especially seem to relate to the song’s exuberance. For many, it’s been a moment of reprieve from the virus.

The song has roots in a much older gospel hymn, “Jerusalem Ikhaya Lami (Jerusalem My Home.)” The original hymn celebrates a longing for a New Jerusalem, a hope for a better place where suffering will end. Jerusalema echoes those same desires. Here are the words and the English translation:

Of course, it’s not the words that have captivated millions around the world. (How many of us understand Zulu?) it’s the animated and infectious rhythm of Master KG’s genius and Nomcebo’s voice that make us feel that we should just get up and dance.

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A simple description of Tara Westover’s “Educated” would be that is a memoir of a childhood and young adult years in a fundamentalist Mormon family in rural Idaho. But it is much more than a chronological retelling of childhood memories based on contemporaneous diaries and journals saved through the years. It is a dissertation on family dysfunction, psychological damage, and the struggle for self-actualization in the face of great opposition.

Born in 1986, Tara Westover is one of seven children in a family dominated by a father with religious beliefs and a social philosophy that many would describe as fanatic. Averse to societal norms, he eked out a living salvaging scrap metal from a junkyard that he maintained on his property in the Idaho hills. He refused to send his children to school; they worked for him in the scrapyard instead, doing dangerous jobs that repeatedly resulted in severe injuries [never to be treated by the highly suspect “Medical Establishment.”]  He viewed women as secondary and required them to be subservient. Westover’s mother obeyed. She became an unlicensed, naturalist midwife and an herbal healer. Westover’s father became obsessed with the 1992 Ruby Ridge incident, in which federal agents shot and killed Randy Weave’s family, and he lectured and preached to his family often about what he saw as the coming End of Days.

None of that sounds too bad—just highly unusual—until you factor in the harsh, unrelenting, physical and psychological abuse Tara suffered at the hands of her father, her loving but complicit mother, and especially her older brother, Shawn. Westover’s memoir chronicles all of it, in vivid and uncomfortable detail.

Becoming educated, as the title implies, is Westover’s way out. But that journey is extremely complicated for a young girl raised in a family that rejects public education, preaches the supremacy of scripture and Mormon doctrine over secular learning, and exerts enormous psychological pressure against Tara’s urge to learn beyond the limits imposed by her family. Her mother taught her to read, but that was the extent of her “home-schooling.” At 17, she managed to convince her family to let her enroll in Brigham Young University [a difficult process, because she had no high-school transcript and even lacked a birth certificate.] In her early classes, she discovered how far behind she was: Once, reading a passage aloud in class, she stumbled over the word “Holocaust,” and asked what it was. The professor thought she was joking and chastised her.

Her tenacity is remarkable—bordering on superhuman. Her academic intelligence impresses teachers, professors and peers, and she pursues higher studies, always opposed by her parents. Time and again, as her formal education moves from undergraduate to graduate to doctoral level, her family rejects her efforts and literally demonizes her—calling her possessed and evil. [Her parents, who never otherwise traveled, flew to England while she was studying at Cambridge, and stayed in her dorm room with her for a week, intending to “exorcise” her.]

Even as she begins to gain some geographical and psychological distance, and begins to be able to analyze and understand the dynamics of her family, she is constantly drawn back in, still craving their love, still wanting to belong, still stung by their ultimate rejection. And virtually every year, when she returns to her home in Buck’s Peak, Idaho, for Christmas, something happens that makes her want to flee, while at the same time feeling the need to stay.

“Educated” gave me an inside view of a world I knew little about, except through stereotypes of off-the-grid, fundamentalist Christian families. This memoir is not an indictment of Mormonism, survivalism, or religion in general. This is personal. Westover’s account includes many difficult memories, described in [often literally] painful detail. She is honest about her ambivalence, her academic insecurities, and her unending internal war between self-actualization and family loyalty. By the end of this engrossing memoir, she has educated herself—and more than just academically. She has paid a big price for her urge to learn. And while I sometimes had to force myself to read certain passages, and wanted to scream at her to not go home, to not get in the car with her brother, to tell someone what was happening to her, I couldn’t put it down. I just hope that Tara Westover has been able to use what she has learned to broker a peace with herself. Sharing her experiences with readers is an education itself.

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Donald Trump’s embrace of neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups has alienated yet another of his showpiece “advisory” councils. All 17 members of the President’s Council on the  Arts & Humanities [PCAH] resigned on August 18, 2017, leaving a harshly worded break-up note. Their letter of resignation is the latest in an accumulating file of written protests by knowledge experts,  industry luminaries and military leaders, whose moral compasses are guiding them away from a president whose policies and actions they feel they can no longer implicitly endorse.

Below is the full text of their letter. It’s worth noting that the Honorary Chairperson of this group is none other than Melania Trump, who must be mightily embarrassed by this move [and by having been suckered into putting her name on the letterhead]. Also, sharp observers have noticed that the first letters of each paragraph combine to spell the hidden message, “RESIST.”

Dear Mr. President:

Reproach and censure in the strongest possible terms are necessary following your support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville. The false equivalencies you push cannot stand. The Administration’s refusal to quickly and unequivocally condemn the cancer of hatred only further emboldens those who wish America ill. We cannot sit idly by, the way that your West Wing advisors have, without speaking out against your words and actions. We are members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH). The Committee was created in 1982under President Reagan to advise the White House on cultural issues. We were hopeful that continuing to serve in the PCAH would allow us to focus on the important work the committee does with your federal partners and the private sector to address, initiate, and support key policies and programs in the arts and humanities for all Americans. Effective immediately, please accept our resignation from the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

Elevating any group that threatens and discriminates on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, disability, orientation, background, or identity is un-American. We have fought slavery, segregation, and internment. We must learn from our rich and often painful history. The unified fabric of America is made by patriotic individuals from backgrounds as vast as the nation is strong. In our service to the American people, we have experienced this first-hand as we traveled and built the Turnaround Arts education program, now in many urban and rural schools across the country from Florida to Wisconsin.

Speaking truth to power is never easy, Mr. President. But it is our role as commissioners on the PCAH to do so. Art is about inclusion. The Humanities include a vibrant free press. You have attacked both. You released a budget which eliminates arts and culture agencies. You have threatened nuclear war while gutting diplomacy funding. The Administration pulled out of the Paris agreement, filed an amicus brief undermining the Civil Rights Act, and attacked our brave trans service members. You have subverted equal protections, and are committed to banning Muslims and refugee women & children from our great country. This does not unify the nation we all love. We know the importance of open and free dialogue through our work in the cultural diplomacy realm, most recently with the first-ever US Government arts and culture delegation to Cuba, a country without the same First Amendment protections we enjoy here. Your words and actions push us all further away from the freedoms we are guaranteed.

Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions. We took a patriotic oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic

Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values. Your values are not American values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too.

Thank you.

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The director of Atomic Homefront calls her documentary “the feel-bad movie of the year.” That’s how Rebecca Camissa described it at a special advance showing last night in St. Louis, and she wasn’t kidding. The movie chronicles the sad and infuriating story of people who live near the Bridgeton West Lake Landfill in a northern St. Louis suburb, where, underground, a smoldering garbage fire is metastasizing, creeping ominously close to radioactive waste dumped nearby in the 1970s and 80s.

It’s a difficult story to tell for several reasons. First, to understand the current situation, you have to delve into a complicated history that starts in the 1940s, when a St. Louis chemical company was commissioned to dispose of radioactive waste generated by the creation of the atomic bomb. The waste was transported [often in open, spewing truck beds] and dumped in several locations, mixed with soil, then dug up and moved again. The routes and the amounts were kept secret for many years. It was only decades later, when a local resident began to realize that many of her school classmates, who lived in areas near the landfill, had developed cancer, that people in the area began to wonder what was going on.

In addition, the personal stories of cancer victims make this an emotionally difficult film. Several people featured in the film’s most poignant scenes have subsequently died, and others are still mourning friends and family. They contend that the cancer and the presence of radioactive waste—not just in the landfill but also in Coldwater Creek, where many children played [and still do]—are linked. It is very tough to watch, but a necessary piece of the narrative.

Atomic Homefront also arouses anger. The film follows a group of concerned citizens, known as Just Moms STL. Spurred to action by the problem in their own neighborhood, they juggle family responsibilities with strategy sessions, activist training, community forums and meetings with government officials. In one segment, we see Dawn Chapman, one of the initiators of Just Moms STL, sweeping her kitchen floor while talking on the phone with a state legislator. It is an authentic, un-glamorous, un-staged, everyday moment in the life of someone who never envisioned herself as an activist. [The contrast with filmmaker Michael Moore’s phony, ambush encounters in his films is stark.]

It’s the meetings with government officials that really make your blood boil. Time after time, officials from agencies, ostensibly charged with protecting the environment,deny that a problem exists, make excuses, offer empty promises and become suddenly unavailable when Just Moms STL leaders show up at their offices.

We see several situations in which officials deliver, with a straight face, absurd statements that are totally divorced from reality. One representative of the US Environmental Protection Agency presents what he calls “a simplified equation of the effects of radiation,” which, when displayed, turns out to be anything but simple, prompting derisive laughter from the audience. In another instance, an EPA official says that the landfill is safe, and that the fire will “self-extinguish.” A representative of the US Army Corps of Engineers states that the agency doesn’t think it is necessary to put up health-warning signs along Coldwater Creek. A manager of the smoldering, acrid-smelling landfill tells a Just Moms activist that the stench is “landfill perfume.”

The film also captures the powerful moment when community residents, previously unaware of the smoldering landfill and the nearby radioactive waste, receive notices from the local school district about a newly created emergency plan, which would be activated “in case of a radioactive event at the landfill.” Taken completely by surprise, they justifiably fear for their children and turn out in droves to a hastily convened community meeting. In one jaw-dropping scene from the meeting, a woman addresses the crowd, demanding action as she reveals that she moved to the area 20 years earlier—from Chernobyl—to save her children, only to find out that she is now living in another highly toxic neighborhood.

Atomic Homefront creates an admirable balance among four key aspects of the Bridgeton Landfill story: history, human impact, local activism, and government response. I found a few stylistic choices to quibble about: It spends a bit too much time on mood-setting; it includes too much un-narrated and visually unappealing exposition. But I applaud the director’s effort to tackle this complex subject and to get it right for the people who have worked so hard to get justice and push for a remedy.

Unfortunately, you can’t leave this film feeling much hope. In the credits, Camissa offers a list of too many elected officials and agency representatives who did not agree to appear in the film. Their absence is a sad commentary on government responsiveness. And keep in mind that the film ends in November 2016, just after the election of Donald Trump. If you think the Obama-era officials who stonewalled and delayed action during the three years covered in this film were bad, remember that the new head of EPA is Scott Pruitt, an avowed anti-environmental zealot who is dismantling the agency’s mission as you read this article. You can’t help but feel bad for Dawn Chapman, Just Moms STL, and the people living in the neighborhood.

[Atomic Homefront received funding from HBO and is scheduled to appear on that network later in 2017 or early in 2018.]

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We are rapidly approaching Oscar season, so anticipate a wave of think-pieces dedicated to their cultural significance. I decided to preempt them with a think-piece of my own to act as a warning sign: Before you, entertainment-conscious liberal, dive into Hollywood’s symbolic impact on the rest of the world, you should know. Your opinions on entertainment are almost completely irrelevant.

Take, for instance, Hidden Figures, the biopic about three African-American women whose mathematical work was integral to America’s first manned spaceflight mission. It’s been nominated for Best Picture. Hidden Figures is a solid film: Taraji P. Henson’s work as Katherine Johnson, the protagonist, was strong, as was Janelle Monae’s funny and prideful portrayal of Mary Jackson. When I saw it, there was minor applause throughout, as there is supposed to be with films that are an Event, a cultural touchstone. The audience in particular loved a gratifying scene in which Kevin Costner, as head of the space task group, takes a literal ax to the facility’s segregated bathroom system. It feels good to see oppression torn down.

So I don’t take issue with Hidden Figures‘ quality. What annoys me, rather, is that the film will inevitably be portrayed as “brave”, or “timely”. The film helps bring to light the erasure of the role of people of color, especially women, in STEM fields, which is obviously virtuous. But it also leads the audience to feel self-congratulatory. The (frequently white) liberal moviegoers pat themselves on the back, having become more “woke” by seeing a progressive and educational film. Their consciousness, they tell themselves, has been raised. Of course, it’s not that brave to detest segregation in 2017.  It’s not brave, and it doesn’t help the exploited people of color of today.

And this is the crux of what is wrong with a liberalism that puts entertainment as the center of social justice movements: It does not realize (or maybe its architects realizes all too well) that entertainment is not in itself progress.

This is most evidenced by another massive cultural touchstone, Hamilton. Readers will probably recall the furor that resulted from when the cast of the musical politely asked Mike Pence to consider the musical’s message. The President was furious, sounding off on Twitter that “The Theater must always be a safe and special place. The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!” This is amusing, given the alt-right’s hatred of safe spaces. But more to the point, it touched off a mini-culture war on the internet that neatly distracted from the Trump University settlement.

Reince Preibus, Trump’s incoming chief of staff, recently commented that the now-forgotten $25 million Trump University scam was settled so that the Donald may take office “without distraction”. But there already was a distraction, and the entertainment-obsessed center-left bought it. “How dare he hate on my favorite musical?” was the rallying cry, instead of, “he defrauded people of their degrees and is still pending with a sexual assault case”.

If Trump’s media parry away from Trump U wasn’t bad enough, there are also the socioeconomic dimensions of the incident to consider. The conservative writer Marc A. Thiessen writes in the Washington Post:

Hey Democrats, want help to rally the country around Donald Trump? Here’s a great idea: Have a crowd of wealthy, out-of-touch Manhattan liberals (who can afford $849 tickets to “Hamilton”) boo Vice President-elect Mike Pence while the cast of the Broadway show lectures him on diversity. (hyperlinks his, not mine)

Honestly, I agree with him. “Hamilton” is the darling of the ruling class. Michelle Obama says it’s her favorite piece of media, period. The AV Club notes that Hamilton has for some become a metaphor for out-of-touch liberalism. This gilded, theoretical, cultural style of politics is completely impotent in fighting Trump.

But following the Oscars and watching Hidden Figures or Hamilton is much more fun and easy than fighting Trump. It’s easy to follow the controversy regarding so-called progressive entertainment and ridicule the reactionaries who belittle them. But it’s not enough. It’s not enough to watch a movie and applaud its marginalized heroes when their children and grandchildren are being systematically oppressed and starved in Flint, Michigan, at Standing Rock, and across the republic. If the liberal response is simply to watch a cool new Broadway musical, if defending Hamilton is the extent of our commitment to social equality, we may as well be watching reruns of 24.

Perhaps this means the viewer is not truly understanding the message of the film or its context. Perhaps this may be true with Hidden Figures. But I truly hope people do not internalize Hamilton, as Alexander Hamilton was fundamentally anti-democratic, argued for an elected monarchy, and once described the masses as “a great beast”.

Which is pretty representative of how entertainment liberals are divorced from material conditions and politics. It’s this delusion that allows them to compare the current situation to Harry Potter. It’s what allows them to talk about how this Super Bowl’s commercials were “brave” and “progressive” while the corporations that produced these ads continue to exploit our workers, destroy our environment, and trample on our civil rights. This entertainment-focused ideology causes liberals to write think-pieces about how Hillary Clinton is a literal goddess.

Entertainment buffs love to tell the amazing story of how Star Trek portrayed the first on-screen interracial kiss. What they fail to mention is Star Trek‘s democratic, socialist, and post-scarcity society. It’s more virtuous to work towards such a future than it is to congratulate yourself on having watched its portrayal on TV.

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The newly released movie Moonlight is a very quiet film with a powerful impact. It’s absorbing, thought-provoking and emotionally exhausting, with performances that are breathtaking. But I wonder if anyone is going to go to see it. The 16-screen theater where we saw it this afternoon offered only one showing—at 3:30—in a dine-in screening room that seated only 50 people.

If that limited availability is typical, it’s very unfortunate, because Moonlight should be on everyone’s watch list.

The story follows the main character, Chiron, from his childhood years in a struggling African-American neighborhood in Miami, through high school and young adulthood. He’s a quiet [almost completely silent, actually]  kid—ignored by his drug-addicted mother, bullied by his neighbors and classmates, and mentored—for a time—by a drug dealer who has retained a sense of decency. We follow Chiron as he grows up, with the three stages of his life portrayed by three different actors [each of whom gives a stunning performance.] It’s a heartbreaking story.

But beyond summarizing the plot, it’s almost impossible to describe this movie. Unlike many of the formulaic movies that draw big box office returns, Moonlight does not fit well into a single category.

It’s not a “black” movie—although all of its characters are African-Americans, its setting is a black community in Miami, and there’s a lot of vernacular that this aging white lady in a suburban bubble doesn’t usually hear. Unfortunately, AMC Theatres apparently thinks it is, indeed, a “black” movie. How do I know? Because 4 out of 5 of the previews that precede it are movies featuring predominantly black actors. That categorization does this movie—and all audiences—a disservice. “Moonlight” focuses on black characters, but tells a story that is far broader.

It’s also not just a “coming out” or “gay” movie, although the main character is bullied, as a child and throughout middle- and high-school, by others who call him a “faggot.” It takes him years to discover who he is, and even more years to accept and act on that aspect of his identity.

Nor is it a “love story,” in the conventional sense. You could say that Chiron eventually learns to accept himself, and discovers that he is capable of loving someone else, and saying so out loud. But you don’t get that until very late in his story—and the future of that self-actualization is not certain.

I can’t comment on the verisimilitude of the story and the characters, because I’ve lived a completely different—privileged, protected, insulated—life. But I don’t think you need to have lived Chiron’s life to appreciate the damaging effect that parental rejection and cultural ostracism can have on a person, regardless of skin color, culture, socio-economic circumstances, neighborhood or other factors. Chiron is oppressed—for reasons he doesn’t understand and can’t control—and repressed as a result. His is not just “black” suffering, it is human pain.

I don’t know what else to say. I’m sure there’s a lot that I missed and didn’t understand because of who I am. But that didn’t stop me from aching for Chiron as a human being.

The Hollywood establishment has believed, for essentially its entire history, that “nobody” [meaning, of course, white people] will go to movies with African-Americans in lead roles. Please seek out this remarkable film—primarily because it’s just a damn good movie—and, as a by-product, to prove them wrong.

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“Half of a Yellow Sun” is a difficult novel to read, but well worth the effort. It’s not difficult in the sense that you’ll have trouble following the sentences, understanding the words, or tracking the plot. It’s difficult mostly because of the subject matter: the three-year civil war between Nigeria and the breakaway country called Biafra, which took place from 1967 to 1970.  Most Americans barely remember that futile, devastating war in a corner of a continent that we essentially ignore. We were too busy, I suppose, focusing on our own war—the one in Vietnam—to pay much attention.

We saw pictures of starving Biafran children, their stomachs bloated with a lethal form of malnutrition that we could hardly pronounce—kwashiorkor. But most of us didn’t even bother to consult a map to see where this place called Biafra actually was.

The book’s title refers to the rising-sun logo on the Biafran flag. The author, Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie is Nigerian. She is too young to have lived through those terrible years, so she based her novel and her characters on contemporaneous accounts and on the stories told to her by older relatives and others who were there.

It’s a story that left me feeling sad: not sad in the way one might feel at the end of a romantic tear-jerker; sad in a more global sense; sad for the real people who experienced the inexorable downward spiral and unimaginable hardships thrust upon them by war.

The main characters represent the spectrum of social and economic strata in 1960s Nigeria: The privileged families of tribal royalty, living a comfortable life that mimics that of the British, who were Nigeria’s colonizers; middle-class Nigerians—members of the Igbo tribe—whose entrepreneurial abilities earned them both respect and hatred; Nigerian academics, who pushed back against colonialism and created the philosophical rationale for secession; and rural Igbos who worked as “houseboys” for both British and Nigerian “masters.” Another key member of the cast of characters is a British writer, whose fascination with Nigerian tribal art moves him to learn to speak Igbo, to fall in love with an Igbo woman, and ultimately to see himself as a Biafran.

The plot covers the early 1960s through 1970. In the beginning, Adichie focuses on the peaceful, comfortable lives of the characters. But when Biafra secedes from Nigeria, their lives slowly and steadily deteriorate. At first, they are in denial, believing the puffed-up propaganda delivered on official Biafran radio. Eventually, reality takes hold: The world abandons Biafra. England sides with Nigeria. The US refuses to engage. The principals of the story—Olanna, Kainene, Ugwu, Odenigbo and Richard—are forced to flee again and again, as Nigerian airplanes strafe and bomb them. Their lives are reduced to subsistence. Their relatives are killed; their young men are forcibly conscripted into the Biafran army; their children starve to death.

The writing is vivid. The characters are alive. You keep hoping for redemption, but there is none. There is no happy ending. Sorry, if I’ve spoiled it. But this is the reality of war, and Adichie refuses to sugar-coat it.

To get back to the difficulty of reading this book: One of the challenges is the author’s use of Igbo phrases. She is, of course, justified in employing indigenous language in a book that is so much about tribal identity. As a reader, you just have to invent your own way to pronounce some of the characters’ names, and you might even attempt to pronounce some of the words. But they are there for a reason, and they give the book a certain flavor that would be missing without them. Something that I could have done, that might have enriched my own reading experience, would have been to search for an on-line pronunciation guide, just to hear how these words would really sound.

Part of the pleasure of reading a book like “Half of a Yellow Sun,” is to be taken away from one’s own life and to become acquainted, if only for a little while, with a completely different culture. This novel goes on my personal list of books that achieved that for me. Even if it made me very, very sad.

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The 1992 movie “Bob Roberts” offers an uncannily prescient, satirical look at a candidacy much like Donald Trump’s.

Written, directed by and starring Tim Robbins, “Bob Roberts” is a mock-umentary about an ultra-conservative millionaire businessman—who’s also a folksinger—who  runs for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. He is supported by fanatic followers. He spouts a xenophobic, America-first, me-first, all-about-the-money philosophy. His followers exhibit some very weird, cult-like behaviors, and are routinely violent against people protesting his candidacy. He even hosts a a beauty pageant–and sings the theme song “She’s a Beautiful Girl.”

I had seen this film before, but I couldn’t have known at the time that it would be the script for the Trump campaign. This time around, I was floored by the jaw-dropping parallels. The one big difference is that, in “Bob Roberts,” the media is openly disgusted by his campaign. They do chase around after him in a Trump-like frenzy, but they’re not fawning–more like ogling.

This is a really good movie—its production values, acting and dialogue hold up very well 26 years later. As you watch it, you’ll recognize members of the supporting cast as younger versions of actors who are better known today. You’ll be name-checking all the way through the movie. [Teaser: One of the out-of-control Roberts fanboys is played by a very young Jack Black.]

Also, the folk songs that Roberts uses to promote his philosophy are hilarious. [Tim Robbins wrote them and performs them—straight-faced– as well.] As Roberts, Tim Robbins does a right-wing version of Bob Dylan’s famous “Subterranean Homesick Blues” video, in which key words are hand-written on cue cards that he drops as the soundtrack plays. In another perverse homage to Dylan, he leads swaying, adoring fans and a church choir in an anthem called “ Times Are Changin’…Back.”  He even steals from Woody Guthrie in a song called “This Land Was Made for ME.”  It’s worth your while to listen closely to the lyrics of the Bob Roberts songs, and not simply dismiss them as soundtrack, background music.

“Bob Roberts” didn’t get the attention it deserved when it was first released–probably because it seemed too wacky and improbable. Unfortunately, reality has now caught up with it.

Here’s the trailer:

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Max and Leo ended up inadvertently producing a smash hit and then going to jail when they couldn’t pay back the investors. Theirs was a brilliant scheme that went wrong. Trump’s foray into the Atlantic City casino business was an unintended, unmitigated disaster, created not by a brilliant idea, but by some very bad business decisions. His losses were huge,  [if his colossal numbers are to be believed]. And they put the lie to his claims about his entrepreneurial prowess.

I’m not sure if this is life imitating art, or vice versa. And the analogy isn’t perfect, I know. Max Bialystok failed to fail. Trump just flat out failed–“bigly.” . And the revelation is simply delicious.

A standing ovation to whoever “produced” the documents that let us in on this secret, and to the New York Times, for revealing it.

Here’s the trailer for the original 1968 movie, “The Producers.” Zero Mostel plays Max Bialystok with a crazed, manic energy that is hilariously reminiscent of Donald Trump, don’t you think?

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I’ve often been told that writers write in order to figure things out.That is definitely the case with this piece, in which I feel compelled to explore the current controversy surrounding the “Direct Drive” exhibit at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis.

“Direct Drive,” an exhibit of work by Kelley Walker, features magazine photographs of black men and women that have been digitally manipulated and then smeared with chocolate and toothpaste. While other works by the artist are also on display, these images have triggered outrage and a public boycott of the museum. Many of the protestors are members of St. Louis’s black community; they have demanded that the works be removed and the museum issue a public apology for hanging them.

Let me be clear: I am not an artist and I have no expertise in the art world.  I have served as a docent at a sculpture park and somewhere along the way I took an art history class.  I like art and I enjoy museums. In the current controversy, I am less troubled by the images than I am about the arguments.

After visiting the exhibit, I came home with a copy of the gallery guide and tried to think critically about the controversy. Part of the problem between those who inhabit the rarefied atmosphere of the art world and us lesser mortals is, I believe, a problem of language. Artists and those who write about their work often use “art speak”—-a version of the English language that seldom clarifies, and often muddies, the water.  Therefore, when the gallery guide says that “Walker creates gestural abstractions and alludes to consumption, objectification, and impermanence,” many of us remain confused.  This was apparently an issue when the artist and a curator participated in a talk at the museum. The artist, who is white, was described as “hostile” when visitors inquired about his use of images of black civil rights leaders and black women on magazine covers.

Is it important for artists to be able to explain their work? I don’t know.

Some of the protestors complain that Walker’s images are “offensive” and “disrespectful.” While I acknowledge these feelings, I also wonder: are works of art supposed to be non-controversial? Is the purpose of a painting to show respect? If so, to whom—-the model on the canvas? the viewer? What about respect for the artist’s vision?  Shouldn’t he be allowed to express it? British painter Lucian Freud once said that “the task of the artist is to make the human being uncomfortable.” If that is the goal, then Walker has succeeded admirably.

Another complaint about this exhibit is that it is being shown in St. Louis, a city that has experienced racial unrest in the wake of Michael Brown’s death. Does place matter where art is shown? If the answer to that is “yes,” then a lot of cities (Baltimore, Chicago, Charlotte) will be eliminated from Walker’s prospective venues. It might be argued that art lovers in these cities would be even more receptive to discussing and critiquing his work.

I don’t know how to respond to this work, any more than I knew what to think about Chris Ofili’s “Black Madonna,” a painting of the Virgin Mary decorated with dried elephant dung that was produced in 1999 (and later sold for $4.6 million). I don’t know if works of art have to have “meaning” or if it’s enough for them to stand on their own, without explanation. I don’t know if the powers that be in the art world are exhibiting “lily white ignorance” of issues that might inflame their communities. I do know that violent and painful images abound in the art world, and some people may be offended by almost anything.

In an attempt to avoid offense, the Contemporary Art Museum found a solution that will probably satisfy nobody. It is erecting barriers to shield viewers from the offending works; the barriers will feature signs that explain the objections to the work and museum-goers can decide for themselves what they want to see.

While this controversy has been difficult for the artist, painful for the protestors, challenging for museum officials, and somewhat baffling for the rest of us, it is probably ultimately good for the city of St. Louis. It has made some of us think and question our assumptions about art. It has probably increased attendance at the Museum. It’s given some of us something new and different to protest. And it’s quite possible that the situation will end up saying more about St. Louis and its citizens than it ever does about Kelly Walker his work.

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