Katherine Kersten: Hard to grasp swooning over Tony Kushner [pedestrian, bigoted playwright]

Minneapolis Star Tribune ^ | July 11, 2009 | KATHERINE KERSTEN

[rhema]

If there's anything we Minnesotans don't like, it's bigotry. Want to be shunned by your friends and neighbors? Try engaging in "hate speech'' -- hurling vicious slurs at people based on race, religion and the like.

Odd, then, that we've just had one of the nation's foremost peddlers of such vitriol here in the Twin Cities. Instead of running him out of town, we've spent two months celebrating him in a communal swoon.

I'm talking about Tony Kushner, the playwright featured at the Guthrie Theater in its recent "Everything Kushner'' festival. For 10 weeks, the Guthrie orchestrated a nonstop hymn of praise to Kushner, turning over all three stages to his work. Bigwigs there were giddy with excitement at the "world premiere'' of a new Kushner play: "The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures.''

Folks who should know better -- politicians, businesspeople and education leaders -- were in full groupie mode, hopeful that a bit of cultural stardust might waft their way.

Bigotry and incivility are Kushner's stock in trade. Take his anti-Catholic rants in the Nation magazine.

There, Kushner branded Pope John Paul II "a homicidal liar'' who "endorses murder.'' (The pope, he charged, had not sufficiently deplored the beating death of gay Wyoming student Matthew Shepard.) Kushner denounced Catholic bishops as "mitred, chasubled and coped Pilates,'' and other church leaders as "flagellants" and "fanatics."

In response to the pope's call for civil dialogue, Kushner wrote that he would first ask the pope not to ''beat my brains out with a pistol butt and leave me to die by the side of the road.'' Even Andrew Sullivan, a prominent gay writer, condemned Kushner's diatribe as hateful.

[doc1019]

Who?

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

They'll open up the comment section on this piece soon so all the KK haters residing near Loring Park can hiss and shriek at her....

[Viking2002]

'Kushner wrote that he would first ask the pope not to ''beat my brains out with a pistol butt and leave me to die by the side of the road.''

I would.

[SuziQ]

There, Kushner branded Pope John Paul II "a homicidal liar'' who "endorses murder.'' (The pope, he charged, had not sufficiently deplored the beating death of gay Wyoming student Matthew Shepard.) Kushner denounced Catholic bishops as "mitred, chasubled and coped Pilates,'' and other church leaders as "flagellants" and "fanatics."

Ah yes, the tolerance of the liberal.

[vpintheak]

Who? Well he sounds like a typical leftist turd. No wonder they laude him.

[SuziQ]

He wrote the Broadway play, “Angels in America”, about homosexual men dying of AIDS, for which I think he won the Tony Award.

[rhema]

And they'll excoriate the Star Tribune for its temerity in countenancing one (count her, one) conservative columnist among a gaggle of liberals.

[Stepan12]

That butt burgaler and opponent of the state of Israel was used as a featured commentator on PBS’s (Palestine Broadcast Service) special on the “Jews in America.”

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

How about the Strib’s minimum wage replacement for Nick Coleman.....Jon Tevlin???

All the hate, a tenth of the salary..

[doc1019]

Thank you.

[junta]

Yet another liberal sociopath perhaps a psychopath.

[alecqss]

To call somebody “a homicidal liar” for not “sufficiently” (from the caller's point of view, mind you!) deploring the crime??!
Whether something is sufficient or not from somebody’s personal point of view is not even debatable. This play-writer is not sufficiently sane - from mine...

[rhema]

Had Kushner smeared a Muslim imam as a ''homicidal liar,'' or compared Al Gore to Hitler, his writing career would likely be over. But here in the Twin Cities, fans clamored for him like seventh-grade girls catching their first glimpse of the Beatles in 1964.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Liberal

[Trailerpark Badass]

denounced Catholic bishops as "mitred, chasubled and coped Pilates,'' and other church leaders as "flagellants" and "fanatics."

LOL, what's his FR screenname?

[JoeDetweiler]

Ummm..........Minnesotans just elected Franken to the Senate. That makes it a little difficult to take seriously comments like “If there’s anything we Minnesotans don’t like, it’s bigotry......”

[Albion Wilde]

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Liberal

Haiku for Liberals:

Lightness in the intellect;
Lightness in the loafers;
They suck.

[Kirkwood]

Speaking on Minn, that Garrison Keilor is a liberal bigot, but they seem to love his form of bigotry.

[Hildy]

Kushner is the most overrated playwright of our times. Just another self-hating homosexual who thinks that if he tears down the good in this world, he will look better by comparison.

[csense]

...he sounds like a typical leftist turd.

He definitely is. I had never heard of the man until I happened upon a PBS documentary of him one day. I couldn't believe how vile the man was. They showed a segment of a play he did on Laura Bush. It was beyond disgusting.

As I was watching the documentary, II remember wondering what his parents were like because hatred like that doesn't just happen...it's learned.