Janet Langhart Cohen: Her take on Emmett Till & Anne Frank

Janet Langhart Cohen's new one act play, "Anne & Emmett," debuts at the Holocaust Museum here on June 10 (private opening night), and then at George Washington University (public)'s Morton Auditorium (click Ticketmaster) on June 12.

First of all, if you haven't a clue who Janet, Anne or Emmett are, you're probably either (1) Dick Cheney or Joe the Plumber, or (2) a fool. Sorry, you can collapse both into one. And apologies to Dick, because he knows exactly who Janet is, as Janet's hubby is Former US Secretary of Defense under Slick Willie, William Cohen. Dick's rabid right has long fatwa'd Bill Cohen, former senator from Maine, as one of the moderate Republicans the GOP can do without--despite the rapport Cheney tried to curry with Cohen over Middle East policy during the Clinton-W. transition 200-2001. Now think of the conversations around wingnut land back when Bill married sistagurl Janet? Oh, and the buzzing about the redneck elisted personnel and holy roller white officers was, according to my pals within the Pentagon on out in the field, quite piquant when Cohen would take Janet on DoD trips to see the troops. Come back to me in the comments for feedback and facts on that stuff...

So back to the play. It's author Janet is retired award winning journalist (I mean in the old school Jane Pauley, Linda Ellerbee, Gwen ifill sense, not Fox News/CNN bubble-head and cleavage sense circa 2009; she still writes for HuffPo etc. occasionally). She's a former national and local on- air news reporter for...Indianapolis beauty queen (okay a friend of mine once said the finest yella/redbone women are from the Midwest, not the East Coast or even New Orleans LOL). Note my "black don't crack" post of a few days ago; Janet looks better than 75% of the thirty-something Fairfax Co. soccermoms I've met, and Janet has not lived some charmed, coddled life. BTW she's penned plays and other long form visual pieces before (short docs, etc.) before.

Her "Anne & Emmett" envisions a conversation between two teenagers who's deaths are allegory for so much that' wrong with our human tribalism. Oh, don't get it twisted: the forces which ripped the flesh of both of these tender kids live and thrive today. It's not "evil" or "hate." It's much more complex, insidious. That's the terrifying notion. And apparently this ain't no bleeding heart colloquium or contrived bitch session using these kids as mouthpieces. It's their characters, idiosyncracies and all, awkaward teens, reflecting frankly on the thing that made them smile and the despair at not being allowed to reach things to which they aspired. Yep, two regular kids. Anne, hiding then found, gassed and burned in the death camp. Emmett, tortured, tied to a truck transmission, sunk in a creek. Perpetrators feeling utterly justified, indeed lauded (and it's still a funky state of affairs in Emmett's America) for their acts at the time. The word which comes to mind for both is always: innocence.

FYI, a great starter book on Emmett's life & death, and in the Civil Rights context, is my boy Prof. Christopher Benson's effort with Emmett's late mother, Mamie Till Mobley titled Death of Innocence (Random House) click here for amazon.com. There's a legion of stuff on Anne, of course.

I'm looking forward to this play. Be nice if the douchebags who fight over the air or the Net would set aside their poison, and join with folk calmly to watch and enjoy, too. In the words of Davey Crockett, musing on the coming oblivion at the Alamo: "Amazing what a little harmony'll do."

Arlen Specter: What makes a Coat Turn?

[Andrew Napolitano, you are so lucky. Arlen and swine flu has postponed your colonscopy at my hands yet again. Lawd.]

Anyway, here's the usual crap on Arlen, from the right: "Senator Arlen Specter has been called many things by his former fellow Republicans over the years, but “classy” has never been a term they used for the man. His announcement today that after nearly 30 years in the Senate as a Republican he will cross the line to join the Democratic majority is the capstone on a career built not on ideological purpose or seeking after the right course for the country, but on service to the worst kind of personal interest, a lust for manipulative control of every situation, and the crass pursuit of power for power’s sake.
For months, Specter has insisted he would not switch. A few weeks ago, Specter was bending NRSC Chair John Cornyn to his will, hitting opponent Pat Toomey for being too conservative to win a general election. Today, by his actions, Specter admits it is he who is out of step with his electoral base–not just in policy, but in manner–and only a political move this desperate could bring him any chance at the victory he craves. Unlike Joe Lieberman, Specter didn’t wait for his likely rejection in a primary–nor did he take the principled route of registering as a political Independent."

(Joe Lieberman--principled? Wait...wasn't this the Loserman of "Sore-Loserman?" Ah the hypocrisy of these folks. Ah how the worm turns...)

Look, Arlen was getting sick of Limbaugh-ism, Fox News lies, the let's brign back Ft. Sumter derangement which he'd done a good job of double-talking around or whitewashing with Kihl's primer for years. Nat has sources close to the Biden camp who'll confirm that there's principle afoot, not just self-interest. Perhaps that's what bugs the wingnuts the most--that there just may be a principle at stake. Obama's victory stripped the primer and the ugliness soaks through. Of course he's a self-interested self-aggrandizing careerist. Who isn't in our government. But that's the beauty of this move: his naked self-interest tells him even he can't keep the Oz like curtain over these lunatics in and around his party. They are distasteful, so here egotism and principle converge. Makes perfect sense to me. [n.b. Look for Susan Collins next, when the first Maine citizens start coughing from swin flu, and she's the poster child for a moderate Republicans being forced to carry wingnut water--it was she who was the public face of stripping pandemic funds from Obama's Stimulus.]

People switch up for all sorts of reasons. Most relate to a slight or reproach or threat, or egomania, or greed. So no, it often has nothing to do with tribalism or ideology. Benedict Arnold, Quisling? No complex motives there. What about Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell? He left the Democratic Party merely because of a silly parochial spat with local Colorado officials. Perhaps a person switches, snitches or remains with "the wrong side" because it's all he/she knows, and resistance is futile anyway. Note the slaves who dug trenches, teamstered wagons etc for the Confederacy. It's too facile to say "even the Robert E Lee had his coons." What makes a coon in the first place should be the point of analysis, not whether or not they exist. Coons are notoriously unhappy in their cooning. KGB mole Kim Philby and our own Benedict Arnold proudly went on to work for the Soviets and Brits, respectively, and yet died miserable despite the monetary rewards and accolades. What reward inured to the slave who sold out Denmark Vesey? Similarly, Clarence Thomas sports very interesting psychopathologies that shaped his attitude towards his own people and the law. He likewise nested in his adopted tribe's (e.g. the rabid white right wing's) good graces yet remains petulant rather than contented. Cooning as a form of turncoat behavior is complex, indeed. Regardless, there doesn't seem to be any principle at stake. Indeed, take the Neocons, born from Jewish liberal, even Marxist roots. Their figurative mom and dad, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Irving Kristol (and literal parents of Bill Kristol), turned-coat--hellbent on smashing all progressive views and creeds. There were a lot of triggers for their rebellion, even weird ones like Vietnam war protest, John Lindsay's kowtowing to unions in NYC, black ghetto denizens going batshit on all levels--and blaming Jews for it. So what was the "principle" here for abandoning liberalism for the mirror opposite creed? Disagreement over direction? Corruption in thought or of finance? Nope. It was that unworthy beings were taking over and challenging their intellectual hegemony. Time to gypsy off to the Gentiles and offer your services, like the nerd kids (often Jews) who're suddenly befriended by the cheerleaders and dumb jocks. That's hardly a principle.

Specter's not in those categories, in my opinion. He left because of, not in spite of Limbaugh, or Pajamas Media blogs, or Govs Rick Perry and Sonny Perdue, or crazy American redneck Taliban trying to take over legislatures in places like Louisiana or Florida. He's not John Quincy Adams trying to save the Federalists by turning them into National Republicans. He's not Lucifer in Pandemonium, making a Heaven of Hell because he revolted against God.

Think of another Jew named Josephus. Hero, general of the army of Judea in revolt against the Romans. The revolt's crushed and Josephus is a POW. He wants to keep the legions from more slaughter, destruction. So he collaborates. He gets no riches or commissions in the Roman army. He's not feted by the emperor or given an atta boy by the Herod-like conservatives who didn't want the revolt in the first place. Recall, he was a leader in the revolt. He tried to stop the violence. The Romans destroyed the Temple was destroyed in Jerusalem anyway (some now say it was accidental, and a command/control failure). But without him, we wouldn't have known about this time period or this critical swath of Jewish history, about the siege of Masada, about the infant Christian movement or the Dead Sea Scrolls. His chronicle was his penance. There was principle here of having a culture survive, not merely saving one's ass.

Likewise, think of Werner von Braun. He wasn't an ardent Nazi, or a strident anti-Semite. No, he was worse. He was part of the majority of regular Germans who tolerated this crap. Who went along for the ride. And what a ride--unfettered resources flowed so he could realize his rocketry dreams. His dreams even clouded the sight of slave laborers building his launch and test facilities. But with defeat looming, he had a choice: serve the same type of regime (Stalin being on the flipside of the coin from Hitler), and hisown ego--or flee to the Americans and contritely renounce his opportunism of 1938-1945. Well yeah, self interest pushed the latter choice. But there was also principle in that move. Penance, subconsciously. Even his detractors admit so. And see what he accomplished for all mankind. Was it enough penance? No. Not for what he did 1938-45. But it was a start.

Specter, like Von Braun, overlooked and tolerated a lot sh*t bubbling from the loonies in his party for 30 years. As of 2009, that roiling mess can no longer be hidden or explained away. Now his balls are on the concrete. Self interest indeed dictates that you make a move. And yet even in it that, there's a higher principle. Arlen the cancer survivor has seeded his own penance...