It's an open secret that political ideology is killing American theatre. But no one wants to acknowledge another culprit in its demise: the industry's extreme response to COVID-19.
This article is a classic. A complete, comprehensive and heartbroken acccount of how an institution destroyed itself.
As proof of your correlation, community theatres in the sane states, which didn't jump on the partisan bandwagon before the monstrosity and weren't forced to spend two years in hell during the monstrosity, are still thriving. For instance, the Gaslight Theatre in Enid is still going strong.
you are my new hero! i said this from the beginning- you do not close down an entire economy every time there's a flu going around. i opened a theatrical costume shop in NYC in the early 80's and did big shows (Phantom, Jersey Boys, Mamma Mia, etc); also ballet, opera, Radio City, art installations- you name it. once a year starting in 1980, i went down to Charleston, SC as the costume director of the Spoleto Arts Festival, working with directors and performers from all over the world.
in all that time, i never got a flu shot or had a mammogram and no one ever questioned my ability or my right to do the good work in theater that gave my life meaning, based on my politics, my voting record or my lack of an absurd and unfounded belief in a fraudulent medical system.
likewise, no one ever questioned that theater was the most inclusive of all professions; the only thing that mattered was talent. and possibly endurance. i did work through fevers, flus, head colds and coughing spells.
in 2016, i closed my NY shop and began a long slow move to Charleston where i assumed i would continue my job at the Festival until i dropped dead sometime in the distant future (i'm a very fit, robust 70 year old and can still work most 20 somethings under the table).
overnight, the Arts changed. the Holocaust Museum in DC required vaccine passports for entry and somehow didn't notice the irony. Neil Young and Joni Mitchell quit Spotify in protest over Joe Rogan's 1st Amendment rights, forgetting their own rebellious trailblazing youth. Broadway wouldn't allow an unvaccinated person near a theater and the Met Opera went full on brownie points seeking commissar, requiring boosters for employment and attendance even before the certifiably insane Gov Hochul did!
here in Charleston, the Spoleto Festival decided to out brown nose even the Met, requiring 2 shots plus a booster after 5 months (5, not 6, just to make the ushers' lives hell), masking and a PHOTO ID, something that if you suggested might be a good idea for voting in a national election would get you branded a racist and perhaps fired from your job, but to attend a concert?- no problem. since the miracle vaccines weren't at that point approved for children, those pesky plague rats were not allowed, so much for encouraging in the young a passion for the Arts.
then there was the problem of black people, POC, african americans or whatever the evolving terminology is at the moment. black people down here do not trust the government one bit and many of them still are wearing masks but it's because they haven't been vaccinated; they feel that masks are a low risk, non-invasive thing they can do for a bit of protection that's non-invasive like submitting to a poison injection (shades of Tuskegee). they're wrong, of course, and it pains me to see them covering their faces but i'm a lot more tolerant of their mask wearing than i am of the terrified old white people who have had every booster and still won't go out unmasked. they're just bat shit crazy and next time this happens they will beg the government to trample on all our rights.
but here's the Festival, bending over backwards to apologize, placate, make amends to black people. most of the programing was planned specifically to attract a black audience EXCEPT for the unvaccinated black people who were discriminated against. needless to say, when you prohibit vast swaths of your potential ticket buyers from buying tickets, you don't sell that many tickets and you don't have much audience. and in a town where you could go into any restaurant or store without showing proof of compliance, one organization asking for papers seems a bit much.
i lost my job after 40 years. no one loved the Festival or worked harder for it than i did; i had structured my entire life around it. i moved here because of it. not a single person who i had worked with for decades had the decency to call to see how i was managing after being betrayed by the thing i had loved most in all the world. had i died, they would have held a memorial for me and my co-workers would have said nice things. had i retired, they would have thrown a party and i'd have complimentary tickets for the rest of my life. as things stand, i cannot forgive them. i leave town when the Festival is in season or, at the very least, avoid "their" neighborhood. i'm no longer at all sure why we live here.
each Broadway producer was given (thank the tax payers) $10 million dollars per show and the Festival probably got a covid grant as well. i'm sure those "gifts" came with public health directives.
does no one remember what happens to the Arts when Stalin whispers in Shostakovich's ear "make it more bombastic?"
now, it seems playwrights have 1000 Stalins looking over their shoulders: you need more characters of color, more transpeople, your play has to be about climate change or social justice, you have to apologize... for everything. it doesn't matter what story you are moved to tell, the politburo needs you to write THIS story lecturing THIS message. with all those masters, how can anyone write anything that isn't pure crap? the audience isn't stupid- they know when they're being scolded.
the backstage crews are demoralized. my boyfriend, recently back from 2 1/2 months in Chicago for an out of town trial of a Broadway hopeful show (no one ever asked about his vaccination status; they just assumed incorrectly), endured many screw ups with his travel, his lodging and his per diem thanks to the two (not one) assistants to the company manager who were obviously hired to give underrepresented groups a turn at theater. there are extra crew on every show now who don't do anything, but make the diversity police happy. and then there's K+K Reset, the HR grifters hired to insure that racism, sexism and transism are everywhere on Broadway. how much money does a show have to make to cover all the increased and unnecessary costs of satisfying the dual gods of covid and DEI?
and what about the unions? they have only one purpose- to protect the labor of their members. suddenly, their job is to protect only the labor of their vaccinated members and to act as an enforcement arm of bad public health policy. during the filming of Diana, the Musical, with the crew virtually imprisoned in hotel rooms, a long time house head was fired for going out to get a coffee one morning! what universe are we in? i didn't think a house head could be fired for anything short of murdering the leading lady!!
i know costume and set designers. composers and playwrights who can't get hired for anything simply because they are white. it's just not enough to be gay anymore. one set designer is considering "coming out" as female identifying in the hopes that he'll be more marketable.
but there's something even more fundamental that will kill theater. at it's heart, what makes theater different- maybe even better- than every other profession is this one simple rule: THE SHOW MUST GO ON. the leading man drops dead right before curtain (how many boosters did he have?). no problem. the understudy is ready. everyone works towards one imperative- nothing short of nuclear annihilation keeps that curtain from going up.
i don't know how things are now, but for a while at least, every show had a couple of covid officers who could shut down a show for 10 days 5 minutes before curtain if a PCR test came back positive. think about this for a minute: Marian Seldes appeared in 1809 consecutive performances of Deathtrap. her understudy NEVER went on. is it conceivable that Ms. Seldes was never under the weather in all that time? that she never had a cough or a sniffle? no, but she went on anyway and none of her co-stars protested that she was "GOING TO KILL US WITH YOUR GERMS!!!!" her fellow actors had some faith in their own resilience. the current crop of weaklings got 10 out of 12s canceled and argue over whether the women's chorus should from now on be called the "skirts" or the "heels" and the men's chorus be referred to as the "slacks" or the "flats!"
then ponder this: to attend theater is to sit in a large enclosed room in the dark with a whole bunch of people you don't know. how many of them are sick? who harbors a deadly pathogen? you're there in the midst of a 1000 or so people of unknown health status. the person next to you might not have washed their hands for two choruses of "happy birthday" when they left the toilet. the guy directly behind you may not have had the latest flu shot. but you take it on faith that your species has survived this long and that contact with other people while sharing an experience is something that humans have done for centuries without ill effect.
i'm old enough to remember the pre-cell phone announcements of yore. the voice would encourage the audience to unwrap their cough drops and lozenges before the show started and to have them ready. it was assumed that at sometime during the show, someone in that large crowd was going to cough or sneeze and the greatest fear was not the potentially lethal cough but rather the irritating sound of crinkling paper. now try to imagine a post covid audience which has been taught to see every other person there as a potential threat. if someone clears their throat or blows their nose during that 2 1/2 hour period, would the deaths resulting from the ensuing stampede be counted as covid deaths?
I'm so sorry about what happened to you, it's nonsense.
I also see that there's a huge generational divide—people 40 and older get what's wrong, but the younger crowd has no point of reference for how things were.
Wow Carolyn I'm so sorry this happened to you also.
I did Phantom on the road in the mid-'90s (Music Box Tour) and I'm quite certain I must have visited your shop at one point or another back in the "good ole days" in NYC!
I've witnessed each and every thing you described above. It's nauseating.
Hoping you're finding some peace and happiness regardless these days.
we worked on the Music Box. my shop was Carelli Costumes. we were invited to the closing night of Phantom NY and no one asked us for proof of vaccination, thank god!
these days, i work on our house and in my garden. when Trudeau froze Canadian bank accounts, we pulled our retirement savings and bought a small farm in NC which has some BnB cottages which are always rented out. we don't live there but it gives us a sense of security. i'd love to do some events there, concerts and such, eventually. right now, we have 7 cows, 3 chickens and one rooster.
What part of NC are you? The institution I taught at was Elon; we lived in Greensboro. We made so many great friends there but between the toxicity at that university and us wanting to be near the west coast mountains, we got out of dodge.
Wishing you well and that you'll be able to do some live performances there soon!
wow, that's wild. we live in charleston, sc but the farm (the Oaks) is in ansonville, NC near wadesboro. it's a very special place. right now it's more of a BnB than it is a working farm but we'll get it together. i feel like i'm in a very different universe now, like my past life almost never existed which is weird because i was such a single minded dedicated person; i never thought i'd ever do anything other than theater costumes and yet, here i am.
our partner is an actor/ stagehand/ production supervisor type. he lives on the farm. we only visit.
we would like to host events there. our first concert was a great success but we didn't charge for admission or anything. it was just a christmas gift to our neighbors. you can't do that all the time. the town is very small. i wonder how much appetite there is for events, small concerts, theatricals, etc in that area. only one way to find out!
Brilliant essay, Clifton. All good points. Our local theatre was already struggling before COVID because of its insistence on "land acknowledgements" and preachy, downright cringey "woke" content. Same thing is happening to some extent with movies and publishing....and yet.... independent films and alternative publishers are popping up and succeeding wildly because people like me still like to be entertained. The Christian film "Sound of Freedom" cost about $20 million to make and has grossed something like half a billion, even though no major studio would touch it with a ten foot pole. And there's the Daily Wire crew (Lady Ballers, etc) who seem to be doing great.
I personally think there is still a hunger for good writing and good art and that this presents a tremendous opportunity for those who haven't been infected with the woke mind virus. Maybe someone like you, with a few like-minded donors, could start your own theatre group. I would donate to that--and I bet many others would too!
This was unbelievably brilliant Clifton you are a rare treasure to not only the Arts (who will never, ever appreciate what you've done here) but to ALL who want to live a life of reason and sanity.
I've posted and replied a few times on various threads and posts that I've been the quiet/not so quiet dissenter in my theatrical/academic circles. Over the past few years I'd comment on this subject and more whenever I felt folks had seriously and completely lost their minds-which was seemingly every single damn day. I mean, academia, especially in elite MT training programs like the one I used to teach at went BAT SHIT crazy over Covid. Oh the stories I could share about trying to create a piece of theater when you force every single (vaccinated-also forced) student to wear a mask.....while singing.....while speaking. It's no wonder that I proudly choreographed ASL into every piece because talk about a completely F'&&**%%%-KED group during these last few years. Nobody gave a shit.
It was this constant craziness that has kept me from wanting to return to my beloved Broadway roots....every time I got close to staging a comeback and getting myself in the right circles again I was hit with booster mandates, testing mandates, and more that would make me go running in the other direction.
I should have grown a pair-or grown a pair sooner-and started screaming from the rooftops THIS IS INSANE.
So I'll share this on every crevice of social media. Hopefully it'll inspire more of us to say something.
I think a lot of talent has been lost because people are tired of the nonsense and would rather just live an easier and more stable life outside of the theatre.
In other words there's a huge "Brain Drain" going on, and we will see the effects play out over the next several years as the work gets worse and worse.
The counterattack is for brilliant people to learn entrepreneurial skills and build alternative institutions and serve the masses directly.
Clifton - fantastic piece. I was one who challenged all of these things and was told, in no uncertain terms, that I was “a murderer,” “a Trump supporter,” that I “hate the elderly,” etc etc …. I could list about 75 things I was told when I’d simply suggest that we’d gone too far. I haven’t worked a whole lot since. (Other reasons also apply but this was a major one). If I’d actually been on a show when things first returned, there would have likely been a newsworthy challenge to required protocols and requirements.
In January of 2022, I filled in for a position at an undergraduate program where the first thing I told the students was that they would only be that age once and so they need to focus on not letting the requirements have them wishing that time away …. It was clear they’d never been spoken to that way and were sort of blown away that “an adult” was saying that to them …. Which gave me hope for young people. And make no mistake - what has been stolen from young people is enormous. I have always stood by a question I asked early in the pandemic, when it became clear that it was mostly killing people who would have died within the next year or two anyway: How long are we each entitled to be here? And at what cost to others who are early in that entitled time? I’m not proposing there is some kind of cutoff to answer that question …. But it all solidified the notion that the Baby Boomer generation (my parents generation - all 4 of whom would agree) is the first to leave the country worse than they found it …. The reason? Hubris and entitlement.
This article is a classic. A complete, comprehensive and heartbroken acccount of how an institution destroyed itself.
As proof of your correlation, community theatres in the sane states, which didn't jump on the partisan bandwagon before the monstrosity and weren't forced to spend two years in hell during the monstrosity, are still thriving. For instance, the Gaslight Theatre in Enid is still going strong.
https://www.gaslighttheatre.org
Thank you for reading.
Yes, it's interesting how venues that didn't go nuts still seem to be doing alright, isn't it?
you are my new hero! i said this from the beginning- you do not close down an entire economy every time there's a flu going around. i opened a theatrical costume shop in NYC in the early 80's and did big shows (Phantom, Jersey Boys, Mamma Mia, etc); also ballet, opera, Radio City, art installations- you name it. once a year starting in 1980, i went down to Charleston, SC as the costume director of the Spoleto Arts Festival, working with directors and performers from all over the world.
in all that time, i never got a flu shot or had a mammogram and no one ever questioned my ability or my right to do the good work in theater that gave my life meaning, based on my politics, my voting record or my lack of an absurd and unfounded belief in a fraudulent medical system.
likewise, no one ever questioned that theater was the most inclusive of all professions; the only thing that mattered was talent. and possibly endurance. i did work through fevers, flus, head colds and coughing spells.
in 2016, i closed my NY shop and began a long slow move to Charleston where i assumed i would continue my job at the Festival until i dropped dead sometime in the distant future (i'm a very fit, robust 70 year old and can still work most 20 somethings under the table).
overnight, the Arts changed. the Holocaust Museum in DC required vaccine passports for entry and somehow didn't notice the irony. Neil Young and Joni Mitchell quit Spotify in protest over Joe Rogan's 1st Amendment rights, forgetting their own rebellious trailblazing youth. Broadway wouldn't allow an unvaccinated person near a theater and the Met Opera went full on brownie points seeking commissar, requiring boosters for employment and attendance even before the certifiably insane Gov Hochul did!
here in Charleston, the Spoleto Festival decided to out brown nose even the Met, requiring 2 shots plus a booster after 5 months (5, not 6, just to make the ushers' lives hell), masking and a PHOTO ID, something that if you suggested might be a good idea for voting in a national election would get you branded a racist and perhaps fired from your job, but to attend a concert?- no problem. since the miracle vaccines weren't at that point approved for children, those pesky plague rats were not allowed, so much for encouraging in the young a passion for the Arts.
then there was the problem of black people, POC, african americans or whatever the evolving terminology is at the moment. black people down here do not trust the government one bit and many of them still are wearing masks but it's because they haven't been vaccinated; they feel that masks are a low risk, non-invasive thing they can do for a bit of protection that's non-invasive like submitting to a poison injection (shades of Tuskegee). they're wrong, of course, and it pains me to see them covering their faces but i'm a lot more tolerant of their mask wearing than i am of the terrified old white people who have had every booster and still won't go out unmasked. they're just bat shit crazy and next time this happens they will beg the government to trample on all our rights.
but here's the Festival, bending over backwards to apologize, placate, make amends to black people. most of the programing was planned specifically to attract a black audience EXCEPT for the unvaccinated black people who were discriminated against. needless to say, when you prohibit vast swaths of your potential ticket buyers from buying tickets, you don't sell that many tickets and you don't have much audience. and in a town where you could go into any restaurant or store without showing proof of compliance, one organization asking for papers seems a bit much.
i lost my job after 40 years. no one loved the Festival or worked harder for it than i did; i had structured my entire life around it. i moved here because of it. not a single person who i had worked with for decades had the decency to call to see how i was managing after being betrayed by the thing i had loved most in all the world. had i died, they would have held a memorial for me and my co-workers would have said nice things. had i retired, they would have thrown a party and i'd have complimentary tickets for the rest of my life. as things stand, i cannot forgive them. i leave town when the Festival is in season or, at the very least, avoid "their" neighborhood. i'm no longer at all sure why we live here.
each Broadway producer was given (thank the tax payers) $10 million dollars per show and the Festival probably got a covid grant as well. i'm sure those "gifts" came with public health directives.
does no one remember what happens to the Arts when Stalin whispers in Shostakovich's ear "make it more bombastic?"
now, it seems playwrights have 1000 Stalins looking over their shoulders: you need more characters of color, more transpeople, your play has to be about climate change or social justice, you have to apologize... for everything. it doesn't matter what story you are moved to tell, the politburo needs you to write THIS story lecturing THIS message. with all those masters, how can anyone write anything that isn't pure crap? the audience isn't stupid- they know when they're being scolded.
the backstage crews are demoralized. my boyfriend, recently back from 2 1/2 months in Chicago for an out of town trial of a Broadway hopeful show (no one ever asked about his vaccination status; they just assumed incorrectly), endured many screw ups with his travel, his lodging and his per diem thanks to the two (not one) assistants to the company manager who were obviously hired to give underrepresented groups a turn at theater. there are extra crew on every show now who don't do anything, but make the diversity police happy. and then there's K+K Reset, the HR grifters hired to insure that racism, sexism and transism are everywhere on Broadway. how much money does a show have to make to cover all the increased and unnecessary costs of satisfying the dual gods of covid and DEI?
and what about the unions? they have only one purpose- to protect the labor of their members. suddenly, their job is to protect only the labor of their vaccinated members and to act as an enforcement arm of bad public health policy. during the filming of Diana, the Musical, with the crew virtually imprisoned in hotel rooms, a long time house head was fired for going out to get a coffee one morning! what universe are we in? i didn't think a house head could be fired for anything short of murdering the leading lady!!
i know costume and set designers. composers and playwrights who can't get hired for anything simply because they are white. it's just not enough to be gay anymore. one set designer is considering "coming out" as female identifying in the hopes that he'll be more marketable.
but there's something even more fundamental that will kill theater. at it's heart, what makes theater different- maybe even better- than every other profession is this one simple rule: THE SHOW MUST GO ON. the leading man drops dead right before curtain (how many boosters did he have?). no problem. the understudy is ready. everyone works towards one imperative- nothing short of nuclear annihilation keeps that curtain from going up.
i don't know how things are now, but for a while at least, every show had a couple of covid officers who could shut down a show for 10 days 5 minutes before curtain if a PCR test came back positive. think about this for a minute: Marian Seldes appeared in 1809 consecutive performances of Deathtrap. her understudy NEVER went on. is it conceivable that Ms. Seldes was never under the weather in all that time? that she never had a cough or a sniffle? no, but she went on anyway and none of her co-stars protested that she was "GOING TO KILL US WITH YOUR GERMS!!!!" her fellow actors had some faith in their own resilience. the current crop of weaklings got 10 out of 12s canceled and argue over whether the women's chorus should from now on be called the "skirts" or the "heels" and the men's chorus be referred to as the "slacks" or the "flats!"
then ponder this: to attend theater is to sit in a large enclosed room in the dark with a whole bunch of people you don't know. how many of them are sick? who harbors a deadly pathogen? you're there in the midst of a 1000 or so people of unknown health status. the person next to you might not have washed their hands for two choruses of "happy birthday" when they left the toilet. the guy directly behind you may not have had the latest flu shot. but you take it on faith that your species has survived this long and that contact with other people while sharing an experience is something that humans have done for centuries without ill effect.
i'm old enough to remember the pre-cell phone announcements of yore. the voice would encourage the audience to unwrap their cough drops and lozenges before the show started and to have them ready. it was assumed that at sometime during the show, someone in that large crowd was going to cough or sneeze and the greatest fear was not the potentially lethal cough but rather the irritating sound of crinkling paper. now try to imagine a post covid audience which has been taught to see every other person there as a potential threat. if someone clears their throat or blows their nose during that 2 1/2 hour period, would the deaths resulting from the ensuing stampede be counted as covid deaths?
Thank you for reading and for sharing, Carolyn.
I'm so sorry about what happened to you, it's nonsense.
I also see that there's a huge generational divide—people 40 and older get what's wrong, but the younger crowd has no point of reference for how things were.
Wow Carolyn I'm so sorry this happened to you also.
I did Phantom on the road in the mid-'90s (Music Box Tour) and I'm quite certain I must have visited your shop at one point or another back in the "good ole days" in NYC!
I've witnessed each and every thing you described above. It's nauseating.
Hoping you're finding some peace and happiness regardless these days.
we worked on the Music Box. my shop was Carelli Costumes. we were invited to the closing night of Phantom NY and no one asked us for proof of vaccination, thank god!
these days, i work on our house and in my garden. when Trudeau froze Canadian bank accounts, we pulled our retirement savings and bought a small farm in NC which has some BnB cottages which are always rented out. we don't live there but it gives us a sense of security. i'd love to do some events there, concerts and such, eventually. right now, we have 7 cows, 3 chickens and one rooster.
it really was alarming to see how NY caved.
not because we're canadian- we're not. but all it would take is a CBDB and a bit more weakening of the constitution and it will happen here.
Carelli that's it!!
What part of NC are you? The institution I taught at was Elon; we lived in Greensboro. We made so many great friends there but between the toxicity at that university and us wanting to be near the west coast mountains, we got out of dodge.
Wishing you well and that you'll be able to do some live performances there soon!
wow, that's wild. we live in charleston, sc but the farm (the Oaks) is in ansonville, NC near wadesboro. it's a very special place. right now it's more of a BnB than it is a working farm but we'll get it together. i feel like i'm in a very different universe now, like my past life almost never existed which is weird because i was such a single minded dedicated person; i never thought i'd ever do anything other than theater costumes and yet, here i am.
our partner is an actor/ stagehand/ production supervisor type. he lives on the farm. we only visit.
we would like to host events there. our first concert was a great success but we didn't charge for admission or anything. it was just a christmas gift to our neighbors. you can't do that all the time. the town is very small. i wonder how much appetite there is for events, small concerts, theatricals, etc in that area. only one way to find out!
Wow. This is epic. Thank you for this.
Brilliant essay, Clifton. All good points. Our local theatre was already struggling before COVID because of its insistence on "land acknowledgements" and preachy, downright cringey "woke" content. Same thing is happening to some extent with movies and publishing....and yet.... independent films and alternative publishers are popping up and succeeding wildly because people like me still like to be entertained. The Christian film "Sound of Freedom" cost about $20 million to make and has grossed something like half a billion, even though no major studio would touch it with a ten foot pole. And there's the Daily Wire crew (Lady Ballers, etc) who seem to be doing great.
I personally think there is still a hunger for good writing and good art and that this presents a tremendous opportunity for those who haven't been infected with the woke mind virus. Maybe someone like you, with a few like-minded donors, could start your own theatre group. I would donate to that--and I bet many others would too!
This was unbelievably brilliant Clifton you are a rare treasure to not only the Arts (who will never, ever appreciate what you've done here) but to ALL who want to live a life of reason and sanity.
I've posted and replied a few times on various threads and posts that I've been the quiet/not so quiet dissenter in my theatrical/academic circles. Over the past few years I'd comment on this subject and more whenever I felt folks had seriously and completely lost their minds-which was seemingly every single damn day. I mean, academia, especially in elite MT training programs like the one I used to teach at went BAT SHIT crazy over Covid. Oh the stories I could share about trying to create a piece of theater when you force every single (vaccinated-also forced) student to wear a mask.....while singing.....while speaking. It's no wonder that I proudly choreographed ASL into every piece because talk about a completely F'&&**%%%-KED group during these last few years. Nobody gave a shit.
It was this constant craziness that has kept me from wanting to return to my beloved Broadway roots....every time I got close to staging a comeback and getting myself in the right circles again I was hit with booster mandates, testing mandates, and more that would make me go running in the other direction.
I should have grown a pair-or grown a pair sooner-and started screaming from the rooftops THIS IS INSANE.
So I'll share this on every crevice of social media. Hopefully it'll inspire more of us to say something.
Thank you Clifton
Thank you, Deb.
I think a lot of talent has been lost because people are tired of the nonsense and would rather just live an easier and more stable life outside of the theatre.
In other words there's a huge "Brain Drain" going on, and we will see the effects play out over the next several years as the work gets worse and worse.
The counterattack is for brilliant people to learn entrepreneurial skills and build alternative institutions and serve the masses directly.
Clifton - fantastic piece. I was one who challenged all of these things and was told, in no uncertain terms, that I was “a murderer,” “a Trump supporter,” that I “hate the elderly,” etc etc …. I could list about 75 things I was told when I’d simply suggest that we’d gone too far. I haven’t worked a whole lot since. (Other reasons also apply but this was a major one). If I’d actually been on a show when things first returned, there would have likely been a newsworthy challenge to required protocols and requirements.
In January of 2022, I filled in for a position at an undergraduate program where the first thing I told the students was that they would only be that age once and so they need to focus on not letting the requirements have them wishing that time away …. It was clear they’d never been spoken to that way and were sort of blown away that “an adult” was saying that to them …. Which gave me hope for young people. And make no mistake - what has been stolen from young people is enormous. I have always stood by a question I asked early in the pandemic, when it became clear that it was mostly killing people who would have died within the next year or two anyway: How long are we each entitled to be here? And at what cost to others who are early in that entitled time? I’m not proposing there is some kind of cutoff to answer that question …. But it all solidified the notion that the Baby Boomer generation (my parents generation - all 4 of whom would agree) is the first to leave the country worse than they found it …. The reason? Hubris and entitlement.
I can't believe I missed this brilliant comment.