Red Hot Patriot

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You'll have noticed that I try to avoid politics here.  That's because I find my own political beliefs awfully boring.  Once you've said, "Eastern intellectual establishment bleeding-heart knee-jerk liberal and proud of it,"what more is needs to be said?  And I can use the time saved by not saying it to discuss more interesting topics, like literature and theater.

Still, I'm going to make a very small exception here and speak directly to conservatives and other non-left-wingers because I noticed that the audience for Kathleen Turner's one-woman Molly Ivins show, which  recently closed in Philadelphia (and is headed now for DC and later, presumably, Broadway), was made up pretty much entirely of liberals.

Which only makes sense, given that Center City is pretty much made up of liberals.  Still . . .  there are probably some conservatives out there who have given the show a miss because they think it's not for them.

Big mistake. 

The thing to remember about Molly Ivins is that she was a big, brash, vulgar Texan and gloried in it.  She spent most of her life covering  politics in a state that's so Republican that . . .  Well, when she was trying to uncover incidents of gay-bashing in one county, a politician assured her that no gays would come out of the closet there, because if they did people would think they were Democrats.  And all the time she was covering the most extraordinary circus-load of fools and poltroons the Good Lord ever gathered under one big tent, she got along with them just fine.  Because she was funny as hell and a great storyteller.  In Texas, apparently, that trumps politics every day.

So if it's politics that's stopping you from seeing this show, just man up and go.  Kathleen Turner is flat-out wonderful.  The day I went, she got a standing ovation -- and deserved it.  I can pretty much guarantee you'll come out of the theater, thinking, "I'll never understand how a fine woman like that could have the political beliefs she did."

Just so you know.

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