THE NO SIN ZONE

THEATER REVIEW:

“Healthscare!”  — A Republican Road Show

Yesterday, Jesus and I attended a performance of the dramatic sensation that is sweeping the nation: a theater-in-the-unfound production of “Healthscare!“  It’s a boisterous Republican-produced melodrama, currently in out-of-town tryouts, being performed at town hall meetings throughout America. As a parade of amateur actors dutifully recited their tortuous lines of sputtering outrage, performed as a geek chorus, more frenzied chants than coherent dialogue, I nudged my nodding-off Savior and muttered: “Honestly, if I’m going to be amused by such scenery chewing pathos, I’d rather see a sobbing Glenn Beck as Medea!”

During the tediously long review, choreographed crazies erupted on cue every time a politician opens his mouth to talk about healthcare. The dialogue and delivery were so over-wrought and under-thought, before the 67th encore, Jesus and I were reaching for our souvenir talking-points program and jealously eying the exits. Frankly, any corybantic catfight on The Real Housewives of Atlanta has more authenticity — and dignity — than the snarling cue card recitations of the Healthcare Industry Players.  And it’s not as if Jesus is put off by a little psychotic hysteria.  As you will recall, He was recently the first person since 1985 to say “no” to Michael Jackson.

But, speaking of entertainment that has passed its “BEST BY” date, when did American political drama’s plots become so predictable, its scripts so sloppy?  You will be able to predict every word that every character says once the first apoplectic actor has delivered his first angry monologue, so given to simple-minded repetition is the playwright.  According to the monotonous script, every single character hates every single word President Obama says, a dull contrivance that leeches every bit of dramatic suspense from each line, making for a rather dull afternoon of theater! And any hope for a better second act is quickly deflated once you realized that the cast will also hate every single thing the President says in every subsequent scene, no matter what it is he actually winds up saying.

Politics has always been theater. But when did its production values slide so precipitously into a self-indulgent, repetitive chorus that only skirts banality by hinting at insanity? Since our last socialist president, FDR, our ovations have drifted from civic acts to circus acts. When did we go from a president who pretends he can stand to a citizenry that pretends it can’t stand anything?

Now, don’t get us wrong: As American Christians, Jesus and I both believe that when a child gets healthcare, an angel loses its virginity — or, worse, its concealed weapon.  Redirecting dollars from arming bombs to vaccinating arms is clearly the work of a wicked, hateful Socialist Satan! (Or is that a Fascist Fallen Angel?  Honestly, as Republicans, we don’t get all liberal-elite,  fact-obsessed when it comes to what pejorative labels for unfashionable ideologies really mean!)

Nevertheless, this Republican road show of rage, with its cheap set, set script and unsettling cast, needs to close out of town before it reaches that big burlesque theater on Capitol Hill. After all, rednecks who hanker to become unglued in public so that rich people can make even more money off them will always have Dr. Phil! But this tedious traveling show has all the spontaneity of a Tom Cruise remark, the sincerity of a Bachelor or Bachelorette proposal and the restraint of a community theater production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  And just as with community theater, in this vanity production, it seems as if the only people having fun are the screaming hams hogging the stage.

Celebrity deaths are spectator sports. And Michael Jackson’s is the Super Bowl of televised grief. America’s patron saint of wholesome exploitation, Mary Hart, can hardly keep her giddiness in check (“Think of the ratings! But why did they have to die on the same day? Damn you Jesus!”), while other celebrities, from the authentic (Paul McCartney) to the risible (Heidi Pratt), all jump on the exciting news as an opportunity to wring some attention for themselves out of the still warm corpse. And, of course, a mindless seeker of perpetual attention like Ashton Kutcher can be counted upon to Twitter his thumbs into a frenzy as he tries, once again, to insinuate-by-texting himself into any situation that holds the public’s fleeting attention he jealously craves, like a junkie hours from his last fix.

People tried yesterday to work themselves into an emotion that approximated grief when Farrah Fawcett died, but she was a minor star and her death was about as predicable as that of the villain in a bad movie. And before everyone could really begin keening her lost in earnest, she was upstaged, in true Hollywood fashion, by a bigger star with a flashier exit. And so the emotional masturbation begins! Ready yourself for the televised tears and the blogged bathos. Emotions are no longer authentic if they aren’t witnessed. Grief is suspect if it isn’t grand enough to register on digital video. So make way for people to appear in public and parade their inconsolable grief over a stranger, someone they never knew outside the removed lens of celebrity — and its close cousin infamy.

Somewhere in Hell, America’s most famous child molester is smiling. He got out of doing those onerous London concerts he was going to cancel anyway. And he can now sit back and watch the one thing he seemed to prize more than melody: flattery. Michael spent so many years giving himself relentless praise; how happy he must be to have finally done something again that provoked others to join in on the adulation. And his death, unlike the now-scrapped London concerts, will be a hard act to follow.