HAMILTON, AND LETTERS TO THE WASHINGTON POST

November 23, 2016
by Ken Berwitz
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The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell has written an essay suggesting that Vice President-to-be Michael Pence showed up at the performance of “Hamilton” hoping that he would be flayed by the audience and cast, because it would deflect away from what a sack of manure Donald Trump is.

In other words, Ms. Rampell believes that the audience’s boorishness and the cast’s lecture were exactly what the Trump people wanted.

Not surprisingly – certainly not if you’ve read Ms. Rampell’s previous work – her essay is also peppered with insulting attacks on Trump, Pence and the people who voted for them.

At this point I usually would be putting up excerpts of what I am talking about.  But in this case, I am not doing so; I am only providing a link, at the beginning of this blog, for anyone who wants to read the entire piece.

What I will show you instead, is a fully representative sampling of the first grouping of reader comments I came across.

As you read them, please keep in mind that Washington Post reader comments are almost always vastly sympathetic to the kinds of views offered by Ms. Rampell.

With that in mind, here they are:

-So cute the cast thought they were “diverse” when none of them voted like 47% of Americans voted. Liberals in a bubble.
-So, it’s okay for non-whites to play the role of whites, but anathema for whites to play the role of non-whites. Funny old world, this modern-day liberal bubble.
-For another brilliant gem from Rampbell, check out all her credibility here: Farewell-Dear Donald Trump An Ode to the Medias Frenemy”
-Nothing like getting hectored while attending a play. 
-How about (Hamilton actor Brandon Victor Dixon’s) sexist, misogynist, racist date rape tweet?http://truthfeed.com/breaking-hamilton-actor-who-l… Was that dignified and respectful too?
-Shock and surprise. Our Catherine used to work at the NY Times. The echo chamber has a hiring network.
-Uh huh. If people booed Obama, or publicly lectured him, it would be racist. If Hillary, it would be sexist. If any Democrat, it would be intolerant fascism. But not only is absolutely any behavior just fine if directed at a conservative by one of The Good People, this little twit actually thinks the Vice President elect went to a theater hoping to solicit boos? Dear god, is there no limit to the unhinged hallucinations you people will come up with? And the Washington Post actually prints this? Utterly deranged.
-Sheesh! This is leftwingnut conspiracy at it’s most lunatic. Do liberal/progressive journalists stay up at night fantasizing about this stuff? Surely they have better things to do.  
-It’s not Trumpian conspiracy, it’s liberal/progressive lack of manners and common courtesy, it’s all politics all the time, it’s their inability to believe that they have been repudiated in the most unmistakable terms, that they’re misguided, wrong, mistaken in their beliefs.  
Their attitude is informed by their behavior, riots in the streets, attacks on cops and, to a lesser degree, actors behaving as though they were consequential and competent political analysts and observers of the social scene.
-“This, I fear, will be the central challenge of mounting an effective opposition to Trump in the years ahead. Like Silvio Berlusconi, Trump has an uncanny instinct for setting off a “Pavlovian reaction among his leftist opponents,” as economist Luigi Zingales recently put it, which only strengthens him.” OH, REALLY? … I wonder if Rampell and WaPo were equally concerned when any criticism of Obama, no matter how valid, was discredited as ipso facto “racist”? The answer is HELL, NO. 
-Of course! Trump is such a genius he’s right now plotting the next time progressives publicly soil the bed. That or perhaps they just do that naturally like clockwork. As JW Booth complained about another Republican theater imbroglio: “He set me up!”
Does that grouping of comments – again, from Washington Post readers who are vastly pro-Democrat and were vastly pro-Clinton throughout this campaign –  tell you anything?  Does it tell Catherine Rampell anything?  Does it tell the Washington Post anything?
Probably not…which is too bad for every one of them.

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