And I don't much care for the Electoral College

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Hello Minnesota Playlist readers, I'll be your substitute editor for the next few months but I want you to treat me like your regular editor. No, we can't have Playlist outside. I see on Twitter there's a big election coming up between a Communist from Kenya and a Mormon dog torturer. So, for the next month, I'll be highlighting articles about politics and theater. We can talk about Aristophanes and Brecht, Arthur Miller and Vaclav Havel. We'll explore the whole range of political philosophies among theater folk, all the way from sort of liberal to very liberal. I think we'll have some interesting discussions. Now, I know political discussions can be frustrating. And I think we in the theater understand better than most why this is. We know that being human means that reason follows feelings. We just feel stuff! And then we come up with all kinds of reasons to justify what we feel. It doesn't make a lot of sense to disinherit your favorite daughter just because she was a little bitch at the big divide-up-the-kingdom ceremony, but reason not the need! (King Lear, opening soon at Park Square.) We feel stuff! My dad was one of the smartest, kindest men I've ever known. He was also a conservative Republican. I'm sure he would have liked his son to be a conservative Republican, too, but I couldn't do it. In my gut, my sympathies always went the other way. I tried. I, along with ninety percent of my classmates at Lakeville Elementary School in Neenah, Wisconsin, voted for Richard Nixon in a landslide 1972 mock election. Maybe it was the sense of betrayal at Watergate - the televised hearings meant I couldn't watch Gilligan's Island for weeks! - but that was the last time I voted for a Republican. So vote for whoever you want. Really. If you vote for the Republican, I'll know it's because he feels like the better choice and not because you're stupid or evil. And if I vote for the Democrat, I'll trust you to understand that it's because that feels right to me and not because I'm naïve or hate America. Let's all vote and try to think the best of each other. We're two sides of the same team. We need each other. You can't win only with offense. (Go Pack!) Then there are Minnesota's proposed constitutional amendments. I can understand a fellow citizen's vote for Romney, but these things are awful. VOTE NO!
John Middleton

John Middleton, belovèd Twin Cities actor and unhappy news aggregator.