NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the Comey hearings and the Corbyn election. A little comedy, a little tragedy, though it's hard to tell one from the other.

I was going to get back on the Public Theater's Julius Caesar, which I covered earlier in the week, because the conservative nonsense campaign against it appears to have got some sponsors to withdraw, but the way things are going I suspect I'll have many opportunities to revisit the subject in the near future.

UPDATE. Oh, the international wingnut bitterness over Corbyn is something to behold. Here, from Australia's Spectator: "Thirteen reasons Jeremy Corbyn is a scumbag and a moral midget." That's givin' 'em what they want! My fave: "9 He loves anti-Western propaganda." But the UK Spectator edition's no slouch, either, with a deliciously passive-aggressive-mostly-aggressive "Intolerant liberals have a new target: the DUP" from Brendan O'Neill. Sample: "Look, I know this is inconvenient, and you’d prefer it if everyone in the country was a carbon copy of you and your lovely friends, but some people out there are religious." Also, opposing the Right O'Life Party is, like everything else liberals do, How You Got Trump:

...those people always looking for an outlet for their outsized sense of moral superiority cannot resist the temptation to pontificate against Others. Against ‘deplorables’, in Hillary’s words. Against the backward. Against — let’s not sugar-coat it — the inferior.

Talking smack about assholes: It's like the gas chambers, only with words! Speaking of which, I suppose I should do my part by noting the dumbest bit from the wingnut war on Shakespeare, provided by Legal Insurrection's Leslie Eastman:

I hate to be a stickler for the trivialities of real history, but I would like to remind the cast, crew, and producers of this particular Julius Caesar that the victim was a populist much loved by the citizens of Rome. Furthermore, after a rousing and subtle speech by Caesar’s second-in-command, the “hero” assassins were forced to flee the eternal city and eventually died in shame and ignominy.

That's right -- she thinks the actors and director didn't notice that in Julius Caesar, assassination is a Bad Thing. Or she pretends to think so -- Eastman can apparently write complete if not graceful sentences, so she's probably not dumb enough to believe it. I'd wager most of them aren't that dumb. They just know what works; let the smart guys lose.