Tony Kushner

Tony Kushner and his partner, writer Mark Harris, are headed to California for a marriage license. [Intelligencer]

Heather Mills has reportedly been invited to do Celebrity Apprentice because Donald Trump likes her. [P6]

New York Ranger-turned-Vogue intern Sean Avery attended R.E.M.'s concert at Madison Square Garden on Thursday wearing all black and a newsboy cap. A "spy" said, "he looked like he was straight out of a 1998 J.Lo. video." [P6]

Cynthia Nixon didn't have breast augmentation surgery as was reported by Page Six (and linked by Daily Transom) last week. She was at the hospital for a check-up following the removal of her breast cancer.  read more »

At around 7:45 p.m. on Monday, April 28, writer Carl Bernstein was mingling at the cocktail hour before the PEN Literary Awards at the Museum of Natural History, Coca Cola in hand, looking very healthy. “I ride a bike and listen to a lot of music,” he said. “I mostly listen to classical but also rock.  read more »

He's O.K., Everyone!    read more »

He's O.K., Everyone!  read more »

A few words about the wayward production of Mother Courage and Her Children in the Park, starring Me  read more »

A few words about the wayward production of Mother Courage and Her Children in the Park, starring Me  read more »

One job I appointed myself to upon returning from Israel was that of trying to acquaint Americans, and especially American Jews, with a sense of Israel as a real country and not a dream state. Most American Jews have not been to Israel, and their views of the country are based on the same images I had before I went: Leon Uris's Exodus, the '67 War, kibbutzes, Moshe Dayan's eyepatch, Abba Eban's speeches, etc.

Tony Kushner tried to break the spell for me a few months back when he said that American Jews' idea of Israel was a "fantasy built on a delusion." The delusion was the lack of understanding that creating the country in the first place had involved ethnic cleansing in 1948 (all those Palestinian refugees), while the fantasy was the belief that Israel wasn't really a foreign country, but some kind of aching Jewish dream of a homeland and a refuge, forever in peril from the evil Arabs.

Now that I have seen what Kushner meant, two ways I've tried to correct the image as a journalist is to describe how militarized Israeli society is and how out of touch with Arabs the Israelis are, if they're not downright racist. Two problems that I would guess bedevil other nationalist countries. For Israel is a very nationalist place. Doesn't prize diversity.

This is all by way of introducing a link. It's become a minor scandal in Israel that on July 12, the day the war broke out following Hizbollah's lethal raid, the Israeli Defence Forces chief of staff, Gen. Dan Halutz, sold stock worth about $25,000. In other words, as war councils were being convened and Halutz was publicly vowing to take Lebanon 20 years back, he was also calling his broker to sell a portfolio. Halutz has confirmed the deal, but blasted the leak.

This incident should be laid side by side with New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler's statement that when the war broke out, he felt just as he felt in June 1967, that Israel was in a war for its very existence. Nadler's fear is widely shared in America. But the two facts show the difference between the real state of Israel and the fantasy state. In the real state, the top general so takes for granted the future existence of Israel that he has time to call up his broker during the outbreak of hostilities with a neighboring militia. In the fantasy state, an American congressman has a vision of a heroic homeland being smashed to bits by the Arabs. Americans need a reality check.

The mortal danger of all the political theater I’ve seen this season is whether it preaches pointl  read more »

The mortal danger of all the political theater I’ve seen this season is whether it preaches po  read more »

Alexander Cockburn, in the latest Nation, tells the story of the first time he wrote about Israeli violence against the Palestinians—yes, in retaliation for (lesser) Palestinian violence—and it was removed from the Village Voice, in 1973, in an "unwonted act of censorship" by the Voice's founder and then-editor Dan Wolf. Cockburn's moving piece underscores two points: 1, Even Jews on the left (like myself) have deep internal struggles over how much to criticize Israel. Tony Kushner explained this point to me in the Nation earlier this year, when he described the agony that he experienced over his film Munich, the feeling that he might be aiding antisemites. 2, When Mearsheimer and Walt talk about a pro-Israel lobby as a very wide and loose group of people sharing certain interests, they made the smart point of including censorship of pro-Palestinian views by influential editors. This is further data.

I went home for Passover yesterday and felt guilty. I feel close to my family but little closeness to my tribe. I am less Jewish than I have ever been, and certain statements I have made in the last year, both out loud and in my head, about my problem with religion, about official Judaism countenancing the treatment of the Palestinians, seem to have dissolved some of the knots that held me close. Saying the words of the Passover seder, I did not feel the thrill I sometimes feel. I wondered, Who is this story for? Whose lives does it apply to? When we say, Next year in Jerusalem, what does it mean that Israel controls all of Jerusalem, with the holy sites so meaningful to so many different tribes? I was silenter than I've ever been at a seder. I pulled faces for my nephew, next to me, and made him laugh, but more often I felt suffocated by selfish Jewish concerns and troubled by the knowledge that I have broken not a faith, I don't know that I ever had much, but like a blood oath to a people.

There is a portion of the seder text that talks about how the different sons respond to the story. There is the wise son, the contrary son, the simple son and so forth, each of them talking to his dad. The point of this episode is that you are supposed to be the wise son, who asks of his father, Why did the Lord do this for me? The contrary son asks, Why did the Lord do this for you? Excluding himself. It struck me last night that I am the contary son. I might wish that it was otherwise, and indeed the seder text seems to suggest that a kid might choose. But I have made my choices and am now having to live with them. It's not that I regret them, but I do feel guilty and awful about some of the consequences. Yet I feel that in the Seder text there is even some room for the contrary son. He has his place. The father may be upset about it, but he has his place.  read more »

For me, the most disturbing aspect of the craven postponement of the production of My Name Is Rachel  read more »

Wednesday 18thMay is the new April!  read more »

We have much to discuss!  read more »

I'm still bitter about Michael Kelly's death.  read more »

Wednesday 7thWake up, New Yorkers!  read more »

Who are the 2004 Media Mensches of the Year?Just a couple of showbiz big shots, Mike Nichols and Ton  read more »

My favorite Jewish homosexual socialist playwright, Tony Kushner, is on a roll, and we are glad.  read more »

Caryl Churchill's Far Away at New York Theatre Workshop is a major event that, at a little over 50 m  read more »

I can't imagine a more significant or touching time at the theater than the three nights I've just s  read more »

How wonderful, in my line of work, to be able to usher in the NewYear by celebrating Tony Kushner's  read more »

Here are my eagerly awaited Theater Awards of the Year. Remember, the only rules are no rules.  read more »