Brickbat: It's a Sin to Kill a Mockingbird

In Wisconsin, just hours before the curtain was to go up on Shorewood High School's production of "To Kill a Mockingbird," Superintendent Bryan Davis canceled the performance. Some parents complained of the play's use of the n-word, and some local residents reportedly planned to protest the play.

Comments

[Rat on a train]

Cast blacks in all the roles that use the slur.

[Will Nonya]

In Wisconsin?

[Woody Chip Hurrrrr?]

Cast some of the protestors -- if they aren't black, they must at least self-identify as black. Where's what's-her-name who used to lead that NAACP chapter? Star material!

[MatthewSlyfield]

"Where's what's-her-name who used to lead that NAACP chapter?"

She's not in/from Wisconsin.

[RoyMo]

No it was Spokane and she covered North Idaho too. It is nothing like Shorewood, but then nothing really is.

Btw, Milwaukee may be the most racist place in America.

[Woody Chip Hurrrrr?]

She can self-identify from Wisconsin, no?

[MatthewSlyfield]

No, Wisconsin officially denies her.

[RoyMo]

You pick the one you probably have, then you use photoshop to duplicate them, it worked for UW-Madison.

[Dan S.]

Are they that afraid of a few protesters? The school went over the context in which the word is used repeatedly, they should have the courage of their convictions and proceed with the performance as planned. If a few people picket, that's American too, and can be one more thing they discuss after the show.

Canceling the show also plays into the hands of the "Believe all women" crowd. I hope in all those discussions the school had about the context and continued relevance of the play, someone brought up that it provides an example of why women accusers of men shouldn't always and automatically be believed, but that might be asking too much. "Reverse intersectionality" anyone? Anyway, I still like the parody of "The Maltese Falcon" called "The Tequila Mockingbird".

[This Machine Chips Fascists]

Prediction, before too long people will forget what The N Word actually is. Drama queens, having shifted all their animus on to the letter N, will then seek its suppression and replacement. The era of of The Tilted Z Word approaches.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Prediction: America's vestigial bigotry will continue to fade as the liberal-libertarian alliance continues to win (and conservatives continue to lose) the culture war. Educated, decent Americans will continue to remember how bigots conducted themselves.

[Woody Chip Hurrrrr?]

That's not even a good parody of OBL. Weak, weak, weak.

[Cynical Asshole]

The Rev isn't a parody of anything. Except maybe itself.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Does that mean people will be allowed to perform the play as written or that they won't want to put on the play at all?

[RoyMo]

You would think you would do well in Shorewood, but they would quickly turn on you once they found out you posted here.

[This Machine Chips Fascists]

Funny. RALK is a mass of social and cultural bigotries. Passive aggressive to its core, it is totally lacking in self awareness.

[Fuck you, Shikha (Nunya)]

Thus failing the Turing test?

[Don't look at me!]

A poorly constructed bot.

[An Non]

I don't know, RALK certainly sounds like your average American liberal...

[Miter Broller]

And what happens when these puffballs are foisted into the real world outside the protective walls and safe spaces erected for them by their helicopter parents and school administrators?

[Think It Through]

College administration, antifa, Elizabeth Warren supporters, goat yoga instructors.....the possibilities in the modern world are endless.

[Fist of Etiquette]

[Patience] Phillips, who objected to the use of the word, said the play would have had the same impact without using the word.

"I don't think anyone would have gone home upset because they didn't get to hear the n-word," she said. "You can still get the point across."

The point that censorship of literature is the best way to educate and inform?

[Fist of Etiquette]

"Us doing the word without the show without the word, we felt like we couldn't really tell the story," said castmember Zeze, who did not want her last named used.

"And when using that word we were really trying to be considerate and telling them this is not something to hurt you," said Nimya. "I'm in show, I'm black and I'm not getting offended but I guess that still wasn't clear."

Nimya for superintendent.

[Jerryskids]

Thank God at least they didn't try staging a performance of 'A Streetcar Named Desire' with its insinuation that people with mental illnesses are something to amuse and entertain us or 'Oklahoma!" with its portrayal of white people as shallow and vapid freaks liable to break into song and dance at the drop of a hat or 'Fiddler on the Roof' with no safety warnings that these are trained actors and you should never attempt fiddling on the roof at home. Everything's problematic and I'm sure next year's class play can be shut down over threats of protests no matter how silly, if we only strive hard enough to be offended.

[Woody Chip Hurrrrr?]

Springtime For Hitler would do a student body good.

[Fuck you, Shikha (Nunya)]

But can you still find labensborn to play the roles?

[Rat on a train]

Finding LSD is the real problem.

[Cynical Asshole]

'Oklahoma!" with its portrayal of white people as shallow and vapid freaks liable to break into song and dance at the drop of a hat

That would have been fine. Anything that makes white people look bad is doubleplusgood.

[Inigo Montoya]

Remember religious nutters protesting Willem Dafoe's Last Temptation of Christ without even having seen it or working to get Harry Potter books banned from libraries because, as a wizard, "he MUST be satanic?"

At the time, I was a young person on the left-wing side, pointing and laughing at these rubes, much like the Rev does today.

And now here we are today, with the left-wing mouth-breathers protesting a story that is famous for its ANTI-racism, but they are too illiterate to realize it.

The sad truth is that both camps are a bunch of idiots. Benighted statists who blindly follow the illogical and inconsistent dogma foisted on them by power-hungry bigots that declare themselves leaders.

I hope more people wake up and think for themselves rather than being "woke" and delegating their thinking. Read the damn book or at least watch the film before you condemn it as racist, morons!

[Jerry B.]

Oh, come on. They're protesting To Kill A Mockingbird because it insinuates that a woman accusing a man of rape could be lying.

[Fuck you, Shikha (Nunya)]

I didn't even think of that angle. You might be on to something there.

[Longtobefree]

I have seen the phrase "n-word" used repeatedly for years now. Given the ever changing truths of social justice, is that still nigger?
And if so, how does that one character string become the only unspeakable one? All other racial, religious, and national slurs are still repeated, even if just in condemnation. Yet that one set of letters is somehow now the unpardonable sin.

The real terror of the book 1984 was not the pervasive surveillance, it was newspeak.

[Rat on a train]

The n-word is ni.

[Enjoy Every Sandwich]

"We are the knights who say...NI!"

[Inigo Montoya]

Bring me a shrubbery!

[Cynical Asshole]

Cut down the largest tree in the forest with... A HERRING!

[Bubba Jones]

Nagger.

[Conchfritters]

You're now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.

[Bretzky]

The fact that the term "n-word" is used here undermines the idea that this act is somehow shocking.

[lap83]

If you want your kids to learn anything besides how to be offended, homeschooling is probably your best bet

[Cynical Asshole]

Some parents complained of the play's use of the n-word, and some local residents reportedly planned to protest the play.

You wonder why so many kids are such fragile snowflakes? The apples snowflakes don't fall far from the tree.

[Eddy]

I thought the complaint was that it has the hero be a white savior figure, rather than having the black guy act on his own behalf.

Anyway, it was cutting-edge in the 60s when there were actually communities explicitly organized on white-supremacist Jim Crow lines.

Nowadays, although white supremacism, and other varieties of racism, have not exactly been rooted out of the human heart, racial issues have taken on (so to speak) a somewhat different complexion.

[Tony]

It's so cute how people think they need to protect young people from classic books while those same young people have access to Trans Black Gangbang Part IX any time they want.

[Longtobefree]

Or - - -
Maybe it is not about the damn kids at all, but about power hungry adults frolicking in the political arena?

[Deconstructed Potato]

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite books. It's very powerful. Kids can learn so much that's important about humanity. So much that is absent from what claims to be righteous and just these days.