When being kicked out of a theater is about more than bad manners

I’m not sure why the story of Rep. Lauren Boebert, the Republican from Colorado, getting escorted out of a Denver stage performance of “Beetlejuice” bothers me, and a lot of other people, so much. It’s just a play, right? Musical entertainment. What’s a little raucous behavior when one is having fun?

After all, what did she really do — besides vape in front of a pregnant woman, sing along with the cast, take flash pictures, indulge in a little slap-and-tickle with her date, give the usher the finger and pull the “do you know who I am” card. Plus, followed it up with a chaser of a canned apology.

Well, maybe it was a bit over the top.

Equal Time: An icon’s example inspires conversations and action on reparations

Known for his work in the courtroom and the classroom, Harvard Law School’s Charles J. Ogletree Jr. is being memorialized by the many he mentored, including former President Barack and first lady Michelle Obama. One of his students, civil rights attorney Areva Martin, was particularly inspired by his work to restore the justice historically denied to so many, including the victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

Martin represents more than 700 survivors and descendants of Palm Springs Section 14 in their quest for reparations after their community was racially targeted, burned out and bulldozed by the city of Palm Springs, Calif., in the 1950s and 60s. In this episode of “Equal Time,” Martin, an author, activist, attorney and media personality, joins Mary C. Curtis in a conversation some Americans would rather avoid. Is resolving America’s unpaid debt to many of its citizens necessary before the country can move forward?

America’s two-tiered justice system isn’t new — just don’t talk about it

The Confederate monument outside the courthouse in Gaston County in North Carolina was not erected just after the Civil War ended. Like so many structures the United Daughters of the Confederacy promoted to prop up the lie of the “glorious” Lost Cause, the statue was raised in the early part of the 20th century.

And the intent was clear.

Then-state attorney general and future governor Thomas Bickett, at the 1912 dedication at the monument’s original site, listed what his North Carolina stood for, “the integrity of a whole civilization and a white race,” as reported in the Gastonia Gazette. Bickett praised white supremacy, criticized the right of Black men to vote and justified the Civil War.

Could any Black person entering that courthouse expect justice?

When a new courthouse was built in 1998, the monument was relocated to stand sentry, leaving North Carolinians of every race to wonder how much had really changed? It has been the subject of controversy, but every attempt to remove it, to perhaps assure African-Americans that the justice they receive in that Gaston County courthouse is indeed blind, has been a work in progress, complicated by a North Carolina law passed by a Republican majority legislature in 2015. It prohibits removal of monuments on public property, other than to a place of “similar prominence.”

Gaston County isn’t the only courthouse guarded by a reminder of North Carolina’s Confederate past, yet, raising the specter of observed systemic bias that still might haunt the state’s halls of justice has gotten state Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls in trouble.

The justice who was elected — yes, elected — is one of just two Democrats on the seven-member court, and the only African-American woman, and she is in danger of losing her seat. She is being investigated by the state’s Judicial Standards Commission, the judiciary’s ethical body, for comments she made in the legal journal Law360.com; the investigation could end in sanctions or removal from the bench.

Talking about the need for diverse staff among clerks and court personnel, mentioning out loud her observations that bias may exist in the court system, well, it’s all a step too far for some who have been questioning Earls since she was elected.

Earls took care not to accuse colleagues of any intentional action, merely noting the “implicit biases” we all share. And that the majority of those making oral arguments to the court have been white is just a fact, one that minorities with business before the court can see with their own eyes.

It’s also true that Chief Justice Paul Newby, a Republican, never faced such scrutiny after speaking quite freely about politics and his colleagues. He told an audience in 2019, before he was the chief justice, that Americans who find fault with the country could “just leave.” And in what was seen as a swipe against Earls, who had won a seat on the court, accused the left of spending $1.5 million “to get their AOC person on the court,” as reported in NC Newsline, an apparent reference to New York progressive Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Newby has never recused himself in cases when he has expressed clear opinions about the issue presented to his court. Newby also has come awfully close to endorsing a fellow conservative running for the court, without rebuke.

But North Carolinians who elected Earls are apparently not supposed to notice such double standards.

Ever since Republicans regained the majority on the state Supreme Court, they have revisited issues such as voter ID requirements and redistricting, and there are moves to get the GOP supermajority in the legislature more involved in picking the people who judge the judges.

If it all sounds familiar, you’ve been paying attention to moves across the country, as Republicans find new ways to rid themselves and the voters of duly elected officials whose politics they abhor, with the judiciary being a prime target.

A summer of reflection — and fears of history repeating itself

It is a striking image, a fearless visage staring at the camera while holding a sign with booking number “7053” chest high. “Beautiful rebel” are the words used to describe Rosa Parks on the coaster that I’ve decided will never cushion a bottle or glass.

Another mugshot has made the news this summer though I don’t think even his supporters would label the subject “beautiful.” “Defiant” is the better adjective for the Donald Trump that looks out from the photo taken when he was booked in Fulton County, Ga., the first mug shot of an American president. Controversial? Yes. But after being charged with a litany of felonies that stem from his and his allies’ alleged efforts to reverse Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia, was there a choice?

While it has been impossible to escape the image now gracing X, formerly known as Twitter, T-shirts and more, the first — the quiet, determined woman — has been stripped of its radical origins, if it’s remembered at all by those who praise the former president’s close-up.

When and if children learn about Rosa Parks and her role in the civil rights movement, the lesson is usually recounted through a gauzy lens that portrays her as a respectable seamstress who just got tired one day instead of the tireless NAACP activist whose refusal to move to the back of the bus was an inevitable and deliberate part of a movement, the continuing fight against the social order of segregation, white supremacy and police brutality that ruled the day.

It wasn’t only Parks in the fight. She has been elevated because of America’s tendency to flatten and simplify, to spoon-feed harsh historical truths in a narrative of happily-ever-afters. In fact, the famous Parks mugshot was taken, not in 1955 during her initial arrest, but in February 1956, when Parks and many other activists were targeted by the city in an attempt to break the back of a boycott that was getting results and making Montgomery leaders “uncomfortable.”

Discomfort, though, was part of the rebellion — the only way to change the status quo.

The ceramic square is a souvenir collected during my visit to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, one stop in my summer of visits to civil rights museums, the chance to broaden my own education about American history.

America’s future depends on a truthful reckoning with its past

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

It’s a quote that in some form has been attributed to many and uttered by many more, perhaps because it is so wise and has proven itself again and again.

Unfortunately, anyone who revived the slogan in 2023 would be labeled “woke” in a nanosecond by politicians looking to score points and their followers who prefer to live by another oft-used mantra — “ignorance is bliss.”

The truth is, all the folks attempting to bury the past or slather a cheery coat of Barbie pink over it, the better to hide any unpleasantness, need to go back to school — and fast. And I’m talking real school, not one with Florida’s “why torture, whippings and having your children sold away wasn’t all THAT bad” curriculum.

Taking a seat in the front row should be Republican Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona, who was not even original in his cluelessness during a debate over an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. Insisting on the elimination of any kind of diversity training before authorizing the release of needed funding, Crane said: “The military was never intended to be, you know, inclusive. Its strength is not its diversity, its strength is its standards.”

Besides his racist assumption that diversity and standards are, you know, mutually exclusive, Crane, whether he realized it or not, also repeated the same argument used by those opposed to the integration of the military in 1948. At the time, Army Secretary Kenneth Royall said the Army was not meant to be “an instrument for social evolution,” and sympathized with the Southern white troops who would be forced to fight for democracy next to Americans of a different race.

That did not stop President Harry S. Truman from signing Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948, mandating the desegregation of the U.S. military. Truman was appalled by the treatment of members of the military who fought Nazis and fascism in World War II, only to face violence and discrimination in the country they served. The case of Sgt. Isaac Woodard, beaten and blinded by law enforcement in South Carolina in 1946, particularly moved Truman, a World War I veteran.

Then and now, Royall and Crane insulted Americans of every race who have served with distinction, patriotism and pride, even when the military constructed barriers to impede their ambitions.

Crane’s assignment — forgive the self-promotion — is to listen to the latest episode of my CQ Roll Call podcast “Equal Time,” an interview with retired Adm. Michelle Howard, the first woman to become a four-star officer in the U.S. Navy, the first Black woman to captain a U.S. naval ship and the first woman graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy to become an admiral.

And that’s just for starters.

Truman’s order and subsequent policies opened a path for the talented and dedicated, like Howard. She is part of a program marking the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9981 this week in Washington at the Truman Library Institute.

Extra credit for attendance, Congressman Crane.

GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis continues to earn a failing grade for his support of his state’s revisionist Black history standards. There were echoes of South Carolinian and fellow Yale alum (class of 1804) John C. Calhoun’s defense of slavery as a “positive good” in the Florida governor, whose words judged enslavement as a chance for building character and a resume. Actually, as Gillian Brockell pointed out in The Washington Post, the enslaved weren’t looking for an unpaid internship, but instead, were human beings living full lives before being kidnapped by enslavers anxious to exploit those very skills DeSantis seems to believe they lacked.

Now that he sees doubling down on racism isn’t shoring up his crumbling presidential hopes, DeSantis is dodging accountability, playing the “who, me?” game.

Country singer Jason Aldean picks and chooses when he wants to play that same game, defiant in front of fans when defending his song “Try That in a Small Town,” but playing the innocent when it comes to the backdrop for its incendiary video, Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tenn., site of a notorious lynching of a Black 18-year-old, Henry Choate, in 1927.

If you take them at their word, the millionaire and his team simply didn’t do their homework.

I have to give them credit, though. They along with the songwriters — a bunch of folks not named Aldean — have certainly learned how to make a mediocre song a hit in a divided America.

Can the U.S. military still lead the way on civil rights?

Executive Order 9981. President Harry Truman signed it on July 26, 1948, mandating the desegregation of the U.S. military. As the Truman Library Institute in Washington hosts a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the landmark decision with a civil rights symposium, there are questions, as well.

Some of today’s elected officials have even derided the merit of diversity in the military and as an American value, making it a part of the so-called “culture war.” Yet the order changed the country — and lives.

In a groundbreaking 35-year-career, retired Adm. Michelle Howard was the first woman to become a four-star admiral in the U.S. Navy, the first Black woman to captain a U.S. naval ship and the first woman graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy to become an admiral. In this episode of “Equal Time,” she speaks with host Mary C. Curtis about not only history and her story, but also the importance of diversity in building today’s military — and the way forward.

Do you need to have faith to practice values?

An increasing number of Americans are identifying as “nones,” with no religious affiliation at all, or switching faiths, dissatisfied with the one they knew as children. That is not exactly a revelation. Trust in every sort of institution is sinking. But does that trend signal the end of the world?

To my seatmate on a recent flight, it did. Not that he thought gun violence, political polarization and racism could be solved if everyone started attending weekly services. But organized religion, however flawed, provided a moral structure, a guide for living a decent life, he told me. And the secularization of America leaves too many adrift, missing something of importance as they figure out how to navigate the world’s challenges.

As a churchgoer — intermittent, I admit — I was surprised at the intensity of my pushback, to a stranger, no less. Perhaps I should have been agreeing with him instead of saying, “Wait a minute.” But my reaction was fueled by my recollection of congregations, especially those most faithful in their attendance and outward piety, acting in ways that would make the Jesus in “What Would Jesus Do?” blush.

If anyone thought the house of worship was refuge from such concerns, more about the commandments than political party, that’s not what folks in the pews believe. According to a study from Lifeway Research: “Half of U.S. Protestant churchgoers (50 percent) say they’d prefer to attend a church where people share their political views, and 55 percent believe that to be the case at their congregation already.”

That doesn’t include all religions, but being an insider is balm for many I speak with who seek refuge rather than argument whenever and wherever they worship.

Judging people based on how they fall politically has indeed become an article of faith, even when there would seem to be an easy area of agreement, like, for example, caring for the less fortunate.

But even that baseline is not so reliable.

For instance, I have always admired the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II for speaking up continuously and relentlessly about the poor — from his pulpit, from the streets, during marches and demonstrations, to anyone willing to listen, as I have been in several interviews with him.

On that topic, the good reverend has lots of backing from the Bible, which praises those with little, doing the best they can, giving to others even if they don’t have anything to spare. And though I realize that in some quarters, poverty has become a sign of personal weakness rather than misfortune, I was a little shocked when a tweet on the North Carolina Republican Party’s official account last month called the founding director of the Center for Public Theology & Public Policy at Yale Divinity School, the man who brought together diverse coalitions as part of the Poor People’s Campaign and Moral Monday marches, a “poverty pimp.”

Barber’s apparent offense was appearing with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., at a North Carolina rally on raising the federal minimum wage, a position most Americans favor, according to polls.

Though, in this case, his companion was a progressive democratic socialist senator, Barber walks with anyone who favors his causes, be it a living wage with Sanders or rural hospitals and Medicaid expansion when he joined with a Republican mayor to shine a spotlight on what both deemed an urgent need.

So much for “blessed are the meek.” When racist, demeaning slurs flow so easily (and officially), it’s a signal that disrespect for the clergy is no deal-breaker, especially if there’s a political point to be made.

Just as Barber believes that meeting actual people whose lives are affected by unemployment or a lack of health care is crucial, Utah Republican state Sen. Daniel W. Thatcher has said it was meeting with people affected by anti-trans legislation as well as his work on hate-crime legislation and suicide prevention that led to his opposition to his state’s anti-trans bills, according to The Washington Post.

“I have had people who claim to be Christian reach out to me and tell me that I can’t be a Christian unless I hate certain people,” he said on The New York Times’ “First Person” podcast.

The recent Supreme Court ruling that would now allow a Colorado woman to refuse to provide wedding website services to same-sex couples — if they ever asked — has been both hailed and derided by those who worship under the same spiritual roof.

What has been deemed legal is not always right

Sometimes, the court gets it right.

It did in the case of Bridget “Biddy” Mason, who eventually walked more than 2,000 miles before her journey ended in California, where her enslavers, Robert and Rebecca Smith, held Mason and her children captive in the supposedly “free state.” When she learned of the Smiths’ plan to haul them all to the slave state of Texas, Mason sued. And in 1856, after listening to her testimony in chambers, because Blacks could not testify against whites in court, Judge Benjamin Hayes decided in her favor.

Lucky for her, and for California, since Mason went on to success as a midwife, entrepreneur and philanthropist, establishing day-care centers and the First African Methodist Episcopal (FAME) Church in Los Angeles, which is still in operation.

I was spurred to learn more about her story after reading a tribute in the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati during a recent trip there. Hers is a true-life tale that displays strategic intelligence and agency, and the countless ways society benefits when barriers are removed and innovation and imagination allowed to flourish.

The current U.S. Supreme Court, unlike Judge Hayes, in my opinion, got it terribly wrong in a flurry of decisions it issued last week. Each one, delivered in turn like staccato body blows, punctuated the court majority’s agenda to halt progress and move the country backward.

At the Freedom Center, I spent hours studying the exhibits, repelled by the lengths those in power would go to possess human beings they viewed as property, yet inspired by stories of brave patriots of every race who traveled on all sides of the “law” but always on the path of justice.

What has been deemed legal is not always right.

This country’s highest court has acted ignobly, as in the 1857 Dred Scott decision, in which Chief Justice Roger Taney declared that Black people had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”

And it has been the prodding guide for a recalcitrant nation, as in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, in which it unanimously stated: “The doctrine of separate but equal has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

Pushback has come from those who call out injustice, as Frederick Douglass did after Dred Scott, when he noted: “The Supreme Court of the United States is not the only power in this world. It is very great, but the Supreme Court of the Almighty is greater.”

And negative resistance has persisted, as well, the hallmark of those who would stand in the way, yelling “stop,” as segregationists proved when they used every tool, including violence, to fight Brown.

It wasn’t a surprise when the Supreme Court knocked down the use of race, but nothing else, as one factor among many for colleges and universities deciding which students to admit. Their reasoning ignores how the Harvard of today chooses a class, saving spaces for children of alumni, faculty and donors, those with talents in music or athletics, or from a state with paltry representation, and with a sprinkling of celebrity names moving to the front of the line.

It ignores that any applicant who makes it past review is qualified, and that no school has ever chosen a class based on test scores alone, lest it leave out too many children of the rich and powerful.

But most of all, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the majority on the court ignore America, where race matters — and has always mattered. Instead, as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in brilliant dissent: “With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat.”

In a moment of progress in America, everyone can win

It’s one of those moments that theater fans live for: A performer delivers a monologue or a move or a song that stops the show — literally. Strangers become friends, applauding as one in the dark, all thinking the same thought: “Start writing your Tony Award speech now.”

One of those moments happens when the character of “Lulu” explains her philosophy of life to a gob-smacked conman who has invaded the lives of the citizens of Cobb County in the Broadway musical “Shucked.” (Judgment of the show depends on your tolerance for a relentless stream of puns, many involving corn.)

But on one thing those who have seen the show could agree: Once Alex Newell finished the final notes of “Independently Owned,” it was just a question of when, not if, they would hold Broadway’s most prestigious award, a Tony for best featured actor in a musical. Newell, who identifies as non-binary, said at the recent awards show: “Thank you for seeing me, Broadway.” Mom got a shout-out as well, “for loving me unconditionally.”

It was a scene that triggered cheers in the house and some jeers in other quarters, predictable in a time when red states are rushing to pass laws to restrict the rights of non-binary Americans.

But it shouldn’t have, at least not from the folks who bleat about the loss of meritocracy in America. They should be applauding, too, because, with all due respect to the talented nominees, the best person won.

All the reactions to history-making scenes surface the hypocrisy of those afraid of an America they increasingly do not recognize. The so-called changing country has always been there, just hiding — well, forced to hide. And that worked, unless you were the one in the closet or at the back of the bus.

If you were someone with a race, gender, creed or identity who was barred from jobs, schools and neighborhoods or the Broadway spotlight, you spent so much time worrying about presenting a non-threatening façade — with the stakes often your survival — not much energy was left for living out your wildest dreams.

Trump indictment: When always striving for ‘more’ turns toxic

It’s an exchange I remember, one that instantly stuck while watching the 2017 movie “All the Money in the World,” a version of the kidnapping and ransom saga of the grandson of J. Paul Getty, a man wealthy beyond measure. A hired middleman, watching Getty haggle as the young man’s life is at stake, proclaiming he has “no money to spare,” incredulously asks: “What would it take for you to feel secure?” Getty, portrayed by the brilliant Christopher Plummer, answers with one word: “More.”

I recalled that scene as real-life events, as startling as any movie plot, have played out. Just this week, a former president of the United States appeared in a Florida courtroom to answer to federal charges that he hoarded classified documents in his Mar-a-Lago home, hedged about having them and refused to give them back.

Like any other person accused of criminal conduct, Donald Trump is awarded the presumption of innocence. The grand jury that indicted him was made up of fellow citizens, and his ultimate fate will be in the hands of the same.

But the crimes presented in the indictment issued by federal prosecutors are serious, and what we already know is astounding.

So, why? Why jeopardize national security by allegedly stashing classified documents in unsecured areas in a ballroom, a storage area and, in one weird instance, a bathroom adorned with an enormous chandelier? (No one ever said that wealth bestows good taste.)

Even those who adore Trump would have to admit the man is not known as a reader, so I doubt he wanted to catch up on information he neglected while “president-ing.”

Isn’t this a man who gained the ultimate prize?

While Trump lost his reelection bid, something he never accepted, the former president scaled heights unknown to most people on the planet. Maybe he might be a bit insecure because his business success needed a boost from his dad — though, even then, he acted as though it was his due. Trump became a television star in a world where celebrity is admired and often worshipped. He was elected to the top office in the United States, stood as a global leader, with all the powers that come with the titles.

Did he still want “more?”