Is for the continuance of suicide bombing. This piece reporting on the latest announcements from the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, makes it perfectly clear that Arafat sees no reason to surrender the one weapon – however grotesque – that still gives him leverage. None of this is particularly bad news, however, for the war on terror. Having Arafat more clearly seen by the world as an enthusiast for terrorism – especially the current brutal, suicidal form – can only help our case in the end. Having Israel continue its incursion into the West Bank can likewise only help intelligence efforts with regard to the terrorist network, sponsored by Iraq, Iran and Syria. The current round of largely meaningless diplomacy achieves what the Bush administration needs it to achieve: nothing. I just hope none of this has in any way delayed or hampered the military planning for Iraq. First things first. If and when Arafat sees his paymasters are under dire threat, he may change his tune. Until then, the art of pursuing the impossible while hoping for stalemate is the order of the day. Colin Powell looks like he’s following instructions quite nicely, thank you. Oh and can we please retire immediately the term ‘homocide bomber?’ It’s largely superfluous and omits the key, if horrifying, element of the new terrorism: the use of young, impressionable men and women as human bombs. If we don’t like ‘suicide bombers,’ how about ‘suicide killers?’
THE OLD NEW GORE: How obtuse is Al Gore? It takes amazing cojones after one of the most execrable campaigns in modern times to get back in the ring with the aplomb he demonstrated in Florida. But his timing is exquisite as usual. When 80 percent of Democrats believe he shoujld refrain from direct attacks on a war-time president, Gore gives a shrill, McAuliffe-like partisan address. No doubt, the need to appeal to his party base skews Gore to the left. But I think it’s worth considering that this is where Gore now is. His long years preparing for coronation were peppered with moderate stances – on economics, race, foreign policy, even the environment, where, despite his New Age book, his record as veep was barely distinguishable from a moderate Republican’s. But since the 2000 convention, Gore has come out as an unreconstructed leftist. He backs strong affirmative action, he describes American economic issues in purely left-populist terms, he is a captive of liberal interest groups, backing the agenda of the NAACP, NARAL and the no-enemies-to-the-left gay rights group, the Human Rights Campaign. This is the real Gore, on the assumption that such a creature exists independent of bare-knuckled ambition. Fair enough. Let him run from the Left. But what this merely proves is that those of us who supported Gore for years as a moderate Democrat were essentially manipulated and lied to. Hence our hostility today. If this “new Gore” is the real Gore, what does that say about the Gore of the 1980s and 1990s? At least Richard Nixon had a modicum of political talent. And at least Bill Clinton rarely governed from the old left.
BACK TO BARAK: His plan still makes the most sense. Fight terror, never negotiate with terror, and build a wall. If Bush is smart, he’ll put whatever weight the U.S. still has in this matter behind the Barak agenda. And let the Arab dictators deal with the aftermath.
UNRAVELING BENEDICK: It’s been a grueling weekend of tech rehearsals, i.e. standing around waiting for production people to cue the sounds and lights. Two twelve hour days of almost continuous grind. Nevertheless, all the gaps give you a chance to hammer the lines into your head and also think some more about your character. I’m glad to say I haven’t seen any productions of “Much Ado About Nothing.” I rented the movie in good faith but never got past the first scene. Kenneth Branagh, alas, drives me up the wall. I’d also never read the play thorougly before I signed up for the Washington Shakespeare Company production, so I started trying to figure out Benedick from scratch. He is known, of course, as a classic romantic character, whose tempestuous and often very acerbic relationship with Beatrice is a deliciously arch and adult mirror to Romeo and Juliet. In most readings, Benedick’s heterosexuality is therefore a given. But the script is far more ambiguous. He is a ‘confirmed bachelor,’ unmarried into middle age, he harbors an attitude toward women that is alternately sexually forward “as being a professed tyrant to their sex,” and dismissive, vowing never to contaminate his life with marriage. Beatrice, who knows him well, makes obvious and crude references to his homosexual leanings in the very first scene of the play. He is “a man to a man,” someone who variably has a new young male companion on his shoulder. Throughout the play, his excessive and rhetorical hostility to the whole idea of marriage is exactly the kind of smoke-screen a homosexual passing as a heterosexual deploys to disguise his true feelings. Indeed, the whole armor of emotional protection that guards Benedick throughout the play is uncannily reminiscent of the contortions gay people have performed for centuries to survive with a modicum of dignity in a heterosexually-dominated world.
BUT IS HE GAY? Yet at the same time, thinking of Benedick as a contemporary gay man is as flawed as seeing him as a classically uncomplicated straight guy. His emotional conflicts, while more comprehensible if seen through the prism of his homosexual orientation, are also intelligible without it. Maybe he’s just scared of intimacy, as most men – gay or straight – are. He clearly loves Beatrice, who is, after all, a woman (and a terrifically funny and sexy one too). Yet he is more comfortable expressing this love in verbal combat than physical proximity. He’s terrified of commitment – but in a way that surpasses the entire issue of orientation. He’s also created by a man who lived in an era where the very rigid concepts of ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ didn’t explicitly exist. What I’m finding, of course, is that, by acting him, I have to make up my mind about his fundamental orientation, and yet find a way to express the sexual ambiguity and emotional complexity that Shakespeare clearly wanted his audience to reflect upon. In the end, what Shakespeare’s comedy has helped me understand is how humanity ultimately transcends gay or straight. The questions of love and sex, marriage and freedom, commitment and relationship, go beyond sexual orientation. I’ve long believed this in the abstract. But acting this part has helped me internalize it again in a whole new way – and, when all is said and done, to find it, as Shakespeare obviously did, one of God’s deepest and funniest jokes.
The Dish 