I like comedy shows, but I think twice before going because of the great “what if?” that attendance provokes.
Avoidance of being called on as the foil and target of the comic/performer in a live show is entirely dependent on remaining invisible. This is important to me because being selected out of an audience for mandatory participation is one of my greatest fears.
I have a strategy. It has been flawless for 50 years. There is a secret known to any person who has ever performed on a lit stage in front of an audience: the speaker can’t see the audience. The vista is blacked out, invisible, unseen and impenetrable. It is this knowledge that has been the basis for my invisibility strategy. All that is required is sitting beyond the first few rows.
I knew I was done the moment I sat down. There were no seats whatsoever in the Pilgrim Playhouse where I had gone to laugh with the good-natured crowd in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Actually, there were just two – in the third row, dead center. There was no hope of being unseen, and on top of that, I was wearing a red shirt – the first I had ever owned. I was a fish in the barrel.
Ms. Richfield 1981 took command of the stage with an experienced glide. She was there to talk about cancel culture, which she learned about during Covid. She wanted to join. Who wouldn’t?
The audience was divided into three sections. I was called forward from the middle section and rendered speechless by Ms. Richfield 1981’s question. She asked what I did for a living – a simple question to which I was completely unresponsive and frozen. It was clear to me that Ms. Richfield did not recognize me, and therefore I might get away with being unseen by the broader audience. It was in the middle of a personal verbal system meltdown that would have shamed an electromagnetic pulse when I heard the first voice.
“It’s Steve Schmidt!”
Then there were more chants of same. There I was, outed, center stage at my second drag show of the week in P-town.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Ms. Richfield 1981 called me up to play a game called “Right or Racist?” She handed me a paddle emblazoned on one side with the word “Racist,” and on the other side with “Right.” The game was at hand, and the responsibility for Group 2 voting was mine alone. We prevailed. The decisive question at hand saw Group 2 stand alone on the facts of Korean dog meat consumption. My teenagers, part of the Group 3 losers, questioned whether it was the wisdom of the leader or the leader’s group!
In the end, Ms. Richfield 1981 made the point that laughing at one another and appreciating the mosaic of differences in this mighty land has made America a beacon for tolerance and differences.
This is an important point. It is what has made America the most prosperous and free society in world history. The country is powerful because it is made up of the greatest diversity of human beings and their talents in world history. It is a country in which every known language is routinely spoken every day; where citizenship is an inheritance that vests with obligation and responsibilities, including service as a trustee of the inheritance. Guarding, preserving and expanding liberty are the purpose of the American ideal and idea. Ms. Richfield 1981 understands this. It’s what makes her a good American.
There was a telling moment in the previous performance in which Miss Conception dazzled an audience, filled with families, old people, gay people, straight people, white people and black people. She made a joke that drew an uneven laugh. It didn’t make sense to the younger people in the crowd when she remembered jokingly, though a bit lamentably, when the crowd would have been universally gay. Such is the price of expanding freedom.
It is the recognition that laughter, joy, sadness, happiness, sorrow and misery are universal. This is what we share in common. When people who are separated by preconceptions and prejudices get to know each other, the cartoons and caricatures disappear. What remains is the possibility of friendship, laughter and shared patriotism.
P-town is a special place. It is the end of the line, and was the spot that all of the “different” people were pushed towards. It is where they gathered. It is the transcendent anchorage of the Mayflower. The tallest granite structure in the Western hemisphere marks the accomplishments of the Pilgrims. The staircase to the top cuts past etched walls where the names and founding dates of towns like Halifax, Boston, Salem, Concord, Lexington and more unfurl from the place where American civilization grew and spread. This is the spot that sparked a tradition of majority rule, the rule of law, the American Revolution and the abolitionist movement.
The Pilgrims dreamed of freedom, and though the version of freedom that exists in 2022 Provincetown would have startled them it would likely have pleased them when they had time to digest it all. That is the nature of progress on the march towards justice. The largely LGBTQ+ audience, but including a score of straight couples and families, laughed riotously together at the gifted performers. They delivered joyful benedictions about tolerance and our shared humanity with cutting commentary and wry observations about our shared burdens of having to deal with stupidity, intolerance and malice all mixed together. The other thing that the audience shared was the coloring of their star spangled, red, white and blue attire.
My next stop was Orange Beach, Alabama. My daughters wanted to see Morgan Wallen in concert, and so we went. I love traveling. I have been lucky enough to spend time in 49 out of our 50 states and all of our territories. We packed up from P-town and headed south.
There was an edge at the Wallen concert that had nothing to do with music or joy. It was the intrusion of politics with an air of menace into a country music concert on July 4th weekend. It wasn’t caused by Wallen, who wasn’t yet on stage but by a drunken imbecile who repeatedly started the chant of “ Fuck Joe Biden.”
It happened. Weak and rude people joined in. Most were drunk as skunks. It would be easy to caricature the entire crowd. Certainly, it is the lazy thing and thus easiest thing to do. The rudeness, belligerence and stupidity can break out anywhere in 2022 America, just like the crack of the first rounds exploding from an AR-15 aimed at the head of an innocent citizen by an evil one. It is interesting that the majority is eclipsed by the belligerent minority in the same way that evil seems to eclipse good when it is relentlessly present and fiercely nurtured by terrible people and causes. The majority of people were happy and good, and most all of them would likely have loved the show in P-town too. They were also dressed in red, white and blue.
I spent July 4th at the Flora-Bama, the legendary watering hole on the Florida-Alabama line. The musicians were jamming, the booze was flowing. Americans of all shapes and sizes were floating in the warm Gulf water. I watched three men gathered around a Yeti 110 in chest-deep water amidst two foot surf for six hours without returning to shore. It was proof, as if any were ever needed that we are an indomitable people. Good luck seeing something like that on the French or Italian Riviera.
It seemed a long way from P-town, but then again it didn’t.
America is a beautiful land with a complicated history that is unique in all the history of the world. We all share a destiny as Americans.
American society is not the sum of the worst amongst us. Freedom should mean freedom for everyone. If you ever need a laugh or a refresher about tolerance in America there are worse places to start than P-town and the Flora-Bama. Anyone who gets up on a dias and tells one group of Americans to be against another group of Americans is someone who hates America.
Most Americans want a way through the madness. The overwhelming majority is fed up and sick and tired. They are the “exhausted majority” and the central unknowable question in American life is will they quit or fight.
It is hard to believe that quitting the cause of expanding freedom, opportunity and justice for the purpose of creating a more just society will be the choice of the American people, but perhaps it will be. Should it come to that —and this generation of Americans abandons pluralism and democracy for the easy lie and divisions that are being sold by venomous hustlers and cheap demagogues — the judgment of history will be brutal and unsparing from the place and time, where a future generation has the courage to rise up and reclaim the birthright and inheritance that was paid for in blood, struggle and sacrifice that their despicable ancestors gave away without a fight.
The fierceness of the extremist cause is driven by the signal reality that they are out of time and space to re-subjugate the groups that now stand equally in American life. We live in a country where Jackie Robinson’s number is retired by every team, and President Obama fulfilled the promise of the Civil Rights movement. There are no laws that eradicate hate from the heart. There is, however, a remedy for it. Laughter. It is hard to hate people with whom you laugh, sing and drink. Thank you, Ms. Richfield 1981, for the memories and the reminder. I hope they will give you a shot at the Flora-Bama. We are all Americans after all, and the people dressed in red, white and blue.
I needed this today.
So glad Steve takes time to share his thoughts with us.
I don't have to count on Twitter or msnbc to hear his views any longer. 🤩🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Nailed it Steve, I wondered where you were going with it with the first photo, but as I read along, bam bam bam, you hit every point, or most anyway, much like an AR15 can, but only this time in a way that does not bring harm but reflects the wonder, uniqueness, and potential of our diversity. We are all in the boat together, (reflecting on the Mayflower), the rising tide of our combined knowledge will lift us all, it makes no sense to demonize the person helping lift the sail, much of America seems to be wearing blinders to that fact and we have lost so many opportunities because of it. The mosaic of our diversity is indeed a wonder to behold.