Looking For Justice In All The Wrong Places

As the days grow shorter and we hurtle toward winter, one thing is obvious: the past few weeks have been a political shit show. From foreign delegates to the United Nations laughing at the President of the United States to Ted Cruz warning that Beto O'Rourke will bring tofu, silicon, and dyed hair to Texas; from Trump's goons moving detained immigrant children under cover of night to a remote detention facility in Tornillo, Texas to news reports of institutionalized homophobia insisting that unless they are married, the same-sex partners of foreign diplomats and employees at the United Nations will be refused visas to enter the United States -- the depths to which we have plummeted are lower than Maxim Gorky ever imagined.

The highlight of all this nonsense came on Thursday, September 27, when Christine Blasey Ford ably demonstrated what a credible, intelligent, and emotionally stable witness looks like and a Judge who has sat on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for 12 years gave an outrageously defensive and politically embarrassing imitation of the worst possible kind of witness to enter a courtroom. Though many have opined about Brett Kavanaugh's numerous lies -- and Aunt Lindsey's frothing-at-the-mouth audition aria ("I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille") -- I absolutely loved hearing Bill Maher opine that "Lindsey Graham needs the stabilizing influence of his dead boyfriend." Let's face facts: operatic mad scenes are much better when sung by coloratura sopranos.

Alexandra Petri has written a series of scathing, must-read Op-Ed pieces for The Washington Post entitled "Brett Kavanaugh Was a Model Youngster. Bart O’Kavanaugh Was Not.," "I Am a Horse. I Know Horseplay. That’s Not What This Is.," "Some Interpersonal Verbs, Conjugated By Gender," and "HOW DARE YOU DO THIS TO BRETT KAVANAUGH?" Satirist Andy Borowitz wrote a piece for The New Yorker entitled "Twenty Million Witnesses Come Forward Claiming They Saw Kavanaugh Lie Under Oath." But I think the top prize for political analysis should go to Paul Krugman for his recent column in The New York Times entitled "The Angry White Male Caucus."

There's an old saying which claims that "If you've done nothing wrong, you should have nothing to be afraid of" (or no problem taking a lie detector test and being investigated by the FBI). Yet what the world saw on September 27 was an uppity white man fighting to save his tarnished brand by threatening members of the Senate Judiciary Committee with the suburban equivalent of "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!" As I watched Kavanaugh's emotional meltdown, I had an eerie recollection of Michael Douglas's portrayal of William Foster in 1993's Falling Down:

"I'm the bad guy? How'd that happen? I did everything they told me to. Did you know I build missiles? I helped to protect America."

Continuing to watch Kavanaugh defiantly duck and weave before the cameras, I found myself wondering "If you're so smart, how can you be so fucking stupid?" (methinks the Judge doth protest too much). In some ways, Kavanaugh's macho posturing and privileged stonewalling resembled the behavior of Michael Cohen in the following video clip.


It takes a far better actor than Brett Kavanaugh to show people what lies beneath a scared and snarling facade of self-righteousness. Thankfully, Matt Damon rose to the occasion.


Much has been written about Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, levels of intoxication, teenage sex parties, and alcoholic blackouts. But one of Dr. Ford's statements (“Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two . . . I was underneath one of them while the two laughed, two friends having a really good time with one another”) led me to wonder about something else.

Ford noted that, at one point, Mark Judge climbed atop Kavanaugh (who was already on top of Ford), causing both men to fall off of her. A friend of mine suggested that, unlike Ford (who was 100% certain that it was Kavanaugh who was on top of her), Kavanaugh might have been so blotto that he had no idea whose body was beneath his (the old "A stiff dick knows no conscience" and "Christ, was I drunk last night" syndromes).

Isn't it also possible there could have been homoerotic undertones to a "Devil's triangle" in which two highly inebriated jocks from an all-boys Catholic high school tried to prove their masculinity to each other with the same woman? We can stipulate that drunken jocks love beer. But what about sandwich sex (and who gets to be the meat in the middle)?

Let's take it one step further. During the September 27 hearing, the Urban Dictionary was cited for its definition of bouf ("1.(v.): to have sex, fuck, do the good thing on the bad leg"). Kavanaugh defined "bouf" as "farting." But the Urban Dictionary lists another definition with a slightly different spelling ("boof") that reads "To abuse any licit or illicit substance via insertion into one's rectum. e.g. 'Dude, I just saw Brian boofing some booze last night at a party. Rad!'" This could lead to speculation about whether a reporter's reference to a comment by Mark Judge ("Have you boufed yet?") could refer to experimenting with beer enemas that could cause someone to get drunker faster than by drinking booze.

Kavanaugh's pompously pathetic public pity party about how his life has been ruined showed absolutely no awareness of or empathy for how the lives of sexual assault and rape victims have been ruined. Should we anticipate a new American tragedy entitled Death of a Bailsman? Or, perhaps a sobering memoir entitled "Bottoms Up -- A College Athlete's Introduction to Dark Beer."

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Although many people can remember key events from the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union (the launch of Sputnik that created the space race, the Cuban missile crisis, the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall), some of us have only had vicarious exposures to the psychological horrors of McCarthyism through such dramas as Kander & Ebb's 1965 musical, Flora The Red Menace; Josh Kornbluth's monologue entitled Red Diaper Baby; Eric Bentley's Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been; Jim Brochu's Zero Hour, Joe Gilford's Finks, and 1976's The Front (which starred Woody Allen and Zero Mostel). As we struggle to make sense of Vladimir Putin's determination to compromise elections within the United States and the constant braying about "witch hunts" from the White House, few survivors of the Hollywood blacklist are still alive.

J. Conrad Frank (Mary Dale), Kyle Goldman (Frank Taggart),
Kyle Dayrit (Malcolm), and Nancy French (Pat Pilford) appear in
Red Scare at Sunset (Photo by: Lois Tema)

In the past two years, Americans have been forced to speculate on whether Donald Trump could be the ultimate Manchurian Candidate, whether his wife, Melania, could be his "keeper," and (thanks to the statements from Trump's older sons that most of the Trump business's money has been coming from Russia in recent years) if a pee tape is the least of Trump's worries. Faced with an incredibly corrupt administration whose leader can't stop uttering blatant lies while asking "Where is my Roy Cohn?" perhaps the only way for us to hold up a fun-house mirror to our increasingly grotesque constitutional crisis is through satire and theatre. San Francisco's New Conservatory Theatre Center is currently presenting the West Coast premiere of Charles Busch's 1991 political farce entitled Red Scare on Sunset. As NCTC's artistic director, Ed Decker, notes:

“In the late 1940s and through the ‘50s, many lives were destroyed when the House Committee on Un-American Activities summoned Hollywood professionals to tribunals, publicly vilifying those with potential ties to the Communist party. Many artisans refused to answer questions and ‘name names.’ Some were sentenced to prison terms for contempt of court. Many more musicians, actors, directors, and screenwriters were cast out of Hollywood and denied employment. Once blacklisted, their lives (as well as those of families and acquaintances) were destroyed. Some even took their own lives, so great was the despair. The blacklist officially lasted until 1960, but many were still unable to find work for years afterwards.”

“No laughing matter then and certainly no laughing matter now. However, comedy and parody can cleverly show us the folly of our misbegotten ways. With high camp humor as only the inimitable Mr. Busch can deliver in his laser-witted writing, Red Scare on Sunset takes us down that scandalous, tragic road of history while holding up the mirror to the fraught moments we are unfortunately reliving today. It is my hope that a little laughter will be the balm for our weary souls during these tense political times. At the same time, it is my greater wish that the smiles we share here in the theatre will serve to rejuvenate us towards the change we must make for the greater good of our country. Hatred, malice, and bigotry have no place here. This is a call to action.”

J. Conrad Frank as Mary Dale in Red Scare on Sunset
(Photo by: Lois Tema)

Set in Hollywood in 1951, the plot of Red Scare on Sunset revolves around Mary Dale (J. Conrad Frank), a ditsy Hollywood actress who has built her career on an aura of glamour and wholesomeness but is suddenly confronted with strange behavior all around her.

• Mary's putative husband, Frank Taggart (Kyle Goldman), keeps making noises about moving to New York City so he can take classes in method acting.
• Her houseboy, Malcolm (Kyle Dayrit), seems to have an especially close relationship with Frank, whom he frequently undresses and "puts to bed" whenever the man of the house comes home drunk.
• Her close friend, Pat Pilford (Nancy French), is the hostess of a radio show who suddenly starts spouting Communist propaganda.

Nancy French (Pat Pilford) and J. Conrad Frank (Mary Dale)
appear in Red Scare on Sunset (Photo by: Lois Tema)

• Meanwhile, Mitchell Drake (Robert Molossi), is an old flame of Pat's who has returned to Hollywood hoping to rekindle their romance.
• Bertram Barker (Joe Wicht) is a crass Hollywood power broker who is not as patriotic as he seems.
• The director of Mary's new movie musical based on the story of Lady Godiva is RG Benson (David Bicha), a gifted film artist controlled by the Communist party.
• A method actress Mary has always admired, Marta Towers (Baily Hopkins), is sinking her Communist fangs into Frank's gullible neck while trying to convince Mary to take the daring step of appearing in a film without any glamour and, even worse, without any filters!

J. Conrad Frank (Mary Dale) and Nancy French (Pat Pilford)
appear in Red Scare at Sunset (Photo by: Lois Tema)

With scenic design by Kuo-Hao Lo, costumes by Tina Sogliuzzo, sound design by Diana Carey, and J. Conrad Frank’s gowns designed by Mr. David, Allen Sawyer has done a magnificent job of coating red hysteria in a thick layer of high camp. Mr. Frank (known far and wide for his drag persona, The Countess Katya Smirnoff-Skyy) proves that no costume is more deserving of his presence, no frill or ruffle more suited to his feigned femininity, no lipstick smear safe from being enlisted for some Lucille Ball-style mugging, and no zinger he can't deliver with the proper amount of disrespect (in the wake of Brett Kavanaugh's recent testimony, the line about someone being "as sober as a judge" was hurled into the audience like a wrecking ball).

Kyle Goldman (Frank Taggart) and J. Conrad Frank (Mary Dale)
appear in Red Scare on Sunset (Photo by: Lois Tema)

In a series of comedic cameos, David Bicha scored strong points as Ralph Barnes, RG Benson, a department store salesgirl, and Granny Lou (wearing a costume and wig which almost made him look like Imelda Staunton). Kyle Goldman, Nancy French, Joe Wicht, Kyle Dayrit, Baily Hopkins, and Robert Molossi all contributed to the fun, although there was never any question that, with the benefit of so much flounce to the ounce, it was Mr. Frank's show all the way.

If you're looking for something to lift your spirits as we get closer to the midterm elections, Busch's play may be just the tonic you need. Performances of Red Scare on Sunset continue through October 21 at the New Conservatory Theatre Center (click here for tickets). Here's the trailer: