Robert Brustein

(A room. Totally unfurnished, except for a gleaming white toilet in the middle of the stage. Two windows. Sounds of explosions and occasional gunfire outside. Two Uzi automatic rifles against the wall. Pete, with a manual in hand, and Sally on stage contemplating the toilet with awed reverence.)

SALLY. Fantastic.

At the same time that many Republicans are calling President Obama a Socialist, the Grand Old Party is becoming indistinguishable from the most radical revolutionary movement in world history.

I refer to Anarchism, the political theory that holds the state to be unnecessary and invidious, a constraint on the...

The media furor over the uncontrollable testosterone of male political figures has been a bottomless source of recent entertainment, particularly on the comedy shows. Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Lewis Black, Jay Leno, Jimmy Fallon, David Letterman, and all the rest of the gang have been taking the opportunity to mock...

(A table set under a tree. Starched Hair and the Mad Hater throwing teacups at each other.

Enter Sarah, dressed as Alice.)

THE MAD HATER
Who are you? Get out. There's no more room at this Tea Party!

SARAH
My name is Sarah. And you...

In the Sunday, October 31st publication of the New York Times Book Review, the singer-composer, Paul Simon, wrote a front page review of a book by the lyricist-composer, Stephen Sondheim, called Finishing the Hat. It quoted some miffed reactions by Sondheim to a show we did together with Burt Shevelove...

I can't think of anything that has more disturbed me in my eighty-three years as an American citizen than the current virulent attacks, both from the political right and left, on the incumbent president of the United States.

Much of the criticism, of course, is pure nonsense...

"Memorial" is a word that we usually associate with the dead, but its etymological roots stem from a living process, the act of memory, recalling vital deeds and past associations. How can anyone who knew him forget our vital connection to Paul Benedict? For years, he was a vivid presence...

I first met Paul Newman when he was a student at the Yale School of Drama in the late forties. Having recently abandoned that training program in order to help start two acting companies, I nevertheless still had friends at Yale. One of these was the director, Elliott Silverstein, who...

McCain and Unable

2008 BUMPER STICKERS
By Robert Brustein

DEMOCRATIC SLOGAN: BARACK TO THE FUTURE

REPUBLICAN SLOGAN: TO HELLERY AND BARACK

DEMOCRATIC RUNNING MATES: BARACK AND FROTH

REPUBLICAN RUNNING MATES: McCAIN AND UNABLE

DEMOCRATIC PROMISE: YES, WE CAN!

REPUBLICAN REBUTTAL: NO, YOU CAIN'T!

ANTI-DEMOCRATIC SLOGAN: NO-KNACK BARACK!

The humorist James Thurber once wrote a story called "If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox," in which he imagined General Ulysses S. Grant surrendering his sword to the Confederate General Robert E. Lee in the drunken delusion that his Union forces had been licked in Virginia. Our present Commander-in-Chief...

A recent New York Times obituary of Huntington Hartford, the much-married millionaire A&P heir, described all his failed philanthropic ventures in art, architecture, theatre, recreation, publishing, and penmanship. The piece gave me a pang since it reminded me of a meeting I once had with him in his twenty room...

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton each have serious spoilers in their campaigns, on the verge of destroying their hopes for the presidency.

For Barack, the spoiler is his ex-pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. For Hillary, it is her husband, the ex-President Bill Clinton.

Bill's bizarre behavior during the Clinton campaign...

While Americans in the workplace, the university, and the arts, are laboring to find ways to express their cultural diversity, we are witnessing a consummate example of the process in Iraq. Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds, among other tribal hegemonies who have been refining cultural identities and religious differences for...

There has been considerable controversy lately over who in the next administration should be answering the White House phone at 3 in the morning. Although Hillary's advisors contrived that commercial in order to raise doubts about Obama's inexperience, the strategy seems to have backfired. No one on the team seems...

Obama's extraordinary momentum in the last 11 primaries is partly a triumph of casting. Hillary Clinton has not found a consistent role to play either on the campaign trail or on the debate platform, and Obama has. In an age when the camera captures every detail of a person's mood...

If there is a single clarifying distinction to be made between the Clinton and the Obama campaigns it is this:

When Bill Clinton says "We," he means Hillary and himself.

When Barack Obama says "We," he means himself and the American people.

The extraordinary surge of confidence and goodwill generated by the Obama victory in Iowa has brought hope to many American hearts that our sorely divided country may at last have a chance to be united again.

That same condition is also increasing fears that, with all this expectation embodied in...

In recent years, Americans have expressed disapproval first of the F word, then of the N word and now of the B word. I would like to propose a new candidate for denunciation -- the I word. The Latin for I is Ego, and there is no question that some...