In his blog riley entry last Sunday on this site, He’s right about that and about the gushing infatuation with Kushner as “a brand name Gay But Riley doesn’t have much love for “Angels” either, which is where we disagree. The play I suppose all of this is old news, except that “Angels” collected seven Golden Globule Riley is right again about the play’s length and lack of focus, but that’s true only for the first As to Kushner’s leftwing slant and “politically correct” agenda, which have been cause for To be out of the closet, or to come out of the closet, is to discover your humanity. If you’re In his blog riley entry last Sunday on this site, “WHAT WOULD RANDY SHILTS HAVE SAID?,” esteemed author and critic Tim Riley nearly gagged on the hype for “Angels in America.” (So had I.) The reason for the hype, he maintained, is that Tony Kushner’s play “is simply too ‘politically correct’ to criticize,” which made it “much easier for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-510","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-8e","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSAID?,”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> esteemed author and critic Tim Riley nearly gagged on the
\nhype for “Angels in America.” (
\nmaintained, is that Tony Kushner’s play “is simply too ‘politically correct’ to criticize,” which made
\nit “much easier for everyone to simply jump on the bandwagon.” <\/P>
\n
\nJewish intellectual,” per the examples of the New Yorker magazine’s less-than-stellar TV writer,
\nNancy Franklin, and its formidable theater critic, John Lahr, both of whom fell over themselves to
\nsee who could offer higher praise.<\/P>
\n
\n“never worked for me, in ANY medium,” Riley wrote, “simply because it’s a) too long and
\nb) unfocused … even though I admired his a) humor (which is a BIG compliment) and b)
\npretension.” <\/P>
\n
\nnominations this morning, and HBO continues to air re-runs (although in hourly bites instead of
\nthe original two-part broadcast of three hours each). <\/P>
\n
\nthree hours. (Yes, it does sound silly: Only for the first three hours?<\/I>) The second three
\nhours were far better, largely because the sprawling plotlines and the many characters come
\ntogether in a tight, ingenious weave of relationships that feels exactly right. To achieve this
\nwithout the contrivances showing, which Kushner manages beautifully, is no small
\naccomplishment.<\/P>
\n
\ndifferent from Riley’s objections, I think the agenda in the most basic terms is this: To be in
\nthe closet is to be a moral coward. If you’re in the closet, you’re bad news, pretty much no
\ndamned good to yourself or to anyone else. You’re untrustworthy, unlovable and unloving, i.e. the
\nevil Roy Cohn (played by Al Pacino) and his disillusioned but still selfish prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Joe
\nPitt (played by Patrick Wilson). <\/P>
\n
\nout of the closet, even if you’re untrustworthy, you’re not necessarily evil or unlovable, i.e.
\nProctor’s lover Louis (played by Ben Shenkman), and you can still be saved from your
\nmoral cowardice. This may be politically correct, but it’s also not a bad thing.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"