{"id":1699,"date":"2017-06-19T11:26:45","date_gmt":"2017-06-19T15:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1699"},"modified":"2017-06-19T11:26:45","modified_gmt":"2017-06-19T15:26:45","slug":"false-analogy-obama-caesar-trump-caesar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/06\/false-analogy-obama-caesar-trump-caesar.html","title":{"rendered":"The FALSE Analogy between “Obama-Caesar” and Trump-Caesar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over Father\u2019s Day weekend, on Friday and Sunday nights, Trump-supporting protesters crashed the New York Public Theater\u2019s Trump-centric adaptation of Julius Caesar, <\/em>demanding an end to \u201cthe normalization of political violence.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

By now, it is well known that the Central Park production features a persona that is the spitting image of Donald Trump in the role of Caesar being set upon and brutally murdered\u2014stabbed to death\u2014by his enemies.<\/p>\n

But, the play\u2019s defenders insist, a 2012 production of Julius Caesar <\/em>featured a Barack Obama<\/em> persona as Caesar\u2014and yet there wasn\u2019t a whimper of protest.<\/p>\n

A prominent Fake News and virulent anti-Trump publication, the Washington Post, <\/em>leads with the headline<\/a>, \u201cDelta pulled funding from a Trump-esque \u2018Julius Caesar\u2019\u2014but not from an Obama-like version in 2012.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0The Wrap, <\/em>while referring<\/a> to a recent exchange between Obama supporter Bill Maher and Alex Marlow, editor-in-chief for Breitbart, <\/em>was incredulous over the fact that neither man knew about the Obama-esque Caesar.<\/p>\n

The Wire <\/em>rhetorically asks: \u201cSo how angry did liberals get over that production? Not even a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

I have been suspicious.\u00a0 After all, virtually every criticism of Obama, however race-neutral, was transformed by his administration and the President\u2019s fellow partisans into a \u201cracist\u201d attack. Obama had most of the so-called \u201cmainstream media\u201d covering for him at every move.\u00a0 How, I wondered, could a character in a contemporized version of Julius Caesar, <\/em>a dead-ringer for Obama, be mocked, bloodied, and assassinated without provoking howls of \u201cracism\u201d and the like?<\/p>\n

For that matter, how is it that most people, including and especially his biggest admirers, like Bill Maher, are evidently unaware, five years out, that this play even occurred?<\/p>\n

I had two questions:<\/p>\n

(1) That \u201cObama-Caesar\u201d was depicted by a tall black man does not mean that he was a genuine likeness of Obama (unless you believe that all tall black men look alike). \u00a0Was the character really<\/em> a spitting image of the 44th<\/sup> POTUS?<\/p>\n

(2) Was \u201cObama-Caesar\u201d mocked, ridiculed, humiliated, and then stabbed bloody as was his Trump counterpart?<\/p>\n

Unless both of these questions are answered in the affirmative, the analogy that leftists are trying to draw between these two Caesar <\/em>productions is a false <\/em>analogy and their argument fallacious.<\/p>\n

Surely enough, Rob Melrose, the director<\/em> of the 2012 \u201cObama-esque\u201d Julius Caesar <\/em>play, confirmed my suspicions<\/a>\u2014even though, given his praise of the 2017 production and his condescension toward the play\u2019s Trump-supporting critics, this was certainly not his intention.<\/p>\n

To my first question, Melrose writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cOur Obama-inspired production\u2026didn\u2019t have any gestures that tipped our hand to say \u2018this is definitely Obama.\u2019\u201d In glaring contrast, \u201cthe Trump connections are more overt<\/em>\u201d in the 2017 Public Theater\u2019s production (emphasis added). \u00a0Trump-Caesar \u201cwears an overly long red tie\u201d and \u201cCalpurnia [Caesar\u2019s third and final wife] speaks with a Slovenian accent [.]\u201d<\/p>\n

Melrose notes that there is significantly more comic relief in Trump-Caesar than was present in his own version.\u00a0 \u201cThere is also much more humor and satire in the Public Theater production.\u201d He commends the director, Oskar Eustis, \u201cfor finding so many genuinely funny moments\u201d in a play from which it is difficult to mine humor, for \u201cCaesar usually is not a very funny play [.]\u201d<\/p>\n

These \u201cfunny moments\u201d include more than a fair share that are reserved for\u2026mocking the President.\u00a0 Melrose, however, dismisses this fact with a shrug, claiming that \u201cEustis is hardly the first person to make fun of the president.\u201d<\/p>\n

To my second question, Melrose admits that, unlike in his <\/em>version, when his ambiguously \u201cObama-Caesar\u201d meets his untimely demise, \u201cthe moment of this latest Caesar\u2019s [Trump-Caesar] is shocking and horrific.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, Melrose\u2019s Caesar was deliberately meant not <\/em>to be an exact likeness of Obama. \u00a0It was meant to leave enough distance between Obama and Caesar so that audience members could <\/em>miss the connection.\u00a0 Eustis\u2019s Caesar, though, is meant to leave no doubts in anyone\u2019s minds that the character is Trump.<\/p>\n

Melrose\u2019s Caesar is not mocked and ridiculed throughout the performance, as is Eustis\u2019s Caesar.<\/p>\n

Melrose\u2019s Caesar is not assassinated in a \u201cshocking and horrific\u201d manner. Eustis\u2019s Caesar is.<\/p>\n

There is, however, another reason why there was no public outcry in 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2012, the produce of The Acting Company, was very concerned that this production was going to get us into trouble, and she really didn\u2019t want us talking too much to the press about the concept,\u201d Melrose says.<\/p>\n

There was no public outcry, hardly any media attention at all paid to Melrose\u2019s version of Julius Caesar, <\/em>for the production company made a conscious decision to keep it a secret<\/em> of sorts.<\/p>\n

There is one other fundamental moral difference between the 2012 and 2017 productions.<\/p>\n

The political landscape was such in 2012 that Melrose believed it plausible that\u2014I\u2019m not making this up\u2014those affiliated with the Tea Party, \u201cBirtherism,\u201d Mitch McConnell\u2019s GOP<\/em>, and\/or\u2014wait for it\u2014the Cato Institute <\/em>could be \u201cso passionate about their beliefs and find the current situation so dire that they would resort to assassinating the president [.]\u201d<\/p>\n

In reality, of course, no one from any of these groups ever so much as threatened Obama or any or his supporters. Tea Party rallies looked like Memorial Day and Fourth of July parades, with participants leaving public areas cleaner than they found them.<\/p>\n

The reality in the Trump-era couldn\u2019t be more different. For well over a year, beginning well before Trump even received his party\u2019s nomination, leftist thugs, many of whom were financed by leftist billionaires like George Soros and coordinated by Democrat Party operatives, have been crashing Trump\u2019s\u00a0 rallies and attacking his supporters. With the rise of the leftist terrorist organization \u201cAntifa\u201d (\u201cantifascist\u201d) and its affiliates, this climate of violence against all things Trump and Republican has only intensified, culminating very recently in the attempted murder of dozens of Republican congressmen.<\/p>\n

When the slaughter of Trump-Caesar is read against the backdrop of the larger political climate, it is understandable, even justifiable, that people should view Oskar Eustis and the New York Public Theater as indulging the left\u2019s fantasies of President Trump\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n

In other words, as I suspected, the analogy between these two productions of Julius Caesar <\/em>is a false analogy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over Father\u2019s Day weekend, on Friday and Sunday nights, Trump-supporting protesters crashed the New York Public Theater\u2019s Trump-centric adaptation of Julius Caesar, demanding an end to \u201cthe normalization of political violence.\u201d\u00a0 By now, it is well known that the Central Park production features a persona that is the spitting image of Donald Trump in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe FALSE Analogy between "Obama-Caesar" and Trump-Caesar<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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