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I’ve long believed it to be one of Gilbert’s best works–yes, you read that right–and each time I listen to it, I notice new facets of it that reaffirm that belief. It may not be his best lyrically, but it contains some of his best characters and cleverest satire, in my opinion.

Maybe it is a bit too long for the theatre; although certainly it never bothered me. But I honestly think that it’s brilliant enough just as a piece of writing. (You can find the libretto here.)

I’m listening, by the way, to the 1976 D’Oyly Carte version, which is quite good except for the fact that it doesn’t include the dialogue. (I wonder if this goes back to the length issue–maybe if it had been shorter they would have included at least some of it.)

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“If you wish to succeed as a jester, you’ll need
To consider each person’s auricular:
What is all right for B would quite scandalize C
(For C is so very particular);
And D may be dull, and E’s very thick skull
Is as empty of brains as a ladle;
While F is F sharp, and will cry with a carp,
That he’s known your best joke from his cradle!”

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(Or ought I to have called this post: “So please you, Sir, we much regret/If we have failed in etiquette“?).

In any event, to briefly sum the case, the facts are these: on January 28th, James Taranto, writing in the WSJ, quoted a letter from a person named Rory Page, complaining about a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, which read in part:

“I must call you on something that was inserted into the play which I am almost positive was not in the original book… The comments made in such a cavalier and oh-so-humorous way were uncalled for. Now, I realize you play to a mostly liberal audience in Missoula and so, I am sure, felt comfortable in your calling for the beheading of Sarah Palin. I am painfully aware that most in the audience tittered with laughter and clapped because ‘no one would miss her’ but there were some in your audience who took great offense to this “uncivil tone” about another human being.”

The news of this performance has drawn the ire of the website Conservatives4Palin. They cite this issue as an example of “left-wing” violent rhetoric against Mrs. Palin, which would indicate hypocrisy among left-wingers who have complained about Mrs. Palin’s use of violent rhetoric.

These are the known facts at present. From here, I shall speculate a bit.

I did not attend the performance in question. Indeed, I’d never heard of the people who performed it  until reading of this incident. Also, I have not been able to find a transcription of the lyric in question. However, based on Page’s quoting the line “no one would miss her”, I suspect it was in Ko-Ko’s famous “little list” song.

If that is in fact the case, the grounds for outrage are decidedly shaky. For it’s a tradition that dates back to Gilbert himself to alter the lyrics in that song. According to Ian Bradley’s The Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan, Gilbert substituted “the critic dramatist”, “the scorching motorist” and others. Likewise, it is also a tradition to reference various politicians in the last verse–since none are alluded to by name, the performer may mimic their mannerisms to convey who “would not be missed”.

Cheer up, though, Conservatives! On page 574, Ian Bradley’s book also quotes these lyrics that Gilbert added in 1908, in which he beats Ayn Rand to the punch by about a half-century:

“All those who hold that publicans it’s virtuous to fleece, 
And impose a heavy war tax in these piping times of peace 
And preach the code that moralists like Robin Hood held true,
That to benefit the pauper you must rob the well-to-do,
That peculiar variety of sham philanthropist,
   I don’t think he’d be missed–I’m sure he’d not be missed!”

UPDATE: While researching this further, I came across a website called “Ethics Alarms”, which contains much more information and commentary about this matter, including the offending lyric. It’s an excellent site, and makes many of the same points I made above, only better written.

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Exile: “Kreia, what are you–are you a Jedi? A Sith?”

Kreia: “Does it matter? Of course it does. Such titles allow you to break the galaxy into light and dark. Categorize it. Perhaps I am neither, and I hold both as what they are: pieces of a whole.”–dialogue from Obsidian Entertainment‘s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, The Sith Lords. 2004.

“I often think it’s comical
How Nature always does contrive
That every boy and every gal
That’s born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
                                Or else a little Conservative!” —Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe. Act II. 1882.

I think everybody knows that the two-party system has its flaws. It is obvious that a system in which two sides work in opposition to one another virtually all the time is bound to have flaws. And then of course, everybody knows that lots of people end up voting a party-line ticket without bothering to consider the specifics of a candidate or policy. No one wants to be guilty of voting without thinking.
Because of this, many people really want to find some sort of “common ground”, or at least a way outside the two party system. This takes two forms: either a centrist “let’s compromise” attitude or else a “a pox on both your houses” approach.
The current holy war between Republicans and Democrats is an irritating thing, to be sure.* But Centrism, in my opinion, does not actually break free of this divide; it merely mixes and matches elements of both in some sort of hope that somehow this will make the two sides dislike each other less. 
(Meanwhile, the “pox on both houses” idea manifests itself primarily as libertarianism, a somewhat noble idea which amounts essentially to leaving everyone alone to do whatever as long as it harms no one else, but which falls apart quite completely when faced with the complexities of actually governing.)
The end result is that the Centrists say “We want both of you.” Libertarians say “We want neither of you.” In this way, as I sort of touched on here, both of these ideas still define themselves in terms of Republicans and Democrats. By that I mean that they are not actual political philosophies, they are just philosophies for dealing with the existing political philosophies.
I suppose I’m writing this like I have some kind of answer or solution. I don’t. All I can say is that while I can understand and sympathize with the impulse of people like the “No Labels” group to break out of the traditional two-party mold and be really independent of “Partisanship”, it’s actually much harder than it seems.   
*One could also, by the way, make a very good argument that the Republicans bear much more responsibility than the Democrats for the current level of vitriolic polarization. This is the sort of detail that centrists are often willing to overlook in their quest for bipartisanship.

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Speaking of conspiracy theories, I see that a Texas Republican is filing a bill that would require Presidential candidates to show their birth certificates, saying: “”This bill is necessary because we have a president whom the American people don’t know whether he was born in Kenya or some other place.”

Alright, dear readers. I know I’m over my allotment of Gilbert and Sullivan references this week, but I just cannot resist posting this that I wrote awhile ago:

(Sung to the tune of “He is an Englishman” from H.M.S. Pinafore.)

He is American!
    For he himself hath said it,
    And it’s greatly to his credit
That he is American!
    (Though he might well be a Kenyan
     In the ill-informed opinion
Of ev’ry third Republican.)
     But, despite the protestation
     Of the Fox News Corporation,
He remains American!

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On  November 18th 1836, Sir William S. Gilbert was born. Probably best known for his collaboration with Sir Arthur Sullivan, he was also the author of the “Bab Ballads” and a writer of many comic plays, as well as a few serious ones.

As regular readers of this blog may know, I am huge Gilbert and Sullivan fan; but here I confess my appreciation is mostly for Gilbert. I have almost no understanding of music, though Sullivan’s seems quite good to me. But it is Gilbert whose work so fascinates me. As everyone who has heard them knows, his lyrics and dialogues certainly “bubble with wit and good humour“, but, even more remarkably: “winnow all the folly and you’ll find a grain or two of truth among the chaff“. Gilbert’s works, in my opinion, offer deeper insights into human nature than they are often given credit for.

On his memorial, Gilbert is called a “playwright and poet”. No doubt, he would laugh at the irony, for Gilbert himself hated the term “playwright”, preferring “dramatist”. But this unfortunate fact is made up for by the inscription, which reads: “His Foe was Folly, and his Weapon Wit”.

To me, that sums up Gilbert perfectly.

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As a follow-up to this post, I realized that I neglected to mention another President who made use of appearing on entertainment television, or at least was not hurt by it: Ronald Reagan.

Sarah Palin herself made note of this fact, arguing against those who say it’s not Presidential to star in a reality show by noting that Reagan had been an actor, and had appeared in some not-especially-Presidential films.

Fair point, I suppose. And Reagan, like Palin and unlike Nixon, had charisma, which made it seem acceptable. (I have a theory that all actors, even lousy ones, have high levels of charisma compared to the general population.) There is, it seems, little which charisma cannot overcome.

On the other hand, Reagan quit working as an actor in 1965, 15 years before he became President. As Peggy Noonan writes as a rebuke to Palin:

“Ronald Reagan was an artist who willed himself into leadership as president of a major American labor union (Screen Actors Guild, seven terms, 1947-59.) He led that union successfully through major upheavals (the Hollywood communist wars, labor-management struggles); discovered and honed his ability to speak persuasively by talking to workers on the line at General Electric for eight years; was elected to and completed two full terms as governor of California; challenged and almost unseated an incumbent president of his own party; and went on to popularize modern conservative political philosophy without the help of a conservative infrastructure. Then he was elected president.”

These qualifications do seem rather more than Palin’s. (As an aside, it’s hard to imagine any artists-turned-union-leaders running for the Republicans nowadays.)

In the end, though, it goes back to the idea that our standards that have changed with time. Reagan was considered an intellectual lightweight in his day and age, as Palin is in the present day. Call me a pessimist if you like, but I believe this is due to a decline in what we expect of our politicians. If someone with Palin’s credentials had tried to run in Reagan’s time, imagine the reaction. P M Prescott‘s comment here says it very well: “The electorate is getting more and more into voting as fans of someone famous, even if it’s famous for being famous.”

And if Reagan’s charisma and celebrity overcame his relative lack of real policy credentials, then what is there to stop Palin’s charisma and celebrity from overcoming hers?


P.S. Incidentally, having read Noonan’s argument that Reagan’s time as SAG President helped him as a politician, I find that I cannot resist quoting these rather prescient lines of Ernest’s song “Were I a King” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Grand Duke:

“Oh, the man who can rule a theatrical crew,
Each member a genius (and some of them two),
And manage to humour them, little and great,
Can govern this tuppenny State!”

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“When the night wind howls in the chimney cowls, 
And the bat in the moonlight flies,
And inky clouds, like funeral shrouds, 
Sail over the midnight skies –
When the footpads quail at the night-bird’s wail, 
And black dogs bay at the moon,
Then is the spectres’ holiday – then is the Ghosts’ High-Noon!”

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It’s always nice to find people doing clever stuff with Gilbert and Sullivan’s works, and I thought this animation was pretty well done. Too bad that it ended before the song was over, but animating even a minute or so of footage can take hours.

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[Note: I wrote this post awhile ago, but didn’t publish it. Then I was reminded of it by thingy‘s comments on this post combined with reading this post by Nameless Cynic.]

Do you have any favorite works of art, music, literature or entertainment that you really like, but that the vast majority of critics hate? I’m not talking about stuff that’s “so bad, it’s good” here, I’m talking about something where you and a friend can be talking about this thing, and it’s like you’re talking about two different subjects. Your friend hates it for reasons you just don’t see, and you can’t make your friend see why you like it.

I think I might have some sort of mental issue with this, because there are all sorts of examples I can think of from my life. For example, remember those Star Wars prequels that everyone hated? Yeah, well… I loved them. I think they’re honestly better than the originals. [Prepares to be flamed.]

Take another example: Obsidian Entertainment‘s video game Alpha Protocol. The critics and videogamers generally hated that thing. Destructoid gave it a 2 out of 10. That just isn’t done in game reviews. I, meanwhile, thought it was an excellent game–in some ways, better than Mass Effect 2, even. [Prepares to be flamed, again.]

Even in my enthusiasm for Gilbert and Sullivan, this issue crops up. The Grand Duke was G&S’s last operetta, and the only one to be an utter failure. And despite the lasting popularity of Gilbert and Sullivan’s works, The Grand Duke has been ignored from its 1896 premiere to the present day. Most G&S fans hate it. And yet I love the thing. It’s my third favorite of their 14 operettas. [I probably won’t get flamed for this, but better safe than sorry]

It’s not like I don’t realize there are flaws in all these works. Yes, the dialogue in the SW prequels is very weak. Yes, sometimes the textures in Alpha Protocol don’t put in an appearance until you’re well into a mission. Yes, it occasionally seems like W.S. Gilbert utterly lost his knowledge of how rhyme and syntax work for The Grand Duke. But somehow, these flaws just don’t bother me like they do most people.

But anyway, enough about my eccentricities. I’m just curious if anyone else has ever experienced anything similar to this.