Next, a minister or priest would appear and offer a benediction, asking God’s blessing on the execution.
The condemned, should he desire, could make a short statement and even a plea of innocence. This would only add to the pathos of the occasion and would of course not be legally binding. He would then be strapped into the chair.
Finally, the executioner, hooded to protect himself from retaliation, would proceed to the platform. He would walk to a console where, on a solemn signal from the governor, he would pull the switch.
The condemned man would instantly surge upward against his bindings, with smoke emitting from his flesh. This by itself would provide a most powerful lesson for anyone contemplating murder. For those not contemplating murder, it would be a reminder of how lucky they are to have been straight and honest in America.
For the state, this would mean additional income; for the audience, an intense and educational experience—people might, for example, wish to bring their children.
And for the condemned, it would have its achievement aspect, because he would know that he had not lived his life for nothing.
Some might object that such proceedings are so fundamentally attractive that it is not too much to imagine certain individuals contemplating murder in order to star in the program. But no solution to any profound social problem is perfect.
Finally, and perhaps most important, it is entirely possible that after witnessing a few dozen privatized executions, the public might grow tired of the spectacle—just as it seizes on all kinds of entertainment only to lose interest once their repetitiousness becomes too tiresomely apparent.
Then perhaps we might be willing to consider the fact that in executing prisoners we merely add to the number of untimely dead without diminishing the number of murders committed.
At that point, the point of boredom, we might begin asking why it is that Americans commit murder more often than any other people. At the moment, we are not bored enough with executions to ask this question; instead, we are apparently going to demand more and more of them, most probably because we never get to witness any in person.
My proposal would lead us more quickly to boredom and away from our current gratifying excitement—and ultimately perhaps to a wiser use of alternating current.
Let’s Privatize Congress
1995
It is great news, this idea of selling a House office building now that the Republicans are dissolving so many committees and firing their staffs. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this is only the opening wedge for a campaign to privatize Congress. Yes, let the free market openly raise its magnificent head in the most sacred precincts of the Welfare State.
The compelling reasons for privatizing Congress are perfectly evident. Everybody hates it, only slightly less than they hate the president. Everybody, that is, who talks on the radio, plus millions of the silent who only listen and hate in private.
Congress has brought on this hatred, mainly by hypocrisy. For example, members are covered by complete government-run health insurance—while the same kind of coverage for the voters was defeated, with the voters’ consent and support, no less.
The voters, relieved that they are no longer menaced by inexpensive health insurance administered by the hated government, must nevertheless be confused about not getting what polls show they wanted.
The important point is that even though they are happy at being denied what they say they want, they also know that the campaign to defeat health insurance was financed by the big private health insurance companies to the tune of millions of dollars paid to congressional campaigns. The net result is that with all their happiness, the voters are also aware of a lingering sense of congressional hypocrisy.
Health care is only one of many similar issues—auto safety, the environment, education, the use of public lands, etc. The way each issue is decided affects the finances of one or another business, industry or profession, and these groups naturally tend to butter the bread of members of Congress.
We can do away with this hypocrisy by making Congress a private enterprise. Let each representative and senator openly represent, and have his salary paid by, whatever business group wishes to buy his vote. Then, with no excuses, we will really have the best representative system money can buy. No longer will absurdly expensive election campaigns be necessary. Anyone wanting the job of congressional representative of, say, the drug industry could make an appointment with the council of that industry and make his pitch.
The question arises whether we would need bother to go through the whole election procedure. But I think we must continue to ask the public to participate lest people become even more alienated than they are now, with only thirty-nine percent of the eligible voters going to the polls in November.
A privatized Congress might well attract a much higher percentage of voters than the present outmoded one does because the pall of hypocrisy would have been stripped away and a novel bracing honesty would attract voters to choose whichever representative of the auto or real estate industries or the date growers they feel most sympathy for.
Once Congress is privatized, the time would have come to do the same to the Supreme Court and the Justice Department. If each justice were openly hired by a sector of the economy to protect its interests, a simple bargaining process could settle everything. The Auto Industry justice, wishing to throw out a suit against General Motors or Ford, could agree to vote his support for the Agribusiness justice, who wanted to quash a suit by workers claiming to have been poisoned while picking cabbages.
Some will object that such a system of what might be called legalized corruption would leave out the public and its interests. But this is no longer a problem when you realize that there is no public and therefore no public interest in the old sense. As Margaret Thatcher once said, “There is no society,” meaning that the public consists of individuals, all of whom have private interests that to some degree are hostile to the interests of other individuals.
Possible objections: the abstract idea of justice would disappear under a system that takes only private economic interests into account. Secondly, the corporate state, which this resembles, was Mussolini’s concept and resulted in the looting of the public by private interests empowered by the state.
Objections to the objections: we already have a corporate state. All privatization would do would be to recognize it as a fact.
Conclusion: we are in bad trouble.
Index
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. The link provided will take you to the beginning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.
“About Theater Language” (Miller), xiv, xvii, 155–172
absurdism and Absurd Theater, xx, 120–21, 144, 164, 292
actors, 16–17
and Ben-Ami’s famous scene, 425–26
in Death of a Salesman, 210–12, 214
and language, 176–77
in movies, 175–77, 180
politicians as, 423–25, 427–28, 429–431, 434–37
and Stanislavsky method, 427
Actors Studio, 210
Adding Machine (Rice), 157
Aeschylus, 84–85, 89, 105
African Americans, 397–98, 411, 441, 464
After the Fall (Miller), xx, xxi, 281–83
“Again They Drink from the Cup of Suspicion” (Miller), xix, 240–45
Albee, Edward, xxviii
Aleichem, Sholom, 384
All My Sons (Miller), xviii
antecedent material in, 32–33
and audiences, 225
and autonomy of art, 48
censorship of, 129–130
human dilemma in, 61–62
as Ibsenesque, 24, 31–33
intention for, 29
language of, 145, 167
and The Man Who Had All the Luck, 25–29
and Marxism, 48
and morality, 30–31
production costs for, 136, 156
reactions to, 51
structure of, 123
success of, 34
time in, 18, 35, 36
and U.S. Army, 258
All the Way Down (Riccio and Slocum), 334, 336, 342
America, belief in, 194–201
The American Clock (Miller), xviii, xx, 145, 167, 301–8
American frontier, 371–72
“American Playhouse: On Politics and the Art of Acting” (Miller), xxiv, 423–438
Anderson, Maxwell, 118, 160–61, 205, 431
Angry Young Men of Britain, 334–35
anti-Semitism, 189–193, 274, 381, 502–3
The Archbishop’s Ceiling (Miller), xviii, xx, 296–301
Aristotle, 4, 13, 16, 43–44, 423
Armey, Dick, 434
art and artists
and American culture, 361
and authenticity of works of art, 438
autonomy of, 48
civilizing function of, 98
communion through, 357–58
consciousness of, 364
European, 362–63
and Jewish culture, 384
subsidies for, 5, 76–77, 148–154
Atkinson, Brooks, 155
Auden, W. H., 160
audiences, 22–23
and accessibility of plays, 64
and commercialization of theater, 156
composition of, 135, 156, 202–3, 223
and playwriting, 136, 156, 203, 223–24
reaction to The Diary of Anne Frank, 110–12
and realism, 136–37
and role of plays, 65
avant-garde plays, 292
Awake and Sing (Odet), 162
Barnum, P. T., 430
“The Battle of Chicago: From the Delegates’ Side” (Miller), xxiii, 400–411
Beckett, Samuel, 136–37, 144, 156, 164, 165–66
Beeves, David, 186, 187
“Belief in America” (Miller), xviii, 194–201
Bell, Ralph, 184
Ben-Ami, Jacob, 425–26
Bloomgarden, Kermit, 134, 209–10
Book of Job, 186–87
“The Bored and the Violent” (Miller), xxii, 333–342
boredom, 334–36, 339
Brando, Marlon, 431–32
Brecht, Bertolt, 57, 146
“Brewed in The Crucible” (Miller), xix, 236–39
“Bridge to a Savage World” (Miller), xxii, 313–332
British theater, 149, 151, 155
Broadway
attendance levels, 149
audiences of, 224
British plays on, 149
commercialization of, 150, 154, 223
Cuban students’ interest in, 491
and Death of a Salesman, 223
and expectations for length of play, 80
and Hollywood system, 152
and language, 161–62
and Odets, 139–140, 161–62, 164, 224
and O’Neill, 141, 156, 158
and realism, 118, 134–39, 159, 183
and revivals, 152
and serious plays, 134
subsidies for, 150–54
and theater proprietors, 217
Broch, Hermann, 286
Broken Glass (Miller), 145
Brook, Peter, 63, 278
Brooks, Mel, 294
The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky), 27–28, 103–4
Bush, George W., 424, 427–28, 431, 433, 435–36
Cain, Harry M., 257–58
capital punishment, 513–15
capitalism, 76, 258, 264–65, 376, 389, 390
Carter, Jimmy, 436
Castro, Fidel, 488–89, 491–98
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Williams), 109, 112–15
censorship, xxv, 126–133, 450
Centola, Steven R., xiv
Chekhov, Anton
and American understanding of Russia, 358
characters of, 107, 108–9
expertise of, 106–7
and realism, 139, 159
and social drama, 77
and social questions, 110
China
and The Crucible, 244, 249, 253
Cultural Revolution of, 222, 244, 273
and Death of a Salesman, 206, 208, 220–22, 224, 226
“lost” to Mao, 243, 249, 253, 349, 355
civil rights, xxvi, 509–10
civil rights workers killed in Mississippi (1964), xx, 288
Civil War, U.S., 101
class struggle, 389
Clinton, Bill, 427, 430, 431, 434–35, 439–442
“Clinton in Salem” (Miller), xxiv, 439–442
Clurman, Harold, 100, 437
Cobb, Lee, 210–12, 215
The Cocktail Party (Eliot), 91, 203
Cohn, Harry, 261–62
Collected Plays (Miller), xvi, xix, 15–67
commitment, moment of, 19–20
communism/Communism
adaptability of, 376–77
and The Crucible, 242, 246, 247, 253
and foreign policy of America, 358
and Greene, 365–66
and Mandela, 463–64
and Miller’s contempt of Congress citation, 257
perceived as menace, 184
and revolutions, 372–73
and scripts in Hollywood, 261–62
“Concerning Jews Who Write” (Miller), xxiii, 378–385
“Conditions of Freedom: Two Plays of the Seventies” (Miller), xx, 296–308
conformity, 339
The Creation of the World (Miller), 145, 167
critics and reviews, 64, 246, 359, 365
The Crucible (Miller), xviii, xix–xx, 236–39, 240–45, 246–251
and audience, 50, 59
and Chinese Cultural Revolution, 244, 273
conceptualization of, 265–69
and consciousness, 237–39, 277
evil as treated in, 54–56
and false-analogy criticism, 243, 246, 265, 351
language of, 145
and McCarthyism, 51–53, 59, 237, 240–42, 244, 247, 249–250, 259, 271–72, 273
and modern Broadway producers, 150
and paranoid politics, 243, 247–250
political backdrop of, 252–275
and political prisoners in Turkey, 454
productions of, 243–44, 247, 273
reactions to, 56–57, 236–37, 271–72, 276
and realism, 18, 58–59
and religious belief, 57–58
reviews of, 246, 249
staging of, 271–72
time in, 18
title of, 271
See also Salem witch trials of 1692
“The Crucible in History” (Miller), xix–xx, 252–275
cruelty, 110–11
Cuba, xxvi, 488–498
Czechoslovakia, 457–462, 482–87
Dark at the Top of the Stairs (Inge), 109
death
and Death of a Salesman, 36–37, 41–42, 45, 46
and tragedy, 45
Death of a Salesman (Miller), xviii, xix, xxi
actors in, 210–12, 214
and autonomy of art, 48
and Broadway, 223
in China, 206, 208, 220–22, 224, 226
expressionism in, 51
and family-social complex, 88
fifty-year anniversary of, 223–26
film of, 38–39, 40, 254–55
first public performance of, 215
human dilemma in, 61–62
images of, 41–42
language of, 145, 167, 205–6, 225
and The Man Who Had All the Luck, 26, 27
and McCarthyism, 254–55
and modern Broadway producers, 150–51
and political implications, 49
portrayal of characters in, 120
preface of, xix
production costs for, 136, 156
reactions to, 39–40, 50, 51, 215–17, 224
and realism, 170, 205
reviews of, 217, 363
staging of, 212–13
structure and form of, 37
and subsidized theaters, 152–53
and suicide of protagonist, 36–37, 41–42, 46
symbolism in, 40
time in, 18, 38, 214
title of, 207–8
and tragic hero status, 43, 46
and transitional scenes, 43
and value of individuals, 75–76
and Williams’ Streetcar, 205
writing of, 205–8
Demirel, Suleyman, 451
democracy
and censorship, 126
and Germany, xxvi, 474–75, 476, 478–79, 480, 481
Democratic National Convention (1968), 400–411
determinism, 66–67
The Devil in Massachusetts (Starkey), 265
The Diary of Anne Frank (Frank), 110–12, 115
“Dinner with the Ambassador” (Miller), xxv, 450–56
A Doll’s House (Ibsen), 85, 230
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 103–4, 358, 362
Douglas, Stephen, 428
Dowling, Robert, 216–17, 219
Dramatists Guild, 152
efficiency, modern, 75–76
Eisenhower, Dwight, 412, 424–25
Eldridge, Florence, xix
Eliot, T. S.
The Cocktail Party, 91, 203
language of, 118, 160
on morality, 398–99
Murder in the Cathedral, 91–92
verse plays of, 91, 138
emotions and emotionalism, 146–47, 171–72
Emperor Jones (O’Neill), 87
An Enemy of the People (Ibsen), xix, 119, 227–232, 233–35, 350