Even though this is going to be a very close presidential election, maybe closer than in 2008, the Democratic convention of 2012 revealed a party that is stronger today than the dynamic gathering of hope and change that nominated Barack Obama four years ago. For the first time since Ronald Reagan won the White House in 1980, Democrats seem to be emerging from Reagan’s shadow.
Ronald Reagan, Shirley Temple, Sony Bono, George Murphy and Arnold Schwarzenegger are all entertainers who launched their political careers in California, and they are all Republicans. Indeed, aside from Al Franken, no prominent Democratic officeholder on the scene today started out in the entertainment industry.
Reminders of an evil empire are on display now at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, and they’re not just related to the Soviet Union.
Mort Zuckerman, chairman/editor-in-chief of U.S. News and World Report and publisher of the New York Daily News, tours The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Library prior to speaking as part of the Center for Public Affairs Reagan Forum Series on April 13. Photo courtesy The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation
Published plays — especially those in anthologies — tend to be dismissed by the casual browser as specialty items, of interest only to students of theater history or to actors in search of audition material. Ellen Schiff and Michael Posnick clearly had something else in mind when they compiled their lively new collection, \”Nine Contemporary Jewish Plays.\”
Talk to Jewish Republicans these days and you hear a palpable sense of coming out of the wilderness.
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