The Dead and Dostoyevsky, in a War With Bush

[kskiska]

It might not have swayed many swing voters: a playlet in which a man portrays Laura Bush, talking passionately about Dostoyevsky and moral relativity to the ghosts of Iraqi children, cursing occasionally and revealing at one point that she sometimes calls her husband "the Chimp." ("You know, those ears," the character of the first lady says, smiling impishly.)

But at a benefit performance Monday night at the American Airlines Theater, this extended scene by the playwright Tony Kushner served as the backdrop for a kind of joyous cultural pep rally for those who want to see Mr. Bush turned out of office.

The scene, from a planned longer work to be called "Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy," was also part of a continuing effort by the liberal activist online group MoveOn.org to try to harness the arts more firmly to its political cause and to mend what the group sees as a rift between populist politics and popular culture.

(snip)

…He also explained that he simply found Mrs. Bush a compelling character. He said he was fascinated that she was "a librarian and a very big reader," but that she had decided to marry a man who had obviously inherited his family's "language-processing problem," a remark that drew huge laughs from the crowd.

He said he decided to write the scene especially after the first lady had mentioned in an interview that her favorite piece of fiction was the Grand Inquisitor scene in "The Brothers Karamazov," one of the more ambiguous in literature. (Mrs. Bush has said, however, that she does not consider it ambiguous but finds it to be about Christ and to be reassuring.)

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http://nytimes.com/2004/08/04/theater/04KUSH.html