Over the weekend, media went apoplectic over the scandal of the day: Vice President-Elect Mike Pence visited Broadway to see Hamilton, received a lecture on governance from the Kennedy School graduate actors and actresses of the show, and then President-Elect Donald Trump tweeted about it. The actor who played Vice President Aaron Burr, Brandon Victor Dixon, lectured Pence thusly: “We, sir — we — are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights,” he said. “We truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.”
That prompted Trump to tweet, “Our wonderful future VP Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing. This should not happen! The Theater must always be a safe and special place. The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize! The cast and producers of Hamilton, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologize to Mike Pence for their terrible behavior.”
The media made this front-page news: the President-Elect attacked the theater! He’s quashing free speech! This is near-censorship! Oh My God WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!
Here are five thoughts.
1. Trump’s Right About Hamilton. It’s the most overrated Broadway show since Rent. The plot’s compelling, but the score is sparse, and the lyrics are inexact. It’s poor craft. Beyond that, the notion, promoted by the press, that the story of Alexander Hamilton can only become relatable to minority audiences if the cast members are members of minorities is insulting. Want to watch a great musical about the founding? Try 1776.
2. The Cast Of Hamilton Are Jerks. Pence paid to go to the show. He is a patron. That means he should have been treated with the same respect as any other patron. If the cast didn’t want to perform in front of him, they could have taken the night off. To lecture a member of the audience because you don’t like his politics is grandstanding. Ability to act and read lines doesn’t make this any better. Imagine going to a restaurant and being lectured by your waiter. That’s what happened to Pence.
3. The Cultural Divide Between New York And Red America Is Vast. Everybody in New York is apparently upset with Trump over the Hamilton car crash. Nobody in middle America cares. While the media go nuts over a bunch of coastal elites slapping each other, the middle of the country just sees a bunch of people who sing and dance for a living lecturing the guys they just elected to high office. Nobody’s losing any sleep in Ohio about Trump smacking down Tony nominees.
4. Trump Should Have Shut Up. This is a game we’ll be playing a lot over the next couple of years: put the shoe on the other foot. Conservatives, how would you feel if Joe Biden attended a NASCAR event and got booed, then Barack Obama went on Twitter and said fans should “apologize” to Biden, and called NASCAR “overrated”? Would you be offended? Would you think Obama should shut up? Of course you would. In fact, conservatives went nuts – justifiably – when Obama routinely attacked talk radio and Fox News. The same holds true for Trump. Yes, there’s something deliciously schadenfreudelicious about Trump punching Broadway. But he’s the president, not a pundit. He’s got higher obligations.
5. The Media Are Nuts For Making This A High Priority. As I said on CNN yesterday, “I would recommend that the media kind of take a second look at how much focus they put on things like this because if you’re going to turn it all the way up to 11 on a Hamilton tweet, this is going to be a long presidency for all of you.” In the past few days, Trump has met with Indian business partners who are building Trump-branded apartments; Trump’s kids are attending president-elect functions; the Washington Post reported that Trump Hotel in DC invited reps from local embassies post-election “to encourage them to use it when leaders from their countries visited Washington.” This is troubling stuff. But the media blew it all out of the water by focusing on Hamilton. The press deafened us all by turning it up to 11 about Mitt Romney in 2012, so nobody could hear what they had to say about Trump in 2016. The same’s going to go for the entire Trump administration, if the media keep this stupidity up.
Hamilton does tell us a good deal about how the cultural divide will continue to widen in Trump’s America. Between leftists using every avenue to whine about politics and Donald Trump refusing to filter his thoughts from the White House, things are going to get worse, not better. But Trump’s unlikely to be the one to pay the political price.