Sunday, November 27, 2016

Why are people so dumb and/or lazy?


Trump voters are by definition dumbasses. A perfect example in today's NYTimes:

Dalia Carmeli, who drives a trolley in downtown Miami, voted for Donald J. Trump on Election Day. A week later, she stopped in to see the enrollment counselor who will help her sign up for another year of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
“I hope it still stays the same,” said Ms. Carmeli, 64, who has Crohn’s disease and relies on her insurance to cover frequent doctor’s appointments and an array of medications."
However, you would have thought that those who value literary arts would be less dumb and/or lazy than a Trump voter. A representative of a theater group that issues calls for scripts once asked me for my advice: "what can we do to ensure that only scripts that meet the submission guidelines are submitted?" she asked.

Hell if I know lady. 

All calls for submissions apparently suffer from the same problem. I've already blogged about it, but once again, I find it's the same old story. The most recent NYCPlaywrights call for submissions says
President-elect Donald Trump has said a number of controversial things, including that he can grab women "by the pussy" because "when you're a star they let you do it, you can do anything." This is considered a description of sexual assault by some, but locker room talk by others.
More on what Donald Trump has said about women.

NYCPlaywrights is looking for scripts about women in a time when the leader of the United States is Donald Trump.
So what has been submitted so far? Well 11 have been submitted so far within the first 24 hours and all but 4 had to be rejected. A few for completely ignoring the standard play script requirements and one for ignoring the request that the submission be sent as a PDF. In addition to that the subject matter of the rejects include:
  • A riff on CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF focusing on Brick's homosexuality
  • An interview by a woman of a character based on Donald Trump which discusses a wide variety of Trump-related issues, not just women.
  • A monologue from a dead (female) cat.
So to make it crystal clear I added this to the call for submissions:

  • Please note: simply having a female character in the script does not, by itself, meet the theme of "women in the age of Trump" - the script must focus on one or more women and their experiences in a world which reflects the values of a country that would make Donald Trump its president. See More on what Donald Trump has said about women for ideas. If the script does not focus on one or more women it does not meet the theme of this call for submissions. If you have already submitted a script that does not meet this criterion, you can resubmit a new script that does, as a replacement. If you don't have a 10-minute play or monologue that meets that requirement, you might consider writing one, the deadline is December 24, 2016. 


Hopefully it will keep the useless script submissions down a little.

In the meanwhile, enjoy this cartoon about reality in the age of Trump from the New Yorker.