Tony Kushner in the South? How did he get in? Will he get out alive?

These questions vexed me as I read this article (link).

The article claims that Kushner is from the South (Louisiana), and answers an apparently groundless charge that Confederate flags were displayed (doubtless in a threatening manner) from dormitory windows at Tennessee's Vanderbilt University during Kushner's lecture there. Thus spake New York Times Reporter Alex Abramovich -- who "followed along as Kushner trekked to a lecture at Vanderbilt." Never mind that there weren't any flags; even after being corrected, "the writer of the story still says he saw Confederate flags.

QUERY: Did Abramovich hallucinate, or was he merely engaging in Blairization?

Either way, all I have to say is "Harrumph!"

I don't like Kushner (a Marxist gay activist whose talent I do not deny but whose philosophy I abhor) and I don't care whether he claims to be from the South, or from anywhere else.

But there is one little gem I wish the Nashville "Scene" had read. I believe this is the best fisking of Tony Kushner, by anyone, anywhere. Here's a sample (and please read the whole thing; the occasion was a commencement speech by Kushner):

Mr. Tushner employs the standard rhetorical trope of cascading polarities. He employs it in the same way the state railroad of India employs bureaucrats---at world record levels.

He sets in motion a good versus evil chain reaction that would threaten the whole planet--if the whole planet was made of newspaper and gasoline, and Mr. Whoosh!ner was in charge of the safety matches. Funny how the Shush!ner left thinks Bush's invocation of the concept of "evil" is indicative of his essential theocratic barbarism. But Bush is Barbar the benevolent elephant compared with Bushner. The happy pachyderm's axis of evil was comprised of the governments of three tyrannies. Tony the avenging donkey's coalition of the just comprises only 40% of the population, once all fallen and craven humans are eliminated from the company of the angels....

For Mr. Kushner, all I can do is offer the following flag. Perhaps this is what Mr. Abramovich should have hallucinated.

Too many hallucinations these days.

Might I be getting too old to be a Deadhead?