Lancaster
papers ran a story about the redeeming value of McCaskey’s, a.k.a., the
School District
of
Lancaster
’s, musical Urinetown. Again, by way of reminding, McCaskey is receiving $12 million additional dollars in “stimulus” money. The story in the papers sheds some light on the content of the play. This content, seems innocuous—the paper even calls it “innocuous.” Admittedly, the title and the content (concerning “pee”) are, well, at least meant to be provocative and offensive, but we are encouraged to set aside our small mindedness, get past our “pee” problems and come and see this uplifting musical. Here is the story:
Louisville
, he was facing the same sort of issue. Plays were being brought in to town and publicly funded. These plays often offended the most basic community standards. This offensiveness was, of course, lauded by the local media who aggressively sought to make people feel embarrassed about having local standards of decorum, manners and moral standards. The media would like all of us to feel our shame for not living in and having the standards of
New York
and
Los Angeles
—the only two important places on earth. We should receive and learn from their rebuke and adjust out antiquated, rustic manners. We should, in this case, embrace the “pee.” Well, this sort of thinking is a bunch of bunk. In my house, you are not allowed to talk about “pee” at the table. This ban on potty talk at the table is particularly in force if you are using “pee” to make a particular point by metaphor—like “urinetown” which uses “pee” to speak of monopolistic government, social control and censorship. If you want to make your point about erudite social topics, you need to make a decent enough argument that you need not throw in gross potty talk to get my attention. To fail to meet the basic standards of civil discourse is not a sign of refinement. It is a harbinger of juvenile delinquency. Any argument, essay, or musical that has to use gross language to get our attention should be rejected out of hand. The writer should be asked to revise his argument before we will listen. Usually, shock language is a sign of a talentless hack who has to use offensiveness to gain attention.
