Shakespeare banned in Florida schools

Women were not allowed on English stages 400 years ago, so women’s roles were played by cross-dressing men, whether at The Globe, the Blackfriars or, what was it called? O, yeah, the Roxy.

This led to the delightful scene in “The Merchant of Venice” in which Portia, played by a cross-dressing man, criss-cross-dresses as a woman playing a man, to save his/her/its friend’s friend Antonio. 

Right: a man playing a woman playing a man to save another guy. Sounds like a Fellini movie to me, “Satyricon,” adapted from Petronius (ca. 27-66). 

Ask your Latin class to translate a chapter from Petronius and you’ll be looking at hard time in Tallahassee, amigo. 

But why stop at 2,000 years? If you want to ban cross-dressing — to make it a criminal act — we’ll have to ban all the Greek drama. 

Sophocles and his Oedipus plays? Please. Not in Florida, not today. “Moms for Freedom” would wee-wee in their shorts.

Should Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis be erased from history — in Florida — for playing women in “Some Like it Hot”? Makes you wonder how a nice young lady like Marilyn Monroe would stoop to conquer that box office. 

I could go on, but why? The point is — one point is — that cross-dressing can be funny. Mostly when it’s a man trying to pass as a woman, as in “Some Like it Hot” (United Artists, 1959, directed by Billy Wilder, six Oscar nominations).

And what, exactly, is wrong with that movie? I’ll watch Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe no matter what they’re wearing. Marilyn wore bluejeans in “The Misfits” and I didn’t see anything wrong with it. I liked it. (1961, screenplay by Arthur Miller, directed by John Huston). Was that cross-dressing? It was, at the time.

Cross-dressing for humor has been a feature in Disney movies since 1944, though I probably shouldn’t say that, what with Vladimir DeSantis waging war — excuse me: I mean a “special military action” — against Donald Duck.

Surely, there are worse things about Xi JinSantis than his puerile mano-a-mano puppet fights against the vile creations of his own sad mind. He reminds me of the poor shlub who finally submitted to a Rorschach test. In response to the first ink blot, the man said, “Oh, look at what they’re doing. It’s disgusting!” 

To the second blot he said, “Oh, man, that should be illegal.” To the third, he said, “Those people make me want to vomit.”

At this point the psychiatrist said, “Sir, you are a disturbed man.”

To which Florida Governor Ron DeSantis replied: “Me? You’re the one with all the dirty pictures.”

Why is Xi JinSantis so interested in what his neighbors do in their own homes? What harms is he imagining, and to whom, in the slimy cave of his vengeful mind? 

And what does Xi JinSantis plan to do about the neighbors he disagrees with, if granted the power to issue presidential diktats against them — across the 3.8 million square miles of the United States?

Xi JinSantis doesn’t want to be president, exactly; he wants to be our national priest and prosecutor, preaching retribution against ... what, exactly? 

Anyone who doesn’t think like Him, and act as He dictates, so far as I can tell. 

Pardon me one thousand times, but it seems to me that DeSantis’ God is just a high-ranking, vindictive demon: A creepy god who reduces love to pornography.

In the O, so fragile tin cup he uses as a heart, Xi JinSantis is a bully. And like all bullies, he is a coward. 

(Hemingway, 1937: “Fascism is a lie told by bullies.”)

Xi JinSantis is scared of just about everything: vengeful for imagined wrongs, done not to him or to anyone, but to creatures of his imagination. He does not know how to think: He can only label, and boast about wanting to be a cop. The best use to which he can put his tongue, he imagines, is as a nightstick.

By virtue of my occupation — if it is a virtue — I am condemned to follow Xi JinSantis’ goose steps. If he ever said anything good, or even neutral, about anyone other than his heavily armed White Christian Crusaders, I haven’t heard it. 

He is incapable of giving an honest answer to just about any question, including a key one for anyone who presumes to want to lead an ethical life. 

That question is: What do you know, for sure, about your neighbors? About anyone? Even yourself?

The only honest answer to that is: “Not that much.”

But Xi JinSantis has the recipe: Exclude and hate; hector and whine; scoop their ignorance into your hate: Stir and bake.

So. 

We’re heading into another presidential election season, on a treadmill of lies and bitching. Who will win? Where are we going, as a country, and as citizens? As voters? Beats the hell out of me.

But allow me to quote Marilyn Monroe in 'Some Like it Hot': “It’s not how long it takes, it’s who takes you there.”

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