Saturday, June 17, 2017

THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: Weekend News Commentary 7

CONSERVATIVE PROTESTORS DISRUPT
CONTROVERSIAL NEW YORK PLAY

Until now, most (but not all) public political disruptions
have been perpetrated by individuals and groups on the
left against conservatives and their events. But a
conservative group, Rebel Media, has now turned the tables
and interrupted a performance of New York City’s
Shakespeare in the Park controversial production of Julius
Caesar.
  The play is done in modern dress, and the title
character, who is assassinated, looks like President
Trump. Even before the horrific shooting at a Republican
congressional baseball practice in Washington, DC, the
production was labeled by many as grossly inappropriate,
but after the DC attack, calls have been made to close the
play’s run. Several of the theater’s major corporate sponsors
have reportedly withdrawn their support. During the
interruption, one Rebel Media protestor rushed on to the
stage. She and another protestor in the audience yelled
“Goebbels would be proud!” and saying to the audience
“You’re All Nazis!” One protestor was arrested and later
released.

ELECTION RUN-OFF IN GEORGIA
NEXT TUESDAY

The congressional special election run-off in the suburban
Atlanta 6th district is only days away. Democrats, needing at
least one victory in their bitter competition with Republicans
since their broad-based election defeats in 2016, have poured
more than $20 million into the race, and overwhelmed the local
radio, TV, cable and print media to promote Jon Ossoff, a 30
year-old first-time candidate against veteran GOP nominee
Karen Handel. The special election is to fill the seat vacated by
Tom Price who accepted a position in the cabinet of President
Donald Trump. Polls have indicated that Mr. Ossoff had held a
5-7 point lead going into the final week, but latest polls now
rate the race a toss-up. It is now the most expensive
congressional race in U.S. history --- and one of the most
publicized.

NEW CENTRIST PARTY HEADS TOWARD
LANDSLIDE IN FRANCE

President Emmanuel Macron, just elected in a landslide over
nationalist opponent Marine Le Pen, now stands likely to win
a large majority of the seats in the French parliament, shocking
his opponents on the right and the left. M. Macron, a first-time
candidate, ran as the head of a new centrist party, Republique
En Marche
, that he had created only months before. The
traditional conservative and leftist parties which had
dominated French politics for more than half a century did not
even have a candidate in the presidential election run-off, and
now these and other parties of the left and right are poised to
have their representation in the French parliament similarly
demolished by more than 400 last-minute candidates from M.
Macron’s new party. Nothing like it has happened since the
reappearance of General Charles DeGaulle when he returned
to power in 1958 during the Algerian crisis, and formed the
Fifth French Republic. Nominally a socialist, from his role as
a minister in the cabinet of his predecessor Socialist President
Francois Hollande, M. Macron has now identified himself and
his new movement as a pro-European Union, pro-business
centrist party. France, although having enjoyed general
post-Algerian civil war prosperity until recently, now faces
crises in its domestic economy and immigration. President
Macron now also faces the imminent negotiations over Brexit
with the United Kingdom. The second and final round of the
legislative elections take place on Sunday, June 18.

[UPDATE: With near-final results now in, President Macron
and his new party have won a landslide in the parliamentary
elections. His party and its party ally have won at least 350
seats, many more than a majority . Coming in second with 
about 137 seats is the conservative Republican Party. The far
left and far right parties have less than 100 seats between them,
and the socialists in particular went from controlling the past
government to electoral obscurity virtually overnight. The 
center and center right, at least for the present, now dominate
French politics.

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Copyright (c) 2017 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.

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