A question for our friends at the IRS: Isn’t having Senator Chuck Schumer urging a crowd of thousands to “Vote Democratic!” from the stage at an event hosted by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit a pretty clear violation of that group’s tax-exempt status?
Not that the IRS would do anything about it.
Senator Schumer, who is one of the key figures who urged the IRS to target conservative nonprofits in the run-up to the 2012 election and after, wandered into a scene in a bizarre, illiterate adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, put on by the Public Theater at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater. (You will be able to read my review of this risible mess in the upcoming edition of The New Criterion.) Unlike those conservative organizations Senator Schumer and the IRS targeted — which, being 501(c)(4) organizations, are expressly permitted to engage in political activity — the Public Theater is expressly barred from campaign activity, being a 501(c)(3).
The evening began with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio delivering what amounted to a stump speech about his pre-kindergarten program and declaring his opposition to “every form of inequality” as publicity photographers captured the moment. (You try taking a photograph, with flashes, at the Delacorte Theater and find out which animals are more equal than others on this particular farm.) I wonder if the great crusader against inequality stood in line for three hours on a hot afternoon in the park to get his tickets, or whether that is only for the peons.
Senator Schumer entered the scene — literally — about a third of the way in, and struck up a conversation with the thief Autolycus, who also praised Mayor de Blasio’s pre-kindergarten program. At one point, Senator Schumer urged the audience: “Vote Democratic!”
Cookie Monster showed up later, but that’s another story.
I have never thought much of the idea of the artist as rebel; some artists are, and some aren’t. But to see Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis prostrating himself before politicians, and making his company utterly supine to them, was extraordinarily distasteful. It was a shameful spectacle.