An opera so repugnant it is capable of uniting in opposition the state Democratic chairman and a former Republican mayor has a First Amendment right to be staged, but it shouldn’t be subsidized by taxpayers.
Last week, former Gov. David Paterson, the current leader of the state Democratic Party, and Rudy Giuliani joined together to protest the Metropolitan Opera’s production of “The Death of Klinghoffer” because it’s undeniably pro-terrorist and perceived as anti-Semitic by many New Yorkers.
“The Death of Klinghoffer” romanticizes the Palestinian terrorists who, in 1985, hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship and murdered the 69-year-old, wheelchair-bound American tourist Leon Klinghoffer, simply because he was Jewish.
The opera does more than tell the audience what the terrorists were thinking. It essentially argues that there were two morally equivalent sides in the struggle, suggesting that perhaps the terrorists had a point when they claimed that Jewish people are to blame for the world’s suffering.
To date, the argument has focused on whether the Met exercised decent judgment in putting on the production.
That ought not be the only question. This cultural institution sits on public land and is supported by New York taxpayers. Should we, the people of New York, pay a nickel to amplify the lyrics, “Wherever poor men/Are gathered they can/Find Jews getting fat”?
That anti-Semitic rant from the opera’s Rambo character is a glaring example of its ugly propaganda. Beginning with the prologue, the opera repeatedly bends over backward to offer justifications for the murder.
The Metropolitan Opera received a $136,200 grant from New York State taxpayers this year, through the New York State Council on the Arts. Over the years, the Met has received hundreds of thousands in tax dollars.
Those grants should stop because of this production.
Some have called my call for New York State to end subsidies for the Met censorship. One critic even labeled it “cultural fascism.”
Nonsense. Various levels of government make decisions all the time about what artistic endeavors to support.
Are there no limits to the artistic expression the “withholding-tax-dollars-is-censorship” crowd would prop up with public dollars? How about a Ku Klux Klan production about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King?
I would be disgusted to see government support that. Would the Met’s defenders support it?
Nor does it impinge upon the First Amendment rights of speech and religion to remove the tax-exempt status from a church if the pastor crosses an arbitrary line by delivering political commentary from the pulpit. The clergy are free to take political stances in their church, but they then risk losing their tax-exempt status.
That prohibition is surely a much more significant burden — and exponentially more common than simply withdrawing taxpayer funding from the Met.
Another common tactic used to squelch debate on “Klinghoffer” is to claim that if you haven’t seen the opera, you cannot comment. I haven’t seen the notorious early-20th-century film “The Birth of a Nation,” but I’m familiar enough with it to know it’s wildly racist.
An actress performing in “Klinghoffer” defended it as similar to “Schindler’s List.” That is laughable. In Steven Spielberg epic, Oskar Schindler is the hero. The Nazis and Amon Goeth are portrayed as unspeakably evil.
It’s so clear cut that in the American Film Institute’s list of cinema’s 100 greatest heroes and villains, Amon Goeth ranks as the 15th most memorable villain. He’s between the Alien from “Alien” and the sociopath in “Chinatown.”
“The Death of Klinghoffer,” on the other hand, is defined by its moral equivocations.
In America, the Met is free to produce shows that are anti-Semitic and make terrorists sympathetic. And in return, taxpayers are free — I would say obligated — to pull back support.
Lalor, a Republican assemblyman, represents Dutchess County.
