The smash hit on Broadway and a Tony nominee for best play is Oh, Mary! which reduces the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War to bickering between failed boozy cabaret singer Mary Todd Lincoln and an adulterous gay president. The show was inspired by Eunice on the Carol Burnett Show. And that is the metaphor for how television news and pundit shows have reduced politics to the Theater of Cruelty and trampled The Quality of Mercy of William Shakespeare.

How politics have changed since World War II. A grateful nation supported the ailing Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who delivered America out of the Depression and an end to fascism in the Second World War. He won a fourth term in 1944 against Republican Governor Thomas Dewey because he replaced a controversial left-wing Vice President Henry Wallace with the moderate and obscure Missouri politician Harry S. Truman. Roosevelt died a few months into his term, leaving Truman to finish the war, deal with the Soviet ally Joseph Stalin and drop the Atomic Bomb.

The relentless search for raw meat by television, more than newspapers, made this Theater of Cruelty a reality aimed at the gentlemanly Joseph Biden. The economy was in good shape and trade among nations was smooth, despite the propaganda from MAGA outlets.

Donald Trump never made any sense with non sequitur lies, whereas Joseph Biden, who had a full time job as President, was criticized for diminished performance in a completely useless debate. Instead of praising him for creating jobs and economic security, MSNBC and the countless pundit podcasts judged him like a failed sitcom vaudevillian.

It is well known that First Ladies Eleanor Roosevelt, Edith Wilson, Mamie Eisenhower, Roslyn Carter, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Reagan shielded Presidents Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, James Carter, William Clinton and Ronald Reagan in their times of crisis, but The View condemned former First Lady Jill Biden as a Lady Macbeth enabler for supporting Biden. Even after the news that Biden has prostate cancer drew crocodile tears from his critics. Trump had the decency to wish his former rival hope, which was diminished by Donald Jr mounting a conspiracy theory that the cancer was a face saving story.

When will this Theater of Cruelty end? More should be like Marshalltown Mayor Joel Greer who sent me a remembrance of the kindness Jill and Joe showed him when they were campaigning. “Joe called me himself when we were hit with the derecho,” Greer wrote.

Biden is still attacked for running for a second term at his age and perhaps there should have been the smoke filled room at the Democratic Convention. And he should have changed the vice president to moderate Governors Andy Beshear or Roy Cooper.

The fact remains that we are so bankrupt morally that we kick an elderly gentleman who carries rosary beads in his pocket and sane wash a convicted felon who stole government secrets.

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Kevin Lewis was the longtime reporter for two Hollywood labor guilds, the Directors Guild of America and The Motion Picture Editors Guild. His play on Jean Seberg, The Doe Hunters, was performed in Marshalltown in 2023.