Arts & Culture

A Trumpian Caesar is too hot for corporations

Bob CollinsBob Collins Jun 12, 2017
33

Et tu, Delta?

The airline has become the latest underwriter of New York’s Shakespeare in the Park to pull its sponsorship over a production of Julius Caesar.

The protagonist was portrayed as a Donald Trump lookalike.

That’s too much for the airline which tweeted its disapproval.

Caesar, of course, is knifed in the third act. Spoiler alert: Cassius and Brutus are responsible.

“I don’t love President Trump, but he’s the president. You can’t assassinate him on a stage,” Laura Sheaffer, a sales manager at Salem Media, who attended the play tells Mediaite.

“Kathy Griffin got so much coverage for what she did, everyone was horrified, so why is no one horrified by this, which is essentially the murder of the President of the United States in front of 2,000 people?” Sheaffer said.

“The performance was well done, and the actors did a good job. It was fascinating to see the parallels between the Trump administration and Caesar’s rule, but murdering the president on stage was just too far,” Sheaffer said.

Delta sponsored a similar Caesar in the Twin Cities during the Obama administration with a presidential theme.

Bank of America also dropped its support.

The show’s director, Oskar Eustis, posted a statement saying it is the “extraordinary quality of Shakespeare’s writing to seem fresh whenever we encounter it again.”

Twitter, of course, provided the hot takes.

Meanwhile, NBC’s Megyn Kelly is giving airtime to Alec Jones, who insists that the Sandy Hook school massacre didn’t happen. The corporate underwriters are quiet on the subject.

The interview will air on Father’s Day.