Paul Sassone

This is not about politics, honest.

So, don’t get mad and stop reading.

You may have heard that at a Nov. 19 Chicago performance of the musical “Hamilton,” a middle-aged man in the audience started yelling at the performers on stage and had to be removed.

According to reports, at a line in one of the songs — “Immigrants, we get the job done” — the man began hollering, “We won! Get over it! —- you! This is disgusting.”

Seems as if the man interpreted the song line as a slap at President-elect Donald Trump and his stated position on immigrants and immigration.

I don’t know what the song’s composer intended when he wrote the song.

Nor do I care.

Everything I read or hear cloaks this sad happening in politics.

In fact, the yeller has an attorney (of course) who claims that removing the yeller from the theater violated his First Amendment right to free speech. All the yeller was doing was commenting on a play, giving his opinion, as is every American’s right.

But, is it every American’s right to interrupt a play? Is it every American’s right to spoil a night at the theater for a few hundred people?

Theaters will be very noisy places if everyone takes to shouting out his or her opinion during performance.

And you know what? That is exactly what is happening. Have you been to a concert, or a play, or a movie in the last few years where there wasn’t some boor talking, or otherwise making noise?

A concert isn’t a concert anymore. It is a many-headed selfie. People in the audience don’t listen to the band or singers. Instead they yell and scream and sing and dance. The concert has become a way for people in the audience to show off themselves. The performers are almost invisible and inaudible.

When did people become so openly self-absorbed, so oblivious to the rights of others?

A lot of the blame has to go to technology. Computers and smart phones have pretty much obliterated privacy. Or, maybe not so much obliterated privacy as made everything everybody’s business. You don’t have a right if I don’t want you to. You have no right to watch “Hamilton” uninterrupted if there is something about “Hamilton” I don’t like. I won’t wait to write a letter, or withhold my attendance.

I’ll just shout out my objection. I can do anything I want. That’s my right.

Americans used to believe that each of us is free to do what we want as long as it doesn’t impinge on someone else’s freedom.

I don’t think a lot of us believe that anymore.

If what I do bothers you — too bad. I can say and do what I want because, well, I am me. And it’s all about me. I am the center.

So, I think we are in for a lot more incidents like the “Hamilton” shout-out.

And it’s not about politics, of which we have plenty.

It’s about respect, civility, tolerance, empathy, of which we have less and less.

–It’s all about respect, civility–