The Other Charlotte has done a marvelous job of chronicling the flopping of Tony Kushner’s TV version of Angels in America. Here’s hoping a similar fate awaits Mr. Kushner’s latest play, Caroline, or Change. Set in Lake Charles, La., where Kushner grew up, the play is about the racial tension between a little boy and the family’s black maid, Caroline. A review in Sunday’s WaPo Style section quoted extensively from the play. Here’s what the little boy says to Caroline: ‘President Johnson has built a special-made bomb to kill all Negroes. I hope he drops this bomb on you.’ Good heavens. I don’t want to defend having servants or not having servants. That is not a problem most of us will ever have to face in this life. What I do want to say is that I grew up in Mississippi, and I can’t imagine what would have happened to me if I’d spoken to anybody this way. I can only surmise, however, that Mr. Kushner knows whereof he speaks — in which case, he was as awful a little boy as he is an adult.
