August 2017

August was a great month I spent a long weekend in Asheville North Carolina working on my latest book 'Stakeholder Democracy.

Of course, i also explored the cafes and the art district and on my last night saw an excellent local production of the classic Mel Brooks play The Producers.

It was a little ironic that the play which is a Nazi-obsessed musical spoof was at end of the week of the tragic neo-Nazi charade in nearby Charlottesville, Virginia. 

If you haven't seen the play or the film then you might think to make fun of Nazis is not an easy task sound. Who, save for a Jew who served in World War II named Mel Brooks ("Blazing Saddles," "Young Frankenstein"), could pull off such a stunt and with such humor and pizzazz? "The only weapon I've got is comedy," says Brooks, "You've got to bring (this) down with ridicule... It's been one of my lifelong jobs — to make the world laugh at Adolf Hitler." He does this within the context of a backstage Broadway concoction where two theater producers create a would-be flop called "Springtime for Hitler," and the rest is ... ...well you have to see it. We live in very difficult times and fighting fascism needs to be on all fronts.