Patrick Healy penned a theatrical tribute to hard-left Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, which appeared in the New York Times Sunday Review: "Can America Back an Underdog? Broadway Did." Healy, a political reporter for the Times, eagerly sold socialist Sanders as a scrappy underdog, just like the musical Fun Home, a musical about a young lesbian, which surprised many observers by winning the 2015 Tony Award for best musical. Healy even contradicted his own previous Obama reporting to make his odd comparison work, while celebrating both Obama and Sanders as purveyors of "authenticity" seen by voters as "the real deal."
Healy took for granted that the only choice among his readership is between Hillary Clinton and Sanders, with no Republicans under consideration.
If you want to support Senator Bernie Sanders for president but worry that he doesn’t have a shot against Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination, take heart from the Broadway show “Fun Home,” which won the Tony Award for best musical last week.
“Fun Home” was the decided underdog: a nominee with little money, bold themes, no frills and a small team on the payroll. (Sound familiar, Sanders-ites?) The story of a lesbian cartoonist and her relationship with her closeted gay father, “Fun Home” is about facing difficult truths and the tragic consequences when we don’t -- the very message, as it happens, that the Sanders campaign is offering to America about income inequality and climate change. Compared with the flashy big-budget musical “An American in Paris,” which was the safe bet to win the Tony, “Fun Home” looked like a fringe contender, too dark and offbeat to have wide appeal, not unlike certain politicians who are easily dismissed as quixotic nonfactors.
....
What does it take for an underdog to succeed? In politics and on Broadway, two worlds I’ve covered as a reporter, some of the factors are similar. Message and perseverance are crucial. Money -- not a fortune, but at least enough -- is essential. And authenticity matters most of all.
Who was also an "authentic" candidate in Healy's judgment? Barack Obama in 2008. But Healy had to undermine his own previous reporting to make the facts fit his thesis.
Underdog candidates like Harry S. Truman in 1948 and Barack Obama in the 2008 primary contest struck many voters as authentic leaders who were willing to speak truth to power...Mr. Obama was the first black presidential nominee and didn’t shy away from his race, giving an eloquent speech in the face of controversy over his Chicago pastor. Many Americans came to see both men as the real deal.
So why did Healy lament that Obama had not dealt with race directly, and did shy away from the issue, in a Times article that ran three weeks before the 2008 election?
The candidacy of Mr. Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, once seemed to promise a new national conversation about race, an open dialogue about historical animosities and prejudices and the ways in which Americans have and have not moved beyond them. Yet for the most part, race has remained submerged as an issue, and the Obama campaign never dealt with it directly or in a full-throated way.
The flattering comparisons to “Fun Home” were extended to the musical's "credibility in the run-up to the Tony Awards....Its producers, meanwhile, had shown perseverance by developing the musical for years and raising enough money ($5.2 million) to transfer it from the Public Theater, Off Broadway, to Broadway."
The musical persevered, just like the gay-marriage movement, gushed Healy, who himself is gay:
Dare to dream, the underdogs reply. Take the fight for same-sex marriage: It was a long-shot movement for years, but perseverance (through legal and political fights) and authenticity (the love and commitment of same-sex couples) have helped changed policies and attitudes across the country.
“It’s the underdogs who dare to push the envelope, who dare to take risks, and who dare to be different,” said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group. “In doing so, it’s the underdogs who prove the pessimists wrong and push the world forward.”
