The Power of Theater?

Dan Froomkin from The Huffington Post on seeing Thurgood at the Kennedy Center, one night after President Obama.

The real message of "Thurgood" is a celebration of courage -- Marshall's, mostly, but also LBJ's, for nominating such a controversial figure to the bench and then twisting the requisite arms in the Senate to get him confirmed.

And that's where it gets a bit double-edged. Because the play reminds us that there was a time when courage was not necessarily disqualifying from public service.

Marshall, in his time, was a radical -- and I gather there was some talk of his drinking and carousing, too, for good measure. But Johnson picked him and stuck by him.

By contrast, rather than nominate a modern-day radical -- say, an outspoken gay rights activist -- or even someone dramatically on the left side of the legal spectrum, Obama recently picked Elena Kagan, whose most significant qualification appears to have been that she successfully avoided doing anything the least bit controversial -- or courageous -- over the course of her long legal career.

And --

I wonder what Obama took away from his night at the theater. I know he must have been impressed by Fishburne's tour-de-force performance, if nothing else. Maybe he could take a lesson there: Even if you're not Thurgood Marshall, act like you are.