“A recent incident of fashionable bigotry masquerading as politically courageous theater was that of Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson’s call for the exclusion of Israel’s Habima Theater Company from Globe to Globe, a renowned international festival being held at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London.

The elegant Ms Thompson cites ‘policies of exclusion practiced by the Israeli state’ as fuelling her moral outrage.

When I clicked on to the Globe to Globe website, then, I naturally assumed, based on the effervescent Emma’s righteous indignation, that the festival would consist of the tried and true assemblage of British Commonwealth nations: Australia, India, Jamaica and of course the United Kingdom. A cross-section of enlightened societies with an appreciation for the Bard of Avon was a safe bet, no?

I stand corrected. Here’s just a partial list of nations that have “partnered” with the World Shakespeare Festival in some way, shape or form, along with some of their own state-sponsored ‘productions’…”

To view the list, which appears as part of an essay posted on CiF Watch, click here: http://cifwatch.com/2012/04/12/bds-the-most-irrelevant-story-ever-told-the-unbearable-vapidness-of-being-emma-thompson/