Calling the film’s use of dark and glowering Jacob Elordi in the role is hardly “whitewashing,” but this is DEI, racial identity, film-as-propaganda ideology for you in the 21st century. The essay is a provocative review of where non-traditional casting stands in 2026—no more colorblind casting, it seems (which backfires when it distracts from the show, and always has)—with the critic concluding that race “figures as a primary visual vocabulary through which meaning is constructed, in our world and in the stories we tell. Ignoring it assumes a collective naïveté that no longer exists, if it ever really did.”

That holds only if you can only see everything through the prism of race, which this “of color” critic does and the Axis of Unethical conduct demands. And—surprise surprise surprise!—he blames that on President Trump. “Look anywhere and try to profess colorblindness, and people will think you’re somewhere between disingenuous and delusional,” he writes.

That’s your bubble, jackass, not mine.

I write this having held repeatedly on EA that race- and gender-crossing casting justifies itself when it works, that is, makes the production better, more interesting or entertaining without knee-capping the author’s intent. When it is just virtue-signalling, a stunt (like the Broadway revival of “1776” casting all of the Founders as female, Asian, Hispanic, black, handicapped or gay, or that production of “Richard III” above—I can’t recall which one is King Richard) or just a woke director proving his or her bona fides, such casting is indefensible. However Kumar’s implication that a director casting white actors in plays about white people might be excusable makes me 1) realize I don’t care what this jerk thinks, 2) comprehend how near to clinical insanity the Left’s indoctrination and propaganda has made millions of people, 3) want to direct an all-white “Porgy and Bess” out of spite.

And one more thing: It makes me miss Curmie.

The Ethics Alarms columnist’s last post here was in January, 2025, and it was on this very topic, which was in his wheelhouse as a director and theater scholar. A lot of topics were in his wheelhouse, but soon after that post Trump Derangement got my friend—at least I thought he was my friend—by the throat. He stopped submitting columns and when I inquired about it he sent me a terse four word kiss-off. Then he began a rampage of Trump hate on his blog, which I had promoted, and on social media. There was no explanation, which I deserved, no thank-you, which I really deserved, no decent good-bye, which is simple politeness.

I, apparently am responsible for the Democrats’ incompetent, babbling fraudster of a candidate losing to a former President.

People I admired, trusted and helped have treated me badly before (lately the D.C. Bar fell into that category) and will again, I’m sure. I never see it coming, I guess perhaps because in my whole life I have never done that to anyone, no, not even before I became obsessed with ethics. I don’t understand it.

I have forgiven it, however. There is always hope.