Listening to the new recording of Ellen Reid’s Prism, which recently received both the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Music and the Music Critics of North America Opera Award, helped me put into perspective Scott Hogenson’s request that The Leader use asterisks to mask words he considers “obscenities.” Without these asterisks, Scott warns,The Leader will sink “to CNN levels of boorishness.”

Reid and her librettist, Roxie Perkins, address the issues of rape, collusion, and the masking of traumatic memory with an aesthetic honesty that includes the use of four letter words. They are the same words used daily on the streets of America to appropriately address obscenities that include child and sexual abuse, racism, the greed at the root of Jefferson County’s housing crisis, paramilitary installations in the midst of nature, growler jets, the drug industry-fueled opiod crisis, the wonton spraying of glyphosate, and the eradication of environmental protections for the sake of profit—the kinds of issues that CNN addresses on a daily basis.

Boorishness? What does “boorishness” mean in the context of a country that was built on slavery, inequality, and the denial of the right to vote to women? To me, masking “boorishness” means wishing to live in a world where unpleasant realities are forever glossed over and hidden for the sake of a Norman Rockwell-like America. I applaud The Leader for getting real rather than trying to maintain fantasy realities.

Jason Victor Serinus
Port Townsend