Bibi, Bonnie and Clyde

Two nights ago, I went out to see a new musical on Broadway. Bonnie & Clyde. Spoiler alert. They die. It was a phenomenal play. More interesting though, were the reactions of the 9 Israelis I saw it with. They mostly enjoyed it. They found the scenes with the gospel choir to be quite amusing. But none of them had ever really heard the full story of Bonnie and Clyde that the average American is familiar with and it was definitely novel. By intermission, one young woman was utterly confused by the ideology of the play. “I don’t get it”, she said, “I’m feeling like I want the bad guys to win”. It must be a peculiar thing that we do in America, turning mobsters, villains and murderers into folk heroes. Especially in the face of economic catastrophe (Bonnie and...