My small high school class was a cool bunch of characters - still is - and included a sophomore transfer named Jerry Doyle. This earned me some serious cred watching TV with Ebola and a friend one late night. There was something about that Garibaldi guy who I just couldn't shake feeling like I knew him, so I stuck around for the credits.

 I had to produce the yearbook for the two skeptical teens to prove I did. 

The funny thing is, I had been telling Doyle stories for years, never knowing he had done amazing stuff once he'd left us all behind, as he'd assured everyone - especially Sister Tarcilia, the perpetually sour-faced chemistry teacher - he didn't have to worry about passing her class because he was going to be a bartender.

Luckily for me, Al Gore had invented the innerwebs, and I got to catch up with Jerry over email as he'd moved to radio.

He was such a treat, and we all miss him.

I got thinking of Doyle and high school and Ebola because of the frickin' British being boneheads again - this time over Shakespeare.

I don't know about your sophomore year, but ours was spent in English lit - and that meant a lot of things, including a go at Hamlet. Nothing made the Felician nun teaching the class happier than rote memorization (I can still rip off the first two stanzas of The Raven), and she assigned Hamlet's soliloquy to much moaning and groaning.

And much hilarity when it came time for the class clowns like Doyle to recite it. Or football players emoting through, ''Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished...'

But at least that way, she knew they'd looked at that much of the assignment and counted it as a win.

Teachers, too lazy to put in the effort, have claimed for decades Shakespeare needed to be 'more accessible' and have agitated to modernize the Bard when it's really not necessary. Exposure is what's absolutely necessary.

We took an eight-year-old Ebola to see a matinee of Branaugh's Henry V when it was released, and that has become a cherished memory in our family.

...In all of Orange County, it was only playing at a little art house theatre in Laguna Beach. I was desperate to see it and major dad thought we could hit their Saturday matinee with Ebola and be pretty safe. Getting there just as the theatre opened, we found seats we could isolate ourselves in and still see. We warned everyone who went to sit near us that “we’ve got a third-grader with us.” Almost to a one they all said “thanks for letting us know” and would move a row or two away. Except for one guy who, bless his heart, said “Really? That’s okay ~ I’d be curious to know what he thinks of it.” And he plopped down right in front of us.

This is no exaggeration ~ through the whole long thing, the one and ONLY time Ebola opened his mouth was as the French nobles were staging on the hill above the field. The English were done with “St. Crispin’s Day” speeches and scurrying through the cold and damp to their positions behind the barricades. 

As they stared at each other, Ebola whispered, “Mommy?”
“What honey?” I whispered back.
“Who are the bad guys?” he asked.
“The clean ones.”
“Okay.”
And that was it.
Magical.

The current crop of college snowflakes needs more than flipping the lingo into plain-speak for dense undergrads. Before being exposed to Shakespeare's multiple horrors, British university students require trigger warnings in case they might not be up to it.

A University has added trigger warnings on Willian Shakespeare’s works, including for “extreme weather” and “popping balloons”.

A total of 220 warnings were added to his works, as well as famous adaptations from the BBC, ITV, and theatrical versions.

The University of the West of England (UWE) told drama students that TV adaptations of Macbeth referenced “war” and “psychological distress”.

University used to be about rigor, not triggers and 'caution symbols.'

...Back in 2017, Cambridge University students were also warned in regard to the playwright’s works. A little red triangle appeared on their English lecture timetables, with a note reading: “Any session containing material that could be deemed upsetting (and it is not obvious from the title) is now marked with a △ symbol”.

The common sense, rational people who exploded on the fragile flowers of the British academic scene back in February...

..."Frankly, how on earth can you be a university student without realising that some of Shakespeare involves daggers, storms, suicide, all of these things.

...have to be about suicidal themselves right now at what this sort of attitude has wrought.

Instead of giving everyone a good shake and telling them to grow the flock up...they're giving Shakespeare himself a make-over in his own hometown. Why?

The fragile flowers of today's United Kingdom find 16th-century life in England to be offensive. So they are rewriting it to suit 21st-century abnormals who heartily object to anything that smacks of 'white supremacy' and 'colonialism' - which means everything. 

Shakespeare will no longer be 'the greatest' bard but one of a global community of 'equal and different writers' - this in his own home. Shamefully, it's all the work of the trust that is in charge of all things Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Neat, huh?

William Shakespeare's birthplace will be de-colonised over fears that portraying his success as the 'greatest' playwright 'benefits the ideology of white European supremacy'.

Shakespeare's Birthplace Trust owns buildings in the playwright's hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon.

It wants to 'create a more inclusive museum experience' and announced it will move away from Western perspectives after concerns were raised that Shakespeare's ideas were used to advance 'white supremacy' ideas.

The trust also said that some of its items could contain language or depictions that are racist, sexist, or homophobic.

It comes amid an ongoing backlash against the writer. Some productions of his works have been slapped with trigger warnings for misogyny, racism and 'problematic radicalised dynamics' that link whiteness to beauty.

In 2022, a research project between the trust and Dr Helen Hopkins at the University  of Birmingham postulated that the idea of Shakespeare's 'universal' genius 'benefits the ideology of white European supremacy'.

This is because European culture is portrayed as the standard for high art and the playwright as a symbol of British 'superiority', according to The Telegraph.

The project said this narrative has caused harm, and advised that the trust stop saying Shakespeare was the 'greatest' but part of a community of 'equal and different' writers globally.

How bastardized a version of Shakespeare could the very people entrusted with Shakespeare's legacy possibly produce?

I'd say they could do a pretty good job of demolishing whatever legitimacy they have historically.

As soon as you hear 'academics,' 'experts,' or 'accessible,' chills should run down your spine.

...The trust also promised to remove offensive language from its collections.

Some of the items at the trust include archived material, literary criticism, books linked to the writer and gifts from around the world offered in honour of him.

A statement from the trust said: 'As part of our ongoing work, we've undertaken a project which explores our collections to ensure they are as accessible as possible.'

In 2021, The Globe Theatre launched a project to 'decolonise' Shakespeare's famous plays, while experts claimed his work is 'problematic' for linking whiteness to beauty.

...A major comic plot line is King Oberon giving a love potion to Queen Titania so she falls for the ass-headed character Bottom.

But academics have claimed this is troubling because Titania is drugged, so she cannot consent.

Hailey Bachrach, the founder of the education project Shakespeare and Consent, said that this kind of plotline can 'make Shakespeare problematic'.

...In these seminars education experts have said the Bard's language was 'racialising'. For example, the first line of A Midsummer Night's Dream is said to set out the racial divide clearly straight away: 'Now, fair Hippolyta.'

The project, 'Shakespeare and Consent'? Holy crap.

If England were in a better place right now - as are we - they would light the torches and run these woke charlatans out of Stratford. 

But England is not okay, and this is where they are right now. This is who is writing the rules - and who he is writing them for - which everyone must play by or else.

Keir Starmer claims that the problem in England is Islamophobia.

Is this a joke?

pic.twitter.com/qiM1vzfOGx

— Vivid.🇮🇱 (@VividProwess) March 14, 2025

The same man whose government has already removed the portraits of beloved and venerated British heroes of yore from Parliament walls to be replaced by the scowling visages of the harpies who populate his ministers' offices and administer his punitive legal retribution system.

So far, no one's tried to stop him.

When you're on that sort of a roll, taking the rest of your BRITISH history to the dustbin isn't that big of a stretch.

If you've been meaning to pick up any favorites from Shakespeare's works, I'd suggest you buy the unabridged, unedited versions now - while you still can.

I don't understand working this hard to destroy something this good, this quintessentially British, that has stood the test of time for quite literally centuries of changing tastes, customs, and conventions.

Then again, I'm proud of my country.