Adam don't know Schiff 'bout 'Soviet-style tactics'

Everybody thought her shrill falsetto was an act, a wonderfully cultivated device to win roles in Hollywood, and it worked! The nation fell in love with Butterfly McQueen when she played "Prissy," Scarlett O'Hara's maidservant in "Gone with the Wind."

It was hard to believe, but the truth is that Butterfly's endearing little speeches as Scarlett's maid were delivered in her real, natural-born, God-given voice. I know, because I lucked out and became Butterfly's close personal friend somewhere around the mid-1970s. That's the way she really talked, even when she wasn't playing a role in one of the greatest films of all time. I think of her performance a lot, remembering how she delivered that famous line, proclaiming, "Oh, Miss Scarlett! I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies!"

It was real, folks. Everything about her was real. She was also famous for saying, when asked how she played the stereotypical African American servant (and why she eventually resolved to decline such roles, despite that decision putting her integrity above her career), "I didn't mind playing a maid the first time, because I thought that was how you got into the business. But after I did the same thing over and over, I resented it. I didn't mind being funny, but I didn't like being stupid."

I got a phone call one day from Butterfly, who was in the middle of the kind of frustration and anger one did not have to be a professional actor to experience!

"Barry, this is awful. This is terrible. This is really monstrous. I did a voice-over, and they told me I'd be paid within 21 days. I waited 21 days and still nothing came. I gave them a call and they told me, 'Oops, we're so sorry, you got lost in our system, it will take another 21 days.'

"So I waited another 21 days and – can you believe it? – 21 days after that and still nothing! When I called again, the sham continued. The guy I talked to acted like he had no idea who I was, or why I was so upset. And so I waited another 21 days and then another, and – so help me, Barry! – 21 days after that, and this time they apologized to me again! And so I'm sitting here now in the middle of one more promise to send me my paycheck within the next 21 days! That's genocide!"

We can all understand that this treatment of a popular movie star is disappointing. It is upsetting. It is vexing, demoralizing, substandard, inadequate, prejudicial and unacceptable. We could sit here for hours and assign all kinds of negative descriptions to the treatment accorded to Butterfly, and all would be correct. But genocide?

Genocide is the calculated, deliberate attempt to kill off all existing members of a targeted population. If Butterfly were still alive (she died in 1995), I'm sure she would quickly agree that her use of the term "genocide" was a bridge too far.

But now let's jump over to today. A prominent member of the House of Representatives, Adam Schiff accuses the Republicans of using Soviet-style tactics in their legislative lunges. Really? Soviet-style tactics? Congressman Schiff needs a briefing from some colleague (perhaps on a committee Adam Schiff chairs!) to go over enough history to help him understand why "Soviet-style legislative tactics" is every bit as ludicrous as Butterfly's allusion to "genocide."

Someone should tell Adam Schiff about the Soviet elimination of 6 million Ukrainian peasants, the Kulaks, whose prosperity annoyed the Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin, who killed them off by deliberate starvation. Really, Congressman Schiff? Has Mitch McConnell, to the best of your information, done anything similar? The body count of victims of Soviet-style behavior exceeds the body count racked up by Adolf Hitler. C'mon now, Adam! Are the Republicans really that bad?

Then again, the way the massive, all-powerful Soviet propaganda machine was put to use in demonizing the Kulaks (who were painted as enemies of the state before being systematically starved to death), as well as the Soviets' use of show trials and kangaroo courts, suggests that Schiff and his Democratic comrades actually do understand Soviet-style tactics, and how to employ them, as well as how to use projection to impute the use of such tactics to their opponents, when such tactics are actually integral to their own playbook!

Alas, dear Butterfly McQueen is no longer with us, and therefore cannot tell us about experiences like not being allowed to attend the premiere screening of "Gone with the Wind" because it was at a whites-only theater (such segregation being quite common in that era and area).

If any of you happen to run into Adam, please remind him that one can be very bad and still be nowhere near the style of the real Soviet Union, a style which can be summed up in one simple but chilling two-word phrase, namely, "mass graves."