Of Course: WaPo Theater Critic Loves Play About Child Sex Abusers

Ah, pedophilia. It is such a gray moral area, you know, and a bit of humor goes a long way to defuse anger at child predators. 

That is the take of The Washington Post’s theater critic, who wants you to know that pedophiles are people just like you and me. They drink tea, can be funny, and put their pants on (or, more appropriately, take them off) just like you and me. 

Naveen Kumar wants us to know that not everybody will consider this important play their cup of tea. His predecessor at the Post also reviewed it positively and caught a little flak for praising it. But he will bravely soldier on so that people comfortable with humanizing pedos can enjoy the vicarious thrill of identifying with some of the most depraved people on Earth. 

When my predecessor as Washington Post theater critic praised the play’s acclaimed off-Broadway premiere in 2022, conservatives such as Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) accused him of celebrating pedophilia. That they probably hadn’t seen the show hammered home Norris’s point: Knee-jerk responses crush complexity underfoot.

See, Naveen is a brave soul, and his prior gig as a writer for a “Queer” magazine writer is purely coincidental to his enjoying a play about pedophilia. 

The play, “Downstate,” seems to be a big hit with the morally sophisticated who can find humor in the rage that a victim tries to express to his abuser. 

Norris uses humor to deflate the tension from the very first moment, dismissing any expectation that we’re dealing in black and white. A buttoned-up couple are perched across from a white-haired man in a motorized wheelchair, the husband (Tim Getman) reading from a prepared statement you can imagine him rehearsing in a mirror. The man he accuses of being “fundamentally evil” (Dan Daily) kindly offers him a coffee, his wife (Emily Kester) fields a call from their bored kid back at the hotel, and other occupants of the house go about their daily routines.

See? Isn’t that funny? The man who committed evil acts that permanently scarred a child offers tea! Hilarious. 

Kumar’s point throughout his review is that there is no black-and-white moral line; some people like abusing children for sexual pleasure, while others don’t. Who are you to judge? 

This was supposed to be a fiery confrontation to try to heal decades-old wounds, but mundane realities keep getting in the way. What their victims might imagine as a den of demons looks like any old mangy living room. What now?

Convicted sex offenders who have served their time must navigate society in prescribed ways, outside expanding perimeters around schools and other public spaces where children congregate. In here (the rundown ranch-home set is by Alexander Woodward), their dynamics are not unlike a family’s: There’s a house mother (Stephen Conrad Moore), who attends to everyone’s comforts with graceful resignation; a soft-spoken introvert (Richard Ruiz Henry) most often in his room with the door closed; and another (Jaysen Wright) whose bluster and ambition become a liability, particularly when he brings home a Juul-ing guest (Irene Hamilton). The eldest (Daily), whose past has come knocking, speaks with the gee-willikers gentleness of a mall Santa. A weary but compassionate cop (Kelli Blackwell) keeps regular tabs.

The play’s structure asks us to see these residents as ordinary people — who wait their turn to use a shared bathroom, worship Diana Ross movies or listen to Chopin — before revealing the monstrous behavior that landed them here.

Clearly, this is a message that the world desperately needs to hear. Too many of us think that a trip through the Woodchipper would be a richly deserved punishment for raping a child, but really, some pedos like Chopin! 

This is the same attitude that inspires Hollywood to celebrate their own master pedophile, the movie director Roman Polanski, for whom all of Hollywood stood up and cheered. 

I get ridiculed by my decent but liberal friends and family when I argue that normalizing pedophilia is a priority of the progressives, and no amount of evidence seems to penetrate the illusion they have that this is impossible. 

The thought is so monstrous that it cannot be true. Except that it is. “Minor Attracted People” are somewhere high up the intersectional ladder, and the alphabet ideologists are determined to normalize their desires. 

5 years ago Elijah wood had alot to say about the pedophilia problem in Hollywood pic.twitter.com/N1ScL9zdTx

— Pedo Lives Dont Matter (@americanmade2A) July 20, 2021

The evidence for this is everywhere. Hollywood is filled with pedos, as is true in the cultural elite and the media. Look at the scandal after scandal in Great Britain where child sexual abuse is routinely swept under the rug.

🇬🇧 Jimmy Saville abused more than 500 children during his employment with the BBC.

50 years on & their employees are still doing it – what’s worse is that we, the taxpayer, or paying their wages.

Huw Edwards is just one of a long list.

There will be more…..defund the BBC now… pic.twitter.com/23Bw4FVPXN

— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) July 29, 2024

The BBC seems to have a surfeit of them, and the Labour government seems determined to sweep the Pakistani rape gang problem under the rug. 

2./ In a society that took child abuse seriously Stephen Fry’s long track record of minimising child sexual exploitation would have disbarred him from the nation’s top honour. In Fry’s first play ‘Latin’ an adult teacher sexually abuses a 13 year old boy and takes him to Morocco. pic.twitter.com/Kuh7iKjDzJ

— Malcolm Clark (@TwisterFilm) January 10, 2025

Depravity seems to be its own defense. Some things are so awful that people don’t want to accept that anybody who doesn’t look like a serial killer could do them. So they look away. 

But these degenerates are everywhere, even at The Washington Post. 

CHILD PORN: If there was only a sign that Washington Post cartoonist, Darrin Bell was a pedo…

h/t @Honkamoto1775 pic.twitter.com/OT2D8TS9cl

— @amuse (@amuse) January 16, 2025

The left LOVES point fingers at conservatives and claim we are merely prudes who want to sexually repress everybody else. If we oppose making children drag queens, or oppose alphabet ideology, or want to keep boys out of girls’ locker rooms we are cruel. 

Let’s check the establishment media’s track record of hiring “journalists.”

Yikes. pic.twitter.com/R6uMHxmgnI

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) January 16, 2025

Well, look at who they admire and what they defend. I, for one, will oppose them to my dying breath.