Peter Marks

Mike Daisey shamelessly lied about Apple's abuse of factory workers in China on stage, which was then picked up by the trendy public-radio show "This American Life," which airs on many NPR stations. It caused a black eye for NPR (by their one-degree association), but The Washington Post has proclaimed Daisey's "voice" is too important to shame off the stage.

Post theatre critic Peter Marks announced Sunday that "after days of wrestling with what’s been found to be Daisey’s dysfunctional relationship with candor, when I have felt angry and a bit betrayed — you put your own reputation on the line when you embrace someone else’s in a review — I’ve settled on a sense of solidarity with Shalwitz." That's Howard Shalwitz, artistic director of Washington's Woolly Mammoth theater, which plans to put "dysfunctional" Daisey back in the spotlight.

Kathleen Turner is starring on stage in Philadelphia as the leftist writer Molly Ivins, and The Washington Post promoted the show on Sunday -- and noted that one of the Ivins-adoring playwrights was a former Post staffer:

"Red-Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins" is a 75-minute foray into the psyche of a sassy commentator perhaps most celebrated for a single word: "Shrub," the withering nickname she gave to George W. Bush, a politician who symbolized for her all that seemed wacky in the reward system of American politics.

Written by a pair of newspaperwomen -- Bethesda-based Margaret Engel, a former Washington Post staffer, and her twin sister Allison, communications director at the University of Southern California -- the play styles Ivins as a live-wire wit who, in her profane, folksy way juiced up the public discourse. (You may recall that the first of her books was titled, "Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?") And she accomplished this from a perspective honed far from the Beltway.

The Washington Post takes up anger-spewing leftist Sandra Bernhard Friday, and explains the sheer joy of watching her unload venom on Sarah Palin. Theatre reviewer Peter Marks began his review on the front page of the Style section: "No one does angry funnier than Sandra Bernhard. So when she turns her chainsaw wrath on the Republicans' new media magnet, Sarah Palin, the trash talk is so witheringly foul it feels as if it's been fired in a furnace of pure, unadulterated rage."

She also promised the Post she'd call Cindy McCain a "Barbie doll hooker." Is Bernhard truly the funniest with an "acid reflex," as the headline quipped? From the one example Marks provided, someone who doesn’t reflexively hate Gov. Palin might beg to differ:

In Tuesday's Washington Post, Peter Marks praises "Get Your War On," a left-wing comedy performance at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre. Unsurprisingly, the critic from the liberal paper finds invective is a lovely thing, if applied to conservatives: