How Much Can You Offend Your Audience?

A Literal Literary Loser Wonders Warily

Because of what I do in my non-novel writing life, I am a sucker for any work of art which deals with schools.

Last week, my husband and I went to see “Eureka Day,” a play about a progressive, private California elementary school where their oft-repeated commitment to accepting everyone’s point of view and achieving total consensus on every decision quickly crumbles in the face of a mumps outbreak and controversy over childhood vaccinations.

The highlight of the show is a scene of an all-school Zoom meeting, where the governing board’s earnest dialogue is overshadowed by the comments projected on a screen above their heads, which dissolves into name calling and emoji wars. It was by far the freshest and most original element of a narrative that otherwise felt familiar… and very, very safe.

Because I work in NYC school admission, I am on a first-name basis with the tropes raised in “Eureka Day,” such as:

• Assuming all families of color are on financial aid, and then wondering why those who pay less have as much of a say in policy as those who pay full?

• Parents asserting that they absolutely, wholeheartedly believe in public schools. Everyone should go to their zoned school, no exceptions. It’s the only way to achieve equity and diversity, they truly believe that. But, well, you see, the local, zoned school just wasn’t the right fit for their particular child for… reasons. That’s why they had to opt for the dual language program, the magnet school, the gifted & talented school. They couldn’t short-change their own child in the name of abstract political values! (I wrote an open letter to all such parents back in 2020. Little has changed since then.)

• Parents who begin their private consults with me by assuring, “I am super liberal,” followed up with, “but…” and then an explanation for why they simply can’t go to a school that does… that has… which won’t… that isn’t…. Diversity is wonderful… except when…. (And, no, it isn’t always what/who you think. You’d be amazed by which groups won’t go to school with which groups for what reasons. One surprising example, here.)

It is due to my 20+ years of school advocacy that I found “Eureka Day” ultimately toothless. I felt it just skimmed the surface. It didn’t dig deeply enough, it didn’t go for the jugular and expose the really, really tough issues which don’t have simple or glib answers when it comes to balancing the needs of your own children with the needs of society at large.

My African-American husband, who attended the non-public gifted school even those parents who really and truly and wholeheartedly believe in public schools are willing to disregard their principles for — because his mother said, “I know what happens to Black boys in public schools — and the test-based public high school NYC’s previous mayor did his best to dismantle because it was racist and exclusionary (after his own son had gotten into a similar school, of course; don’t be silly), dismissed my concerns with a shrug and a reminder, “You can’t insult your audience.”

“But that’s what art is supposed to!” I protested, then quoted “Hamlet’s” Advice to the Players, “To hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.” (Because I went to a similar, gifted magnet public high school in San Francisco, and we are both very pretentious, as a result.)

Which brings me to the main question of this post: How far can you go in holding up “the mirror to nature” i.e. offending your audience?

Even before we saw “Eureka Day,” thanks to my decades in NYC school admissions, I included a scene in my upcoming May 2025 book, “Go On Pretending” (available for pre-order now!), where one of my leads, Emma, who grew up as the biracial daughter of high-profile defectors in the Soviet Union and is familiar with the USSR’s gaslighting and hypocrisy, comes face to face with the progressives of America, who confuse her with their stance on such issues as censorship, unions, owning the means of production, and education.

I wrote the below interaction based on my personal experience. It is much gentler than my non-fiction writing on the topic, but it, nonetheless, definitely has the potential to offend some of my readers:

“You must visit our school.” Tag team, a married couple took their turn welcoming Emma. “Both our children attend. It’s called The Little Red Schoolhouse. We’ve been at the forefront of progressive education since the 1920s! We encourage cooperation, activism, social justice, and acceptance. The Meeropol boys are alumni. That’s the adopted name of those poor Rosenberg orphans.” They assumed Emma knew about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, put to death for the crime of passing radar, sonar, and atomic secrets to the Soviets. Mom told Emma about them, including that Julius attended the same Lower East Side high-school as she had, graduating right before Rose started. “Oh, and, of course, Angela Davis.” Their coy smiles made it clear why Emma should feel a particular affinity with the activist. She unconsciously ran a hand along the back of her hair, newly straightened for the occasion. “We took her in her junior year of high school. Poor thing was absolutely stagnating in Alabama. Why, if we hadn’t extended a helping hand, who knows what might have happened to that brilliant mind!”

“That is very nice that New York City is supportive of such a progressive school.”

“Oh, please! That couldn’t be further from the truth. They pretended to be supportive in the beginning. We started as a public-private partnership, where the Department of Education gave us money to operate. But then, as soon as the depression hit, they used the lack of funds as an excuse to shut us down! We transitioned to a private school and have been independent ever since. No government bureaucrat is going to keep us from teaching our collective values!”

“So now the school is paid for by the Socialist Workers Party?”

“In part. And, of course, everyone pays their fair share in tuition, we’re very cooperative.”

“In America, you pay for school? How much does it cost?”

“A few thousand dollars a year, we do our best to keep tuition as low as possible, so that the children can interact with peers from all walks of life. That’s very important to us.”

“They do not have free schools in America? Government schools?”

“I realize this is difficult for you to understand, coming from a classless society, but, the government schools, they’re called public, they are terribly… oh, how can I explain – they’re just terribly middle-class. They teach children bourgeois values like individualism. No surprise, they were established to perpetuate an oppressive, colonialist, capitalist way of life. The only way we can be certain our children value an egalitarian community where all are respected not based on how much money they have but on what they contribute to the greater whole, is by removing them from the brainwashing of our government. We need to protect them from any ideas which might prevent their growing into true revolutionaries, untainted by status quo pablum.”

Did I go too far? Did I — as I accuse “Eureka Day” — not go far enough? What do you think? Is it possible to point out your audience’s sanctimony… without insulting them? And by insulting your audience, are you cutting off your nose to spite your face when it comes to sales?

Let me know in the comments, and happy new year!