December 16, 2009 | 10:10 pm

A Vile Character Performs at the Taper

Posted by  David A. Lehrer

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From now until January 24th LA audiences will the opportunity to see Palestine New Mexico, the world premiere of a play by Richard Montoya at the Mark Taper Forum in Downtown. The play stars actors from Culture Clash and includes Russell Means as an Indian chief named Birdsong.

On reading the review, I had a flashback to Russell Means, the Native American activist and American Indian Movement (“AIM”) leader who took over Wounded Knee, Alcatraz and Mt. Rushmore in his more notorious days. I also recalled reading some time ago about Means, Israel and the Middle East situation and thought that that was a relic of his youthful days as the director of AIM in the early 70’s.

Thank goodness for Google. In short order, I discovered that Means never left the looniness of his youth but remains, to this day—-a far out radical with hateful views on Obama, the United States, Israel and God knows what else if I cared to sift through over his 8 million citations on Google.

In a video blog that he recorded after President Obama was announced as this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, he denounced the president as a “Manchurian candidate and flim flam man….nothing more than Bush’s third term.” He described “Demopublicans as all brain dead” and then punctuated his commentary by announcing that

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His description of President Obama as a “Manchurian candidate” wasn’t just casual jabber, he has a notion as to who is pulling the president’s strings. In an interview earlier this year he described the president as being “a Zionist controlled by Israel.” He observed that “the Zionists who control Israel now control the United States….

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He blithely renders his view of history—- the United States began “as an outlaw and renegade nation” and that “today its imperial policies mean that Israel is a surrogate of the US… the 51st state of the United States.”

His nuttiness and vile rhetoric go on and on, it’s actually difficult to listen to.

I, for one, have no interest in buying tickets that might in any way pay the salary for a hatemonger and political nut like Russell Means. He may look like the quintessential American Indian and his website may describe him as “the most famous American Indian since Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse” but his fame will not be added to by my subscriber dollars, his politics are beyond the pale.