In August, 2015, he published a piece on the Web site CounterPunch accusing Miranda of smoothing over Hamilton’s slave-owning past and overlooking his involvement in the genocide of Native Americans. Perhaps no one has been as constant in his criticism as the writer Ishmael Reed. There have been a few notes of dissent along the way, though, particularly from historians. Barack Obama once joked that it was probably the only thing that he and Dick Cheney agreed on. Miranda’s hip-hop-inspired telling of Alexander Hamilton’s rags-to-riches rise is all things to all people: a humanizing portrayal of the Founding Fathers that has just enough irreverence-in its soundtrack and, crucially, in the casting of performers of color in the roles of Hamilton, Jefferson, Washington, et al.-to lend it an air of subversion. “Hamilton,” the musical created by Lin-Manuel Miranda that débuted in 2015 and is well on its way to becoming a billion-dollar production, is a rare source of general accord. Photograph by Chris Sorensen / The Washington Post / GettyĬonsensus and bipartisanship seem like a distant fantasy in today’s America. “The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda” portrays a fictionalized version of the “Hamilton” creator as an impressionable dupe, and a kind of victim.
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