Went to see Audra McDonald the other day, want to share a little story about it.
Just in case you don't know who she is, here's a little intro. She's a modern Broadway legend, and has appeared in such movies as the new Beauty and the Beast and Wit (a dramatic role in which she shines). So she does these tours and sings Broadway songs. I knew maybe four of them, but she's still impressively good.
She's also, unsurprisingly, a pretty left-leaning person. She had sprinkled in a few light political comments in during her banter, and the large (mostly 70+ crowd) clapped along like you would expect in upper-class suburban Mass. I noticed that the guy sitting next to me never clapped during these asides, but I also noticed that he had fallen asleep a few times during the concert (mid-afternoon is nap time, I guess).
So she finishes up and then comes out to do an encore and introduces it by talking about how we need to protect and love kids. Kids from all over, our own and others. During the uproarious applause, I hear the guy next to me mutter underneath his breath "Sure, let's care about ALL the kids, every one of them. Not just AMERICAN kids, but all of them." And thats when I remembered that old people aren't just cute and slow moving, but also often set in their ways. There's no way you could convince this guy that children from other countries should be treated like his own grandkids, and that's maybe the saddest thing that happened during a concert that featured a song about 9/11.