How To Handle Controversy

With class. Like Steve Martin:

Steve Martin has offered to pay for an off-campus production of his play “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” which was banned from a high school because parents objected to what they called adult content.

The actor and comedian said in a letter to a newspaper that he wants to keep the play, conducted in other high schools without controversy, “from acquiring a reputation it does not deserve.”

Martin doesn't condemn the parents who objected to his play, disagrees with their view but respects that parents and the community should have a say about what plays are produced in their schools, and offers an alternative of which he's willing to finance. Winners all around.

It's a good play, by the way, and probably not as controversial as the objecting parents might think. Certainly there's darker material out there being produced in high schools every day.

Anyway, good for Steve Martin. Now if he'd only stop making Pink Panther movies.