From a long profile of John Roberts in today’s Times, one sentence stands out.
The school yearbook from 1972, his junior year, shows he played Peppermint Patty in the production of “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown.”
From this we can conclude that a Justice Roberts would have deep empathy on lesbian issues.
LOL!
Even weirder considering that Peppermint Patty isn’t even in that show.
Wasn’t she in the original?
Considering the link, do you really need to phrase that as a question?
My question was rhetorical, as yours likely was. ;)
Actually, Tin Man, the answer to your rhetorical question is yes…and no. While there was, indeed, a character named “Patty” in the original version of the show, nowhere in the script was she referred to as “Peppermint Patty.” Neither does the writing reflect the style of that character from the comic strips or the television specials. While named “Patty,” the character was always more like “Sally,” which, of course, made the revision easier since nothing really needed to be revised except for the name.
I have no explanation of why this was so since Sally had long been a PEANUTS character and Peppermint Patty was not added until the 1960’s or ’70’s. Maybe the conception of the character changed at some point and the musical got stuck with early ideas for Patty that later just got incorporated into Sally anyway.
Of course, Peppermint Patty IS a character in SNOOPY!, the other PEANUTS musical.
What I what to know is…what happened to Sherman, Violet, and Pigpen?
Aha! We’ve got him now! Roberts likely referred to a character by an incorrect name when talking to the Times, trying to add flavor where there was none… and thus…. eh… help me out here, I’m floundering.
What DID happen to Sherman? I could google it but that would require time and effort that, frankly, I don’t have with vacation starting at in less than an hour.
Catching up on this discussion a few days late…There was a non-Peppermint Patty in the original YAGM,CB because there was a non-Peppermint Patty who appeared in the early years of PEANUTS. She and Violet were Charlie Brown’s principal tormentors in the early years (Lucy wouldn’t show up for a while yet, and when she did, she was an infant).
Patty disappeared along with Violet and Shermy (not Sherman!) as Lucy, Linus, Schroeder, and Snoopy became the principal supporting players, but she was apparently still in Clark Gesner’s memory when he wrote the musical.
You’d think that Schulz would have remembered all of this and chosen a name other than (Peppermint) Patty for the new character who arrived some 20 years after her predecessor, but no such luck.
And as noted above, when the musical was revived a few years back, Patty I was replaced by Sally, and Kristin Chenoweth became a big fat honkin’ Broadway star. So hey, it’s not all bad.