Editor's note: Kevin D. Williamson writes the theater column for The New Criterion and is a roving correspondent for National Review. His new book, "The End Is Near And It's Going To Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure," was published last week.

(CNN) -- I have the great privilege of writing the theater column for The New Criterion, the arts-and-culture journal founded by New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer and pianist Samuel Lipman in 1982. Some people have to be in an office at 8 a.m., but I get to be at the theater at 8 p.m. It is a pretty sweet gig.

The power of theater comes from its ability to surprise. Once or twice a season, I am treated to an unexpected discovery: While movies so often are cut, polished, CGI'd, and market-researched to death, even the most commercial piece of tourist-bait theater -- lookin' at you, "Evita" -- contains within it an element of unpredictability.

The audiences, unfortunately, are drearily predictable. It's the old one-in-every-family phenomenon: They will be late. They will talk. Their cell phones will ring, and some of them, by God, will answer them. They will text, and they may even play a few rounds of Words with Friends during the third act. They are the enemy. They are depressing not because their bad manners surprise us, but because they do not surprise us.

I found myself in the news this week after offering a surprise of my own at a New York theater: The woman seated next to me was on her phone throughout most of the show. (It was "Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812," in case you're wondering, a musical based on "War and Peace." You know what show you shouldn't see in New York if you have the attention span of a goldfish? One based on "War and Peace.") When she was not on her phone, she and her friends were engaged in a four-part imitation of a "Sex and the City" brunch conversation. I asked her nicely -- more than once -- but she did not respond to courtesy. She said: "Just don't look." So I took her phone from her and tossed it.

There was a moment of wonderful, shocked silence. She salvaged such self-respect as she could -- which is to say, she slapped me -- and then stalked off in search of her phone. A few minutes later, I was visited by an annoyed gentleman in a black suit and soon enough found myself out on the street.

Yes, it was worth it.

In part, I blame the theater managers. If you seat people who show up late, they will show up late. One or two high-profile ejections a month would go a long way toward beating some sense into the theater-going public.

But you can never design a perfect protocol. Audiences must behave. People are awful, of course -- somebody once observed that every civilization faces a barbarian invasion every generation in the form of its children -- and the Broadway and off-Broadway crowd is full of miscreants.

Theater is New York and New York is theater, and New York is not much like the rest of the country. (Shake Shack, a summertime favorite in Madison Square Park, has a menu for dogs.) New York is one of the world capitals of self-importance. And, with the possible exception of Washington, there is no city in the country where self-importance is more disconnected from actual importance. If I could buy New Yorkers for what they're worth and sell them for what they think they're worth, I'd own Fifth Avenue from Saks to Harlem.

That guy whispering into his cell phone? He isn't getting the news that little Timmy finally has a donor for his heart transplant -- he's just another schmuck having a schmuck conversation with schmucks elsewhere. That guy tapping away on his smartphone isn't restructuring the derivatives markets -- he's playing "Angry Birds." The lady to my right, I am willing to bet, was not receiving her orders from the Impossible Missions Force, and her phone did not self-destruct.

I destructed it. And I am not sorry.

I am advised that what I did was almost certainly a crime. And if the law, in its majesty, should decide that I need to spend a night in jail over this episode, then I will be happy to do so.

But I think of it as an act of criticism. Occasionally, a shocking gesture is called for, perhaps even a histrionic one. I may have met conventional-grade rudeness with thermonuclear counterforce, but I did it in the interests of civility, violating standards to preserve them.

Theater-goers on Twitter jokingly compared me to Batman: Not the hero Gotham deserves, the hero it needs. I don't know about that: Grumpiness is not much of a superpower. But we will live in exactly as rude and coarse a world as we will tolerate, and I do not intend to tolerate very much.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Kevin Williamson.

Editor's note: Ruben Navarrette is a CNN contributor and a nationally syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group. Follow him on Twitter: @rubennavarrette.

(CNN) -- "Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. ... My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use." -- President Barack Obama, memo to heads of executive departments and agencies, 2009

"The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." --Thomas Jefferson to Lt. Col. Edward Carrington, Continental Army, 1787

Journalists are hardwired to be pro-transparency, pro-leaks and pro-whistleblower. They're not supposed to cozy up to the powerful; they're supposed to confront them. Their job isn't just to comfort the afflicted, but also to afflict the comfortable. And above all, the media have a sacred duty to act as a watchdog against the excesses of government.

And if there is one thing that the Obama administration finds itself with an "excess" of at this point -- a little more than 100 days into its second term -- it's government excess.

This White House has been horrible at transparency. In 2010, in more than a third of the requests for public records, the Obama administration didn't provide any information. In fact, the administration has released fewer records under the Freedom of Information Act than were released during the George W. Bush administration.

And in the case of "Fast and Furious," where U.S. law enforcement agents allowed illegal guns into Mexico so they could track them -- and then lost track of them -- we're no closer to knowing the truth about who was responsible. Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress during a dispute over requested documents and President Obama went so far as to invoke executive privilege to keep from releasing those same documents.

The administration knows all about secrecy. Nonetheless, these days, you need a program to keep straight all the scandals of officials in the executive branch secretly doing things they're not supposed to be doing.

AP hits Justice Dept. over investigation

The Justice Department is investigating the Internal Revenue Service for unfairly scrutinizing conservative groups thought to be aligned with the tea party. And so who will investigate the Justice Department for spying on The Associated Press? The IRS should do it. Just to keep things even.

Welcome to the Obama administration's chaotic version of the second-term curse, where the common theme is government officials, either with or without the blessings of higher-ups, abusing their power.

The Associated Press revealed this week that the Justice Department, in April and May 2012, used subpoenas to secretly help itself to two months' worth of phone records from journalists. Those targeted included at least five reporters, an editor and AP Washington bureau chief Sally Buzbee.

The Justice Department was interested in the conversations of anyone who worked on a May 7, 2012, story about the CIA thwarting a terrorist plot in Yemen. The administration wanted to know who was leaking information to the AP, so rather than monitor the phone lines of its own employees, it monitored the phone lines of the journalists who might be receiving that information.

According to the news agency, 20 different phone lines were tapped, including not just work phones and the AP's main switchboard, but also the journalists' home and cell phones. In all, according to the AP, when you count all the people who came in contact with the phones in question, more than 100 journalists could have been affected. Is it cold in here? I just felt a chill down my spine.

It is all part of the government's aggressive crackdown on leaks to the media. The Obama administration has prosecuted six leak-related cases. That's more than all previous administrations combined.

On Monday, AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt fired off a letter to Holder condemning this "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into the agency's reporting.

Pruitt wants the Justice Department to return the phone records and destroy any copies.

That would the smart thing to do. I've known Pruitt for more than 20 years, since he was a young publisher of my hometown newspaper in central California, The Fresno Bee. He's a smart and tough newspaperman who originally came into this business as a media lawyer. He won't be intimidated, and he won't let this go. When the government counterpunches, Pruitt will hit back even harder.

The counterpunching has already begun. On Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General James Cole sent a letter to Pruitt defending the decision to grab the phone records. Cole insisted that the subpoenas were "drawn as narrowly as possible" and aimed at collecting "limited subject matter."

Not good enough, said Pruitt in a quick response. Saying that Cole's letter did not "adequately address our concerns," Pruitt questioned how such a sweeping investigation could be called "narrowly drawn."

My friend is right on the money, and he's right to raise a ruckus. A line has been crossed here. Every journalist in America ought to be outraged by the hubris of this administration, as should every American who believes -- along with Thomas Jefferson -- that the press has a solemn duty to inform the public as to what government is doing in its name.

And it's hard for the media to keep tabs on the government when the government is busy keeping tabs on the media.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ruben Navarrette.