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Cellphone toss: Is National Review writer’s act heroic or criminal?

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Talk about taking issues into your own hands.

National Review writer Kevin Williamson did just that Wednesday night, in what’s now become either an infamous public outburst or a heroic arts effort.

During a performance of the musical “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812” at the New York pop-up bar and performance space Kazino, Williamson hurled a nearby woman’s cellphone across the room when she refused to stop texting.

“I had a genuinely new experience at the theater tonight,” Williamson wrote that night on the National Review’s website. “I was thrown out.”

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Kazino’s performance space is particularly intimate, with the audience tightly packed in at small tables and on benches. The main offending guests, Williamson said, “were two parties of women of a certain age, the sad sort with too much makeup and too-high heels, and insufficient attention span for following a two-hour musical.”

We get it. We’ve been there before. Ringtones and glowing cellphone screens in darkened theaters is an increasingly irksome issue; some feel theaters should take more aggressive measures and ask audiences to check their phones along with their coats -- but not their manners.

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But we can also imagine Williamson’s actions were as disruptive to the production and audience members as the chatty, itchy-fingered texting woman herself.

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The incident has hit a nerve, sparking a wave of Internet buzz, largely in support of Williamson.

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Gothamist wrote a love letter to the writer, calling him a hero. The texting woman had threatened to press charges, Gothamist said. If that were to happen, it made a generous offer to Williamson: “If you need help raising bail money, we’ll totally start a Kickstarter for you…” the blogger promised.

The most entertaining responses, however, have been in 140 characters -- on Twitter.

”.@petermarksdrama THEY’RE PLAYING OUR SAMSUNG,” wrote one user, Howard Sherman.

“ROAM SWEET ROAMER,” replied Peter Marks.

Writer Kurt Andersen was there and tweeted “Only distraction for me: her huffy theatrical exit.”

See for yourself; our favorite hashtag of the day: #cellphonetheatre.

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