Posted by parhad (158.252.210.146) on October 06, 2001 at 08:16:28:
Here's about as stark a contrast between the Grat Leaders in our community and those who go along with them...and the larger society and world we live in but apart from...much to our everlasting shame and detriment.
The mayor of the most powerful city in the world was powerless to have a single painting removed because he, and several other movers and shakers objected to it, found it offensive to religion and GOD. Rudi Guiliani had a fit when he saw the Elephant Poop Madonna in Brooklyn's museum...I don't know if he actually saw it or not, but he said it had to go and resorted to some pretty familiar Nimrodisms. Religious leaders yowled about blasphemy etc and pressure was brought to bear from several "respected" sources.
Hilarity and sarcasm was also trucked in, along with a good dose of the guarantees in the US Constitution. As a benefit the artist's works soared in value and the show was sold out (thank you Rudi!!). "Crap", literally, of all kinds began to be viewed afresh...gone was that old fashioned disgust, here instead was a new and challenging medium...what shade, what texture, and how much is "just right"...when have you exceeded the limits of craplology, gone too far in Shit-ism. Americans had a field day...told the blue-noses to go get lost and Western Civilization withstood another attack and inslut...go get 'em Hanna!!
Doesn't matter if you thought crap was crap...what mattered was that the Constitution provides the chance, the right almost, to be WRONG...to experiment...to have BAD TASTE. Freedom means you have the freedom to screw up as well as be sublime...that if you enforce sublimity and "correctness" you will sooner rather than later stifle all creativity and innovation because the REAL thing requires experimentation and unfettered freedom. In this case especially we were talking about "good taste" and the imposition of some group's religious sensibilities on the rest of us. These are things Law should not have to contend with, not if you value what this country is really about.
Freedom is messy...Totalitarianiam can be neat and tidy...and dead. The Nazis organized a show of all the "decadent" Art they could find...meaning all the stuff the guys who were killing innocent children and skinning people for lampshades and boiling them for soap...didn't like. They had the work exhibited in a dingy warehouse. At the same time they mounted a show of nice and "approved" Art in one of the finest buildings they had in Berlin. Guess where the people lined up.
Contrast all this with Rabel Shmoel's experience with our "domocratai" organizations at the convention in Chicago in 2000. Rabel was nineteen then, a student whose hometown is Chicago. He displayed a painting showing a face divided in half by color. One side was a "sad" face, and it was painted in purple...the other side was "happy" and was in another color (I did not see the painting). There was no outrage or public outcry at the placement of this painting in the Art Show. It took only ONE individual to remove it, and he did so because purple is ZOWAA's color...and the "sad" half of ther face "meant" that ZOWAA was either SAD, or causing SADNESS...or the man who seized the painting was INSANE.
No one asked Rabel what he meant...no one asked him to remove it...no one gave him a chance to explain or defend his artistic choice...his daring and bold and therefore unacceptable use of the color PURPLE...which ZOWAA claims is THEIR color.
In those incidents you can see how we live in a mental "Turkey"...how we come to this country just glad to get jobs and buy cars...how we have no clue as to how this country got to BE this country. If we had our way, especially our Grat leaders...we'd have taken down the Poop painting as well Rabels...we'd also throw out the Bill of Rights and any Moslems we could find and all A-rabs and anything else a leader of ours or a priest didn't like...and we would make America into a "good" and a "godly" and a "right thinking" nation...and no one would show up at our art shows either.