I'm not a big fan of Molly or those who think desecrating anyone's religious icons is somehow a good idea. The whole episode made me think of Serrano's Piss Christ, which looked like this:
Unlike Molly, who chose the wrong crowd to insult, Andres Serrano is living large and has a new exhibition at the Yvon Lambert Gallery. It's called Shit. Truly awesome stuff, there, Andy. In addition to the lesbian and gay performance artists who fling AIDS-infected blood and feces at each other on stage, Andy's probably one of the top 100 excretion-based artists in the world. He's a genius.
Andres' genius is recognized by Open-Minded Catholic People Who Think Deeply About Such Things. There's even a poem celebrating Piss Christ. I'll let you read it here. It's lovely. The comments on that post reveal something that probably goes on all day and all night within the Obama White House. Thinking so deeply about something that it no longer makes any sense at all. Allow me to cut through the noise.
- Piss Christ and Shit are lousy art, if they're art at all. You can tell this because your first reaction to them is, "That's just stupid."
- Poems don't make stupid things any better. They just show you how stupid things can be turned into a mammoth waste of time and intellectual energy. Excreting while reciting poetry is still just excreting.
- Burning Korans and drawing Mohammed are childish. You can tell this because your first reaction to it is, "That's childish. I used to draw cartoons of people in 4th grade."
- Finally, all the talk of racism from the Democrats is hogwash. You can tell this because there aren't any Eskimos on Obama's cabinet, ergo they are racists.
* - Clearly, the Democratic Party has been taken over by anti-Eskimo extremists.
5 comments:
I think that what is going on, is that "Offensive Git" has become a viable career option. It is now possible to make a pretty large income by being publicly offensive for money. We've got idiot DJs spewing crap over the airwaves; "artists" who substitutes a lack of shame for artistic ability; "news commentators", "interviewers", and "journalists" who specialize in being abusive and infuriating rather than informative or thoughtful; "celebrities" who are only famous for being horrible people; the list goes on and on. The one thing they have in common is that attention is their currency. The more that people rant and rail against them, the more famous they become, which leads to speaking engagements, book sales, TV shows, movies, and all sorts of other ways to turn public outrage into profit.
The only thing that makes it possible for them to make a career out of this, is that people pay attention to them. I think the best response to these people is a derisive snort, followed by ignoring them. There's no money in being ignored.
Someone has confused the microbiological sense of the word "culture" with the sociological sense.
1389 +1.
I've struggled mightily with this. My tepid endorsement of "Everybody draw Mohammed Day" was not so much to incite or offend but rather was motivated as an existential practice in my God-given 1st amendment rights... and who is anyone to tell me otherwise form of being ungovernable.
And what is going on now with Molly Norris demostrates the value of EBDMD and the apalling hypocrisy of our elected officials towards the same.
The editorial board of the Washington Examiner had an excellent piece today saying back in the Civil Rights era, the FBI moved heaven and earth to snuff out the KKK and now... the FBI tells Norris to go underground to escape the death threats.
Dean, I would think we could separate resistance to Islamofascism from burning the Koran. Dittos with drawing Mohammed. Free speech doesn't mean it's acceptable to draw Mohammed with his pants around his ankles any more than it's acceptable to have an exhibit called Shit. A swine is still a swine whether you're living in 2010 America or Stalin's Russia.
KT, I'm not down with burning the Koran... however, it is indeed my constitutional right do so regardless of what a nitwit like Breyer says.
Free speech and "acceptability" are foreign concepts to one another. Bad aesthetics are protected in a free society.
KKK marching through Skokie: revolting but granted.
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