Posted by Dan Ewert : 12/14/2003 09:56:00 AM (Archive Link)
"Why Don't the Husseins Call Anymore?"

We got 'im!

Osama... where are you?!

Posted by Dan Ewert : 12/12/2003 12:34:00 AM (Archive Link)
You Don’t Like My Art? Fine! Just Give Me Your Money And I’ll Go!

Artist Charles Bowden has decided that he’s upset his prize was taken away. You see, a drawing of his won second place in a Eureka, CA, art contest which meant that Bowden in turn was to receive a $300 gift certificate. The business owner sponsoring said prize, however, withdrew the award. The reason: Bowden’s art drawing in question, “The Tactics of Tyrants Are Always Transparent,” featured a “crown and halo-topped Bush stand[ing] on a grave, his hand dripping with blood as bodies fall to the ground from the World Trade Center towers in the distance.” In other words, it supported the vicious and deplorable theory that Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks beforehand and did nothing, or even worse, was himself involved. The proprietor who withdrew the award, Paul Bareis, doesn’t agree with such views and refused to support them. Seems fair enough so far, but let’s see Bowden’s side.

“They shouldn't call it [the art show] `open to art. They should call it, ‘open to Republican art’ or ‘open to closed-minded art.’… For local business owners to try to stagnate artistic expression according to their political interpretation of how life should be is not such a good idea.”

Ah yes… the old canard about free speech and free expression. People should be able to say whatever they want and never experience ANY negative consequences from it. Artists should be able to produce whatever they want, declare it “art,” and never be subject to any real criticism about the content, quality, or actuality of said art, with the possible exception of the truly informed professional critic. (Although, nowadays the professional modern art critic tends to use the following as his or her criteria: A) if it’s so confusing or bizarre that neither I nor any normal person can possibly glean any meaning from it beyond what I’ve made up or what the artist told me in his notes, then it’s really, really good, B) if it’s shocking, disgusting, outrageous and violates a variety of social norms, mores, morals, religious values, and common decency, then it’s great, and C) if it possesses the qualities of both A and B, then it’s a frickin’ masterpiece.) Back to the point, though, normal people aren’t allowed to question art, especially from moral, religious, or political perspectives. To do so is to repress artistic freedom or to stagnate it, etc., as if we’re always one step away from the hoi polloi stoning artists. That and artists are part of some sort of protected class as if their brilliance somehow transcends the knowledge and understanding of the rest of us mere mortals. Bowden obviously feels that Bareis should have coughed up his money and kept his mouth shut about the sort of art he was rewarding/funding. However, as Mr. Bareis said, “Freedom of speech is not a one-way street. A person has a right to paint what they want, and I have the right to not fund hate speech. I didn't want my business associated with someone's political thought.” That gets to the heart of the matter. Just because Bowden produces something and calls it art, it doesn’t make him immune to criticism or from the consequences of said art. Mr. Bareis, being a private entity, is well within his rights not to fund something he finds offensive. That’s not limiting Bowden’s right to free speech… he’s still free to produce whatever images he wants. It just means he won’t be getting Bareis’s money when he does it and that’s Bareis’s free speech in action. And quite honestly, one gets the feeling that Bareis’s free speech in the form of money is more important to Bowden than Bowden’s free speech in form of bad art is to Bareis.

Posted by Dan Ewert : 12/12/2003 12:33:00 AM (Archive Link)
The Artful Blader

The above reminds me of a time in Austin, TX, almost six years ago. I was walking down the main street with all the book stores and such across from UT-Austin when this odd-looking on rollerblades rolled right up to me, gave me a small magazine with pictures of all sorts of modern art-ish looking thing and proceeded to discuss art with me. She was representing an art commune on the outskirts of the city (yes, this is in Texas… Austin is a very strange city and probably the least “Texan” of the many places I’ve visited in the state) and they were having a public show the following weekend. She rattled on about how significant the pieces were and how they all made points because in her view all art had to make a point, whether it be political, moral, or what have you. No art for art’s sake here. I was polite and engaged her in a little conversation, declined the invitation since I wasn’t going to be in town at the time of the show (not that I would have gone anyway), but wished her luck all the same. Then she asked for $5 for the magazine. This took me by surprise since it appeared the paper itself was more valuable than its content. I refused and handed it back to her at which point her demeanor became considerably less friendly and she rolled on. Perhaps she blamed me for repressing artistic expression, but my monetary expression simply wasn’t interested.

Posted by Dan Ewert : 12/07/2003 10:59:00 PM (Archive Link)
The Circle Of PeTA Life

This article helps describe why PETA is at best a fringe group. It discusses a billboard they erected in Rhode Island (which has the highest percentage of Catholics in the nation) that has the Virgin Mary holding a dead chicken with the words, “Go Vegetarian. It’s an Immaculate Conception.” In fact, you can also currently see it on their website’s main page. Just in time for Christmas!

They’re always up to fun little tricks and comparison like this. Not too long ago, they compared factory animal farms to the Holocaust. Of course, the comparisons are always invalid and specious and almost always deeply offensive. The point of these campaigns, though, isn’t to convert large numbers of the public over to their philosophy or even to create sympathy; it’s hard to appeal to large segments of the population when said segments are disgusted by your message. No, the main purpose is to turn those who already lean their way into ardent believers, or even better, activists. Because each time they pull one of these stunts, the public outrage inevitably results in free publicity in the form of media coverage. Then their message reaches a wide audience and in that audience is a very small percentage who see the ads and think, “Yeah… livestock farms and slaughterhouses are exactly like the Holocaust! It makes perfect sense!”

You see, while PETA’s comparisons are invalid to normal people, they’re not to the extreme PETA folk who create them. And so the end result of their ad campaigns is to attract other extremists who also believe in the invalid comparisons. So while PETA may claim that they want to make a big impact on society’s attitudes towards animals, it doesn’t really happen. Since the organization is largely made up of fanatics (have you ever heard of the moderate wing of PETA or moderate PETA tactics?), they create fanatical ideas and ads that only succeed in bringing other fellow fanatics into their fold. Thus the circle completes itself and continues on.

Posted by Dan Ewert : 12/07/2003 10:57:00 PM (Archive Link)
All the Non-News That's Fit to Print

This article is a little old, but interesting nonetheless. Reuters reported last November that 26 House members were introducing a resolution urging President Bush to fire Rumsfeld. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) trumpeted that he had 25 co-sponsors for the bill and the reporting makes it seem like this is a big deal. However, keep in mind that there are 435 members in the House of Representatives. 26 members make up just 6% of the total which is pretty minuscule. Add this to the fact that the resolution in question will never come up for a vote and even if it had, obviously wouldn’t have passed, and what we have here is a time-wasting non-story about a non-event. There is no significance at all to this proposed resolution. It’s just another way for a few disgruntled liberals to remind everybody how little they like Bush and Cabinet. It’s nice of Reuters, though, to report on this meaningless minutiae and give Rangel a little bit of publicity since that’s all he was looking for anyway.

Posted by Dan Ewert : 12/04/2003 09:25:00 PM (Archive Link)
A few days ago in Cincinnati, a 350 pound black man who had various weight-related ailments and who was high on cocaine and PCP at the time died after a brief but violent struggle with police. During the altercation, Nathaniel Jones attempted to grab the nightsticks and pistols of the six officers (five of whom were white, one black) wrestling with him. After pummeling the drug-strength-enhanced Jones (who, keep in mind, possessed one third the weight of the other six men combined) with their nightsticks, the police were finally able to subdue him. The combination of his enlarged heart, the drugs, and the exertion, however, soon caused cardiac failure and he died. This is all on videotape.

Predictably, the civil rights community is all a twitter about how an African-American died in police custody and how the police attacked him with nightsticks, etc., etc. Here are the facts: Jones was severely obese and weighed almost as much as two normal men combined; his weight problems led to health issues such as his enlarged heart; he was high on illegal narcotics at the time, one of which was PCP which gives the user unusual strength—my wife once witnessed an incident where a scrawny 150 lbs PCP using perp had to be wrestled to the ground by seven officers; he attacked the first two officers at the scene and the next four that arrived and attempted to grab the officers’ weapons; the officers acted in self-defense and the coroner’s report specifically indicated that no blows landed around Jones’s head and no force was transferred to his internal organs; he died because the exertion exacerbated his health problems.

Now this man is not Martin Luther King, he is not Medgar Evers, he is not Emmett Till. However, you certainly wouldn’t know it by listening to some folks. There was a community meeting about it, the family is demanding an independent investigation, community leaders are calling for the Cincinnati police chief to resign, the FBI and Justice Department are looking into it, and you can be sure that it’s only a matter of time before Jesse Jackson and/or Al Sharpton make their obligatory photo op appearance. This is a running irritation. The civil rights community has a very bad habit of choosing very bad people as their poster boys of racial injustice. Instead of maybe using a worthwhile case, if there is one, they pick up on a drug-addled fat man whose heart gave out after the police used justified and judicious self-defense. It was a year or two ago that they rallied around a man killed in a police shootout after carjacking a vehicle, leading police on a high-speed chase and shooting at them. Before that, Jesse Jackson championed the cause of black youths up north who were expelled from school after getting in a fight and a variety of other offenses. It’s a case of learning to pick your battles and these ain’t them. These examples attract the support only of those who perceive racism all around them and who buy into the self-destructive and self-defeating ideology Jackson’s ilk has been peddling for years. Everybody else looks at the incidents and shrugs. The tend to sympathize more with the fellow , not the criminals who prey on them.

The problem, though, is that truly worthy instances of such injustice with truly worthy victims are hard to come by nowadays. You don’t have many Rodney Kings or Emmett Tills or James Byrds, so the civil rights leaders must grab at whatever they can find in order to keep up the perpetual image of society holding down and punishing the black man. And so they come to support men like Nathaniel Jones. And every time they do so, though they may succeed in blackmailing government concessions, they only weaken their moral cause in the public eye and look all the more foolish for it. Shame on them, woe to those who follow them, and pity those who don’t but are involuntarily spoken for by them anyway.