I dunno, I thought that the video would be a little more horrifying for all the fuss . Several hundred people gathered Sunday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to protest the recent decision by the Smithsonian Institution to remove a contentious video from a current exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The video, “A Fire in My Belly,” which was created by the late New York artist David Wojnarowicz and had been part of the exhibition “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” includes a scene of ants crawling over a crucifix. The film was removed following criticism from, among others, the Catholic League and Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio).[..] The protesters marched from the Museum to Cooper-Hewitt, the city’s primary Smithsonian institution, holding signs reading “Silence=Death” and “Smithsonian, Stop the Censorship.” The WSJ conveniently left out the name, but the outcry originated none other than Bill Donohue, the perpetually outraged head of the Catholic League, seeking headlines once again . A Smithsonian exhibit that includes a video of ants crawling on a crucified Christ has triggered an unholy backlash — with the head of the Catholic League fuming that the artwork is “hate speech.” “A Fire in My Belly,” by the late artist David Wojnarowicz, is included in “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” a show at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery to run through Feb. 13. Catholic League President Bill Donohue said the four-minute video “was designed to insult and inflict injury and assault the sensibilities of Christians,” and he blasted the museum’s federal funding. “If the government can’t fund the promotion of religion, it shouldn’t be in the business of funding an animus to religion,” he said. Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas declined to comment “on people’s opinions on art,” but noted that the museum, although 55 percent funded by Congress, raises its own money for exhibits. That’s right, the exhibit was privately–not government–funded. But you get a little wailing by Bill Donohue, egged on by John Boehner and the Smithsonian folded like a house of cards. But there are many whose delicate sensibilities aren’t so easily affected. In solidarity with the artist and against the censorship, protests have occurred in DC, NYC and Chicago and now, museums are agreeing to exhibit “A Fire In My Belly”, including the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum . While marches of protest have been staged in Washington, D.C., and New York City, dozens of privately funded institutions and collectives across the country have obtained permission from The Estate of David Wojnarowicz (via New York City-based P.P.O.W., which has represented Wojnarowicz’s work since 1988) to screen “A Fire in My Belly” on their own terms. Among them are a trio of Chicago venues including the Smart Museum, which announced this week the video airing as well as a faculty panel discussion organized in part by graduate student Jenn Sichel, who served as a research assistant for “Hide/Seek.” “On the one hand, it’s disheartening to see a work being used so blatantly out of context in this way to stir up controversy,” Smith said. “But on the other hand, it’s really quite beautiful and heartening to see how quickly awareness of the situation has spread, and to see how many institutions have really stepped up to provide people in their communities the opportunity to see the work, to experience it as art rather than just as this tool.”
Continue reading …CBS ‘Early Show’ Touts Obama’s ‘Big Win;’ Claims He’s ‘The Comeback Kid’
December 20, 2010 No Comment
On Saturday's Early Show fill-in co-host Russ Mitchell saw passage of the tax deal as a possible “turning point for Mr. Obama's presidency” and speculated that it was “perhaps setting the stage for another victory as the Senate takes up the repeal of the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' law.” In the report that followed, correspondent Whit Johnson declared that with the deal “President Obama could finally declare victory.” The headline on screen read: “The President's Big Win; More Success Before The Holiday Break?” Johnson explained “that after months of debate, they [Democrats] finally have the votes to repeal 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'” In a report on Sunday Morning , Johnson touted the eventual repeal of the policy on Saturday as a “major victory” for Democrats.
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Some members of the U.S. Senate are dragging their feet and kvetching about wording issues in the latest American-Russian disarmament pact, the START treaty, as they prepare to vote for its ratification. In response, they have received a clear message from Moscow: The terms of the treaty are no longer negotiable.
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The self-published author who gained national attention last month by selling his “Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure” on Amazon has been arrested on obscenity charges. Authorities are concerned that the book advocates illegal behavior, a familiar challenge to free speech protections. Reuters: “The book contains two graphic stories depicting an adult engaged in sex acts with children,” according to a statement from the Polk County Sheriff’s Office in Florida. “The book also defends, advocates, and trains adults regarding illegal sex acts between adults and children.” Greaves was booked into the Pueblo County [Colorado] jail and is being held on a $15,000 bond while awaiting extradition to Florida, said Laurie Kilpatrick, spokeswoman for the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office. Read more Related Entries December 20, 2010 Bitter Memories of War on the Way to Jail December 16, 2010 2010: The Year’s Best Books
Continue reading …An animated map of red versus blue in the lower 48. Of note is the overwhelming blue during FDR’s years in office and the explosion of red in the South during the civil rights victories. h/t Carl in the Morning via Harriet M. Open thread below….
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For the past few days, the far-left Fox haters have been using a study by the University of Maryland's World Public Opinion project to claim that FNC “mis-informs” its viewers. There's nothing particularly novel about the claims, but some lefties are apparently under the impression that this study lends academic weight to their deranged hatred of everything Fox. It does not. Let's start with the study's broad disclaimer, which should have (but so far has not) dissuaded the Fox haters from their rabid attacks. The study's findings ( pdf ) plainly state: …misinformation cannot simply be attributed to news sources, but are part of the larger information environment that includes statements by candidates, political ads and so on. read more
Continue reading …Haley Barbour winks and nudges at the ol’ White Citizens Council folks again
December 20, 2010 No Comment
Click here to view this media Our favorite would-be Republican presidential nominee, Haley Barbour, got a wide-eyed adulatory write-up in the Weekly Standard yesterday that included this nugget: Both Mr. Mott and Mr. Kelly had told me that Yazoo City was perhaps the only municipality in Mississippi that managed to integrate the schools without violence. I asked Haley Barbour why he thought that was so. “Because the business community wouldn’t stand for it,” he said. “You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.” In interviews Barbour doesn’t have much to say about growing up in the midst of the civil rights revolution. “I just don’t remember it as being that bad,” he said. “I remember Martin Luther King came to town, in ’62. He spoke out at the old fairground and it was full of people, black and white.” Just to stipulate: In reality, the Ku Klux Klan in the South, both immediately after the Civil War and in its post-1915 reincarnation, in fact always was an organization of town leaders — but secretly. The White Citizens Councils were merely their public face. As the Wikipedia entry puts it : Members of the Citizens’ Council were sometimes Klansmen, and the more influential the Citizens’ Council member, the more influence he had with the Klan. In fact, the WCC was even referred to during the civil rights era as “an uptown Klan,” “a white collar Klan,” “a button-down Klan,” and “a country club Klan.” The rationale for these nicknames was that it appeared that sheets and hoods had been discarded and replaced by suits and ties. Much like the Klan, WCC members held documented white supremacist views and involved themselves in racist activities. They more often held leadership in civic and political organizations, however, which enabled them to legitimize discriminatory practices aimed at non-whites. If you want to see for yourself, check out the archives of the old WCC newsletters . You get the flavor pretty quickly. Matt Yglesias runs a sample from the archives and observes: The Citizens’ Councils were, right in the state of Mississippi where Barbour is from, the respectable face of white supremacist political activism. Here’s an example from the Association of Citizens’ Councils pamphlet: “Why Does Your Community Need a Citizens’ Council?” Maybe your community has had no racial problems! This may be true; however, you may not have a fire, yet you maintain a fire department. You can depend on one thing: The NAACP (National Association for the Agitation of Colored People), aided by alien influences, bloc vote seeking politicians and left-wing do-gooders, will see that you have a problem in the near future. The Citizens’ Council is the South’s answer to the mongrelizers. We will not be integrated. We are proud of our white blood and our white heritage of sixty centuries. Haley Barbour gives these people credit for keeping things calm! Of course he does. That’s because, as we pointed out, Barbour won election in 2003 by openly consorting with the Council of Conservative Citizens — which is in fact the direct descendant of the White Citizens Councils, having been organized on its bleaching bones. Barbour also campaigned by promoting the Confederate flag. When he was finally called on it, Barbour just winked and nudged and pretended that it was all just harmless gee-whiz folks stuff. Just as he is now.
Continue reading …Johnny Isakson Pretends He Doesn’t Hear Caller’s Question on First Responders Bill
December 20, 2010 No Comment
Click here to view this media The Senate looks like they might finally take up the first responders bill and do what’s right during the lame duck session. It’s a damned shame it took the likes of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show possibly shaming some of these people into doing the right thing, instead of our sorry ass mainstream media giving them a pass on this. Now that it appears this bill is finally going to be passed, I thought I’d share this little tidbit that I caught and almost forgot about from this past Friday on C-SPAN’s morning call in show, Washington Journal. Georgia’s Republican Senator Johnny Isakson is asked by a caller why he was not going to vote for the first responders bill and rather than answer the question, Isakson pretends he didn’t hear the question and tries to punt. He does eventually answer the caller’s question only after host Susan Swain repeats the caller’s question for them. This is what it looks like when these Senators actually have to face questions from the public and they know what they’re doing is wrong and they’d prefer not to answer for it. They attempt to run from it. Pitiful. Maybe next time Isakson would have better luck just sticking his fingers in his ears and going “lalalalala… I can’t hear you!” He came pretty close in this segment. I just wish Senator Isakson was as concerned about the potential fraud in this first responders bill as he has been for military contractors ripping our government off to the tune of billions of tax dollars instead. Good thing he has his priorities in place.
Continue reading …John McCain’s viciousness on DADT, phoniness on DREAM Act secure an unpleasant legacy
December 20, 2010 No Comment
Click here to view this media I dunno about you, but my initial instinctive sense of John McCain, even when he was giving George W. Bush heartburn on the campaign trail back in 2000, was that he really was a world-class phony. That whole “maverick” schtick was so transparently a cover for opportunism that he always had me counting my spoons, if you know what it mean. This past week, he put his utter phoniness — and the really vicious streak that it has always hid — out there for the whole world to see, leading the Republican charge against Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in a truly ugly fashion. But every bit as phony, and significant, was his vocal opposition to the DREAM Act — a bill he had once vocally championed in the Senate and on the campaign trail. Because of McCain, only a tiny handful of Republicans were willing to vote for what had once been a consummately Republican immigration bill. He caught everyone’s attention with his utter nuttiness on DADT repeal : If John McCain gets any more hostile toward his Senate colleagues, they might consider having him go through the metal detector before he enters the Capitol. Saturday’s debate on the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was only half an hour old when the Arizona Republican burst onto the floor from the cloakroom, hiked up his pants and stalked over to his friend Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). Ignoring Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), who had the floor, McCain hectored the men noisily for a few moments, waving his arms for emphasis. When McCain finally stormed off, Durbin shook his head in exasperation and Lieberman smiled. A minute later, McCain returned — he had apparently remembered another element of his grievance — and resumed his harangue. As Steve Benen observes : When we look back at the apartheid-loving segregationists of the 1950s and 1960s, most decent people see racists and misguided monsters. Yesterday, it seemed as if McCain decided, perhaps deliberately, that he wanted to be that guy for the 21st century. Why? I obviously can’t read the conservative senator’s mind, but it seemed to have something to with (a) his intense disgust for President Obama and anything he wants; and (b) his revulsion towards gay people. … This isn’t another “Whatever happened to the old McCain?” piece, which we’ve all seen too many times in recent years. Rather, this is to suggest McCain has done more than make the transition from “maverick” to petulant right-winger. Yesterday, the man waving his arms on the Senate floor was a misanthropic hack who’s abandoned basic decency, and trashed any hopes he might have had about a respectable legacy. Indeed, McCain has now secured a kind of legacy for himself. Today, we look back on figures like “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman and Theodore Bilbo and John Rankin and Strom Thurmond and James Eastland — all ardent defenders of segregation and the sanctity of white womanhood — as tragic monsters, bigoted misanthropes who fell on the wrong side of history defending a system of xenophobic hatred and human evil. Fifty years from now, Americans will look back on McCain as that kind of politician too — not just for his vile efforts to defend DADT, but for his utter betrayal of his onetime supporters among the Latino community by coming out against the DREAM Act. As you can see from the video atop this post, even on the campaign trail, McCain flip-flopped all over the place, telling some right-wing bloggers in 2007 that he now opposed the DREAM — even though he had cosponsored versions of it in 2003, 2005, and 2007. In 2008, before a crowd of Latinos, he said he supported the act. Later, on the campaign trail, he had an Arizona backyard barbecue with some DREAM Act proponents, and as you can see he was very warm about helping them. He expressed similar sentiments on the campaign trail in Florida in 2008, when he met with several DREAM Act students, including Gaby Pacheco . Yet when he encountered Pacheco a few months ago, threatened to have her arrested : A few days before the Senate left for the Thanksgiving break, Pacheco met the new McCain when she tried to lobby him on the DREAM Act, the bill he’d once championed. When Pacheco approached McCain, she said, he dismissed her and threatened to call the Capitol Police on her if she continued to follow him. As he entered an elevator, the DREAM Act supporters told the senator that all they want is to serve their country. “Go serve them then,” McCain told them, according to Pacheco. Brooke Buchanan, spokeswoman for McCain, said the protesters approached the senator, but said McCain did not say he would call the Capitol Police. She said she was not aware of him telling the protesters to “go serve them then.” Like I said: A world-class phony.
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