Tag Archives: culture

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Dennis Prager (a friend of a family friend of sorts) writes a column that is as shockingly offensive as it is logically absurd, challening William F. Buckley’s “My Cold War” essay of a decade ago (fighting Murphy Brown = fighting Stalin) by arguing that homosexuals are like terrorists in that they want to decay Judaeo-Christian values:

America is engaged in two wars for the survival of its civilization. The war over same-sex marriage and the war against Islamic totalitarianism are actually two fronts in the same war — a war for the preservation of the unique American creation known as Judeo-Christian civilization.

One enemy is religious extremism. The other is secular extremism. One enemy is led from abroad. The other is directed from home.

The first war is against the Islamic attempt to crush whoever stands in the way of the spread of violent Islamic theocracies, such as al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Iranian mullahs and Hamas. The other war is against the secular nihilism that manifests itself in much of Western Europe, in parts of America such as San Francisco and in many of our universities.

The irony is that a federal marriage ammendment has no stronger backer than Usama Bin Laden or the mullahs Prager makes a killing fulminating against.

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I was all revved up to respond to this paragraph from Keith Urbahn on The Passion:

Charges of ?anti-Semitism? have been conveniently tossed around by those who object to the film?s portraying of Jews in a negative light. Ironically, many of these guardians of religious sensitivity are the same who defended the desecration of the Virgin Mary in elephant dung at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in the name of freedom of expression, and now with the tables turned, condemn the film as rabidly anti-Semitic and a breach of the norms of decency.

But it turns out James Kirchick, with whom I agree on few things, has beat me to it:

First off, there is a major difference in defending an art museum’s first amendment right to display whatever art it chooses, and advocating that the museum be forced to close the exhibit altogether. I defy Keith to find a statement from Abraham Foxman or any of the other major Jewish leaders he accuses, demanding that the government prevent Gibson from displaying his art, which is what Catholic leaders urged, and ultimately convinced, Mayor Giuliani to do in the “Sensation” episode. Second, as I remember, the “Sensation” exhibit was essentially an elephant-dung stained portrait of Mary, created by a Catholic. However tasteless that piece of “artwork” may be, it does not compare to a Catholic defaming a people of different faith.

Jamie makes the central point: that protesting the nature of a piece of art is not a parallel activity to protesting the freedom of an independant artist to create it or of a publically-funded institution to display it. Intentionally obscuring this line allowed conservative commentators to have a heyday claiming that the Ofili episode was yet another demonstration that liberals hate religion except when it’s aberrant and/or un-Christian. Keith risks echoing that line in the graph above – what exactly does it mean to say “now that the tables are turned”? Now that Jews rather than Christians are allegedly impugned? I trust that Keith doesn’t intend the nastier readings of that line – but it’s an unfortunate turn of phrase.

I do disagree with Jamie, however, on two points. The first, which is incidental, is that I agree with Jack Newfield’s account in this book that Giuliani’s stand against Ofili’s painting was much less about his bowing to pressure from the “Catholic leaders” Jamie references and much more about his ill-conceived gambit to pick up suburban votes for his senate run by sparking a controversy. Second, while I agree with Jamie that the Museum had the right to display “tasteless” art, I think to describe Ofili’s work as “tasteless” is an unfortunate mischaracterization of the piece – a mischaracterization which went largely unchallenged in the press at the time. Ofili was a Nigerian altar boy who set out to create a work to reconcile his African heritage and his Christian identity. The elephant dung was a traditional sign of respect which he incorporated into portraits of other figures as well. “The Holy Virgin Mary” was, in Ofili’s words, “a hip hop version.” I wrote more about this in the early days of this site in a post here (scroll all the way down), on a strangely fitting coda to the whole episode.

In related news, Drudge is reporting that Mel Gibson declined to appear in tonight’s Oscars because he was afraid he’d be booed. So much for redemption in suffering.

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The Wonkette translates Peggy Noonan’s attempt to determine whether, in the shadow of Janet Jackson’s breast, “our culture has gone iredeemably to pot” or whether “we can jump for our lives…” Zach’s already posted my five words on the subject; I do wish that someone could explain to me the causal relationship between a person – of whatever age – seeing a mostly exposed breast – much like the ones most of them depended on for food for a good while – and any set of unsanctioned behaviors, actions, or attitudes of the sort that make Peggy Noonan want to leap out of a boiling pot of water. I think it’s very easy to hone in on how comparatively explicit different images are and avoid a conversation of how comparatively problematic their messages are. Even if I believed in censorship, I’d rather ban DeBeers Diamond Ads than Janet Jackson’s mammary.

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There’s no way I would have been watching The West Wing this season if not for a perhaps perverse sense of loyalty to what it was back when it was Aaron Sorkin’s show. The writing, as many have observed, has tanked, and everything else has gone down with it. Tonight, however, may have been a new low. Whereas Sorkin could actually (and did) make the census riveting television, this season’s writers have made the policy discussion so dry and so trite that the one clever line of the show was when Leo responds to the President’s monologue by asking the others whether they were taking notes. And the character development may actually be worse. It was only in the last minutes of the episode, however, that I was offended in a way I can’t remember ever (despite often coming down pretty far to the left of the positions advanced there) being offended by the show.

President Bartlett has rightfully chosen to take a strong stance against mandatory minimums in drug sentencing and has commuted the sentences of thirty-some first-time non-violent drug offenders stuck with outrageous sentences under mandatory minimums. After the State of the Union, he’s introduced to a Black woman who’s one of the thirty-plus just released and expresses her gratitude. At this point Bartlett launches into a lecture on how lucky she is to be getting a second chance, how dire the consequences if she screws up again, how much the futures of other prison inmates are riding on her behavior, and how important it is that she appreciate her freedom. The sight (fictitious or not) of a white Nobel Laureate/ US President born to privilege taking the opportunity of having taken small steps towards ameliorating awful, punitive, and racist policy lecturing a Black woman who’s just made it out of years of humiliating and unjust punishment for a non-violent offense on how grateful she should be to him and how if she played by the rules he might be more magnanimous to others of her kind was offensive to the point of being difficult to watch. And that the woman simply smiles, blushes, and thanks him again for his kindness is absurd. I expected better.

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Do not read the New Yorker’s review of The House of Sand and Fog, whose assertion that

the ineluctable downward pull of absolutely everything in this movie is more exasperating than moving

leads one to question not only reviewer David Denby’s taste but his humanity as well. Do go see the movie. Now. Please.

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I’m generally not one for on-line polls, but I think sending the right-wing American Family Association a message – through their own poll – that Americans reject their campaign to disenfranchise gay families is a worthy cause, especially given that they’ve promised to pass the results on to Congress. I just got an e-mail from the AFA sharing the results of the poll so far, and it looks like the real pro-family folks are clobbering the AFA’s supporters:

I oppose legalization of homosexual marriage and “civil unions” total votes: 201914

I favor legalization of homosexual marriage total votes: 378691

I favor a “civil union” with the full benefits of marriage except for the name: 52238

Pretty embarrassing for them, eh? So if you’re the AFA, and you’re losing your own poll, what do you do? The end of the e-mail may have a hint:

Only votes that have a valid email address associated with them will be counted. We will be purging those with invalid email addresses, which may cause poll results to change somewhat.

No explanation of what renders a vote “invalid,” of course. Must be the same thing that marks so many of my friends’ and relatives’ families invalid as well…

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Just watched an episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy last night. My sense has been, and still is, that those who are arguing that the show symbolizes a crude minstrelesque stereotyping of gay folks and those who are arguing that the show symbolizes a new prominence and acceptance of gay folks are both right. The most powerful argument of the former camp, I think, is that after performing stereotypical queer labor for heteros, the “Fab Five,” leave the heteros alone and go back into their queer home to watch from a distance as the people they’ve served experience romance. The fact that they’re drinking martinis doesn’t diminish the resemblance to servant quarters. The powerful argument of the latter camp, I think, is that queer folks are being brought into heteros’ homes not only to joke, advise, and support them but specifically to facilitate the development of healthier monogomous, faithful, loving relationships.

What struck me most strongly on watching the show last night, however, was the class-typing which pervades it. I think that the “positive stereotypes” associated with the “Fab Five,” while they share some of the problematic nature and potential utility in social progress as, say, the idea that Blacks beat Whites as Basketball, are comparatively noteworthy in that they’re almost totally inaccesible to a large swathe of the homosexual community. What are gay teenagers gorwing up in urban ghettos – especially those of color – to make of a queer icon distinguished by his inpeccable fashion who in a recent episode found an unacceptable shirt in a hetero man’s closet and asked him, “What are you, poor?”

There’s a compelling argument that the recent media buzz over “metrosexuals” – basically, hetero men who follow homosexual stereotypes – represents a reification of the claim that homosexuality and the expressions associated with it – warmth, compassion, fashion – both other you and make you less of a man. There’s a compelling argument to be made that the buzz over “metrosexuals” represents a problematization of constructs of gender and sexuality, and a growing comfort with the idea that multiple masculinities are available to heterosexual and homosexual guys alike. But what both of these arguments gloss over is that “metrosexuality” further weds sexuality and class by implying that northeastern urban wealthy trendy heterosexual men can perform homosexual stereotypes too.

It shouldn’t be surprising that the internet parodies of this show – some quite hateful – which have risen up have also been pervaded with class-typing: regular, blue-collar, beer-guzzling, poorly-dressed men converting effete trendy queers. But perhaps it should be concerning. Just as it should be concerning how many of the official and unofficial spokespeople of the political gay rights movement are white, upper-middle class folks (some of whom have a great deal of vested interest in divorcing the movement from class- and race- based justice movements). What’s needed is more voices, and diverse ones. Let a thousand queer TV shows bloom – but please, let them depict more than the type of gay folks in the Fab Five.

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Paul Krugman gives the argument – advanced most recently by his newest fellow columnist – that the problem with political discourse today is the rudeness and meanness of the left exactly the response it deserves:

But there’s more going on than a simple attempt to impose a double standard. All this fuss about the rudeness of the Bush administration’s critics is an attempt to preclude serious discussion of that administration’s policies. For there is no way to be both honest and polite about what has happened in these past three years.

The problem with political discourse in this country, as far as I’m concerned, has everything to do with what issues are and are not on the radar screen, who gets a voice in the discourse, and what the assumptions are which undergird the discourse – and nothing to do with the civility of the diction.

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Jacob Remes deserves, depending on your judgment, the credit or the blame for pitting Josh Cherniss and I against each other over Tony Auth’s recent cartoon. His original take on Auth’s work is here; his more extensive, and fairly moderated, take, in response to my earlier post, is here. In responding to his eloquent piece, I should start by noting that there is a great deal about which, in principle, Josh and I agree. We stand by the importance of distinctions between anti-Sharon, anti-Israel, and antisemitic sentiment, and recognize that, as he says, “many extreme and dogmatic defenders of Israel,” as well as too many critics of Israel, “casually ignore this distinction, to their great dishonour.” We both maintain that, as Josh says, “we should be careful in how we employ symbols — and may with justice criticize others for not taking such care — ESPECIALLY when we agree with the point they were trying, or may have been trying, to make.” Josh and I both share with Tony Auth an opposition to the “separation fence,” the occupation, and the settlement project. And like Josh, I’ve felt and expressed a special frustration with those who use unjust tactics or offensive rhetoric in the service of a cause I share. The case of Professor Qumsiyeh, to which I alluded in my previous post, who sent to the Yale Coalition for Peace listserve what he believed was the membership list of the pro-war Yale College Students for Democracy, and was actually the list for an Israel discussion listserve, is for me the most telling recent example. Instructively, but not surprisingly, after I and then other students in Yale Peace rebuked him over the listserve, the story was spun as further evidence of the antisemitism of the left without mention that leftists had been the first to condemn his actions.

It doesn’t seem worth devoting too much space to defending myself from an accusation of having “an ideological persecution complex,” especially given Josh’s admission of using my “minor side-comment as an opportunity to express [his] thought” about the attraction of the victim posture. I’ll just say that I agree that demonstrating persecution is not a substitute for demonstrating virtue (Josh’s word choice), while sharing that I think accusations of a “victim mentality” are too often – in other contexts – a substitute for confronting the arguments offered by, or the injustice witnessed by another. I don’t believe (despite being called a Nazi, a self-hating Jew, etc. on occasion) that being a Jewish critic of Israel makes me a victim of some sort. But I also don’t believe that making the personal and empirical observation that much left criticism of Israel “come[s] under fire…as not only critical of the Sharon government but anti-Israel, and not only anti-Israel but antisemitic” represents “a wallowing in victimhood, a sheer love of whining and feeling put upon,” or even a lesser shade of such.

Josh suggests that because Sharon does not appear in Auth’s cartoon, it must be anti-Israel at the least rather than anti-Sharon. Terms like “anti-Israel” are as ambiguous as they are charged – the cartoon is only anti-Israel, as I see it, in the sense that it presents a strident critique of Israel and uses the central symbol of the state in connection with oppression. That may pass Josh’s bar for anti-Israel – I wouldn’t render that inherently anti-Israel any more than I would a depiction of, say, the Statue of Liberty carrying Japanese into internment camps anti-American. To me the cartoon is anti-Sharon in the sense that it dramatically criticizes a policy of the Sharon government, even if Arik himself is absent from the cartoon. But at the center of our dispute isn’t how to draw different shades of political criticism of the state but how to draw the line between political criticism of the state and religious bigotry – the charges being leveled at Tony Auth now are not primarily of offering anti-Israel criticism but rather of offering antisemitic criticism – although much of the criticism comes from people and organizations, I should note, who seem to be interested in charging the latter only when it offers an opportunity to discredit the former.

Josh reads me incorrectly as seeing “the ‘appropriation’ of the Star of David as the symbol for Israel — and, thus, the symbol for supporters of Israel, including diehard Likudniks (and worse) — as somehow making it cease to be a symbol of the Jewish people.” Not at all. The Jewish star today is identified as a symbol of the Jewish faith and people, and as a symbol of the state and government of Israel (while I maintain that the Jewish star is used and has been as a religious symbol, Josh is right to remind me that the historical root and dominant use of the Jewish star is as a symbol of the Jews more than of Judaism). But just as the political symbol doesn’t erase the historic meaning of the star, neither should the latter invalidate the former. Josh seems to be suggesting either the reverse of the statement he attributes to me – that the use of the star as a symbol of the Jewish people makes it invalid as a symbol for Israel – or that the star is a valid symbol for Israel but inaccessible to Israel’s critics. Either of these arguments seems to me rather troubling, both, I think, for obvious reasons. There’s little of substance I would disagree with in Josh’s characterization of the historical and current resonance of the Jewish star – as he says, “It has been worn — sometimes proudly and voluntarily, sometimes forcibly and with shame and fear — by Jews throughout history.” No one could reasonably argue with Josh’s admonishment that “given how potent and fraught symbolic politics are, we should be careful how we employ symbols…” But that said, we should also be careful how we read symbols. And I don’t think it’s unreasonable for Auth to use the star in the cartoon as representative of the state which imposes the fence on the civilians – the fence and the civilians being the second and third symbols of the cartoon. And I strongly reject the idea – one promulgated on print and around the web, but one which in fairness Josh implied in his original post but seems to have backed away from – that to do so makes Auth a bigot. I can’t think what the better symbol for this particular cartoon would be – the menorah, in my judgment, which appeals on the seal of the state, is a distant second as a national symbol. It also co-exists as a religious symbol (and an evocative one which, like most Jewish symbols, is tinged with memories of oppression), and it lacks the currency in the American consciousness that the star has as a symbol for Israel. Josh’s conclusion may be that a cartoon of this type – combining the national symbol of a state with a symbol of the oppression it’s visiting on others – simply shouldn’t be drawn. I don’t think that’s an easily acceptable conclusion. .And again, I think it’s illustrative that the Israeli government, Israeli politicians, and right-wing lobbies all plaster their material with the symbol of the star. While I might sometimes find such use of the star (much like much of the use of the American flag) tasteless, I wouldn’t deny them that symbol from their vocabulary.

Incidentally, if Auth intentionally adapted a similar-looking Nazi cartoon, obviously that would be tremendously problematic. But absent that, as aesthetically unsettling as the similarities might be, I don’t think the argument that Auth’s cartoon resembles a Nazi one is an effective critique

Josh seems to fail, or decline, to distinguish between provocative and offensive commentary – or between that which offends and that which is offensive. Political cartooning is a provocative medium, and some of its best achievements are among its most provocative. Tony Auth’s cartoon after the lynching of Israeli soldiers in Ramallah on October 12, 2001 (I remember because I was in Hod HaSharon at the time), redrawing the photo of one of the Palestinian killers pressing his blood-stained hands against a window and replacing him with the image of Yassir Arafat, was highly provocative (and like much of Auth’s work, not overly clever). And provoking intentionally – a charge Josh levels against Auth – doesn’t strike me as poor behavior on the part of an artist. But if offensive works are to be condemned (but not – I assume Josh agrees with me – censored), then offensiveness must be some quality – like, say, religious bigotry – beyond being observed to offend some people. I agree with Josh that, “It should be very easy to criticize Israel on its merits right now, and not be open to imputations of anti-Semitism from any reasonable person.” But when critics of Israel are subjected to imputations of antisemitism, we should ask ourselves whether the problem is the critics of Israel, or the critics’ critics. Josh shifts in his post between criticizing Auth for being offensive, and criticizing Auth for opening the left up to attack from the right, for giving “a gift to the Likud.” And while I agree with Josh that one mistake peace movements make is a failure to disavow bigotry promulgated in their name, I’d contend that another mistake peace movements make is allowing themselves to be cowed out of making difficult charges by the threat of being tarred with unjustified accusations of bigotry. There are few to the left of Alan Dershowitz who can criticize Israel in a manner that CAMERA would approve. One of the major obstacles to the execution of a coherent Jewish response to genuine antisemitism is the frequency of spurious charges. As Uri Avnery argued, antisemitism used to be a charge that people shrunk from with haste. Now the real antisemites have safe cover among the increasing ranks of non-antisemitic critics branded with the label. In other words, absolutely there’s a difference between Die Sturmer and (as much as I hold its cartoons in about the same estimation the writers of Seinfeld do) the New Yorker. Which is why treating the New Yorker like Die Sturmer is such a mistake. I’ll admit to being somewhat mystified by Josh’s narrative in which the Likudniks and their American allies were “slinking about silently trying to ignore the marriage law” before Tony Auth spurred them on and rendered them “suddenly up in arms” – I think this may be another case where the “blogosphere” fails to reflect the pulse of the broader populace.

Was Auth’s cartoon the most effective image to convey his message? I’m not sure. But the charges of bigotry leveled against it are unjust, and in many cases, quite suspiciously motivated. I’m glad Josh has backed a few steps away from them. Where Josh accuses Auth of poor political judgment, or failure to advance the cause of the peace movement, I’m skeptical. But his charges of foolish offensiveness I have to reject.

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This Tony Auth cartoon has caused a stir in several Philadelphia, Jewish, and on-line circles since it was printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer last Thursday. The cartoon, which depicts a fence in the shape of a Jewish star dividing Palestinian civilians, has come under fire – as do most on the left about Israel – as not only critical of the Sharon government but anti-Israel, and not only anti-Israel but antisemitic. And, as in most but not all cases when Israel is the topic and antisemitism is charged, the charge doesn’t hold weight.

At the heart of the issue with this cartoon is the symbolic use of the Magen David, the Jewish star. Because Auth uses a religious symbol, the argument goes, the cartoon represents a religious – rather than political – slur, a blood libel. Because the star is employed in connection with a depiction of oppression, the cartoon’s message must be that the religion, and the coreligionists, associated with the star are oppressive. But this argument disregards the appropriation of the Jewish star a century ago for the flag of the State of Israel. The star, which appears in the center of the flag framed above and below by horizontal stripes, is its only recognizable symbol, and appears solo in a range of administrative contexts, as understandably is also a mainstay of pro-Sharon lobbies. So why the Magen David does not belong to the lexicon of acceptable symbols for Auth is seems to me difficult to argue.

This may seem like a belated nitpick, but there’s a larger and more persistent issue here. Whatever one believes about the religious nature of the state, I think intellectual honesty demands a recognition that any self-identified religious state inherently blurs the discourse, insofar as most of us legitimize and call for judgments of states and political actors of a type that we don’t want or legitimate of religions or religious groups. But pundits on both sides can fall prey to a desire to have it both ways. A couple months ago I called a Yale professor active on the Yale-Peace listserve on a seeming inability or willful refusal to distinguish between Jews, Zionists, Likudniks, Israelis, and neoconservatives. But the double standard on the right is more subtle and more ubiquitous: Groups that defend the Israeli government are pro-Jewish and speak for Jews, but when critics of Israel conflate the state and the religion it’s bigotry. It would be gratifying to see more politicians willing to distinguish the Jewish community and Arik Sharon when it comes to commentary they agree with and commentary they don’t.

Katha Pollitt, in an essay on flags after September 11, wrote that symbols are doors and it’s time to walk through them (when I asked her in person what she had meant by that quote, she said she didn’t remember ever writing it). Symbolic politics is inherently potent and inherently fraught. And all cartoons are charicature. As cartoonists go, Auth isn’t a particular favorite of mine, although he has his moments. But Auth’s cartoon has three symbols. The first, as described above, is perhaps the primary symbol of the state. The second, Palestinian civilians, exist by the millions in the territory occupied by that state. And the third, the fence in question, is lengthening even now. The criticism of Auth for using the symbol, and the implication that his symbolism is akin to Nazi propaganda and/or is comparing Israelis to Nazis to Nazis, makes it easy to forget that in this case life preceded art. The actual fence, in fact, looks a lot uglier than portrayed in the cartoon. Auth chose to make a statement – not a particularly new one – about the construction of the fence in the name of the star and its impact on men, women, and children. Debatable? Sure. Bigotry? No.

Disagree? Eidelson@Yale.Edu

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Attention must (belatedly) be paid:

Thanks to ZKSW for the link from the anarcho-syndicalist playground that is his website. Go read it. Now. Especially the “pithy quotations,” like “Run-UOC”:

[Run]
For all you sucker Ph.D’s perpetratin a FRAUD
your lies are cold wack and keep the crowd cold lost
you’re the kind of guy no one could ever afford
cause you eat like you’re a feudal lord
The hall is Woodbridge and we’re here to maraud
And when you see us marchin you better pray to GOD
Because we’re wheelin, dealin, give you a funny feeling
When we hang our banners from your ceiling
We groove it (you move it) it has been proven
We filed seventy-seven complaints because your style is LOSIN
We realize it (contrive it) and always organize it
We’ll diss an administrator make the other fuckers’ eyes itch
We’re rising (suprising) and constantly mobilizing
We always tell the truth and then we never slip no lies in
You steal millions from our kids and then ya still get paid
Well now we’re descending on your house like a fuckin’ air raid

(guitar solo by Julie Gonzales)

[Run]
Because the lies you say, When you’re running Yale
Prove it to me that this place for sale
Like Phil Lesh, your shit is so stale

[U.O.C.]
We get no rest from the UOC but we never fail
We couldn’t wait to demonstrate
cause your contract proposal’s insensate
Came here cause we were lured from what we’d heard
But your administration’s quite absurd
Tell you what we don’t like, that’s when you say
That if it weren’t for GESO there’d be A Better Way

Also, I should print in its entirety a recent message from Julie Gonzales:

your blog is amazing.
but it’s missing la cucaracha !
www.ucomics.com/lacucaracha

I should admit at this point to never having read this comic before.

From the makers of Legally Blonde II…
And the people who brought you “PATRIOT ACT II”…it’s…
“ILLEGALLY BROWN III: FULL THROTTLE ROUNDUP”

With the Julie Gonzales hashkachah (Julie – know what that means now?), you know it’s good…

Also, while we’re doing the Day-After-All-the-Rape-Links-Shout-Out-to-College-Friends-and-Websites, go check out Alyssa’s Rosenberg’s Elm City Politics Blog for a much more responsible (and coherent) brand of blogging than this one. No seriously. It’s very solid.

And then for something completely different, check out Thomas Frampton and his band.

“Revolution is just about to come
and for two dollars you can read about the fun
One paper at a time the party ladder I will climb
Till state power and authority are mine”

Yeah well I have imperialists
But you turned equally fascist
And your papers won’t do jack to get me free
And you sold your youth the day you bought their Truth
And now you’re hawking Worker’s Weekly, issue 3

In the (unlikely) event that you’re reading this site and not one of the four people mentioned above, go read their stuff. Now. And, as always, the UOC site, unless you’ve been there since it was updated a couple months ago before the webmaster’s ex went to Senegal (we’re working on it…).

And if you want to see yourself against this pea-soup background, e-mail me – eidelson@yale.edu. Or e-mail me anyway. I like e-mail.

Peace.

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Zhou Tiehai has created what seems a fitting tribute to one of Giuliani’s more ridiculous actions as Mayor of New York(although certainly not his most destructive, when compared to summarily jailing the homeless or turning a blind eye to police brutalitiy):

It was only a shade less than four years ago that New York flew into a frenzy over Rudolph Giuliani’s short-lived effort to shut down the Brooklyn Museum of Art for exhibiting Chris Ofili’s dung-ornamented painting “The Holy Virgin Mary.” Last week dung returned for an encore, ceremonially clumped on a portrait of the former mayor himself that appears in a new show at the Whitney Museum. The Daily News reflexively slapped the picture, by the Shanghai-born artist Zhou Tiehai, on Page 1 (“New Rudy Art Flap”), the local television newscasters duly cluck-clucked . . . and no one cared. Even Mr. Giuliani didn’t rise to the bait. “Well, I’m really not an art critic,” he said. “If it was an opera, I’d be able to comment on it.”

Maybe this shows take from this is that being in the right place at the right time (and, to be fair, making a couple admirable moves, like having hate crimes against Arabs tracked) has caused his popularity to so skyrocket that he no longer sees a need to take potshots at free expression. Equally likely, he simply realizes that it’s more difficult to take the moral high ground when you, rather than the Holy Virgin Mary are the subject of the offending painting.

The irony of Tiehai’s work, and the reason that it strikes me as perversely appropriate, is that Tiehai’s work uses dung for the purpose of smearing (so to speak) the image of Giuliani, while Ofili, despite Giuliani’s accusations that he was smearing the Holy Virgin Mary, was using dung to honor her. As I wrote in a piece in my high school newspaper at the time,

The dung in Ofili’s painting, as well as in his other art, is not a sign of disrespect. Rather, it is a sign of reverence. “It’s a way,” he explained, “of raising the paintings up from the ground and giving them a feeling that they’ve come from the earth rather than simply being hung on a wall.” Ofili pointed to the sexual undertones of many traditional artistic depictions of the Virgin Mary as the inspiration for the sexual imagery in his own work. “Mine is just a hip-hop version.”
“Ofili,” writes Inquirer art critic Edward J. Sozanski, “is imagining a Virgin Mary far different, but no less legitimate in devotional terms, from the one that the Roman Catholic Giuliani encountered in his catechetical youth.” Viewed in its proper context, how can “The Holy Virgin Mary” possibly be seen as anything other than what it is – the alternative vision of an observant Catholic, a bold attempt to mesh his Western upbringing with his Nigerian heritage?

And so while I would generally consider dung-throwing, literal or figurative, to be a low form of political expression, the cleverness of Tiehai’s work is that it reflects back on Giuliani precisely what he falsely projected onto Ofili’s work. Giuliani’s phantom offense has come back to haunt him. Tiehai offers Giuliani the disrespect that Ofili, an alter boy in his youth, never intended (another former alter boy to haunt the former mayor would be Patrick Dorismond, whose point-blank shooting by an undercover cop Giuliani defended with the bizarre allegation that Dorismond – based on sealed juvenile court records – was no “alter boy”).

My high school op-ed on the topic was accompanied by a photo of the painting in question, captioned “The Holy Virgin Mary.” At the last minute my editor switched that for a picture of Giuliani because we couldn’t find a good non-copyrighted shot of the painting, but he almost forgot to change the caption.

Poetic justice?