Guess Who's Not Coming To Dinner
Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts tell this interesting story at the Washington Post:
Censorship! That's what some art lovers whispered during the Hillary Clinton fundraiser Nov. 5 at the Woodley Park home of Tony and Heather Podesta. The huge photograph of the nude man was missing from its usual spot on the living room wall, and some guests concluded that politically correct Clintonites had demanded that the naked guy disappear.
My social set would probably run to murals of poker-playing dogs, but in certain circles tastes are more exalted. The Argetsinger-Roberts article continues:
The Podestas are part of Washington's Democratic elite: He's a top lobbyist and brother of Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta; she just launched her own lobbying firm. They're also nationally known collectors of contemporary art, and one of their favorite pieces is "Soliloquy VII," an eight-foot-tall color photo of a nude man lying on his back, by British artist Sam Taylor-Wood. ...
"Soliloquy VII" will return in a year, he promised. "We are resting it for the presidential campaign but bringing it out for the inaugural ball."
What kind of world puts a "Soliloquy VII" on the wall and starts up new lobbying firms? Maybe Peter Finch's movie soliloquy from Network provides a glimpse.
You people and sixty-two million other Ameicans are listening to me right now. Because less than three percent of you people read books. Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers. Because the only truth you know is what you get over this tube. Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube. This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation. This tube can make or break Presidents, Popes, Prime Ministers. This tube is the most awesome, god-damned force in the whole godless world...We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds - we're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness. You maniacs. In God's name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion. So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off. Turn them off right in the middle of this sentence I am speaking to you now. Turn them off!
posted by wretchardthecat at 11/21/2007 01:14:00 PM
8 Comments:
Yeah, it seems that our boomer generation discovered you could get rich by...starting Internet companies or getting elected or running hedge funds, or dare we say it, selling military technology to the Chinese.
There is no doubt a Clinton social circle that is salivating at a potential upcoming chance to rake in the dough. If only they can keep the illusion in place long enough...
Actually it's the exact opposite of Network. The elites world-wide have done their best to fracture and degrade mass culture and replace it with specialized, niche cultures that are mutually antagonistic.
The great danger to elites is the people. The people unified by a mass culture can turn on the elites (particularly led by a Robspierre, a Napoleon, a Jackson) and destroy them. There is no telling WHAT an ambitious man with the ability to use mass culture might do.
Thus there is a painting worth millions hanging on the wall of a connected family. That holds fundraisers for the Clintons. A family I would emphasize that has vastly different tastes, attitudes, and culture than the rest. A family that has in it's own way helped to destroy the social glue of a common culture to practice divide and conquer among the people.
Seems to me that John Ashcroft took a lot of grief for covering up a statue. My liberal 'friends' castigated him calling him a 'boob' for his prudery.
Hillary was working to avoid this. Won't be penis decorations on the campaign christmas tree either.
"We are resting it for the presidential campaign but bringing it out for the inaugural ball."
What a marvelously candid quote.
I do wonder what other things now hidden the Clintonistas plan to "bring out" for their enjoyment on January 20, 2009.
Whiskey_199,
As a participant in a few of these "niche cultures" (SF Fandom, Anime Fandom, RPing...) do you mind if I disagree? o_O
The people "unified" by a "mass" culture are a lot more easily
manipulated than people who choose their culture will ever be. If you doubt me than considered that part of the reason the Left is currently demented and in despair lies in the fact that their little safe oligopoly of media control is useless to them right now because of an Internet that allows the reader to bypass them. An "army of Davids" is an army of slingers and slingers fight better as skirmishers rather than as a phalanx. Screw Robspierre and screw Napoleon! In the world of the Net a Martin Luther, a Herodotus or a Juneval is worth a thousand of them and that is as it should be. ^_^
Tonight I listened to an "ear-opening" presentation by former judge Andrew Napolitano, explaining the details of Bush's anti-terror legislation and how it violates cherished constitutional principles. He pointed out that Lincoln also was a major trasher of the Constitution, suspending Habeas Corpus, for instance, a principle that had been recognized and respected (in the main) since the Magna Carta...
I kept thinking "Well, habeas corpus was RESTORED after the end of hostilities."
The greatest danger of the legislation that I anticipate is its abuse by any subsequent Democrat Party administration. Recall how the Clintons used the raw power of the Federal Government to intimidate and torment their opponents when they occupied the White House. For all the accusations of "Nazism" by the Left, I don't see any domestic opponents or critics of the Bush Administration being rounded up and made into soap bars or tins of pet food. What I do see, for all the pissing and moaning about how BUSH is setting up the government to repress citizens' rights, is DEMOCRATIC PARTY manipulating the system to screw anyone they can in the Republican Congress and the administration.
We see Scooter Libby railroaded by an arrogant, over-reaching DEMOCRATIC-sponsored special prosecutor, while Sandy Berger gets a slap on the wrist after admitting to stealing and destroying classified documents to protect his former boss.
Brings back horrible memories of Lawrence Walsh, the special prosecutor who issued a felony indictment of Caspar Weinberger the day before the presidential election contested among George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and H. Ross Perot. (His assistant in that time was political commenter Jeffery Toobin, by the way.)
As soon as his boy had won (by a plurality NOT a majority, let's recall), the son of a whore withdrew the indictment. If it had been prosecutable, it should have stood. Otherwise it stands as one of the most blatant abuses of power by any special prosecutor.
The most aggravating aspect to liberals continues to be the distinction that is made between US Citizens and NON-Citizens. But *** I *** believe that the praxis the Left is pushing of extending the rights of US citizenship to any and all aliens will dilute and debase those rights to the point of extinction.
This may be their entire goal. "Trans-national Progressivism" is the name, right?
Our language has been vandalized.
Here's a question that doesn't seem to have been brought up:
What does it mean that a big-time Clinton supporter considers an entirely decadent photo to be art? What does that say about standards for decency? Elitism? Morality? When they express faux moral outrage?
Remember, it could be that Soliloquy IX photo is the same picture, except with a child. But that would also be art to these people.
On the other hand, talking about art vs. pornography is a wonderful tactic to divide the religious right.
The human form can be high art. Michaelangelo's David and the Venus DeMilo are two of the greatest works of art in existemce.
If a Republican candidate was stupid enough to comment on the missing "Soliloquy VII" one way or the other, I guarentee they would lose votes. Let's see if the question gets asked to the Republican candidates.
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