Hindrocket plays art critic:
Well, you know a painting is offensive when the guy who painted the Pope with swastikas thinks it’s over the line. I’m a little puzzled, though, by what the show’s organizers considered to be a “relevant political message,” i.e., how the oil companies “abuse” the United States. That would be, I suppose, by providing petroleum products that allow us to go places, heat our homes, have offices and factories in which to work, and operate equipment so that, instead of living like the ancient Egyptians, hauling blocks of stone around with ropes, we can sit at desks and do things like operate computers. Is that how the oil companies “abuse” Americans? I suppose the idea is that without the oil companies, oil and gasoline would spring magically out of the ground (pollution-free, of course), and into our gas tanks and furnaces. For free.
Leftists are so childish that I cannot understand how anyone can take them seriously.
In fairness, John, these are left-wing artists we’re talking about. Artists are possibly the least well-educated college graduates out there – those who have a degree in the first place – after all, you’re not going to learn much about economics, history, chemistry or anything else in art history or English class.
This doesn’t mean that non-artistic leftists are necessarily much more likely to make a rational and informed argument about the Iraqi War or anything else, but they are less likely to be as hopelessly childish. I mean, at least a socialist economist knows what GDP is, even if he has trouble grokking the fact that increasing G will reduce I, sooner rather than later.
Your average artist, on the other hand, is operating on the level of the high-school dropout stripper who can’t understand why all the poor people don’t just move to Jamaica.
It’s been said that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. I therefore note in passing that universal democracy is somewhat conspicuous by its absence in that particular document.