The Assassination of Art

The Art Offends

As you might have heard, a lot has been going on since I last emailed you inviting you to attend the opening event for the Assassination exhibits.

For the first time since my last encounter with the NYPD and the Secret Service, I have written about the experience in an article that was published today in The Huffington Post, entitled ‘The Art Offends.'

I encourage you to comment and share it with those you think might find it interesting.

Also, I have listed recent media coverage of the project below.

I will make sure to keep you informed as the project continues to unfold.

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

SELECT MEDIA COVERAGE:

New York Times

The Guardian

El Tiempo, Colombia

The Sun-Sentinel

The New York Post

The Washington Post

NY Daily News

The Miami Herald

The New York Sun

The LA Times

O Globo, Brazil

Television is chewing gum for the eyes

FOX NEWS:

The great thing about television is that if something important happens anywhere in the world, day or night, you can always change the channel. Taxi

ABC NEWS:

Seeing a murder on television... can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some. Alfred Hitchcock (1899 - 1980)

CBS NEWS:

Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other. Ann Landers (1918 - 2002)

AL ROJO VIVO:

Don't you wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence? There's one marked 'Brightness,' but it doesn't work. Gallagher

GOOD MORNING KANSAS:

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us. Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - 2007)

NOTICIAS UNIVISION:

Imitation is the sincerest form of television. Fred Allen (1894 - 1956)

MY 9 NEWS:

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)

GOOD DAY NEW YORK:

I think that parents only get so offended by television because they rely on it as a babysitter and the sole educator of their kids. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park, Death, 1997

TELEMUNDO 47 NEWS:

It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper. Rod Serling (1924 - 1975)

A Day Away...

Make sure to RSVP!

YouTube Dictatorship

I was struck over the past few days by the extent to which we have become a culture driven by "Gotcha" politics. I wrote recently about the flak Hillary Clinton got for her remarks on RFK's assassination in June 68. Obama has had his share of faux-pas, although his were mostly the result of his now erstwhile pastors getting a little too outspoken and provocative by the standards of middle America. The theatrical Michael Pfleger makes an easy boogeyman for the republicans, another bullet for them to swift-boat Obama into a liberal radical, piling on to the assumed reluctance of many white voters to vote for an African American.

When I looked at that clip on YouTube, over half a million people had already elected to watch it. We have gone from the dictatorship of the 24 hour news cycle to that of the recorded image that can be played and replayed online on demand. Every single misstep that an exhausted candidate can make on the stump will exist for ever, and can have an impact that it never had before. The iconic example of this new dynamic is of course George Allen's infamous Macaca comment, which helped make the democrats the Senate majority again in 2006.  In a way Americans are now writing the headlines themselves rather than waiting to see what a newspaper has decided for them should be front page news. Which you could say is good for democracy. But there is a downside to this: the risk that anyone's actions will have to become entirely scripted to avoid any potential slip of the tongue.

And I'm not even talking just about politics. Dior quickly dropped ads in China featuring Sharon Stone after she gave off-the-cuff remarks to journalists at the Cannes Film Festival in which she candidly shared her musings on karma. If you watch the whole clip though, clearly you understand that her intentions are good, and that of course she was not rejoicing in the death of tens of thousands of people. Even more baffling was how conservative bloggers managed to get Dunkin Donuts last week to stop running an ad with Rachel Ray simply because she was wearing a keffiyeh, which apparently makes her a supporter of Arab terrorists.  What's next? I am certainly familiar with the threat of censorship, and the pressures to remain politically correct. But you know that being intimidated is not my style. Art will not be silenced, and with your support and that of organizations such as ANAVAILABLESPACE, I will keep on fighting for the freedom of all artists to speak their mind. Yes, even using YouTube to make that happen!