The Assassination of Art

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)

The Whitest Show Ever (Well, Since Friends Ended in 2004)

If you watch Gossip Girl, you could be forgiven for thinking that only white people are allowed to have a life on the Upper East Side. A couple of weeks ago, the front cover of New York Magazine titled it the best show ever, announcing "what it gets right about New York". What it certainly doesn't get right is the ethnic mix that is so inherent to what makes our city what it is. There is nothing New York about a bunch of perfectly groomed over-privileged teenagers who live in a timewarp back to the 1930's when everyone pretty much stuck to their own race. Furthermore, glorifying these types of scenarios speaks largely to America's "White-Is-Right" syndrome, making caucasians the inherent superior race and ignoring the fact that pretty soon they will actually become a minority in this country (when Hispanics/Latin-Americans become the majority).

Perhaps it is I that is the naive one thinking of my multi-colored world as the norm? Perhaps the fact that they shut down my exhibitions still has not hit me yet? Could it be that as my "The Assassination of Hillary Clinton" installation alluded to three months ago, racism is alive and well, not just in the south or in the Bible belt but inside of us all?