Read additional details HERE, including the following:
...The controversial painting was selected as part of a student art competition in Rep. William Lacy Clay's district. The Missouri Democrat hung it in the Capitol, and Republicans immediately demanded that it should be taken down.And then there's this (from C-Span on February 6, 2017):
After the Architect of the Capitol agreed the painting should be removed, Pelosi appealed the decision to the House Office Building Commission. Pelosi herself sits on that panel, which also includes House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
The panel rejected her appeal in a 2-1 vote...
Transcript HERE (if the video is no longer available).
Keep it up, Leftist loons. America is watching.
Well, we certainly don't want a painting that offends right wing snowflakes.
ReplyDeleteThis is about much more than offending right wing snowflakes.
DeleteA constituent produces a painting on a subject of some immediacy.
DeleteDon't see why it should be censored because it is controversial.
Duck,
DeleteI don't beat the drum in favor of law enforcement. Mr. AOW and I have no family or friends working in that field.
But just imagine our lives without law enforcement!
Besides, not all law enforcement officers are "pigs." And, frankly, this so-call work of art stereotypes law enforcement officers. Painting with a broad brush, as you have mentioned about other topics.
Perhaps we should hang pictures of Lt. Calley burning huts in My Lai, too, mr. ducky? Let's "celebrate" what America's REALLY all about... not her imagined "ideals".
DeleteCuz "art" should inspire us to pursue "reality" and "the status quo"... NOT some "imaginary" utopian ideal.
Delete@ ducky, ps - Whatever became of your fixation upon "Socialist Realism"?
DeleteStill stuck in Aristotle, eh Farmer?
DeleteLeaving art nothing to do beyond mimicking physical reality consumes it's possibilities pretty quickly.
I don't care much for Rand's favorite format (Stalinist realism) but early soviet era art was innovative before Stalin reined it in.
Leaving art nothing to do beyond mimicking physical reality consumes it's possibilities pretty quickly
DeleteExactly. That's 'why' the painting needs to come down.
PS - I agree. Rand's first novel and prototype "communist Roarke" for Fountainhead/Shrugged, "We are the Living," was terrible. :)
Deletefrom Slavoj Zizek's "Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism": Such retroactive delegitimization makes "vanishing mediators" of past phenomena: although a past phenomenon can be a necessary moment in the emergence of a new form, its role becomes invisible once the New has arrived. Lat us take an unlikely example: Ayn Rand's first novel written in English, "We the Living", set in Petrograd between 1922 and 1925. Kira Argounova, the young daughter of a bourgeois family and a strong-willed independent spirit, manages to enroll in the Technological Institute where she aspires to fulfill her dream of becoming an engineer. At the Institute Kira meets Andrei Taganov, an idealistic communist and high ranking officer in the GPU (the secret police); the two share a mutual respect and admiration for each other in spite of their differing political beliefs. Kira finds Andrei to be the one person she can trust, and with whom she can discuss her most intimate thoughts and views. Not even her passionate lover, Leo Kovalensky- a handsome member of the nobility with a free spirit to match Kira's own- can fulfill this role for her. When Leo contracts tuberculosis and cannot get State help for his stay at the sanatorium, Kira feigns love for Andrei and agrees to become his mistress in order to secure his help in getting medical treatment for Leo. Months later, after Leo has been cured, he gets involved in black market speculation. Andrei is tipped off about this venture and, unaware of Kira's love for Leo, arrests him for crimes against the State. Eventually he finds out about Kira's relationship with Leo, and the ensuing confrontation between Andrei and Kira is the most poignant scene in the story. When Kira tells Andrei that she has faked her love for him just to get support for Leo, her true love, his reaction is not the expected one of rage and vengeance, but one of regret at the suffering he has unknowingly caused Kira, and understanding the depth of her love for Leo, for whom she was sacrificing herself. In order to redress the situation, Andrei promises to bring Leo back to her; after Leo's release from prison, Andrei loses his position ion the Party and commits suicide.
DeleteAlthough staunchly anti-communist, the novel remains ambiguous: what is surprising is not only the highly ethical reaction of the Bolshevik hero Andrei when he learns that Kira does not love him; even more surprising is the fact that this ethical reaction seems to be part of the communist persona. What is evil here is not simply the Bolshevik revolution as such, but its betrayal, which culminates in the pact between the revolutionaries who have betrayed their vocation and the old corrupt bourgeoisie. It is as if, although the revolution was flawed in its very essence and its corruption was unavoidable, the only path to truth leads through revolution: it is Andrei, a communist (and even a GPU officer) who, confronted with a tribunal, gives the original version of the staple Randian speech praising the individual spirit and rejecting collectivism, a speech whose later versions are Howard Roark's in front of the jury in "Fountainhead" and John Galt's long radio speech in "Atlas Shrugged". Andrei is thus a kind of vanishing mediator: the proto-figure of the Randian hero whose communist roots, still visible here, disappear in her late "mature" anti-communism. The first step in an effective critique of ideology is to render such vanishing mediators visible again- in the case of Rand, to show how even an extreme anti-communist stance was secretly based upon communist premises. (At a different level, the same holds for "The Fountainhead": is not the architecture of Howard Roark, the novel's hero modeled on Frank Lloyd Wright, also uncannily similar to the Soviet modernism of the 1920's?)
PPS - Plato is NOT Aristotle.
DeleteDon't let your "art" get stuck in the cracks between "Objective" and "Subjective" truths. Absolutize them through a process of "selective forgetfulness". ;)
Delete...and part of the forgetfulness that I would select, would be this painting. :)
Delete...much as the right half of Picasso's "Nude Woman in Red Armchair" (1932).... the "male" half of the painting. ;)
DeleteThe Decryptologist said
DeleteFrom your link:
"This work belongs to the remarkable sequence of portraits that Picasso made of Marie-Thérèse Walter at his country property at Boisgeloup. Marie-Thérèse is presented here – as in most of her portraits – as a series of sensuous curves. Even the scrolling arms of the chair have been heightened and exaggerated to echo the rounded forms of her body. The face is a double or metamorphic image: the right side can also be seen as the face of a lover in profile, kissing her on the lips."
Anon... wouldn't you rather argue over whether the dancer SHOULD ALWAYS spin left or right, like ducky?
Delete:P
The Decryptologist said
DeleteMy intention is always to clarify, never to argue.
Argumentation is not only vulgar, and invariably rebarbative, it is a waste of energy.
The duck deserves no attention whatsoever from any sane, decent person. I dismiss leftists categorically as unworthy in every regard, though some may be tolerable to know on a social level, –– as long as it remains politely superficial, and one refrains from getting too close, –– as Hollywood in it's uniquely insidious fashion has always urged middle-class young people carefully raised to follow the rules to do.
The Hollywood Moguls (invariably Jewish, as it so happens) accomplished this by casting parents, preachers, close-knit family members, and often the community in which those being ever-so-seductively urged to rebel were raised as "villains," while portraying loutish, obnoxious, disreputable, poorly dressed, rebellious outsiders and agitators as heroic, the modern equivalent of knights in shining armor.
John Garfield was especially good at playing this kind of role but there were many others.
Did you see LaLa Land yet? And if you did, what did you think of the "double" ending?
DeleteI forget which one I liked better. ;)
Oh, that's right, NEITHER! Both were hat-tips to the neo-liberal ethic of authenticity.
DeleteAuthenticity is vastly over-rated as an ethic AND a lifestyle choice. :)
Best in the theaters right now, Farmer?
DeleteI'd say Jim Jarmusch's Paterson by a long shot.
Things to Come is very good primarily thanks to Isabelle Huppert.
Interested to know if you consider Jarmusch's minimalism "authentic".
Sounds very dasein, ducky... Paterson from Paterson. But which is the person, and which is the place?
DeleteTo describe human being as Dasein is an attempt to leave behind philosophical notions of the individual as subject, and more broadly, the subject-object duality of the individual and the world, that is, interior consciousness juxtaposed against an objective world outside of it.
DeleteIs the subject the object, or the object the subject?
Paterson sounds like the "authenticity" of "determinism". My dog has that...
...or of an Emily Dickinson w/o any "correspondents" to share letters with.
DeleteObserving Paterson's routine brings to mind the question of how we can differentiate free will from determinism.
DeleteSome would say that it lies in the ability to change the "world"... instead of the world changing us.
Delete...redemption.
DeleteSome "facts" are best forgotten...
DeleteThis is why the critique of ideology has to contain a theory of constructed ignorance: one of the main lessons of the critique of ideology is that it is not only knowledge that is socially constructed but also ignorance- in all its fifty shades from simply not knowing that we don't know to a polite ignoring of what we know very well, and covering all intermediate levels, in particular the institutional Unconscious. Recall the liberal appropriation of Martin Luther King, in itself an exemplary case of un-learning. Henry Louis Taylor recently remarked: "Everyone knows- even the smallest kid knows about Martin Luther King- can say his most famous moment was that 'I have a dream' speech. No one can go further than one sentence. All we know is that this guy had a dream. We don't know what the dream was." King had come a long way from the crowds that cheered him at the 1963 March on Washington, when he was introduced as "the moral leader of our nation": by taking on issues beyond segregation, he had lost much public support, and was increasingly considered to be a pariah. As Harvard Sitkoff put it, he took on issues of poverty and militarism because he considered them vital "to make equality something real and not just racial brotherhood but equality in fact." In Badiou's terms, King followed the "axiom of equality" well beyond the topic of racial segregation. He had spoken out against the Vietnam War and was supporting striking sanitation workers in Memphis when he was assassinated in April of 1968. As Melissa Harris-Lacewell noted, "Following King meant following the unpopular road, not the popular one." In short, elevating King into a moral icon involved a systematic erasure of a lot that was known about him. - Slavoj Zizek, "Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism"
...As old age came on, he grew blind, deaf and dumb,
DeleteTho' his sport ‘twere hard to keep from it,
Quite tired of life, bid adieu to his wife,
And blaz' d like the tail of a comit, my brave boys.
What country on earth, then did ever give birth,
To such a magnanimous saint?
His acts far excel all that history tell,
And language too feeble to paint, my brave boys.
Now to finish my song, a full flowing bowl;
I'll quaff' and sing the long day,
And with punch and wine paint my cheeks for my saint,
And hail ev'ry first of Sweet May, my brave boys."
FJ,
Deleteelevating King into a moral icon involved a systematic erasure of a lot that was known about him
Having lived through that period of American history, I remember "the morphing" of MLK, Jr. I doubt that our history textbooks touch much upon that morphing.
Ducky calls it "censorship" when its "his cause" being censored. I call it a polite forgetting to honour Institutional Memory.
DeleteThe look on MW's face is priceless until she pulls back to a blank face.
ReplyDeleteAdrienne,
DeleteThe look on MW's face is hilarious, isn't it? She just can't believe that San Fran Nan made that huge mistake. Is MW worried about the mental health of her fearless leader? LOL!
Didell E. Skwatt said
ReplyDeleteAnyone who takes Nancy Pelousy seriously –– or advocates the right of others so to do –– must, himself, be mentally retarded, clinically insane, treasonous, or a common criminal.
If lunatics have a right to vote, that right should be rescinded.
The same should apply to all members or associates of seditious, traitorous organizations and adherents of any set of beliefs inherently disruptive of good order.
HEAR! HEAR!
DeleteThe mere existence of the likes of Pelosi and Waters, as elected representatives of highly populated districts, is proof that there are massive numbers of cerebrally challenged with the right to vote. This, no doubt, accounts for a significant amount of the "popular vote" and thus lends credence to the fact that we must have the Electoral College deciding Presidential elections for the overall good of the Nation; to even include those lost souls who would put such morons in office!
ReplyDeleteThe Town Crier said
DeleteYou will love Diddle E. Skwatt's post above. Please read it, because it is exactly in accord with your brand of thinking.
@ TC,
DeletePlease enlighten us as to [your] "brand of thinking"; that is, of course, assuming that such exists.
Markedly soviet, from the looks of it.
DeleteThe Town Crier said
DeleteOh dear, JB! Apparently, you are not as quick-witted as I had assumed. You don't seem to realize when someone is paying you a compliment. Just as someone else, like too many who regard themselves as possessing superior wisdom, seem always to lack common sense.
The Town Crier said
DeleteOh dear! Apparently, you are not as bright as I had assumed. You don't seem to realize when someone is paying you a compliment. Just as someone else, like too many who regard themselves as possessing superior wisdom, seem always to lack common sense.
@TC,
DeletePlease read my comment(s) again. If you have some other "brand of thinking" regarding this subject; let's hear it, that's all I asked for. Your most recent comment seems irrelevant!
Town Crier,
DeleteMy friend Jon Berg has plenty of comment sense.
Just sayin'.
Disgusted, Discouraged and Disgruntled said
DeleteGod almighty! EVERYONE is so primed for a fight and so eager to do battle NO ONE can understand ENGLISH anymore, –– IF they ever did which grows more dubious every day.
When one becomes so blinded by habitual rage, resentment, and defensiveness that he loses all ability to comprehend what others try to say, can no longer use the power of reason, refuses to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, and cannot even recognize a FRIEND when one shows up, it is time to RETIRE.
DDD,
DeletePolitics has put us all into a state of perpetual rage.
For what it's worth, I didn't detect any rage from AoW or JonBerg.
DeleteJez,
DeleteI am a redhead and get angry. That anger flares from time to time.
But I am not enraged. My health cannot afford it!
The Town Crier said
DeleteAs so many are these days, this was a conversation no worth having. Forgive my attempts at clarification.I should have known they would fall on deaf ears.
HEAR! HEAR!
ReplyDeleteAmigo Viejo said
ReplyDeleteOFF-TOPIC-BUT-VITALLY-IMPORTANT:
Permitting the Rule of Law to be supplanted by the Rule of Judges and the Lawyers who bring POLITICALLY-MOTIVATED SUITS before them –– SUITS that for the most part should be DISMISSED is the pits.
This phenomenon –– brought to us courtesy of the belligerence and colossal effrontery of Progressive-Marxian-Statists –– is possibly the worst development in modern times.
It effectively subverts, and obviates the Will of the People by undermining and dismissing the decisions made by their duly-elected representatives, thus creating a JUDICIAL OLIGARCHY informed and motivated primarily by TROUBLEMAKERS.
If this is in fact "constitutional," it reveals a serious FLAW in the thinking of our Founding FathersWe should excuse them, however, for its doubtful they could have foreseen the emergence of Marxist-Anarchist-Progressive-Statists in a society funded by English-speaking white men on the principles of English Common Law, which was certainly informed by CHRISTIAN principles and precepts.
Misuse and abuse of the judicial process is the way COMMUNISTS have managed to TAKE OVER our once-free society.
Amigo Viejo,
DeletePermitting the Rule of Law to be supplanted by the Rule of Judges
Activist judges -- and not all of them have been appointed by Dem POTUSES, either.
Amigo Viejo said
DeleteThat, of course, was one of the points I tried to make, but beyond that I think it's important to consider how and why things have degenerated as they have.
WHO or WHAT is responsible? Have we just SLID, or have we been PUSHED?
If the latter, by WHOM?
Since time moves only forward, is it possible we could ever recapture our former levels of sanity, civility and good order?
What if it isn't possible? What then?
Amigo Viejo,
DeleteHave we just SLID, or have we been PUSHED?
Both, I think.
1. Too many Americans decided to "let someone else" be interested in politics and manage political issues.
2. The pushing has come from various sources -- academia being a major source. Academia is infested with Leftists, and this infestation began in the latter 19th Century -- in Germany, I think. In the 20th Century, the Frankfurt School came to the fore.
Since time moves only forward, is it possible we could ever recapture our former levels of sanity, civility and good order?
Not in the short term (10-20 years) -- if ever.
The best that those of us are over 60 can do is hang on for the ride and, in the process, try to live out our lives in as much serenity as possible.
There should be something like Godwin's law for Warren and antisemitism.
ReplyDeleteIt has no business hanging in the House Office building says the chief censor.
As long as we have Pelosi and Warren leading the women down the road to hell, the GOP should remain in fine shape. Throw in Watters to lead the Blacks.
ReplyDelete...but if you did that, who would be left to throw the Russians out of Korea???
DeleteBunkerville,
DeleteYou might enjoy this video:
The Three Stooges: Featuring Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Elizabeth Warren.
Bunkerville,
DeleteNot that the video footage will be new to you. :^)
Hank Johnson can help out with his concern over Guam tipping over., he should be able to figure out the Korean worry.
DeleteNo I missed it AOW! Perfecto. I will have to post!
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteComment deleted because of vulgarity -- although I tend to agree with the essence of your comment.
Keep it up President Trump, the world is watching:
ReplyDeleteWhite House schedule says his Daily Intelligence Briefing was at 10:30am. This was the tweet he sent at 10:51am. ----
My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person -- always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 8, 2017
Ducky, that's why it's called a BRIEFing :-)
Delete... and I think SNL has it's next cold opening.
DeleteWord is that His Nibs was really steamed by the Melissa McCarthy takeoff on Spicer.
I love SNL. Inaction through vicarious interpassivity. :)
DeleteHow about a painting called HATE AMERICA FIRST in the halls of Congress? Are we NUTS? We're supposed to be sooooo coooool and welcome CRAP? Nobody's against hearing/seeing both sides...this isn't it. COMMUNIST DEMOCRATS: TAKE DOWN THAT ART.
ReplyDeleteCommunist Democrats?
DeleteZ,
DeleteWe're supposed to be sooooo coooool and welcome CRAP?
Looks like that what's being promoted. And "OUR" sensitivities are to be disregarded.
Sheesh.
Everyone is looking out for their "sensitivities".
DeleteMilo the Klown gets peoples sensitivities up. They riot.
Elizabeth Warren reads a letter from Coretta King reminding the Senate that Jeff Sessions is a racist and it hurts their senitivity so she's shut down.
A painting doesn't go along with "the thin blue line" meme so it gets taken down.
Nobody listening.
As opposed to going along with that line....wouldn't you objectively say that it crosses?
Delete- CI
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteSo the police in Ferguson were above reproach?
DeleteIf you are closed to any other narrative I can understand why you object.
You picked a bad example, ducky...
DeleteWhy can't BLM admit their mistake in Ferguson? Michael Brown WAS a bully-thug who got what he had coming.
Cry for the innocent... NOT the guilty.
...because when you don't, you can't be taken seriously.
Delete:)
DeleteFerguson. A lesson in socially constructed "ignorance".
DeleteFerguson was the story of a minority community drained economically by the courts and the cops. That was the story.
DeleteMichael Brown was a catalyst.
The only mistake BLM made was making Michael Brown the issue itself.
What FJ said.
Delete- CI
After-thoughts, mcduck. :P
DeleteWe protect our little fictions
DeleteWhen we bow to fear
Little wilderness mementos
But there’s only you and me here
Fire breathing
Hold tight
Waiting for the original miracle
Fire breathing
Hold tight
Life is the original miracle
Nostradumbass, shallow thinker that you are, I reject Godwin as I reject your casual Antisemitism. Neither Your love of Nazi propaganda and tactics nor your Antisemitism make you a Nazi but it does mark you of a similar mindset. The sane consider that mindset Fascist in nature.
ReplyDeleteI suggest you look up the word censorship and try to carefully read the meaning or try to get someone with rudimentary comprehension skills to explain it to you.
Vulgarity, as you call it, is often the most appropriate way to express certain opinions. Vulgarity is far less harmful than dishonesty, hypocrisy, disingenuous, snide innuendo, snottiness, and crafty, manipulative dissimulation.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's not opinion. it's fact.
My blog, my property, my rules.
ReplyDeleteEnd of discussion.
The courts and the cops were only "symptoms" of the real disease... 100,000 factories off-shored.
ReplyDelete...and the neo-liberal global economic fantasy that the "services" and "financial" industries might serve as an economic replacement for the Mittelstand.
DeleteThe "elite" neo-liberal response to America's problems...
DeleteThe Solution
After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writer's Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
- Bertolt Brecht