Pictures

at an Exhibition


Some notes on

this post.

This is Picasso’s masterpiece;

"Guernica"


If you try to use "Guernica" as a GPS system to navigate your way through the town of Guernica, you will get hopelessly lost.

Also the town of Guernica is not black and white.

This is Marcel Duchamp’s masterpiece;

“Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2”

If you use “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2” as an anatomical diagram, you're going to cut someone's dick off by mistake.

My post -- no masterpiece by any means; just one mash-up and a few words -- has proven beyond my wildest dreams to be a splendidly evocative Rorschach Test, the results of which filled up the comments section over at Crooks & Liars, and my email in-box.

That graphic -- he said, speaking as the one who created it -- had very little to do with the specific virtues or defects of Candidate Clinton: it was about being sick to death of having my political and media choices picked and laid out for me like bednight jammies by people I do not respect and who do not have my best interests at heart.

For weeks, the emergent frame in the corporate media was that Hillary was Unstoppable and Romney was Untouchable.

Both were massively well-financed, have their firmware-message programmed to a fare-thee-well, and have the full, unsheathed muscle of the Party Establishments behind them.

Obama was supposed to be a cute, biracial human-interest story that would go down under the Clinton Experience Onslaught

like this.

Edwards was Mr. Angry One Note.

Mitt Romney’s only heavy lifting was going to be getting past New York’s own

Rodent of Unusual Size. (photo from here)

while Mike Huckabee was a curious, Jebus-shaped growth that just kinda showed up on the GOP’s hindquarters one day: Evangelicals pronounced it a miracle, while Establishment Republican specialists at the Reagan Clinic said, nah, it’s just a mole.

Weeks – months! – ago, these stories (and Many!Many!More!) were already being bound into galley proofs of the 2008 Election Book of Common Wisdom; the details were already being outlined by the pundits, already on the spike, and the MSM was already picking out the cover art.

And then came Iowa with a big, corn-fed, Midwestern...

Fuck. You. All.

Bwaahahahahaha!

Now Hillary – in a very classy speech – is practically doing her own cover of “Knockin' on Heavens Door”

...Mama, put these slogans in the ground
'Cause I can't shoot them anymore

abruptly cross-ripping against her own grain and her own carefully crafted “Experience” message, and using the word “Change” ten times a minute.

While Romney’s handlers hustled him back to the shop last night to pull his “Pro-Torture Money Manager” and “Jebus-N-Me” chip sets and replaced them with “Ch-Ch-Change Agent 2.0”

From the AP:

DERRY, N.H. - Republican Mitt Romney, trying to prevent a potentially crippling New Hampshire primary loss, cast himself as a change agent Saturday as he tried to repel rival John McCain and answer Iowa caucus voters who showed they have tired of the status quo in Washington.
…

Noting that freshman Sen. Barack Obama beat Hillary Rodham Clinton, a second-term senator and former first lady, Romney said Iowans "wanted to see someone who said they would do something new and change Washington."

…

Another none-too-subtle banner was an 11-item "To Do" list beginning with "Make American Safer" and ending with "Put people ahead of selfish interest." He said the "customers," or American people, can add more throughout the campaign.
…

I don’t know whether to laugh of cry (OK, I lied; I'm laughing.)

I do know that Romney’s campaign won’t end in tears or recrimination, but with him levelly pleading “Dave. Stop. Stop. Will. You. Stop. Dave.”


and singing “Daisy” as his critical CPU components are yanked out, one after another.

In other words, Iowa smashed the Villager’s Precooked, Prefab Message all to shit, and I am de-lighted.

So when Candidate Obama talks about wanting to reach out and be inclusive, I believe he is sincere. I have no idea how successfully that can be done, but I wish him well and do not doubt his authenticity on the subject.

However, stories of the Magical Pious Center -- where all good things reside -- are political fairy tales that stupid, timorous people tell themselves to relieve themselves of the responsibility of making and then defending actual, difficult choices.

As you and I damn well know, when Republicans talk about bipartisanship, what they actually mean is "We really, really, really wish Liberals would just stop fighting back and we could get back to the good old days when we would call them ‘Traitor’ and they would roll over and take it.”

But it turns out, having nothing in your wormy apple cart to sell but hate and fear and the appeasing of dolts eventually exacts a helluva price; and that price is called the Bush Era.

So if Candidate Obama can come along and collect the disaffected and horrified that have been drop-kicked and centrifuged out of the Party of God by thirty years of escalating insanity and failure, well that’s just fabulous. However, the only reason that incivility is even there as an issue to be exploited is the Dirty Fucking Hippies.

Is you and me.

Because as long as all the hellfire was pouring down from only one direction – from Right to Left – the GOP and the Establishment Media had absolutely no fucking problem with “partisanship”. It sold papers, swelled ranks and increased donations.

No, it is only now that Liberals are firing back hard, fast, en masse and without surcease that the Villagers have suddenly become horrified with the potty mouths of we ugly, vul-gah masses, and that a candidate selling a message of unity and civility stands any kind of chance to win.

So just as soon as Fixed News goes off the air, Bill O’Reilly’s audience finally dodders away into their unquiet graves, AM Hate Radio goes back to the business of broadcasting farm reports, traffic and high schools sports, and Dominionists are flogged back into the ignorant Bronze Age sewers from whence they came, I will gladly hang up my guns and play nice.

And not a moment before.

Helpful Addenda #1: For people who assert that the Iowa vote means that 60-something-percent of the Democratic voters in of Iowa “rejected” Hillary Clinton, I call bullshit.

Bullshit on raveling up people’s complex, political decisions in free-floating “What’s wrong with the other sweater?” Mom-guilt.

I’m sure that some small percentage of the caucus-goers voted straight Repudiation Party ticket.

But it is equally obvious that a large number of them saw that, for the first time in many years, two or three or five or even seven of the candidates at the table were acceptable. Were...OMG...actually OK. Maybe they even found some of them admirable.

Ah but in the end it’s only one to a customer.

In the end, like Dunkin McDonut of the Clan McDonut, "There Can Be Only One!"

Helpful Addenda #2: For people who think Liberals shouldn’t be allowed to talk a little shit about people “in the family" because somehow the Evil Conservatives will leech enough fuel from our honest disagreements to win in the Fall, I call Fainting Couch Bullshit.

I believe you’re looking for the “Trust Circle Management Empowerment Retreat”. That’s three doors down, on your right, past the bathrooms and the buffet table.

This is “Politics”, and if the man or woman of your dreams can’t take a few punches, maybe they’re in the wrong business.


Helpful Addenda #3: For the people who somehow took one graphic as an endorsement of Candidate Obama (this is me laughing) and all acid-pissy that I won’t now hit him equally hard because that’s the only “fair” thing (this is me falling down laughing)

A) If you can find a way to graft another 10 hours onto my already-ridiculously busy day, let me know and we’ll talk.

B) Within the confines of an already-ridiculously busy life, when the Muse calls I come. When she sleeps in, I do other things. I don't punch a blog-clock, carry other people's water, and I don't answer to anyone.

C) You want fair? This a link to “Blogger”. Click it. Start a blog. Write really well about how terrible Obama is and change people's minds.

Then the world will be fair.