No Return to Quality or Authority Yet: Crude, Stupid, Risible Trayvon Martin Mural Unvelied at Florida Capitol

When people on the cultural/aristocratic left, such as David Brooks, speak of the "Quality" of the media class and self-presumed intelligentsia, what they really mean is deranged incompetence such that only they are elevated enough to realize is worthy of praise.

Such as, for example, art created by "Outsiders," "Outsiders" referring to those well outside the traditional norms of craft or talent.

Imagine a crude, terrible piece of "art" such as this, but created by one of those Crazy Crude Rightwing Cretins the media likes to do stories about.

Any chance that would hang anywhere?

I cannot explain to you how crude, witless, stupid, and craftless this is. But the left champions so-called "Naive Art," art created by those who are naive of the basic tenets of the craft of art. Thus, not being sullied by such artifices as technique, practice, and talent, they are more "authentic."

It looks like a bad cover of a Mac Bolan knockoff book, except a giddily stupid leftwing version of such.

And this nonsense is foisted upon you by the New Class which is so educated and enlightened it can't even tell that this is what the average man in the street would recognize instantly as shit.

I'm reminded of the observation recently quoted by, I think, Kevin Williamson: "Totalitarianism does not consist of iron law; it consists of capricious law, because those in power get to decide when it will not apply."*

Similarly, a plainly standards-free aesthetics of art empowers the New Class, because only they then can decide what is Shit and what is Shit But We're Going to Decide This Is Important and "Authentic" Shit Because If Most People Could Tell What Was Good and What Was Horrible, What Purpose Would We Serve?

Keeping your job as the nation's tastemakers and culture-transmitters requires a lot of goofy rules to hedge out any would-be competitors. Every guild relies upon arcane rules and traditions to sustain itself.

* ‏@adam_evans reminds me that this quote -- or actually, my paraphrase of it -- is from Christopher Hitchens.

posted by Ace at 05:10 PM

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