I wonder just how wealthy Mr. Jean currently is--he seems to have become quite a well-known and successful singer over the years by commodifying his 'dissent' and 'oppression' for the consumption of trust fund anarchists and parlor liberals like Dean. Nice how society creates niches to comfortably accomodate even (in fact, especially) those who build their reputations and fortunes by trashing it. But don't knock the man, Ace--after all, he's just earning an 'honest' day's living the same as any other professionally transgressive artist. You've really got to polish those lunatic credentials regularly, or next thing you know someone labels you a 'reactionary', the left moves on to some other radical chic fetish object, and you're stuck with all kinds of private school fees and boat payments you can't make.

Seriously, shouldn't people this stupid be in cages getting poked with sharp sticks?

What someone should have said to Mr. Jean: "Are they tears of remorse for all the people he had killed? If not, then I'm not interested."

Damn, I would like to see if he has the balls to say that at a Million Kurd March and of course, video footage of what follows.

Perhaps Wyclef would have liked to have performed for one of "Father Saddam's" sons?

They would have fed him to the plastic shredders for not recording another Fugees album.

Ditto, Purple Avenger.

If everyone -- or even just politicians -- is somehow responsible for every utterance of every artist they admire ...

you will NEVER run out of cheap, pointless material.

Try it yourself. Make a list of your favorite artists from the last 500 years, or 100 years if you want.

Monarchists? Elitists? Advocates of IRA-style terrorism? Anti-semites? Misogynists? In favor of selective ethnic cleansing? Beholden to corrupt tyrants?

My hat is off to anyone who can make a list of 10 artists whose views they also endorse. To me the exercise is difficult, but kinda pointless in the end. Art isn't always politics.

Havin said that, I'm skeptical that W. Jean ever said anything that stupid -- but anything's possible, I guess.

Who the heck names their kid "Wycliffe"? Would've had the crap kicked out off 'im in public schools. Even the middle class ones I went to.

Tubby: Glad to see that you also recognize that any utterance by an "artist" is to be treated with all due care as most are woefully ignorant of anything outside the purview of their own navels.

"Who the heck names their kid "Wycliffe"? "

It's not Wycliffe, it's Wyclef. Born in Haiti.

Lots of English-speaking kids in the Caribbean get names like Winston, Reginald, etc.

"Tubby: Glad to see that you also recognize that any utterance by an "artist" is to be treated with all due care as most are woefully ignorant of anything outside the purview of their own navels."

Well DUH. It only makes sense that a guy like me wouldn't buy into the celebrity culture. I have a TV, but except to watch a movie I haven't turned it on in months.

The whole elevation of pop stars to guru status is idiotic, but predictable in late capitalism.

The treatment of politics as a branch of spectacle, celebrity or PR is also idiotic, and also predictable in late capitalism.

Leni Riefenstahl got this very early.

Almost all MSM TV coverage of politics falls into the spectacle/celebrity/PR category.

The Republicans also get this, very well. It's most telling when they overplay it, as with Terri Shiavo.

Leni Riefenstahl got this very early.

You lose.

My hat is off to anyone who can make a list of 10 artists whose views they also endorse.

I suspect foaming-at-the-mouth leftes would have an unfair advantage in that competition.

The whole elevation of pop stars to guru status is idiotic, but predictable in late capitalism.

"Guru status?!" There is some significant number of people who actually treat circus people as informative or thought provoking? There are discussions where people cite bloviations from Barbra Streisand, Cameron Diaz, or Kanye West as authoritative in some way? Where are these people you have been talking to?

Leni Riefenstahl got this very early.

You lose.
--------------------
Ya got me! :) I was really wondering if anyone was paying attention.

Still wondering if anyone has an equiv term for arguments devolving to Clinton's penis.

"I suspect foaming-at-the-mouth leftes would have an unfair advantage in that competition."

Don't know about that, but I suspect righties are the ones who would care the most, though... See the post of this thread for an example. When was the last time you saw someone on the left connect a rightwing pol with the rants of an ARTIST the rightwinger admires? I can't think of a single example.

It was the left who coined the term POLITICAL CORRECTNESS in a self-deprecating way.

VRWC agent: If you think GURU is too strong, fine. I hope you're right. From what I see on the magazine covers and a little bit of TV talk shows, though, the phenomenon seems pretty clear.

Saw a good bit between Viggo Mort. (sp?) and Charlie Rose though... Obviously Viggo really thinks about politics and takes it seriously, whether you agree with him or not.

Obviously Viggo really thinks about politics and takes it seriously, whether you agree with him or not.

...in his own little way, kinda like Cameron Diaz.

Still wondering if anyone has an equiv term for arguments devolving to Clinton's penis.

I'd rather not think about Clinton's "little commander-in-chief."

I guess he cried when Baby Doc fled to France.

When was the last time you saw someone on the left connect a rightwing pol with the rants of an ARTIST the rightwinger admires?

I'd probably quibble with your definition of "artist," but exactly how many if these are conservative? Circus people are notoriously shallow, ill informed and intellectually lazy. They are also overwhelmingly moonbats. Coincidence? You be the judge.

From what I see on the magazine covers and a little bit of TV talk shows, though, the phenomenon seems pretty clear.

Just find me some significant number of people whose thinking is affected by Madonna's latest pronouncements and we'll talk about phenomena. What you have so far is just a demeaning presumption.

The left generally considers art an active political force, and many leftist artists consciously aim to promote a certain political message--not in their non art-related lives, but in their artworks themselves--and consider political activism in art to be a duty of every artist, even the highest duty of any artist. This is true whether you're talking about Barbara Kruger or Wyclef Jean. The right, on the other hand, may associate old-fashioned ideas of 'genius', 'beauty', 'truth', 'inspiration' to a work of art--but generally considers politics to be outside the artist's purview, and far from the artist's highest duty, to be beneath the artist--the artist in their view should aim for universality, not the fleeting historical specificity which so often results from explicit political activism in art. Basically, the left is more likely to see artwork as inextricably bound up with the historical conditions in which it was produced, the right more likely to consider a fine work of art as ahistorical, universal, having risen above the conditions under which it was produced and even the person who produced it. A leftist may be much more credibly held to account for the worldview of an artist he likes than a conservative, simply because the two have sharply divergent views of the nature of art.

But, as should be thoroughly obvious to anyone, when art has explicitly political content, I think any person regardless of ideology may rationally be assumed to approve of the politics if they've already acknowledged a liking for the art. A Spanish fascist would have been unlikely to enjoy 'Guernica' (unless he simply didn't understand it).

And the word Obvious, should be given to any work of Public Art. If it is going to be out in the square it ought (IMNSHO) to be bloody obvious what it is about. In an earlier thread I referenced to the Michigan Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Detroit.

I can't do a link to save my life, but google that name and you will see shots of it. Looking at it you say "Yep, Soldiers and Sailors Monument". It's obvious.

If you need a guidebook or a 200 level course to figure out public art, the artist failed. He/she spoke to no one but him/her self. And public art should speak to those who are not born yet. It should say, "Greetings. We here in 20-- found this importent to memorialize, and we chose these constant allegorical figures from our common heritage to do so. Please, step back and reflect on what happened, and why we we were so insistent to set it to granite/marble/bronze. Please, remember."

So much is about the artist, andit really should be about the subject. Especially in this Republic.

An example of what I mean. In September, 1925, the USS Shenandoah (ZR-1), crashed in southern Ohio. There is a monument, it lists the dead, and in the arch is a bronze representation of the dirigible, surrounded by swirling thunderclouds, the ones that would shred her and slam her to earth.

The monument is for Shenandoah and her crew. It is not about the artist. That is what public art is for. It is for us, the living, not for one manor woman to parade his or her ego across the stage.

Who remebers the sculptor of The Statue of Liberty? Who remembers? But Lady Liberty still lifts he Lamp beside the Golden Door. Isn't that the most important thing? The work lives on and still speaks to the heart of the viewer? Not relevant, but timeless, which is its own relevance.

"also predictable in late capitalism"

Ever since I stopped being one of you people, I've wanted to ask one of you this: precisely what is this epithet supposed to *mean?* Are you so confident that capitalism is at, let alone past, middle age? Because that's as pathetic as people eagerly anticipating the Second Coming (see? fair and balanced. I scorn all belief systems equally).

Is it really just shorthand for "Phase II Capitalism?"

Is it semantically equivalent to "post" modernism? i.e., is it hollow, monkey-hear-monkey-say bullshit?

Or is it an attempt to harness the Power of Positive Thinking? Say it often enough and it Just Might Come True?

(These are things that I wanted to ask at the time, but I was afraid the other poseurs would snort and flick their hand-rolled-cigarette ash on me. Oh, I been in the ivory tower trenches, friends and neighbors).

"It was the left who coined the term POLITICAL CORRECTNESS in a self-deprecating way."

Nope. The phrase dates back to 1930s USSR. It originally referred not to censorship per se, simply the acknowledgement that there was now a new metaphyisical category (a People's Category?):

a statement could be "factually correct," or it could be "politically correct." (sometimes, but by no means, always, both).
In other words, wait for it ... fake, but accurate.

I can assure you, the NKVD did *not* mean it in a self-deprecating way. Don't think that was really in their rhetorical toolkit.

The phrase pops up again in the 80s, and, despite later spin, didn't have much "irony" to it at first. By the time the phrase was popularized, it had lost most of its original force, but that first angry cohort of striving grad students (born right around, hmmmm, 1965 or so) certainly had odd ideas about speech, constraint and education.

Just because you don't know that, doesn't make it okay. Your history is long, rich - and little-understood by yourselves. And you'll find it to be just as creepy as the intellectual history of conservatism.

No One Here Gets Out Alive