Bush-League Censorship
Gandalf Grey
Mondo Washington
by James Ridgeway
Bush-League Censorship
Artist's 9-11 Work Honored Then Pulled
Even when John Ashcroft is beaten back, as he was in Congress in his
attempts to set up neighborhood watches to rat out suspected terrorists, he
sets the tone for others operating on their own to stem the terrorist tide.
Northern California artist Chuck Bowden had won second place in the Redwood
Art Association's fall exhibit in early December in Eureka, California,
bringing him a $300 prize put up by a local businessman. The Tactics of
Tyrants Are Always Transparent is an 11-by-14-inch work-done mostly in
pencil and ballpoint ink-depicting Bush, wearing both a halo and crown,
standing on a grave, his hand dripping blood. In the background, bodies fall
from the WTC. Bowden said that the work was meant as a tribute to those who
were killed on 9-11 and that it aimed at placing the blame squarely on the
shoulders of Bush. The frame shop owner who put up the prize money didn't
see it that way: Paul Bareis said he withdrew the money because "you've got
to stand up and fight for what you believe in and I think that's what our
president's doing and that's what I'm doing. That conspiracy stuff is bunk."
An anonymous donor made up the $300, but the arts group refused to show the
work, saying its public presentation would raise "insurance issues." Bowden
said of the contest, "They shouldn't call it 'open to art.' They should call
it 'open to Republican art' or 'open to closed-minded art.' " First prize
went to a watercolor called Spirit Fishing Fading Light.
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"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so
long as I'm the dictator." - GW Bush 12/18/2000.
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that
we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
---Theodore Roosevelt
"I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of
Iraq."
-- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz,
Tlalocelotl Tlatoani
money, right? Then why should he have to put his money into the hands of
someone who opposes his beliefs? No one forced this dude's work out of
public, so it's not even censorship by any standard definition. The
frame shop owner simply refused to participate. That's his right as
well. The money was his, and is his statement, his speech. No one should
be able to force anyone to put their money into something they're
opposed to. That this involves one other's use of expression does not
change that fact.
Real freedom is bigger than people believe it is.
TT