As Useful as a Sack of Hammers.

Gov’t suspends Cash for Clunkers program because it is running out of money.

This is exactly what so many of us are thinking.

“If they can’t administer a program like this, I’d be a little concerned about my health insurance,” car salesman Rob Bojaryn said.

The medical system has been built up over the years to what it is today.  It would be pure hubris to think that just a few hundreds o congress-critters could make sense of it, come up with a fix, and steer it in the right direction without breaking it.

It is equivalent to “fixing” any muslim country’s society – and I refer to the ones that support honor killings, stonings, beheadings, torture in jails, and call for the extermination of other countries.  Good luck fixing the entire complex mess.

****

Another sack of shi… hammers award goes to artists that are able to express their fetishes and mental sicknesses in a “socially acceptable” way – through paintings and sculpture that are increasingly funded by extortion money – money taken from you, by the gov’t, and given to artists whose work would not be supported in any way because most people see no intrinsic worth in it.

This is not to say that the “art” in Eureka Springs, Arkansas is supported by the NEA.   I’m just ranting up to this point.

No, what bothers me is that artists create some pretty intentionally offensive crap and expect others to keep their mouths shut.  They claim that any negative criticism is “suppression of their free speech”.

Exhibit A is a painting of Alice in Wonderland, by Beth Post of Fayetteville, Ark. Titled “The Temptation of Alice,” it is a rendering of the iconic children’s book character alongside the “Drag-Queen of Hearts,” a man wearing women’s lingerie. The two of them are surrounded by rabbits that are, ahem, busy making more rabbits.

Well, naturally a small town that depends on tourism would care about their image.

Its first exhibit revolved around the theme of fruits and vegetables, which was well-received, according to city council member Joyce Zeller. But the new exhibit is no bowl of cherries, she said. “It’s just this year that the subject matter got offensive, and we started getting phone calls. We said, ‘Wow we need to do something.’”

Eureka Springs survives on tourism — more than 1 million people visit the town every year, Zeller said — so the city elders are very concerned about image.

The city wants to scrutinize the “art” by a six member panel before it goes up.  Artists are bitching.

But not everyone is happy with that arrangement. The idea of policing artwork encroaches on the quality of the art and constitutional rights of the artists, some critics are saying.

“You’ll end up with a billboard rather than art,” explained Nancy Foggo, a local artist. “It’s something that is commercial rather than artwork.”

Another local artist, John Rankine, says those who are offended by the current paintings need to “lighten up a little bit.”

“The art is a little provocative,” he said. “It’s nothing you have to shield your children from in horror.”

Besides, says Buchanan, the project’s creator, deciding what is appropriate is subjective: “Depending on your emotional background, you could see something offensive in your spaghetti,” she said.

What they invariably fail to realize is that by not wanting their stuff displayed no one has trampled on their rights.  They just don’t want the crap displayed there.  We have obscenity standards that have been upheld time and time again in public.  This is no different.

Advertisement