Dung near art, part 2

Just pronounce the magic word “Art,” and everything is OK.

–George Orwell

Remember the pile of manure New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani
stepped in late September regarding city funding of “provocative” art?
I’ll lay any odds that the folks at the Brooklyn Museum of Art do.

As summer rolled into fall, the art exhibit, “Sensation,” rolled into
Gotham and set up shop at the museum — where it promptly began to stink
things up, both figuratively and literally. The stench was mainly due
to the work of one young British artist, Christopher Ofili, who prefers
to work in mixed mediums — oils, water colors, elephant dung,
the usual.

The particular piece of Ofili’s work that caused Giuliani’s bald spot
to grow was his painting of the Virgin Mary. In addition to the typical
dose of pachyderm poop, the Madonna was also haloed by magazine-clipped
pix of vaginas. None too happy with this, Rudy dubbed the exhibit, and
Ofili’s work in particular, “sick,” “disgusting” and “anti-Catholic,”
resulting in his cinching the $7.2 million-per-year purse strings
granted to the museum by the city.

While many cheered the mayor’s decision, many booed — most notably
the lawyers for the museum. One such chap, Floyd Abrams, said that the
mayor’s move was “punishing the museum for doing nothing more or less
than being a museum. …” After all, it’s common knowledge that museums
are supposed to hang paintings of religious figures decked in dreck and
plastered with porn.

U.S. District Court Judge Nina Gershon agrees, and dejected
copro-culture buffs need not be downcast any longer. On Monday, Gershon
handed down a 40-page ruling saying that Giuliani shouldn’t cut the city
coffer umbilical cord from the petulant museum. As the result of her
verdict, dung-dabblers of the world are doubtless rejoicing.
Scat-slingers and fecal fans are lifting their voices in thanksgiving.
Their ultimate salvation draws nigh!

The wise and noble magistrate ruled that Giuliani should slacken the
purse and give the museum its $7 million, regardless of whether or not
the mayor has to pinch his nose and religious sensibilities every time
he sees the exhibit. Predictably, according to the judge, for Giuliani
to continue being a Neanderthal would violate the museum’s First
Amendment rights. And we can’t have that, now, can we?

It’s quite possible, however, that the good mayor may have other, far
more noble reasons for cutting the funding. First and foremost, there’s
concern over the risk involved. Elephant dung can be lethal. The
winner of the 1998 Darwin Awards proved this fact. As the judges of the award tell it, Sherry Mueller, an attendant at the St.
Louis Zoo, apparently drowned while treating Ethel the elephant. The
Darwin folks thoughtfully summarized her untimely and
hard-to-hold-back-laughter demise:

It seems that Ethel had been constipated for quite some time and
Sherry had been feeding Ethel berries and fruits laced with heavy doses
of laxatives. Sherry was preparing an enema when Ethel let loose. The
force of the BM knocked Sherry down where she hit her head and was
knocked unconscious. Sherry was covered with 200 pounds of Ethel’s BM,
and died from suffocation.

It’s possible that Giuliani got wind of this story and quickly
ordered a cease-and-desist order to the museum, fearing for the lives of
New Yorkers. However, I’d probably put such grace and benevolence
beyond him. Giuliani is more worried that smearing scat all over a
poorly painted visage of the Virgin Mary is in poor taste than he is
about the safety of New Yorkers. He’s more worried that it offends
religious sensibilities. That it smells funny when you walk by it.

The Supreme Court might stand in Giuliani’s corner on this one. In
June 1998 the Court ruled that the government doesn’t need to subsidize
art that it considers a bit iffy and indecent. A decency standard,
wrote Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in the Court’s opinion, “neither
inherently interferes with First Amendment rights nor violates
constitutional vagueness principles.” That sounds like a razzberry at
Judge Gershon’s opinion; according to the Supremes, she’s wrong. If the
artist confuses canvas with toilet, the government doesn’t have to fork
over the money for it. Sounds pretty reasonable.

It’s also a tad wrong.

The issue really shouldn’t be about decency. It should be about
taxes. The only pertinent question here is whose $7.2 million is it?
While public policy hacks may never be able to reach a consensus on the
color of manure, they certainly should be able to figure out where the
money comes from to buy it — your and my wallet.

The taxpayers of New York fill the city’s coffers — that includes
all the Jacks and Jills who will never see the Sensation exhibit. They
should not be forced to pay for such an exhibit if they don’t want to,
and force is definitely the operative word. Taxpayers have no
more input into how the money is spent than they do how it is
extracted. If they refuse to pay, they get a trip to the Gray Bar
Motel. The state has essentially set itself up as the arbiter of
culture, which it is not, and steals money from the citizenry in order
to enforce and hold on to this position, which it shouldn’t.

This isn’t about the First Amendment; artists can be nasty on their
own dime. It isn’t about decency; no one is saying you can’t bill
yourself for dirty pictures. The trouble in Brooklyn is really about
who decides what you buy with your money: what you want,
or a pile of elephant hucky.

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Joel Miller is Assistant Editor
of WorldNetDaily.