The art of controversy

Editor's note: Michael Ackley's columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.

Recent years – and electoral triumphs – have brought hints of humor from Republicans, but, by and large, the GOP continues to be the Grumpy Old Party.

Before Ronald Reagan, you'd have to go all the way back to Abraham Lincoln to find a Republican who really knew how to crack a joke, while in the latter half of the 20th century, the Democrats had any number of wits and puckish party stalwarts.

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John F. Kennedy knew how to deflect tough questions with a quick quip. On the operational side, Dick Tuck's inspired pranks were in marked contrast to the crude efforts of Richard Nixon's dirty tricksters.

There seemed to be some hope for Republicans when the Democrats started running presidential candidates like Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale and the ineffable Al Gore, but in the same epoch the GOP went to the dark side to come up with Bob Dole.

Arnold Schwarzenegger rode unbidden out of Hollywood to lend some laughs to the California GOP, but when it comes to sense of humor, the party bureaucrats still seem to belong to the Nixon school of levity. They haven't learned when to laugh off a slight.

Case in point: A snare baited with cheesy art caught Golden State Republicans last week. They didn't recognize the trap even after it snapped shut, and their squeals – far from provoking the outrage they hoped – instead gave the "artist" far more publicity than he could have hoped for without them.

At issue was "T'anks to Mr. Bush," a painting by war protester Stephen Pearcy, who earlier garnered notoriety by hanging an anti-war effigy on his Sacramento house. The painting depicts a crude outline of the United States, with a blue field and stars in its upper left corner (roughly in the area of Washington, Oregon and Idaho) and the rest covered by alternating red and white stripes.

This image is protruding from a toilet bowl, to the left of which, lettered vertically, is the aforementioned title.

Pearcy's painting, in an exhibit sponsored by California Lawyers for the Arts, is on display in the cafeteria of the state building that houses California's attorney general.

Alerted to this "outrage," somebody at GOP headquarters went to the cupboard where they store prefabricated indignation, took some off the shelf and issued a broadside to the news media.

Republican spokeswomen Karen Hanretty called on Attorney General Bill Lockyer to remove the work as "blatantly offensive to our military and what we are doing in Iraq to fight a war on terrorism."

A Lockyer spokesman smugly replied that the AG was "not in the business of censorship."

Pearcy, one may reasonably conclude, sat in his Bay Area home, rubbing his hands and exclaiming, "Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!"

For as an anti-war effort, "T'anks to Mr. Bush" is no "Guernica." It doesn't even rise to the level of the good graphic art, like the anti-Vietnam War posters of the 1960s. Further, you'll find better fine art in the rooms of your local Holiday Inn. (Picture moonlight shining through a breaking wave.)

Pearcy's title is a sophomoric play on words, and his toilet imagery has the sophistication of volunteer art in a public restroom. His rendering of the commode is so rudimentary, it might have been lifted from a Home Depot catalog.

Clearly, the California Lawyers for the Arts know more about law than they do about art.

If the Republicans had just let it alone, "T'anks to Mr. Bush" would have received only the passing notice of state workers, glancing up from their desserts of strawberry Jello and Cool Whip.

But the worthies at the GOP ended up looking like bumpkins, while Pearcy, who lacks artistic merit but has a nose for controversy, gained a publicity bonanza. If you weren't crying, it would make you laugh.