by Jerome du Bois; edited with Catherine King
A few hours after Ms. King posted I Changed My Mind, the latest fallout from our walkout of Jon Haddock's slide slam, we received the following comment from a woman (unknown to us) named Anne McGovern:
I am an artist who deeply believes in artistic freedom. Jon Haddock is not an artist. He is an insensitive and sick man. I lost my stepson on 9/11. His wife and two little girls lost a husband and father. Our lives will never be the same.
We are devastated -- we didn't lose anyone we knew, after all -- but now's not the time for our tears. There's anger instead, and some questions for the artists, curators, collectors and other principals who were at that slide show presentation that night, or responsible for it. Also the commenters.
For example, we received a comment from artist and blogger Franklin Einspruch, someone deeply into videogames and animation, Haddock's bailiwick. This was a comment to a long dialogue between us and ASU curator John Spiak, in which many crucial points were raised, at least by us. At the very beginning, I made an offhand Hitler-moustache remark about Spiak's pathetic, wispy goatee. From the entire exchange, this is what Franklin Einspruch chose to write about, followed by my initial reply:
Points taken -- but when you made that remark about Spiak's facial hair, I think you lost this discussion according to Godwin's Law.
[And he thoughtfully includes a hot link to somebody named Godwin who says a blog discussion is getting old as soon as someone mentions Hitler. Yup, he figgered it out hisself. With examples.] My initial reply:
Franklin:
You think I lost the discussion because of the H-word and some geek's "law"?
If my points are taken, then take them -- don't clutter up the view with irrelevancies.
Now, upon reflection, I have more to say to Mr. Einspruch: Do you have anything substantive to contribute to the conversation, Franklin? About 9/11? About exploiting the deaths of innocents? Do you have anything to say to Ms. McGovern before going back to studying Understanding Comics, or The Fundamentals of Ignoring Life, or maybe playing 9/12, or making cute remarks about compensatory goatees for bald geeks in their thirties? Otherwise, shut up and go away! and take your irrelevancy with you. ("The chronicles of an artist in what world," Franklin?)
Jon Haddock: We're pretty sure you've been following this discussion. Rhodes.edu showed up on the SiteMeter for the first time the night we posted "John Haddock Has No Bottom," and a couple of times since then. Your so-called blog says you were visiting Rhodes College in Memphis. We've never had a hit from Rhodes.edu before, in eight months of blogging. I checked. QED. So I say it's you, Jon Haddock, and you were hanging back lurking, without a word in your own defense; you're letting John Spiak carry your water. Bad choice, but at least he stood up for you. You won't even stand up for yourself. (Reminds me of a line from The X-Files, one which I'm sure you are familiar with: "You don't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage.") What superhero costume are you wearing now?
So I hope you read this posting and, the next time you kiss your own two children goodnight . . . Never mind. You're life is the same after 9/11, isn't it? It shows in your work. And that's the shame.
John Spiak: First you get all up in our faces about criticizing Haddock, you try to defame Ms. King and distort our artwork, all the while yakking about dialogue, then you book when we say boo: "From this point forward, I will stop chewing up your bandwidth." How dramatic. Maybe you don't stand up for your joe after all. You're a coward, so I don't expect a response, but the comments are open, if you can stick to the assignment: What do you have to say to Anne McGovern?
Susan Krane of SMoCA: You must be very proud -- and relieved. Nobody left the room but us, and we're nobody if anybody is. The money stayed put, thank God.
Milli Weithorn: Speaking of money, it's the collector! You, too, must be very proud. Did you buy the Black Panther piece? Or the West Bank piece, with the rat head splat! on the ground? Or maybe the piece with the little mouse, cradled by his father, whose feet have been cut off and those little blood drops spurting out look soooo cute? Buy them all to grace the dining room!
Bill Thompson: Thanks for signing off on Haddock, man. Good work, and an extension, perhaps, of allowing the black artists and writers of HairStories to get away with blaming 9/11 on white people. [You can look it up.] Do you have a paint-by-numbers piece of the Towers burning, by the way? If not, Jessica Stockholder has been beavering away on some stuff you'd like. Why don't you get her crap out here for the 9/11/04 Anniversary?
Heidi Hesse: Have you got around to baking that apple pie yet? Still thinking about becoming a U.S. citizen? You used that citizenship handbook as a cute gimmick in your thin pomo game. There's more wisdom (and probably even better art) in that book than you could come up with in a hundred years, Ms. Hesse. What have you ever done to advance the conversation, or elevate the discourse, while you're vacillating about joining the USA or retaining citizenship in a country that has and will take it on the knees and every other way? These are mortal stakes, these days. (They always are, actually: it was a wide, dangerous ocean my ancestors crossed 350 years ago, not some light ripples on a plastic wall from a wave-making machine.)
All you zombies -- about thirty-five -- many of you even older than us, who were at SMoCA on January 13, 2004 and sat through that bastard Haddock's obscenities without a single gasp, a single indrawn breath, a single walkout but ours: simply, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. It has nothing to do with us getting all huffy and judgmental. It has nothing to do with us at all. It's black and white: the insulting thing on the screen, your eyes, and your minds, and your hearts, and what happened inside you when you saw that 9/11 image. Nothing much, we fear. Or maybe you think we, as a nation, deserved it. That's what's scary. (Leandro Soto: you're from Cuba, you work in Mexico, you presumably know something about the world, and not a peep out of you that night. You're welcome to the USA, though. Enjoy ASU West.)
Islamist terrorists -- intransigent Muslims -- not mice, or rats, or cats -- killed innocent people, including Ms. McGovern's son-in-law. Do any of you named and unnamed above have anything to say to her, and to the over twenty thousand other survivors of over three thousand individual tragedies, before you get back to your smarmy and complacent lives?
Since the beginning of this blog we've included George A. Romero's sardonic reminder on our sidebar, as a kind of joke:
Zombies have one big advantage over us: they don't think.
They don't feel, either, so I'm not laughing anymore, because the zombies are running the show in this town.
We are going to email all of you we can find addresses for with a notice about this post. We wonder: what will you say?
Comments are open.