The Tears of Things

Stop'N'Look. See Jeff Falk Mock. Mock, Jeff, Mock.

[Update: Since I'm getting some traffic on this, I'll open comments, at least for awhile. Thanks for your attention, readers.]

by Jerome du Bois

Jeff Falk's long-promised installation at the Stop'N'Look window on Grand Avenue is just about as viciously ignorant an attack on America -- and on its unique and honored status as protector of the sovereign individual -- as any of these local rat-bastard leftists could wish for. Two of his worst transgressions: awarding equal status to Abraham Lincoln and Che Guevara, and implying that we had it coming on 9/11. And in the middle of it, his signature image, stand-in, and avatar, as dead-tired as Keith Haring's glowing baby: the gold-painted cherub with useless blue wings, oddly impaled to a base, smack dab in the middle of the installation. Too many angels were created that day, and this bastard sacrifices every one for his resentful, pissant vision. Yes, Jeff, it's all about you, it always has been, and that's why your art is weak, vicious, and stupid.

Let's look at some pictures, readers, then I'll have more to say.

[Update: Val Prieto shares his short, pungent opinion. And so does my man Dean Esmay. Thank you, friends.]

[Update 10/08/04: Related Che items at attaboy.]

Here's Lincoln on the right side (I've printed the text under the photo):

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right [to dismember, or] overthrow it . . . (From the First Inaugural Address, 1861. Falk leaves out the bracketed section.)

Here's Che on the left:

The text reads: Let me say, at the risk of sounding ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. 1961. (I'll get back to this horrible falsity, uttered by one of the Americas' worst murderers.)

A more panoramic view:

Finally, the planes, from the left --

-- and the right:

These photos were taken from the car; we didn't get out to read all the printing on those yellow and white sheets, or on that stand in front of the murderer. I doubt I'm overlooking some important subtlety, though.

Despite Falk's heavy-handed and semi-coherent Lincoln / Che comparison, there is a lesson behind the two statements, which hinges on the recognition of human dignity. Lincoln accepted human beings as they were; Che delusively thought he could create a New Man, partly by personally shooting a whole lot of the Present Men in the back of their heads with a .45 automatic, splattering their brains on his boots.

Oh, sorry . . . Lincoln's First Inaugural is a fascinating document where, in a cursory reading, the President seems to endorse slavery and sidestep any principled explanation. But, on closer reading, he is simply saying that he took an oath to keep the union (at present, with slavery) intact. He would not make their decision for them. In other words, he respected his citizens and he refused to take the reins from them. Read, please:

One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. . . .

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember, or overthrow it. . . .

I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution — which amendment, however, I have not seen, has passed Congress, to the effect that the federal government, shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments, so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express, and irrevocable. . . .

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect and defend" it.

I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Che, whose soul was as shallow as his nickname ("Hey, you"), wanted to create those better angels. From an article by Humberto Fontova in Newsmax, February 23, 2004:

"Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!"

This from Che Guevara's "Motorcycle Diaries," the very diaries just made into a heartwarming film by Robert Redford -– again, the only film to get that whoopin' hollerin' standing ovation at last month's Sundance Film Festival. Seems that Redford omitted this inconvenient portion of Che's diaries from his touching film.

The "acrid odor of gunpowder and blood" never reached Guevara's nostril from actual combat. It always came from the close-range murder of bound, gagged and blindfolded men.

(Hat tip: Val Prieto.) And this, from earlier in the article:

"To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary," [Lewis] Carroll would have heard from the chief executioner, named Ernesto "Che" Guevara. "These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredon (The Wall)!"

But wait. Check this out, from Val Prieto's Babalu Blog:

Robert Commie-pinko Redford's latest movie premiered yesterday in Cuba. "The Motorcycle Diaries," a portrait of Ernesto "Che" Guevara as a young romantic, opened in Santa Clara, where Che's remains are buried.

More adulation and masturbation over a murderer.

Here's the ultimate money quote:

"The presentation of the film pays homage to the life of a man who taught us a lot about tenderness," said Aleida Guevara March, Guevara's daughter.

Tenderness? WTF? I almost choked from laughing so hard.

Che was a puritan pig who hated humanity as it was. He was allergic to love and empathy. He and Castro delusively believed they could expunge something they called the profit motive from people's minds, hearts, souls. Frankensteins, both of them. Lincoln was wise; he knew that people evolve; you cannot create them.

And Jeff Falk is worse than a fool: he thinks we had it coming on 9/11.

Why the jet planes, Jeff? Why the fluttering papers and piles of grey dust and the black house? Is it Che = Osama and/or Saddam, Lincoln = Bush, beleaguered leader of a divided country? But you put revolution in Lincoln's mouth, and love in Che's. You twisted twit, squeezing our still-wounded hearts, then stabbing them. You mock everything Abraham Lincoln suffered for, everything that stands behind me, and elevate a bloodstained psychopathic mafiamechanic in a splatter suit for your saint. You shame yourself, Jeff Falk, but America endures you anyway. Let me say it in the short words you know best: Grow up. Your baby clown days are over. You. Must. Change. Your. Ways.

Posted by Jerome at October 7, 2004 07:25 AM | TrackBack