by Jerome du Bois
This week's Phoenix New Times offers up a trio of pendejos stemming from the "Democracy in America" exhibition and the upcoming Presidential Debate -- a weasel editor, a vacillating, infantile executive editor, and a fascist, racist artist-professor. I refer, respectively, to Rick Barrs, Michael Lacey, and John Jota Leaños. The first man ignores our scoops and prescient analyses, far in advance of Joe Watson's stories, though Joe Watson became aware of our work; the second man whines, on the cover of his increasingly filthy and misogynistic rag, "How can anyone vote for either of these two clowns?"; and the third man stridently advocates censorship and practices political indoctrination on his students. And all three snidely look down their noses at ordinary, thinking, decision-making American citizens, any one of whom puts these wankers in the shade when it comes to being a stand-up person. (Other, minor players in this piece -- pendejitos -- include three of Leaños's students, and ASU President Crow, who is afraid of signs in students' dorm windows.)
Did someone mention clowns?
Barrs
But this isn't funny. Part of it might seem silly -- for example, applying the concept of journalistic integrity to Rick Barrs and New Times. But we do. We must. It's an important part of 21st Century Soul to sincerely hold up high standards.
Barrs's story "Forty Whacks" (an irrelevant title, complete with humiliating, adolescent S/M cartoon) tells how Crow and other ASU administrators pressured Zeitlin to balance an obviously anti-Bush exhibition, and how she responded by claiming it was Joe Watson and New Times who created a climate of sensationalism, which marred the curatorial process. But Zeitlin gets ambushed by her own (and others') emails -- six months worth -- which the paper obtained under FOIA. She also damns herself repeatedly with her easily-disproved, pathetic letter to Svetlana Mintcheva and the National Coalition of Censorship.
Barrs knows so many more facts than we do, yet he writes this obvious falsehood:
At the outset, Zeitlin and the museum simply judged artworks on their merits, choosing what they thought was best. Guess what? Artists are mostly liberals, and political artists tend to lampoon whatever president's in power. To boot, there's a war going on that's unpopular among a throng of Americans. The result was an exhibition that would've been offensive to the Rush Limbaugh crowd. . . . Had it not been watered down.
Now, that first sentence is a lie, revealed in Watson's first story. In February, both Zeitlin and Spiak commissioned specifically anti-Bush pieces from at least eight artists, who delivered as promised. Later, in one of those famous emails, she writes to Mills, her Dean:
. . . we also know of several mediocre pieces that focus on Kerry that we can add . . .
So much for "merit" and "best." Barrs's main target, though, is ASU's President Michael Crow, a nervous nelly who apparently fears funding loss if students may put political signs in their dorm windows, and display them on That Fateful Day. And Barrs, for his own inflated part, thinks that having those signs makes any difference at all. Both these men are deluded. Senator Kerry and President Bush will just roll on by without a glance, if they even use University Avenue, past any number of placard-waving people.
Near the end of his piece, Barrs advances a "theory" for Crow being "so concerned about putting up such a nonpartisan pre-debate front":
Conservative Arizona legislators and Bush administration grant purveyors could get all exorcised [sic] over they'd perceive as a pro-John Kerry exhibition at the ASU Art Museum, and Crow's efforts to continue turning ASU into a premier research institution could be affected. Particularly if Bush were reelected.
Ahem. I wrote, on August 16:
One must be breathing real air, outside the hermetic academic fantasy world these people inhabit, to see the deluded hubris that dominates their minds. Ted Decker, Peter Held, Heather Sealy Lineberry, Jean Makin, John Spiak, and Marilyn Zeitlin must have actually believed that ASU President Michael Crow would eat crow: that he would, for one, put a multi-hundred-million dollar public institution, partially dependent on Federal funds, at risk, financially or by public embarrassment; or that, two, he would foul his own professional future permanently by pissing off the President of the United States -- whoever that man turned out to be.
And why would the University President do these things? Because over there on the far corner of the campus at the art museum (big cash cow) six pissants were scheming to promote their narrow hateful agenda through political cartoons while trashing the twin towers of Democracy and America and all who love them both. Riiiight. Read me that list of names again?
More importantly, Barrs ignores what his boss, Michael Lacey, admits:
When it became obvious that the current art was overwhelmingly anti-Bush, school administrators, who were contractually obligated by the debate guidelines to remain neutral on the candidates, turned the screws in favor of a more balanced collection. (Emphasis mine.)
Again, we covered this. In my late father's words, "There is no First Amendment issue." But for Barrs, it's just politics:
Also, although I fear it's just an excuse for certain high-handed tactics, ASU officials have cautioned that the Commission on Presidential Debates might pull the plug on the ASU location if it detected campus partisanship.
All the curators knew of the contract, but they went ahead anyway, floating away in the blithe bubble of insularity and illusory invulnerability in which they live.
POP! And Barrs maintains they sacrificed "integrity." They sacrificed nothing, and , of the art, nothing of substance. They have their puerile show, with Alfred Quiroz's cocaine-snorter and all 98 of Jon Haddock's little Senator puppets. I hope they're proud of themselves. And Barrs wouldn't recognize integrity.
Lacey
Now, about Lacey: here's the founder of the whole New Times alt-weekly megillah -- fight the daily paper power, baby! -- refusing to take a stand, refusing to be a traditional editor, or even a man, an ordinary person, millions of whom will ignore him and his multiple insults -- "How can anybody vote for either of these two clowns?" -- and go right ahead, step up, and a make a mature, informed decision. Unlike him, they will be responsible citizens.
Oh, he huffs and puffs about wanting Osama's head, but . . . on November 2, according to his citywide, cover-story declaration, Executive Editor Michael Lacey -- "Make mine a double" -- will be curled up in a corner of his mansion in a fetal position, sucking on his Black Bush and whining about how unfair life is: he doesn't like any of the candidates. Awwwww. (Maybe he'll move to Ireland, finally. Oh, wait, he said, "Yo soy Mexicano" in that article, didn't he? Uh-huh. The only thing Mexican about Michael Lacey is his Monterrey tan and the tequila in his belly.) He has no shame at all:
These [the candidates] are not my countrymen.
When asked who I will vote for, I shake my head in disgust and reply, "Yo soy Mexicano."
Friends and colleagues expect me to vote for John Kerry. But they misjudge me. Kerry does not deserve to be President . . .
I do not feel that Kerry or Bush is competent to lead us through a religious war waged by terrorists.
And who are you, exactly, Mr. Lacey, that we should listen to you? A newpaperman who made his fortune off ads for massage parlors, gay hook-ups, and T & A bars, and who has no problem running a bondage photo in this week's issue (of a woman, of course, you asshole) in a free paper available to anyone of any age on the street. And I'm going to listen to you, my countryman? Go to hell -- but first, have another drink to convince yourself of your significance, you pitiful man. And thanks for encouraging people not to vote.
Leaños
In the middle of Lacey's screed lies the insidious La Raza racist and bullying fascist John Jota Leaños:
A perfect storm of biased cultural critique, joined with a refusal to confront the moral implications of Hussein's genocide, festers in the halls of higher education at Arizona State, the university hosting the presidential debate.
Assistant professor John Jota Leaņos coached his students at ASU into an overwhelming demonstration against the war in Iraq and against President Bush. As part of the first component of this class in Chicana and Chicano Studies, the teacher assigned a reading list about the war.
"We needed to inform ourselves about Iraq," explained a student.
Once they were thoroughly grounded in their reading, the students were required to make protest posters in the rich tradition of Mexican artists. The students chose overwhelmingly to voice their opposition to Bush and the war.
The artwork hung on building walls in downtown Phoenix as part of the First Friday celebration on October 1, less than two weeks before Kerry and Bush were to conclude the debates in Tempe.
I first learned of this activism from a student who occasionally baby-sits my kids. She claimed professor Leaņos steered the class to manufacture anti-war, anti-Bush art, and she felt extremely uncomfortable having a political position forced down her throat.
The studious and demure [?!] Leaņos (whose card reads, "artist, cultural worker, assistant professor") is contemptuous of the campus, and First Friday, too, because he does not see enough stridency in either setting.
Leaņos explicitly advocates censorship when he thinks it is necessary:
Leaņos felt New Times should not have exposed the administration's heavy-handed attempts to dictate the contents of an art exhibition. He argued that the story should have been suppressed and the controversy ignored until the show was finally mounted. He felt the story egged on administrators to push even harder for fair and balanced.
Your tax dollars support this man, who, not incidentally, believes white people are inferior to brown ones. This is not a non sequiter: this thirtysomething spoiled punk with the cushy academic job and swooning stupid students really thinks he knows better than you. Well, I see the little Mussolini for what he really is.
And I wonder about his students, Joaquin Lopez, 24, Violeta Tamayo, 25, and Moshe Novakoff, 24. Please note the ages of these adults well. After plowing through his propaganda and the required reading -- Ramsey Clark: "A major part of the demonization of Saddam Hussein has been based on the false portrayal of Iraqi government policy toward the Kurd" -- this is what they say:
As a result of his reading in this class, Joaquin Lopez said his eyes were opened.
"Before this class, I wasn't concerned about political views or the war in Iraq. If I don't think about it, maybe it's not there," said Lopez. "But I have discovered the power of art. How would I feel if someone came and bombed my neighborhood? The class made me think critically about war. Why are people dying? Why are we forcing our views? I feel like I'm really against the war."
Moshe Novakoff is outraged by what he has read for the class.
"Everyone in class realizes it's a complete degradation of morality," said Novakoff, who feels that their art represents a shot at having a voice.
Violeta Tamayo does not think of herself as an artist, but does feel well-informed. For her, the class was a revelation.
"This is unlike any other art class I've been exposed to. Art and politics, they should be synonymous," said Tamayo.
Novakoff: "It's daring . . . Because of the times. I know you can't speak your mind. The FBI will investigate you if you say something anti-Bush . . . Not having access to media outlets, not having a loud microphone to speak out . . . Most art comes out of desperate situations."
And finally, Tamayo: I don't know," she concluded. "If they liked Saddam, it's none of our business."
Leaņos needs to brainwash people; he needs them for his stupid fever dream of power. But why do they become convinced, when other information is freely available at their fingertips? Because that's work. These three students are typical of the new empty ones, who have no depth and will latch onto anything that seems substantial.
Leaņos himself is a political coward:
As an example of how he proposed to confront the evil of genocide, Professor Leaņos suggested that if one left things alone, things would work out. As an example, he offered Spain's Franco, who, once his dictatorship was over, was replaced by enlightenment.
This man, I promise you, is typical of the Resentful Class who have been teaching our young men and women for the last couple of decades. Even if he is a mere college professor I consider him dangerous, since he hates people, freedom, and life itself. Rick Barrs is a dissembler, a Bush-basher, and a cynical opportunist, Michael Lacey is a big arrogant drunken crybaby, but this guy Leaņos -- he's evil in the flesh.
Posted by Jerome at October 9, 2004 08:56 PM | TrackBack