The Clockwork Chartophylax

Warren Buffet coined the phrase “it’s only when the tide goes out that we see who’s swimming naked”, referring to the way that people with risky market positions get exposed when the market tanks.

Similarly, CowenGate has been like an ebbing tide revealing the reactionaries and habitual Fianna Fail fluffers among Ireland’s political and media classes.

There really does seem to be almost a generational divide between people of the old order, who think the paintings were disgraceful and an affront to society, and younger people – perhaps more exposed to American ideas of freedom of expression – who think the government’s reaction to the paintings was disgraceful and an affront to society.

Well, let’s say that time is not on the side of the former and hopefully one day, when the assholes are dead, we will amend our laws and constitution to guarantee the same freedoms of speech and expression that are enshrined in the First Amendment of the American Constitution (not to mention something like Jefferson’s wall of separation between Church and State).

While discussion of the matter was prevented in the Dail by the Ceann Comhairle (speaker) yesterday, there was much righteous outrage from conservatives in the Senate.

John Hanafin (FF) said he was sure that the Taoiseach did not like to be portrayed in the manner he had been portrayed on RTÉ.

Oh noes! The Taoiseach didn’t like how he was portrayed? The horror! The horror!

Well, senator – I didn’t like how your party allowed reckless bankers and developers to ruin our economy. Yet, I apparently don’t have the pull to get the Gardai raiding banks and building companies. So, here’s a deal – you do your fucking job and run the country properly and we common folk won’t have any reason to question and insult the dignity of our betters.

Elsewhere, Catholic fascist Ronan Mullan thought that the attitude of the media at reporting the story and not grovelling to make an apology to the Taoiseach for doing so was just awful.

“…The comments of the producer of the Today FM show demonstrated that the station felt no contrition regarding abuse of a public personality. By publishing the portrait The Irish Times had perpetuated the story. This was the way in which the media could be abusive of people’s personal dignity.”

If you can stop trying to foist the Catholic Church’s agenda on secular society for minute there Ronan, I think you’ll find that a caricature of a person is not abuse of a public personality. Forcing women to go through with unwanted pregnancies – that’s abuse  of personal dignity. Buggering young boys and then having the church hierarchy cover up the crime – that’s abuse  of personal dignity. Lampooning a political figure – not abuse  of personal dignity. In fact it’s a healthy and necessary part of a democracy.

And it seems that someone let John Waters loose with the crayons and brandy again last night:

The Irish Times:

The only amusing thing here is Casby’s deluded belief that he has something to say. His response is typical of a public discourse almost fatally degraded by internet auto-eroticism and an obsession with what is called “comedy”. His works are crude, unfunny, vindictive, without intrinsic content and wholly lacking in artistic merit.

Seems that the operation to remove the pole from John’s arse was an abject failure. Oops – I’d better be careful, or I’ll fall beneath John’s very high standards of discourse, intellect and sensitivity, what with my coarse internet cant and sarcasm:

The internet has reduced public debate to the level of a drunken argument, in which no holds are barred, in which deeply unpleasant people get to voice their ignorant opinions in the ugliest terms, in the name of “free speech”.

That’s pretty rich coming from a man who wrote a cringeworthy eulogy of Katy French while apparently under the influence of some form of intoxicant.

Nonetheless, Mr Waters, do allow me to address the substance of your epistle in a manner befitting the enormity of your self-regard.

First, you think that the paintings are juvenile and without merit. This is your opinion and you are entitled to it. As pieces of art, they’re hardly a par with the Old Masters, but this is completely beside the point, a running theme, as we shall see, in your response to this matter.

You then express (briefly) concern over a breach of security at a national institution. If the artist had removed a painting, rather than adding one, there might be some merit to your point. As the National Gallery is a public space (as argued by Dr Eoin O’Dell), rather than a salon from which the unwashed must be barred from at all costs, your outrage is again as close to the mark as it is conversant with reality.

Then you say:

The third stage involved the news division at the national broadcaster choosing to ignore this element in favour of an, at best, thoughtless exercise in humiliating the Taoiseach and bringing his office into public contempt. RTÉ has rightly issued an official apology for this breach of its public duty.

You will excuse me, sir, as through the absurdity of your line of argument here, I find myself temporarily at a loss as to where to begin.

As I understood it, it is not the job of a free media to protect the political office holders from public contempt. That really is a matter for the politicians themselves by not behaving in a way that arouses the contempt of the public.

You write extensively about how Spitting Image in particular and satire in general is apparently so corrosive to the body politic. Your talent for missing the point again shines through here. Corrosion of the body politic is the precise aim of satire. In a democratic society, satire is a means for the public to speak to power, to pop the bubble of its self-absorption and remind the powerful that they are powerful only because the people allow them to be. Satire has been an essential element of liberty since the time of Aristophanes (well before, you will note, the invention of the internet). If we cannot show that the great and the good are human, if we cannot mock their conceits, their flaws and their actions, then why pretend to live in an egalitarian society at all?

If this country has suffered from anything over the past decade – it is an excess of deference for the rich and powerful, not a lack of it. While the times were good, we were happy to let the excesses of politicians, bankers and developers pass without comment while they ran the country into the ground. But according to you, Mr Waters, we shouldn’t even try to pour scorn and ridicule on our betters. We should just tug the forelock and remain quietly anonymous, and not tarnish the Golden Circles of Irish society with our “distasteful daubs”. You will excuse my lapse into the debased “auto-erotic” language of the internet and the gutter, if I say “Go fuck yourself” by way of response to that line of argument, as it is the only appropriate response to it in a democratic society.

You say:

On his radio show, Pat Kenny implied that RTÉ should not have apologised for reporting the story as it did. If someone produced a similar portrait of himself, he would buy it and hang in in his toilet, so that visitors there could get “a bit of a laugh”.

The difference between himself and Brian Cowen, he asserted, was that he, Pat Kenny, has “a sense of humour”.

Well, no. One difference is that Brian Cowen is Taoiseach and Pat Kenny is not. A second is that these paintings were not hung in the toilet of a private house, but placed in two prestigious galleries, without permission.

Again your genius for evading the essential point approaches the miraculous.

The fact that Brian Cowen is Taoiseach is precisely the point here. So is the fact that the paintings were made in a public space. Making the powerful look ridiculous in public is precisely the point of satire, and if you might briefly distract your gaze from the mirror of your own self-importance and superior outrage you might see that.

Brian Cowen is human, is he not? Given the reverence you seem to have for him, you may be surprised to hear that like you and I, he is naked under his clothes. He also, I am reasonably certain, has bowel movements. How is it a humiliation to show that our Taoiseach is human, unless it’s some yearning for the court of the Sun King you’re feeling, Mr Waters?

How can these paintings possibly bring the office of the Taoiseach into more contempt than the actions of Mr Cowen’s predecessors already have, and Mr Cowen’s disastrous tenure in the position threaten to do again? In a free society, an office cannot be offended. In a free society, a holder of public office cannot put themselves above public criticism, scorn or contempt.

If you have an issue with this, Mr Waters, it is not a sense of humour you lack, but an appreciation for what it is to live in a democratic society.

In conclusion, I offer you my most enthusiastic contrafibularities, and humbly suggest that if the decayed state of Irish society is not to your taste, perhaps the climate in North Korea might be more agreeable to your delicate sensibilities and apparently deep-seated yearnings for autocracy.

Now fuck off, you pretentious asshat!

Update: By gub, is nothing sacred to these artists? If the prudes of Ireland get the vapours at the sight of Casby’s paintings – whatever will they make of this?

Justine Lai:

In Join Or Die, I paint myself having sex with the Presidents of the United States in chronological order. I am interested in humanizing and demythologizing the Presidents by addressing their public legacies and private lives. The presidency itself is a seemingly immortal and impenetrable institution; by inserting myself in its timeline, I attempt to locate something intimate and mortal. I use this intimacy to subvert authority, but it demands that I make myself vulnerable along with the Presidents. A power lies in rendering these patriarchal figures the possible object of shame, ridicule and desire, but it is a power that is constantly negotiated.

There’s durty pictures at that site too – so be careful that your boss, or a member of the government or media isn’t looking over your shoulder.

Via Boing-Boing.

Posted on March 27th, 2009 under Ireland, fulmination, meija, politics • Tags: art, conservative, cowan, cowangate, gubu, john waters, pictures, reactionary, senate. • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback