11 thoughts about hammering "Piss Christ" into destruction.

1. Here's the news article everyone's linking to, which says that the famously controversial photograph "was attacked with hammers and destroyed after an 'anti-blasphemy' campaign by French Catholic fundamentalists in the southern city of Avignon." The use of "after" is a weirdly hedged insinuation of cause-and-effect. "After" is the "post" in the phrase "Post hoc ergo propter hoc" ("after this, therefore because of this"), which identifies a logical fallacy.

2. Quite aside from that "after" problem, I can't tell what happened "the southern city of Avignon." Was it the anti-blasphemy campaign or the hammering? (More details in the linked article. I know what happened. )

3. Andres Serrano sure made a splash with that urine of his! He's been famous and provocative since 1987 for what really ought to have been shaken off at the time as a mere droplet of bad art.

4. A hammer was used to destroy a picture of the crucifixion and a hammer was used to nail Jesus to the cross.

5. The destruction itself could be viewed as a work of art — like "Erased De Kooning."

6. Indeed, the museum — the Collection Lambert — will reopen "with the damaged works shown as they are." And many will come to view and talk about the already over-talked-about photograph.

7. "Piss Christ" is a photograph — a print from a negative — so the destroyed work is not the only "Piss Christ." "Serrano made 10 Cibachrome prints of 'Piss Christ." Presumably, the negative still exists as well, though the value of the prints must depend on the small size of the edition of prints.

8. The value of the prints also depends on the controversy! In 2008, a print of "Piss Christ" sold for $277,000. You figure out the cause-and-effect.

9. The destruction of one print enhances the value of the other 9 prints in 2 ways: It cut the edition of undestroyed prints down to 9 and it bumped up the controversy. And the bonus is the 10th print exists in destroyed — "Erased De Kooning" — form. It is now unique, and it embodies the controversy in a new way. Question: It is now more or less valuable than the undestroyed prints?

10. How do you know the destruction of the "Piss Christ" was not an inside job? Here's another Latin phrase: Cui bono?

11. The first linked article, from a UK website (The Guardian), has a correction appended: "The original [article] referred to the Senator Jesse Helms as Jesse James." Ha. The Brits can't keep their American outlaws straight.

NPR set Juan Williams on fire.

And it's all on Fox News.



Especially hot:

Nina Totenberg wished that Senator Jesse Helms and his grandchildren would get AIDS -- I said would get AIDS. She's still working there.

A so-called humorist on NPR said the world would be a better place if 4 million Christians evaporated. Hilarious.

And calling millions of members of the Tea Party movement a sexual pejorative, tea baggers won't get you in hot water either.

So it seems some opinions are more equal than others at NPR.

There's something about Jesse.

Jesse #1. So Jesse Helms died. He was old and his time had passed, but he got some attention.

Jesse #2. Wait! There's a more famous Jesse the ME? JESSE THE GREAT FORMER GOVERNOR OF MINNESOTA!!! That cannot stand! Jesse Ventura springs to life. He's running for Senator maybe... probably....

Jesse #3. NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! I AM THE JESSE!!!!!! Of all of the Jesses, one Jesse must prevail. Whatever it takes. I will not be overshadowed! I will not be ignored. Death! A lame stunt! A run for the Senate... even if it involves kicking Al Franken's ass... that will be nothing! Nothing! Compared to what I can do!!!!! Jesse Jackson will not be ignored.

UPDATE: What exactly did he say?

In a vulgar tirade caught on tape by Fox News, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said he wanted to "rip (Barack) Obama's nuts off" and he accused the fellow Chicagoan of "talking down to black folks" by giving moral lectures to African-Americans, source said.

Supposedly, Bill O'Reilly will be playing the tape on his show (which is on soon).

AND: I watched the clip on O'Reilly. Jackson makes a little nuts-ripping hand gesture when he says it. O'Reilly was pretty mellow, but he did say that there was a lot more on the tape, that it was worse, and that they decided not to use it.

AND: I missed a Jesse.

AND: Here's the O'Reilly video.

Jesse Helms is dead.

The NYT reports.

ADDED: An obit:

During his 30 years in Capitol Hill, the North Carolina Republican became a powerful voice for a conservative movement that was growing both in Congress and across the country, and he used his position to speak out against issues like gay rights, federal funding for the arts and U.S. foreign aid.

"I had sought election in 1972 to try to derail the freight train of liberalism that was gaining speed toward its destination of government-run everything, paid for with big tax bills and record debt," Helms wrote in his 2005 memoir, "Here's Where I Stand."

"My goal, when my wife, Dot, and I decided I would run, was to stick to my principles and stand up for conservative ideals."...

In 1960, he moved to the executive offices of Capitol Broadcasting Co., the parent of WRAL, and he developed a strong following across eastern North Carolina over the next decade by appearing in editorials that ran at the end of each night's evening newscast. The editorials blended folksy anecdotes with conservative viewpoints that blasted the federal government, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and other entities he viewed as too liberal. In one noted editorial, he suggested building a wall around the UNC campus, which he called the "University of Negroes and Communists," so that its liberal sentiments could be contained.

Ugh. Mixing "conservative ideals" with racism.... I think that made millions of young people hate conservatism.

[H]e was accused of using racial politics to secure narrow victories. In the 1990 campaign against [former Charlotte Mayor Harvey] Gantt, for example, a Helms television ad showed a white man's hands crumpling a rejection notice from a company that had used an affirmative action program to hire a black job candidate.

His views on race relations – he opposed a national holiday honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., led a filibuster against the extension of the Voting Rights Act and called some young blacks "Negro hoodlums" – and social issues sharply divided the public into those who viewed him as a champion of the common man and those who thought of him as a narrow-minded bigot....

"What is unique about Helms – and from my viewpoint, unforgivable – is his willingness to pick at the scab of the great wound of American history, the legacy of slavery and segregation, and to inflame racial resentment against African Americans," [David] Broder wrote shortly after Helms announced that he wouldn't seek re-election in 2002.

Did he really die on the 4th of July? The president of the Jesse Helms Center announced that the time of death was 1:15 a.m. on Friday. It has long been considered an important distinction to die on the 4th of July, as, most notably, both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams did in 1826. And now Jesse Helms has that distinction.

But death is an end, and the 4th — though it is a famous death day — more properly represents a beginning. In the hope that the era of Jesse Helms is really dead, let's look at another closeup of the Declaration of Independence:

"Manipulative. Shameful. Race-baiting."

"Those are the only words to describe a new television ad from the Republican Party running in North Carolina that attacks Senator Barack Obama as 'too extreme' for the state."

So says the New York Times.

But look at the ad! It's about left-wing politics and anti-Americanism.



You can agree or disagree about whether Obama has a real problem on this score. But how is it racism? Is it racism simply because Jeremiah Wright and Obama are black? It would make more sense to accuse the NYT of racism for thinking that that anything that black people say or do is about their race. Here's how the Times explains it:

The assertion that Mr. Obama is “just too extreme for North Carolina” is a clear bid to stir bigotry in a Southern state. The ad’s claim that its target is actually two Democratic gubernatorial candidates who endorsed Mr. Obama is ludicrous.

This is too familiar. In his 1990 re-election campaign, Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina ran the infamous “hands” ad showing two white hands crumpling up a letter while the announcer intones: “You needed that job, and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority.” His challenger, Harvey Gantt, a former Charlotte mayor, was, of course, African-American.

Huh? The Jesse Helms ad specifically talked about race. How is that like the anti-Obama ad?

Come on. There is a serious question here about whether Obama is too left wing. We damned well get to talk about it. If you're going to push us back and call us racists for trying to address an overwhelmingly important political problem with a black candidate for President, then what you are essentially saying is that America is not ready for a black President. And that would be racist. Either we can talk about him vigorously or we can't. And if we can't, he shouldn't be President.

***

And could John McCain watch the ad and think coherently before condemning it? Is this the man you want analyzing data and making life-or-death decisions for the world?

ADDED: For anyone who thinks I'm resistant to seeing racism in a political ad, let me remind that I was the one who wrote about the letters "NIG" on the child's pajamas in the "3 a.m." ad.