digital emunction

From “Mao Crazy,” Jed Perl’s review of Cai-Guo Quiang’s “I Want To Believe” show at the Gugghenheim:

There are times when art should be the last thing on an art critic’s mind. The thunderous popularity of a number of contemporary Chinese artists compels a political analysis. Much of the work is powered by a startling and completely delusionary infatuation with Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution. This is more sinister than anything we have seen in the already fairly astonishing annals of radical chic. We are witnessing a globalized political whitewash job, with artists and assorted collectors, dealers, and sycophants pouring a thick layer of avant-garde double-talk over the infernal decade of suffering, destruction, and death that Mao unleashed on his country in 1966. And as we are also dealing with the house of mirrors that is the art world, I have no doubt that somebody is ready to explain that I am confusing appropriation with approbation or that fascism is just another way of spelling freedom. I must say, the theory people have a lot to answer for. But here is the bottom line: the global art world’s burgeoning love affair with Mao and the Cultural Revolution makes a very neat fit with the current Chinese regime’s efforts to sell itself as the authoritarian power that everybody can learn to love.

1/ From Michelle Cottle’s “External Flame,” at The New Republic this week:

[T]his alliance may be an even shrewder move for [Caroline] Kennedy Schlossberg than for [Barack] Obama. It’s been 45 years since the fall of Camelot, and the family brand has begun to fade. A growing portion of the electorate was born after the deaths of John and Bobby and has a tough time relating to the Kennedy fixation of its elders. Under such conditions, what’s a committed custodian of the family legacy to do? Hitch her clan’s wagon to the hottest political star in decades. With a little luck, even as that old Camelot magic rubs off on Obama, the candidate’s energy and relevance will help sustain the Kennedy brand for a little longer.

2/ From my February Chicago Tribune article (PDF) on the Kennedy Obama endorsements:

The Kennedy name is the gold standard in Democratic politics, and it will remain so as long as John Kennedy’s assassination is a part of living memory. But the youngest people to vote for him in 1960 are 68 today, and seven out of eight Americans are too young to remember him as anything more than a historical figure, no more or less real than Roosevelt, Lincoln or Jefferson.

Edward Kennedy himself is 75. Besides his son, no third-generation Kennedy holds national office.

And thus, when Kennedy said Obama would not be trapped by the patterns of the past, it might not be because he was comically or tragically unaware of his own or his family’s position. It might be exactly the opposite: Perhaps he was too aware of that position. If that’s the case, then last week’s endorsements should be seen as an acknowledgment of just how fragile the patterns of the past can be.

By midnight Tuesday [i.e. February 5], after more than 20 states have weighed in on the Obama-Clinton race, we’ll have a better sense of how the Kennedy calculus affects the election in the
short run….

But in the long run, I wouldn’t be surprised if the endorsements do as much to help the Kennedys as they do to help Obama. Casting Obama in the Kennedy mold offers him authority, but it also offers the Kennedys a future, a way to keep the mystique alive.

QUICK UPDATE (7/1): Don’t worry, the irony is not lost on me.

Ku Klux Klan DOES NOT Endorse Barack Obama for President

(via The Stump)

The McCain story may well turn out to be the not-so-sharp instrument with which the New York Times delivers the coup de grâce to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

Here’s the thought: Ten straight victories mean that Barack Obama’s had nothing but good press since the February 9 contests. What’s more, Obama’s been gaining in national polls and in Ohio and Texas. The only plausible way that Hillary could stem that tide is to get some seriously bad news about Obama on the television and the front pages of the newspapers and the interwebs. That would be a tall order in any case—witness the flame-out of the plagiarism and Michelle-is-finally-proud-of-the-country stories. But now the McCain did-he-or-didn’t-he spectacular (combined with the should-the-Times-or-shouldn’t-they minitacular) is guaranteed to occupy the journalism corps for at least a week. Which means that HRC really only has March 3, the day before the big primaries, to get whatever nasty thing she has to say about Barack up and into the news cycles. And by then it’ll be too late.