Site Presented By
Saturday, Nov 22, 2008
It must be time for another egomaniacal rat-patroller to pound his chest over yet another artist's filth-stained image of a religious icon.
Sep 29, 1999 | I was invited to the "Spin City" TV show party, ominously held in the 666 building at the Brooks Brothers store the other night in New York. When I got into the line I was flanked by TV women -- behind-the-scenes ones: wipers, fluffers, flossers. Anyway, they are very tall and expensive in their nipple-enhancing tube-dresses with pointy Manolo Blahnik shoes and good bone structure, and they are very fetching if you squint or don't get too close, but on closer inspection they all have the punchy, stress-fractured look of the Polish immigrant high-school girls in my neighborhood, who tend to have hard, permanent scowls and the type of deep, poisonous acne only caused by hours of rueful crying in secret and perhaps horrible sexual abuse.
To look at them, you'd think that TV women are as miserably oppressed by their professional status quo as any enclave of literate Afghan women living under the Taliban. As I was waiting at the velvet rope, I could see Michael J. Fox through the window in a rain of camera flash on some kind of podium, in a staggering dog-pile hug with many network Importantes.
The escalators were smotheringly packed into one big sweaty clog of suits, all, I learned later, craning for nearness to Heather Locklear. It became suddenly incredible to me that a huge conglomerate can decide that meaningless TV finger-puppets like Michael J. Fox and Heather Locklear are Important again, and suddenly, it's not just pop culture, it's actual CNN News. These recycled celebrities, the dregs clinging to the sides of the Fame Jar, can suddenly cause near riots with their deadly rays of commercially endorsed star-power again, after years of latency. Americans are easy corporate heathen, who, it is well-known, will practice wanton idolatry toward anyone Viacom tells them to, but it never fails to amaze me how indiscriminate they are.
It was during this reverie that the tiny pug-woman with the clipboard shrieked at me, "You didn't RSVP! It's not my problem that I don't have you on the list! You can't come in! I can't talk to you anymore!" her tiny row of razor teeth bared, raw hatred foaming on her upper lip. I ran away without protest to have a whiskey with Maxfield Parrish's Olde King Cole at the St. Regis. I didn't have the will to engage, she was way crazier than I was; in a tussle she would go straight for the eyes or carve nail-skids on my face and neck with no thought of jail or future ruin -- she was clearly deranged by high-viscosity, Hollywood death-lust.
It was yet another party where the A-list never comes in contact with the C-list; the real power heads were kept on a completely different floor, or in Brooks Brothers, a completely different department -- a whole other, better, richer, more intense galaxy, with a bigger sun, closer to the light.
Speaking of idolatry, it must be that time of the decade again; time for yet another squalling, Jesse-Helmsish, delusional, egomaniacal rat-patroller to pound his chest and thump his dick on the table over yet another artist's filth-stained religious icon in the art world.
The idiotically sensationalistic "Sensation" show scheduled to appear at the Brooklyn museum is at least now guaranteed to make one British artist an art star: Chris Ofili, the lucky guy who made the Virgin Mary collage with animal shit and pussy shots! He's having steak and champagne in jolly old England every night this week! Roit-Ho! His will be the blockbuster piece of the millennium, now that Mayor Rudy Giuliani has decided to pull all funding from the museum to appease his own hubris-rotted cop-brain and the hanky-snuffles of the archdiocese.
Remember the "Piss Christ" Serrano controversy? Well, that was years ago. Serrano is famous now, and part of the accepted canon. "Piss Christ" is ironically appearing in the second half of the "American Century" show at the Whitney, and nobody cares, but this new waste-covered icon is perhaps so moving and terrifyingly effective in its desecration of Roman Catholicism that the shrieking, bat shit-encrusted aboriginal tribe-elder Giuliani feels it is reason enough to fuck up an entire museum, forever. Ofili is probably going to send Giuliani long-stem roses and a big box of novelty chocolate penises and gleefully mention this retread controversy in every single piece of press material he has, forever. His Virgin Mary, formerly just a quasi-shocking in an '80s kind of way joke piece, will now sell for approximately 25 times what it was originally worth; he will now be the toast of the art world. He has "made it."
The real tragedy about the Giuliani "Sensation" controversy is that now this mostly stupid show will have to be taken seriously -- now we will have to decide that this hackneyed, adolescently shocking art-school mannequin wank is real "art" in order to preserve some semblance of the First Amendment. We'll have to defend it with the blood of our right young men in order to disallow Der Giuliani from arbitrarily and vaingloriously dictating what images New York is allowed to see. Now all culturites and good bohemian lefties will have to chain themselves to David Bowie's pet art show because Evil Stepdad wants to take it away; just like a tormented teenage daughter impulsively marries a loser boyfriend in a wet blur of mascara and harsh words.
The Clinton woman has got Giuliani politically afraid; now he's retreating into histrionic Idi Amin gestures of absolute cannibalistic control. Soon he'll pass a flag burning law; he'll have Wayne Newton performing in riot gear at fist-shaking rallies in clouds of tear-gas; he'll find and prosecute any tiny remaining cells of communism. There will be public Goth burnings in Washington Square park; police will break the thumbs of those who publicly spit or use the F-word. What Giuliani really seems to want is some kind of Emperor Tiberius-for-life status and is essentially catering to the very old, rich, God-and-nigger-fearing folk and putting New York under martial law until he gets it.
Get Salon in your mailbox!