Here's the question: are we returning to the repressive days of Joe McCarthy? I read today in Nicholas D. Kristof's column in The New York Times of the Republican plan for a congressional committee to investigate American Muslims. Like the Reds back in the 1950s, "they" are everywhere, spying on us and infiltrating our government in their effort to sabotage the American way of life. We must protect ourselves against our internal enemies at all costs...
Artists, of course, are thrust unwillingly into the front line of today's cultural battle, prime targets for the kind of philistine paranoia that characterized the shameful McCarthy era. Two current headline stories remind us that the Constitution -- with its protection of freedom of speech -- is wielded as a weapon by the righteous right only when it suits their purposes. In Washington, DC, the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute has capitulated to conservative religious and political pressure, removing from its current exhibition a videotape by David Wojnarowicz entitled "A Fire in My Belly" (see it here.) The video includes a sequence with ants crawling over the image of a crucified Christ...
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