George Will

Mullah Bullah!

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

2/27/01

It’s often said that religion fosters great art. Sometimes that’s true. A visit to the Vatican, or the great Cathedrals of Europe, will show conclusively that the Roman Catholic Church has been the repository and mentor of great art for over a thousand years. Much of the great art in Japan owes its existence to the Shinto faith. Hindu and tribal faiths around the world have produced marvels for the world to marvel at and ponder over.

But religion doesn’t just foster great art. It controls it. We’ll never know how many masterpieces and artists were lost to history because the artists failed to faithfully follow Catholic doctrine. Sometimes it destroys art. England has only a tiny fraction of what had been a collection of religious art to rival that of Rome’s, the rest smashed, burned, ruined in the madness of the Reformation, when Calvinist Protestants wrecked anything that smacked of papism and idolatry. Other religious artifacts, such as the Sphinx, Stonehenge, Ankor Wat, and the heads of Easter Island bear scars, vandalism and scornful graffiti placed on them by offended zealots. Those are the survivors.

So it was depressing, but no real surprise, to read in today’s Sacramento Bee that Afghanistan’s Taliban, the cadre of Moslem maniacs who have subjugated that benighted land, have ordered the destruction of all religious artifacts and other works of art deemed offensive to Allah. The leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, sat down with Allah over coffee, and while they were chitchatting about chopping off hands and public whippings for marital infidelity and the like, Omar said, "Hey, Al. What do you think about all that Buddhist and Christian stuff that’s lying around? Doesn’t that BOTHER you?" And Allah, who had been staring off into space and wishing they got cable in Afghanistan, said, "You know, now that you mention it, it DOES bother me! I hadn’t thought of it before, but it really gripes my chaps! It’s not like Buddha or Jawa are paying the rent around here, you know!"

So the order went out to destroy all artifacts deemed offensive to Allah.

That includes one of those Great Works fostered by religion mentioned above. In this case, it’s the Buddha of Bamiyan, a statue inset into a cliff. But this is no ordinary nook figurine. This Buddha stands an incredible 175 feet tall. It was built in the 5^th century.

It’s impossible to guess how long it took to construct. Like many of the remarkable erections of the early ages, the means used to create it are a mystery to modern civilizations. Like the giant heads of Easter Island, or Stonehenge, or the remarkable temples of Central and South America, we really have no idea how they did it.

It’s an extraordinary artifact, on the level with the Seven Wonders.

It’s going to be destroyed because religious maniacs, invoking their deity in an orgy of anthropomorphic psychosis, have determined it is offensive in the sight of their lord.

And there isn’t a god damned thing the world can do to stop them.

Which brings us to George Will.

George, insufferable and stuffy even by the standards of conservative tub-thumpers, well-known for stuffiness and insufferability, is in high dudgeon, again, over art. In the very same edition of the Sacramento Bee that reported the attacks by the Taliban on art, George is after the Brooklyn Museum of Art. That naughty, naughty museum is, once again, displaying things that George has decided are offensive.

Indeed, so deep is his pique that he actually starts out his screed against the museum in this manner. "Here. We. Go. Again." How Donald Duckian his rage must be! One can almost picture the thin little shoulders hunching up, the eyes flaring red, the bill doing an admirable job of grinding non-existent teeth!

The cause of his outrage is predictable enough. The museum is displaying a privately funded art show that shows religious imagery in jarring and different fashions. The show might be privately funded, but George reasons that the fact that the museum itself is publically funded gives him an in to squawk loudly, along with every other wowser in the country. It never occurs to him that this particular approach would, if encoded, destroy every public library in the country. Or it does, but like most American reactionaries, there will be one set of rules for him, and other for the rest of us.

In any event, the museum is showing art that George finds objectionable. In fact, it’s pretty tame stuff–a nude female in the position of Jesus in the "Last Supper" tableau, and a crucifix with a nude female torso on it. You can find ruder stuff on the Comedy Channel most nights, and there’s nothing there that MAD magazine hasn’t been doing for 50 years.

George, of course, doesn’t say that HE’S offended. People would scoff. The man, after all, has professed admiration and respect for the intellects of Ronald Reagan, Dan Quayle, and Putsch. That tended to wear his intellectual credentials, not to mention perception of his judgement, a bit thin.

Nor does he say his God is offended. Americans have the pleasant characteristic of being a largely secular bunch, despite the loud claims from the wowsers that all Americans are god-struck and rabidly theocratic. Enough so that Americans, even those with deep personal faith in the same deity, aren’t going to take any claims by George about said deity’s opinions at face value. ESPECIALLY those with the same deep personal faith. Most of them hear about god’s opinions on abortion, race, the budget, baseball and cats a hundred times a day from people who are usually trying to get them to donate money. The whole "gawdwants" schtick is dead.

Which leaves only the Soviet God. The PEOPLE are outraged and offended, quack quack quack quack quack quack!

Of course, what George is hoping is the PEOPLE will consist of the usual suspects in the Christian Coalition, the ones who aren’t afraid to make asses of themselves insisting that they can divine the, er, Divine Will for us. God is a Yankees fan. He hates those friggin Dodgers. And He’s down on abortion, even if He forgot to mention it in the Bible.

Well, George had to come up with something. There’s too many free thinkers in America who would just shrug and look at him and say, "Well, if He’s really so Offended, can’t God, um, I don’t know, turn the artists into XFL commentators or something? I mean, really zap their asses?"

Perhaps that thought occurred to George. He quoted one of the artists, and if the quote is accurate, then the artist is like, so TOTALLY Valley Girl. Bitchin’. Toobler. Like, you know? Definitely XFL color commentator material.

Well, that was George’s foray into humor. It’s not a pretty sight, and fortunately, it doesn’t happen often. But he decided to finish up with his own variation of A Modest Proposal, this one based on a vignette written by Peter DeVries. In one story, DeVries has this protagonist, a minimalist artist who makes massive amounts of money by selling empty frames and untenanted pedestals to gullible and avid connoisseurs with the explanation that it is the epitome of minimalist art in that it forces the viewer to impose whatever image of symbology onto the artwork he can, making it a wholly subjective and personal art. The idea, of course, is a run-on from Al Capp’s "Bashful Bulgarniks", the birds too fast to be seen, and prior to that, Hans Christian Andersen’s "The Emperor’s New Clothes".

George, in an unsettling echo of the Mullahs of the Taliban, proposes that the government subsidize ONLY such art as the DeVries example, and never, ever subsidize any other art that might possibly offend somebody. The somebody might be the Soviet Vox Deus, or George’s anthropomorphic imposition upon the universe, or George himself. None are valid, but George hopes if he squawls loudly enough, he can make one of them valid, and get rid of art he doesn’t like.

Taliban vs. George Will and his reactionary ilk. The two aren’t comparable, but the differences lie in the realm of potency, rather than intent.

Of course, it’s easy to understand why the DeVries notion of a minimalist artwork consisting of an empty frame or a pedestal with nothing but empty air above it might appeal to George. After all, he bought such a piece himself, and for the past month, has been saluting it and calling it "Mr. President."