corrente

Looks like Bush's Base is having a hard time dealing with all that "realist" worldview they are always clamouring to claim. Great champions of liberty and freedom and chivalry and morality that they are. I shudder to think about what kind of recent physical abuse they must be heaping upon their own boob tube machines and the glowing gallery of images emanating from within.

Gallery Owner Attacked for Iraq Abuse Art, by Lisa Leff, Associated Press Writer.

SAN FRANCISCO - A San Francisco gallery owner bears a painful reminder of the nation's unresolved anguish over the incidents at the Abu Ghraib prison — a black eye delivered by an unknown assailant who apparently objected to a painting that depicts U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners.

"the nation's unresolved anguish" - ??? - Oh BULLSHIT. That gallery owner bears the painful reminder that this country is also infested with pig-eyed knucklewalking fascists and petty despots and unhinged bigots and it always has been. Unresolved anguish of the nation my ass. These kind of low bred predatory criminal idiots don't represent anything but a reflection of their own narrowly indoctrinated stupidity and ignorance and unresolved fear. And ironically, on a weekend in part dedicated to such worthy causes as the defeat of fascism during WW2, so we get the Associated Press characterizing events that resemble Volkischer Block beer hall stunts circa 1924 as, ya know, "reminders of the nation's unresolved anguish." Ay yi yi.

The assault outside the Capobianco gallery in the city's North Beach district Thursday night was the worst in a string of verbal and physical attacks directed at Lori Haigh since the artwork was installed at her gallery on May 16.

San Francisco police are investigating and have stepped up patrols around the gallery. But Haigh decided to close the gallery indefinitely, citing concern for the safety of her two children, ages 14 and 4, who often accompanied her to work.

Guy Colwell's painting, titled "Abuse," depicts three U.S. soldiers leering at a group of naked men in hoods with wires connected to their bodies. The one in the foreground has a blood-spattered American flag patch on his uniform. In the background, a soldier in sunglasses guards a blindfolded woman.

[...]

Two days after the painting went up in a front window, someone threw eggs and dumped trash on the doorstep. Haigh said she did not think to connect it to the events at Baghdad's notorious prison until people started leaving nasty messages and threats on her business answering machine.

"I think you need to get your gallery out of this neighborhood before you get hurt," one caller said.

She removed the painting from the window, but the gallery's troubles received news coverage and the criticism continued. The answering machine recorded new calls from people accusing her of being a coward for moving the artwork.

Last weekend, Haigh said a man walked into the gallery, pretended to scrutinize the painting for a moment, then marched up to her desk and spat in her face.

On Thursday, someone knocked on the door of the gallery, then punched Haigh in the face when she stepped outside.

[...]

Haigh has received some expressions of support since closing the gallery. Her favorite: an e-mail whose writer said, "I'm sure that a few and dangerous minds don't understand that they have only mimicked the same perversity this painting had expressed."

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