A Forum for Vigorous Debate, Cornerstone of Democracy

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A FORUM FOR FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND VIGOROUS DEBATE, CORNERSTONES OF DEMOCRACY
[For the journal--guidelines, focus, etc.--go to www.theamericandissident.org. If you have questions, please contact me at todslone@hotmail.com. Comments are NOT moderated (i.e., CENSORED)!]
Encouraged censorship and self-censorship seem to have become popular in America today. Those who censor others, not just self, tend to favor the term "moderate," as opposed to "censor" and "moderation" to "censorship." But that doesn't change what they do. They still act as Little Caesars or Big Brother protectors of the thin-skinned. Democracy, however, demands a tough populace, not so easily offended. On this blog, and to buck the trend of censorship, banning, and ostracizing, comments are NEVER "moderated." Rarely (almost NEVER) do the targets of these blog entries respond in an effort to defend themselves with cogent counter-argumentation. This blog is testimony to how little academics, poets, critics, newspaper editors, cartoonists, political hacks, cultural council apparatchiks, librarians et al appreciate VIGOROUS DEBATE, cornerstone of democracy. Clearly, far too many of them could likely prosper just fine in places like communist China and Cuba or Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Russia, not to mention Sweden, England, and Austria.
ISSUE #45 PUBLISHED MAY 2023. NOW SEEKING SUBMISSIONS FOR ISSUE #46.

More P. Maudit cartoons (and essays) at Global Free Press: http://www.globalfreepress.org

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Gen-X Takes on the Censorial Hippie Helm

Gen-X takes on the censorial hippie helm. This blog will likely be a blog into the void of the universe, the void of death pending, read by nobody but I. Ainsi soit-il…

A DeCordova Museum gen-x curator rejected my request to display the dissident watercolors exhibited at the Concord Free Public Library at the museum. It pisses me off. Onwards nonetheless! I’d contacted Nick Capasso, curator at DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, just a couple of “blocks” down the street from Walden Pond, informing him of the exhibit of dissident watercolors, “Literature, Democracy & Dissidence” at the Art Gallery in the Concord Free Public Library last month. He visited:

“While DeCordova Museum does have a long track record of presenting politically engaged contemporary art, I’m afraid that we will not be able to include your work in our exhibition program. Good luck fining [sic] other venues for your work.”
What pisses me off is not so much the “good luck” automaton refrain these fellows collegially chorus like toads in the evening, but rather the autocratic NEIN! It bubbled up in me over a couple of weeks then popped out just yesterday, took form as a new sketch and eventual watercolor. How to do it? I pondered and pondered, then came up with the Nazi idea. Yeah, curators like Nazis. Autocratic Aesthetics! So, I hunted for the fellow’s photo and a photo of Adolf, found both, and sketched. The curator looks like a gen-X fellow—replacement yuppie—, as does the new director. It does piss me off to witness these young bourgeois grads dictating what art shall appear in the nation’s museums and what art shall be deemed NEIN! Ah, but thus is life in America. So, the least one can do is create from the cultural crap covering over the landscape or crony culturalism to paraphrase that nice new term, crony capitalism.

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