Pointing Fingers

Get the Flak Outa Here

“My name’s Isaiah Washington and I am a bigot. My epithet of choice. Faggot.”

It was perfectly timed. The same day Serena Williams stunned the world Friday, pulverizing the top-seeded Maria Sharapova to win the Grand Slam title in Melbourne, Australia, the decrepit, wheezing, dried-up cocaine addict and radio shock-jock, Don Imus, was wincing irritably over a bad telephone connection to Sid Rosenberg, the gambling crack-addict that was fired as Imus' sports commentator after making the following comment in response to singer Kylie Minogue's breast cancer diagnosis: "She won't look so pretty when she's bald with one titty."

You may recall, Rosenberg – in a comment that did not get him fired -- called Serena and sister Venus Williams, animals, better suited to pose for National Geographic than Playboy.

Neither rehab, nor firing helped Rosenberg, who months later was fired again, this time by WFAN radio, following a crack and gambling binge in Atlantic City that caused him to blow off a Giants pregame show. Now, racism, homophobia and misogyny be damned, Imus appears to be worming him back into the fold.

Unlucky for Isaiah Washington, Grey’s Anatomy is an ABC show, forcing him to feign contrition, and conveniently enter rehab to compensate for calling T.R. Knight a faggot. Apparently, these days being an asshole is a very quickly curable disease, and if you’re really lucky, you can get inpatient credits with outpatient privileges.

Or, if you’re Lindsay Lohan, you can enter rehab and actually treat it like a hotel. The poor real addicts genuinely struggling with their addictions at the appropriately named, typically-Los Angeles, rehab facility, Wonderland, must wonder how Lohan was cured so quickly.

Just nine days after checking in following yet another passing out episode, this time in a hotel hallway at 6.00am following a Golden Globes afterparty, she’s back to feeding the paparazzi, running around West Hollywood, shopping – her usual humanitarian work. Kindly offering them up some fresh dysfunction to give Britney Spears a bit of breathing room.

In their self-centered worlds, being snapped, legs open, unconscious, and pantyless with an empty bottle of Jack Daniels in hand, vagina gaping for the world to see, is better than no photo during a half-hearted, publicity-seeking rehab stint.

The enablers, who should stock up on glycerin in case there’s a funeral any time soon, are either to busy wallowing in their own substance-altered, denial-fueled reality to help, or are nothing more than callous, self-serving, money-grabbing maggots who would sooner lull a vulnerable woman into a self sense of security by lying about and to her, than help her by forcing her to face the truth, and do the work necessary to get on track.

Anyone who’s ever been an addict can tell you – addiction isn’t cured in nine days, not even physiologically. And nor are the underlying reason that drove her there in the first place.

"She is doing fine right now," confirmed her publicist Leslie Sloane Zelnick. "She is allowed to work, and then she returns to treatment at night." Last week her mother, Dina Lohan, told a TV reporter how amazingly well Lindsay was and what “a great space” she was in right now.

Never mind that the Golden Globes incident was less than two weeks ago. Next they’ll be telling us the excessive, out-of-control partying hasn’t escalated; it’s more of an augmentation. For these despicable sycophants, rehab is nothing more than a pubic relations tool, served with a wink and an eight ball.

It’s not exactly a new phenomenon, but when Alan Nierob, Mel Gibson’s “Jewish, son of Holocaust survivors” publicist announced that his client would be entering rehab to simultaneously address his alcoholism and his anti-Semitism (apparently for Nierob, like the brass at NBC, addressing a woman as “sugartits” isn’t offensive enough to warrant either an apology or an intervention), the notion of using rehab as a fix-all to compensate for genuine remorse and elicit sympathy for the offender rather than the victim has become all too apparent.

While Gibson’s father may have a hard time acknowledging the very existence of his son's publicist (if the Holocaust did not occur, how could Nierob’s parents have survived it?), rehabilitation is actually a useful and life-saving tool for people whose lives have been ruined by the powerful forces of addiction, and are intent on doing whatever hard work is necessary to change course.

It’s a pity that a few reckless celebrities, their flaks and their enablers, are tainting rehab itself with the very status their clients/children/cash cows are trying to escape: a weak, pathetic joke.

Shock and Augmentation

Condoleezza stupid bitch
Spitting out your deadly spew
Dozens dying daily damn it
Nothing worthwhile, nothing new

Secretary, Statesman, Russian expert
Stanford Provost, Cunt Supreme
Still standing by her man abusive
Our kids are burning, hear them scream

President Fuckface, fucking prick
Christ your cock so small must be
Sending soldiers more to die
Your senseless fucking killing spree

A blocked up asshole, keeping shit trapped
Telling us history will view you kindly
Guess what dickwad, murderous asswipe
You sent our children to die blindly

Protecting Americans, who are you kidding?
Your actions kill, we bleed and burn
I hope you rot in hell you fucker
The only thing you’ll ever earn

The Horrors of torture, reinterpreted through art

Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle reviews my latest exhibition, Torture, posing some interesting questions. I have received a lot of praise and a lot of criticism related to this show, but art critic Kenneth Baker frames the debate amazingly well, and asks some critical questions.

"Encountering them in an art gallery provokes tangled responses: outrage that someone would advance his own ambitions through the degradations the Abu Ghraib photos record; perverse temptation by the opportunity to study the mise-en-scene of the original pictures, safe in the knowledge of seeing simulations; despair that history has again diverted the resources of art away from pleasure and contemplation to bleak and urgent critical functions; and, finally, the recognition that, after all the barriers between art and life come down, nothing insulates our enjoyment of the arts against toxic pollution from our knowledge of real events.

How far should simulation in art go? Will we next have to ponder a re-enactment of, say, Saddam Hussein's execution, or even Daniel Pearl's, merely because these images can be found on the Internet, and because they symbolize the degeneration of American foreign policy?"

Unacceptable In Any Context or Circumstance

Isaiah Washington doesn’t read much.

Nor do members of GLAAD, executives at ABC, gossip bloggers or a billion other people running around with knotted knickers.

Yes, it’s an ugly word when tossed as a hateful epithet. And although the word faggot has been around since around 1250 or so, referring to a bundle of sticks, twigs, or branches bound together and used as fuel, and as late (or early) as 1915 was used as a contemptuous word for a female (by Americans, of course), its still a word that is unequivocally acceptable in some contexts and under certain circumstances.

Although not according to star of the ABC hit show Grey’s Anatomy, Isaiah Washington.

A brouhaha of gargantuan proportions has enveloped Hollywood after the Grey’s Anatomy star, speaking to reporters at the Golden Globes, reopened a wound he had made back in October last year when he referred to T.R. Knight as a faggot.

His transgression, this time, was denying the original accusation -- that he had referred to Knight as a faggot in a heated on-set altercation with co-star Patrick Dempsey -- by once again uttering the forbidden word. “No, I did not call T.R. a faggot,” Washington told reporters. ”Never happened, never happened.”

Problem though, was that following the October altercation, Washington had issued an apology to Knight for his derogatory slur, suggesting he was either unlikely coerced into apologizing for something he did not say, or has an atrocious memory.

His remarks at Sunday’s ceremony, however, ignited like a bundle of sticks, twigs, or branches bound together and used as fuel – dare I say – a faggot!

Grey’s Anatomy star, Katherine Heigl, immediately came to Knight’s defense, suggesting in no uncertain terms that Washington just shut up. On Tuesday, Knight appeared on the Ellen Degeneres show, clarifying the original incident, which forced him to come out as a gay man, and referring to Washington’s remarks Sunday. “He referred to me as a faggot. Everyone heard it.”

It got worse. On Wednesday, GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, demanded that Washington apologize, and the influential gossip columnist, Perez Hilton, began a boycott of ABC, Disney and all related properties, refusing to write about any of their talent, unless they fired Washington.

By Thursday, ABC and Washington were in high-octane damage control mode, issuing statements and apologies quicker than you could sneer “sugartits” to female police officer.

“We are greatly dismayed that Mr. Washington chose to use such inappropriate language at the Golden Globes, language that he himself deemed ’unfortunate’ in his previous public apology,” ABC said in its statement. “His actions are unacceptable and are being addressed.”

Washington, clearly an out-of-control idiot, taking a page from all-too-obvious Mel Gibson playbook, apologized yet again. Feel the sincerity.

“I apologize to T.R., my colleagues, the fans of the show and especially the lesbian and gay community for using a word that is unacceptable in any context or circumstance. I marred what should have been a perfect night for everyone who works on ’Grey’s Anatomy.’ I can neither defend nor explain my behavior. I can also no longer deny to myself that there are issues I obviously need to examine within my own soul, and I’ve asked for help.”

And what might that help look like? You guessed it. A “meeting” with the gay and lesbian community to “to apologize in person and to talk about what I can do to heal the wounds I’ve opened.”

We can only pray that Washington, who is black, doesn’t deem the rich, white, high-drama, hysterical queens at GLAAD as representative of the gay and lesbian community.

You may recall, meetings aren’t particularly effective in dealing with hate, especially when confused with speech and expression, and GLAAD’s efforts in the past have yielded little. They attempted a town hall meeting with Eminem over the homophobia in his lyrics, which he smartly rejected, and then angered Elton John by scolding him after he agreed to sing a duet with Eminem.

The smartest suggestion of all came from none other than the singer John Mayer, who suggested that ABC “produce an episode of Grey's Anatomy in which Mr. Washington's character, Dr. Burke comes out to his friends and colleagues as a gay man!!! What better way for an actor to get to the roots of his discrimination than by portraying the very the subject of his own ire for the remainder of his contract? That'll learn ya!”

Like Jesse Jackson’s attempts to ban use of the word nigger, efforts to punish Isaiah Washington for using the word faggot seem ridiculously misguided.

His denial of having uttered it is what’s offensive, not his use of it in the context of the denial. Had he said, I am really sorry I called T.R. a faggot, as opposed to I didn’t call T.R a faggot, would his comment have been so explosive?

The big question, if ABC was to follow John Mayer’s advice, is whether Washington’s character would have to endure being called a faggot. Offering a real and meaningful demonstration of the hurt the word can cause when brandished as a weapon.

Somehow, I doubt it.

When You Puke Upon a Star

While Dick Cheney busies himself pouring over the private financial records of innocent American civilians, the fugliest man on the planet, (or just behind Cheney, as my friend Jayne argues), Donald Trump was dealt a number of blows this last week, none of them coming from Rosie O’Donnell, mind you.

To compensate for -- how do I say this delicately – an obviously very small penis, this delusional clown revealed his Achilles heel, by revealing his ever-so-desperate need to belong, to feel part of something he’ll never be part of. Laying out a minimum of $15,000, The Chump bought himself a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. No matter how successful The Apprentice was once upon a time, long ago, acting it wasn’t. Nasally sneering “You’re Fired,” looking as ugly as is humanly possible wasn’t exactly a stretch for someone already as ugly as is humanly possible.

Despite The Chump’s hate-filled attack on O’Donnell, the ratings for the newest season of The Apprentice were pitiful. Almost as embarrassing as a man getting his wife and daughter to attack a woman on his behalf, because his own catty claws weren’t drawing any blood.

Watching Mensa…er …Melania and Ivanka Trump both berate and urge Rosie to get help was kind of like watching Dina Lohan chide Lynne Spears for failing to intervene in Britney’s bloated, self-destructive spiral into drug-induced, career-crashing oblivion.

Then came word that Katie Rees, the “dethroned” Miss Nevada, who The Chump determined did not get a second chance, (for antics just slightly less vanilla than former Miss USA, Tara Conner’s, exposing his hypocritical, double standards for what they are), signed a lucrative two-year, $2 million-plus deal to host a revival of an "Beacher’s Madhouse" variety show at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Essentially laughing all the way to the bank whilst simultaneously telling Trump to take his “second chances” and double standards and shove them up his lily-white, saggy ass.

What is this loser’s problem?

Could it be that he looks like a frightful, bloated, pale multifarious horror blend of a frog, a fish, David Gest, Tim Russert, John Bolton and Big Bird with lips that look like they’ve been bludgeoned with a Botox-filled syringe and then slammed up against glass?

Or could his bitter misogynistic outburst be retaliation for an interview his former wife Ivana Trump gave a while back, touting the virtues of her new, young, handsome, virile boyfriend whilst expressing gratitude for no longer having to share a bed with a man donning what looks like a spray-on comb-over to rival Richard Simmons’ pubic perm? Her elation that sex no longer manifests itself as an unpleasant exercise of Viagra-supported, performance-deficient, wheeze-inducing duty, degraded further by groaning and back pain whining? Enter Don Imus.

The final sledgehammer of desperation from The Chump was an appearance last week on the Don Imus show. Imus, the loud-mouthed, misogynist buffoon who’s homophobic, mid-life crisis morning radio show is simulcast on MSNBC, and who despite extraordinary lengths to position himself as a cowboy, looks like an aging, cocaine-dry-wrinkled cross between the late Ann Richards and Miss Piggy.

Edged on by Imus and his sophomoric crew, The Chump continued his high-school girl tirade against O’Donnell. “I happen to like my hair,” The Chump told Imus. Like an anorexic beauty pageant contestant given a “second chance” claiming to love her cellulite.

I’m not some avowed, die-hard Rosie O’Donnell fan, although I do appreciate her humor from time to time. And this whole ratings-inspired Donald O’Donnell fiasco is a perfect distraction from our President’s not-so-idle threats to Iran and Syria.

It’s just that if Donald Trump has an urge to prove his manhood, challenge someone like Barry Bonds. Threaten to find and catch Osama Bin Laden. Uglifying the Golden Globes and bashing Rosie O’Donnell and Barbara Walters just isn’t that impressive.

Holding up his nine month old son Barron at the ceremony forever cheapening the meaning of the already cheap-meaning stars, The Chump offered these barren pearls: "He's strong, he's smart, he's tough, he's vicious, he's violent — all of the ingredients you need to be an entrepreneur, and most importantly, hopefully he's smart because smart is really the ingredient."

Just what the world needs. Another violent, vicious, arrogant, self-obsessed, nouveau riche asshole with delusions of grandeur and an unhealthy sense of entitlement. Why not skip the charade and buy the little brat his own star too? Hey why not pick out a wife for him to betray while you're at it?

And should you, in the meanwhile, happen to be in Los Angeles and step in dog crap, feel an overwhelming urge to defecate or urinate in public, or puke upon a star (as opposed to being puked upon by a star), there’s a certain star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame…

Dead at Last: I Have a Nightmare

I wrote this back in 2003, shortly after Trent Lott was given the boot as Minority Leader following his December 2, 2002 whiskey-drenched toast to Senator Strom Thurmond, at a hundred year birthday celebration, wistfully imagining a world where racial segregation would have governed our social interaction. Since Lott was returned to Senate Republican leadership by being elected Minority Whip in November 2006, this dark reality check deserves a revisit. My apologies, once again, to Dr. King.

Dead at Last: I Have a Nightmare

I regret to inform you today we bear witness to the greatest erosion of freedom in the history of our nation.

Symbolic platitudes, such as a day dedicated to Martin Luther King, and upon whose poetic insights these dire forebodings are reconstructed, offer little more than a decoy that enables us to avoid the yearnings of institutionalized apartheid, inadvertently vomited forth by racists at political birthday celebrations of bitter men as fresh as their moldy ideological predispositions.

For forty years later, not the nigger nor honky, the kike nor kaffir, the spic nor kook, the raghead nor faggot, the witch nor shwarze, the beaner nor Jap or any other ethnic, cultural or social epithet you can conjure, have enjoyed anything more than a cursory nod to random speech prohibitions cloaked in political correctness. Lonely islands of token terminology in the midst of a vast ocean of ill intention. Religious dogma exiles the compassionate to languish in the scornful corners of faithless derision, killing spirituality with fanatic fervor. The chosen versus the abandoned, the saved versus the damned, the holy versus the holey.

In a sense we’ve reached a point where it’s time to empty the cache, and load the ballistic fingerprinted magazine of our hate nation. When the architects of our republic penned the ambiguous words of the ill-treated Constitution they did not imagine the destructive forces of faux piety laying claim to the sacred doctrines to which every American was to fall prey. The indoctrination that accepts that all but a few privileged white men - yes, one or two wealthy black men as well– should be blindingly ensnared by the government’s domain over death, entrapment and the illusion of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has not changed an iota since Doctor King reminded America of her sacred obligation, (or differs much from a regime on the southern tip of Africa who at the time likely attributed Rosa Parks’ refusal to move to the back of the bus as Negro laziness). America’s blank-check racism is far from insufficient. The savings garnered by storming out of the World Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa just prior to the events of September 11, 2001 stands testament to the revenue-producing potential of unbridled denial when combined with cutbacks in tolerance and layoffs in leniency.

But we cannot deny that the bank of justice is as bankrupt of equality as its leader is of moral consistency. We have to acknowledge that there lies nothing but worthless stock options in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so it’s time to cash this reality check, a check that will give us upon exchange a mere glimpse at the pretense of freedom and surplus of indiscriminate justice that plagues America.

We have also come to this tainted realization to remind America of the final solution of procrastination. This is the perfect time to wallow in delusional national security at the expense of fundamental liberty or to take the debilitating drug of affirmative discrimination.

Now is the time to pig out on the lies brimming over the trough of democracy’s empty promise. Now is the time to realize that the treacherous path of identity politics and all advances in social progression lead forebodingly back to the dark and desolate valley of segregation and ignorance. Now is the time to face our nation’s shameful reemergence from the polluted swamp of covert racial injustice to the solid rock of unabashed Klean Kut Kommunity. Now is the time to continue to fake justice and blur reality for all of God's hated and deluded children.

It would be predictable for the nation to overstate the earnestness of its compassionate commitment to remove the hoods, while amicus briefing its true intentions. This bitter winter of the Senate’s unintended exposure will not erase the explosive spring of half-hearted apologies and unconvincing spin attempts that followed, and will continue to.

Two Thousand and Seven is not a beginning but a damned continuation. Those who hoped that the demise of the disgraced helmet-haired Honky Segregationist, Senator Trent Lott, would not blow over, or that the incident would force the media to focus intelligently on racism, deserve the rude awakening as the nation, once again, dons its hood and returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until every citizen is reclassified as an enemy combatant at the mercy of military tribunals. The hurricane of denial is nothing more than the bulimic byproduct of a nation binging on political correctness at the expense of comprehension and in the absence of contextualization, and will continue to reinforce the impenetrable foundations of our deep-rooted perversion until the darker days of vigilante justice reemerge stronger and more sinister.

But there is a tornado of turmoil that envelops those who stand on the icy precipice towering over the shantytown of justice. In the process of absent-mindedly sauntering to the front of the bus, try not get run over by the White Lexus of the United States leadership or fooled by the whitest faced blacks in the blackest wing of the White House, nor mistake Condoleezza for Rosa. Let us not blindly drink from the poisonous well of bitterness and hatred, marketed and packaged as an anecdotal quench for our thirst for token equality. We must forever remember the transformational political makeover of hoods and sheets into suits and ties offering cheap platters of petty placation. The uppity plane of dignity and discipline must not thwart creative protest or preclude self defense in the face of physical violence. Look closely at the colors on the frontlines of America’s preemptive war against America, and praise Ivy League alumni for their ability to give orders and profit from body bags.

Again and again we must defend against the jagged shards of cultural suspicion and dangerous misappropriation of moral superiority. The horrific hijacking of spiritual compassion must serve as a color coded alert to anyone pawning rectitude in the guise of religious piety or as a fundraising cash cow for the sin sowing temple thieves and apocalyptic assassins of reason, remedy and resolve.

For few today have come to realize that their political and pseudo-religious maneuverings are functions of, and enabled by, media complicities. Complicities glued by the wholesale purchase and selling of access, by cozy elites, to the production and distribution of consumer messaging. And most don’t seem to realize that their delusional freedom is inextricably bound by their subservient devotion to unbridled consumption of the entire destructive package.

We walk alone in fear, plagued by paranoia.

And as we walk, we are forced to avert our eyes and watch our backs. We cannot turn back. There are those who are accusing the pesky devotees of civil rights of terrorism. We are meant to be satisfied whilst women are the victims of the unspeakable horrors of religious intolerance and governmental subjugation. We are meant be satisfied whilst women’s bodies are dictated to by the penis platitudes of erectile dysfunctional males, and are afforded fewer rights than the fetuses they carry by the men who raped them. We are meant to be satisfied whilst teenagers and children slit their wrists rather than live with the sordid secrets and painful aftermath of the musical pedophiles, hidden and sheltered by the religious institutions, snatching their parents’ meager salaries to settle steamy sexual lawsuits. We are meant to be satisfied whilst our children are sodomized and robbed of their childhood and their futures by God ordained evil men wearing satin dresses or hooded sheets. We are meant to be satisfied whilst men, who wrap their heads and arms in leather in devotion to the God that chose them, feel no compunction in strapping leather over the heads and arms of their neighbors before flicking the power switches to kill them. No, no we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied while injustice rolls down like toxic mudslide with boulders of patronization crushing down like a devastating avalanche.

I am not unmindful that most of us are recycled products made up of telegenically cleansed consciousness vacuums and pop-psychology induced apathy. Where the First Amendment is nothing more than a pornography provision from a Hollywood flavored Larry Flynt movie. Where the greatest struggle we’ve encountered is how to reconcile Esera Tuaolo’s coming out of the closet as a gay NFL linebacker with our deep-rooted attachment to stereotypes. Most of us come from perspectives where our casual disregard for basic freedom leaves us battered by storms of political deception and staggered by the stench of institutionalized hypocrisy. We have been the victims of creative propaganda. We can no longer recognize the fact that the human suffering of others, left unchallenged, is ultimately self perpetuating.

Cry for Mississippi, cry for Alabama, cry for South Carolina, cry for Georgia, cry for Louisiana, cry for the cross burning, Bible thumping, sheet-hooded past of our northern cities, knowing that somehow in keeping with the worst of our misguided intentions, this situation will never be changed.

Let us wallow in the menacing meadows of political incorrectness. I say to you today my scapegoats - so even though we face the nauseating reality of today and tomorrow, I still have a nightmare. It is a nightmare deeply rooted in the horror of the American dream.

I have a nightmare that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" by stoning women to death, burning faggots and Caucasian-exempt conscription.

I have a nightmare that one day on the acrid wastelands of Tennessee, the sons of former politicians and the sons of former affirmative action recipients will peel off their pasted smiles and cover their perfectly barbered and coifed hairstyles with familiar slit holed sheets and erect a partition at the table of racism.

I have a nightmare that one day even the state of California, a state sweltering with the heat of superficiality, sweltering with the heat of shallowness, will complete its transformation into a spirit sucking desert of bulimia and skin cancer.

I have a nightmare that my little children might one day live in a nation where they are forced, in sickness, danger or in health, as children to bear children, because some Attorney General, who anointed himself with oil, believes the only way to keep his job is to raise a generation of criminals by making parents of a generation of inadequately equipped minors.

I have a nightmare today.

I have a nightmare that one day here in America, with its vicious racists, with its putrid judges inseminating the separation of Church and state with the gonorrhea of confusion - one day right there in America little unborn fetuses will trump the rights of little boys and girls as well as sisters and brothers and fathers and mothers.

I have a nightmare today.

I have a nightmare that one day every tragedy shall be cheapened with token gestures and cheesy sentimentality, and every hill and mountain shall be leveled to make room for more Starbucks and McDonalds franchises, that the rivers will run with the sticky syrup of a patented Coca Cola recipe, doubling as pesticide for the genetically engineered corn on the banks, enveloping the landscape with the sickly sweetness of intellectual property litigation, and the glory of the dollar shall be revealed and all DNA-monitored, retina-scanned irises shall see it together.

This is our future. This is the foreboding that I bring to the New Year. With this toxicity we will be able to hack out of the mountain of despair a monolith of psychosis. With this failure we will be able to thrash the precarious threads of harmony into an entropic cacophony of regret and recrimination. With this agenda we will be able to fire each other, to fuck each other, to hate together, to murder together, to detest and deplore together, knowing that in the shadow of a pitiful dream, we will be dead one day.

This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to loathe with new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, bitter land of hypocrisy, of thee I wretch. Land where my fathers were lynched, land of the Pilgrim's massacre of natives, from every pillaged and polluted mountainside, let hypocrisy scream!"

And if America is to remain a belligerent nation of self-deceiving fools, this must remain true. And so let hypocrisy scream from the burning skyscrapers of New York. Let hypocrisy scream from the littered streets of Louisiana. Let hypocrisy scream from the urban sprawl of New Jersey.

Let hypocrisy scream from the hate-filled slopes of Colorado. Let hypocrisy scream from the overextended hydro-electric plants of California.

But not only that; let hypocrisy scream from the empty office space of Texas.

Let hypocrisy scream from the anthrax-dusted offices of Washington DC.

Let hypocrisy scream from every project and ghetto, synagogue, mosque and church – from every homeless shelter and prison.

Let hypocrisy scream. And when this happens, and when we allow hypocrisy’s scream - when we let it scream from every abortion clinic and every veteran’s hospital, from every electric chair and every detention camp, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's illegitimate and abused children - black men and white women, gays and straights, hermaphrodites and transgendered, Jews and Gypsies, Muslims and adulterers, Christians and Wiccans, Protestants and Catholics - will be able to glare at each other, place barrels squarely between each other’s eyes and spit in each other’s faces and mutter, with trigger-clenched fingers, in the words of the current American spiritual: "Dead at last! Dead at last! Thank God Almighty, we are dead at last!"

Clinton Fein Torture Exhibition Opens Abu Ghraib Wounds

A PLUG FOR MY OWN EXHIBITION OPENING THIS THURSDAY THE OFFICIAL GALLERY PRESS RELEASE & ONLINE MEDIA KIT Clinton Fein Torture Exhibition Opens Abu Ghraib Wounds SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- Security firmly in place, Clinton Fein's latest exhibition, Torture, scheduled to open at Toomey Tourell Gallery in San Francisco on January 4, 2007, is a shocking and defiant exploration of America's approach to torture under the Bush administration. A series of staged and digitally manipulated photographic images recreate infamous torture scenes from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, transforming diffuse, muted and low-resolution images into large-scale, vivid, powerful and frightening reproductions. Fein focuses on the choreography and sexualization of torture, which includes images of prisoners, stripped naked, wearing hoods or sandbags as they're forced to stand in excruciatingly uncomfortable positions, simulate sexually degrading acts, and are subject to egregious humiliation. The horrifying images, stylized with fashion-photography lighting, radiate a profound beauty and eroticism that is all at once seductive, disturbing and unsettling. Fein's deliberate rejection of blurring or obscuring the blatant nudity prevalent in the original Abu Ghraib images is consistent with his history of challenging notions of decency, which included a Supreme Court victory over United States Attorney General, Janet Reno. "In undertaking the Torture series," said museum specialist and art consultant, Hanna Regev, "Fein channels his artistic reservoir of explosive energy into a high resolution digital camera to expose the dark side of the first 21st century war and its demoralizing and abhorrent effects." Born in Johannesburg in 1964, Fein's work has achieved international recognition and his previous exhibitions in both San Francisco and New York have been fraught with controversy. Palo Alto printer, Zazzle, deliberately destroyed two Abu Ghraib-related prints prior to an exhibition, also at Toomey Tourell, in 2004. "In a culture obsessed with violence, as indicative in Mel Gibson's recent movies such as the Passion of Christ and Apocalypto, Fein's Torture series, refashioned in an artistic rendition, warrants a second look," added Regev. The Torture exhibition runs from January 4, 2007 through January 30, 2007 at Toomey Tourell gallery. Additional information can be found at www.clintonfein.com/torture/ . Number Ten (Detail) Torture Series Clinton Fein, 2007 TORTURE 2007 - About Torture - Artist Statement - The Images - Video Promotion Gallery Talk - Behind the Exhibition - Video Interviews with Models - Gallery Talk Location & Time About the Artist - Clinton Fein Biography - Clinton Fein Exhibition Resume - Early Review - Select Previous Reviews/Media Exhibition Information - Exhibition Location & Times - Contact TORTURE 2007 About Torture Rank and Defile 1 (Detail) Torture Series, 2007 Clinton Fein Fein's Torture focuses on the choreography and sexualization of torture, which includes images of prisoners, stripped naked, wearing hoods or sandbags as they're forced to stand in excruciatingly uncomfortable positions, simulate sexually degrading acts, are plastered with feces and subject to egregious humiliation. In spite of the horror, the images, stylized with fashion-photography lighting, radiate a profound beauty and eroticism that is all at once seductive, disturbing and unsettling. Fein's deliberate rejection of blurring, obscuring or even shading the blatant nudity in his images is a response to the blurring of genitals that characterized the images released to the public, and is consistent with Fein's history of challenging the notions of decency, which included a Supreme Court victory over United Sates Attorney General, Janet Reno. "Nudity and genitalia are not obscene, torture is," said Fein. "Obfuscation is at the heart of what is happening with the torture debate. If anything, they should have blurred Private Lynndie England's thumb." Born in Johannesburg in 1964, Fein's work has achieved international recognition and his previous exhibitions in both San Francisco and New York have been fraught with controversy. The Torture exhibition runs from January 4, 2007 through February 3, 2007 at Toomey Tourell gallery. Additional information can be found at www.clintonfein.com/torture/. >>Clinton Fein's TORTURE Artist Statement Crucifiction 1, Torture Series, 2007 (Detail) Clinton Fein In April 2004, a story broke that would change the perception of America by both Americans and the rest of the world. The Abu Ghraib images jolted us, momentarily, into a realization that morality is a relative construct, and that in a world defined by such simplistic contrivances as good and evil, it is what humans are capable of doing to one another that affirms, despite our intellect, that at our core we are animals, primal and base. In response to an interview question for her new book, American Protest Literature, author and Harvard lecturer, Zoe Trodd asked me whether I thought the Abu Ghraib images had a lesser effect on public opinion than Vietnam war images because (a) they emphasized humiliation rather than physical violence, and (b) their aesthetic quality was not high - so grainy and undetailed, just snapshots, no texture or focus. The sexual dimension that seemed to be glaringly obvious in the Abu Ghraib imagery but clearly under the general "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy applied to all things sexual in the military, is noticeably absent from much of the debate. The images that were released by 60 Minutes II in April 2004, and subsequently reproduced by publications the globe over, included a pyramid of bare-assed detainees. Every image I have ever sourced, then and since, showed the assholes and genitals blurred. It struck me that obscenity laws, including those governing the transmission of images over the Internet - the very provision I challenged, but which remains in effect relating to obscenity - precluded the image from being transmitted unless those areas were blurred out. Yet, to me, the obscenity constituted the grinning servicemembers, PFC Lynndie England and Specialist Charles Graner, giving the thumbs up. The revulsion and outrage voiced by politicians and Pentagon officials alike failed to mention that the abuse at Abu Ghraib went well beyond torturing the detainees to humiliate them, but revealed a sexual dysfunction far deeper, related to the captors. The execution of the photographs for this exhibition presented unique challenges and raised unexpected questions. From communicating my intentions to the models so that they understood what I was doing and why, to physically handcuffing, tying and placing sandbags over their heads, I came as close as I ever wanted to the mindset of those who executed the actual deeds at Abu Ghraib. >>Read full, extended Artist Statement The Images Basic Restraining, 2007 (Detail with inset) Clinton Fein Just before the opening of my exhibition in 2004, Silicon Valley printing company Zazzle characterized the iconic hooded Iraqi with outstretched arms dangling electrical wires, positioned as stars on an American flag as "excessively violent," in my piece, "Like Apple Fucking Pie" before destroying it. Yet the same company did not regard a man, hands and feet bleeding and nailed to a wooden cross, as excessively violent. Somehow, the image of a crucifixion is not considered violent imagery, because we, as a society, have accepted the attachment of some spiritual significance negates the violence. I experienced a startling realization quite unexpectedly after one of the models had been standing in an excruciatingly uncomfortable position for longer than expected as I shot him from different angles, his arms wrapped around his knees, doubled over, and a sandbag over his head. After the shot was done, before even removing the sandbag, he stood exhausted with his hands resting on his thighs, before even taking the sandbag off his head. I carried on shooting, because in that moment, it became clear to me that most of the images we had witnessed from Abu Ghraib were also staged. What the Abu Ghraib images represented were indeed trophy shots, much like the proud, smiling faces of those responsible for lynching standing boastfully alongside their handiwork. The exhibition includes two pieces that are not modeled on Abu Ghraib imagery, but rather on what I imagined we were not seeing -- photos that were not being taken, hence the names Crucifiction 1 and 2 (spelled with a c and not an x). Click here to see all the images for this show, including, alongside them, the originals that inspired them. >>The images Torture Video Promotion Simply click on the image below, and a new window will open. Then push play, and voila It's also viewable on YouTube and Google Video if the VodPod version doesn't work for you. Gallery Talk Behind the Exhibition Clinton Fein on set Clinton Fein's Torture examines the choreography and sexualization of torture as it applied to Abu Ghraib, and the systemic rot that exacerbated it. Stephen Tourell and Nancy Toomey of Toomey Tourell invite you to join artist Clinton Fein and author and Harvard lecturer, Zoe Trodd, in a presentation relating to the content of the exhibition. Discussion will include the motivation behind the restaging of the Abu Ghraib images, and the challenges that presented themselves. Video Interviews with Models A short video includes interviews with some of the models appearing in the photographs, as they share some of the insights and observations that occured as the shoot progressed. Gallery Talk Time and Location WHEN: Saturday, January 13, 2007 6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. WHERE: Toomey Tourell 49 Geary Street San Francisco, CA 94108 About the Artist Clinton Fein Biography Clinton Fein, 2006 Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Clinton Fein is a San Francisco-based artist, writer and activist, noted for his controversial website Annoy.com and its Supreme Court victory against Janet Reno, United States Attorney General, regarding the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act in 1997. Fein is represented by Toomey Tourell in San Francisco and Axis Gallery in New York. In October 2004, Palo Alto-based printing company, Zazzle, destroyed two of Fein's giant images just before the opening of a solo exhibition at Toomey Tourell Gallery. The one image, reviewed at Chelsea's Axis Gallery by New York Times' Ken Johnson, was described as "an American flag with the stars and stripes made from the text of the official Abu Ghraib report is accompanied by fifty representations of the iconic image of a hooded man teetering on a box with wires trailing from his arms comprising the stars." The second image depicting President Bush on a crucifix entitled "Who Would Jesus Torture?" was also withheld by the printing company, who told San Francisco Chronicle art critic, Kenneth Baker that the company had "destroyed the images." Company spokesperson, Matt Wilsey, claimed the image might "offend Christians," and threatened to sue Fein for defamation if Fein publicly criticized the company's actions. In May 2006 the same image was exhibited at the Katzen Arts Center at American University Museum in Washington D.C. in "Visual Politics: The Art of Engagement," curated by Jack Rasmussen. "Who Would Jesus Torture?" was also published in Art of Engagement, Visual Politics in California and Beyond, by Peter Selz, released in November 2005. Peter Selz is Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley, is the founding director of the Berkeley Art Museum, and a former curator of New York's Museum of Modern Art. In November 2006, "Who Would Jesus Torture?" was published in Harvard lecturer Zoe Trodd's book, American Protest Literature. Fein is currently President of the Board of First Amendment Project (FAP), a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and promoting freedom of information, expression, and petition. FAP provides advice, educational materials, and legal representation to its core constituency of activists, journalists, and artists in service of fundamental liberties. In recognition of his work, Fein was nominated for a PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award in 2001. Fein currently serves as an editor for First Amendment Project's blog, as well as his own blog, Pointing Fingers on San Francisco Chronicle's website, SFGate. Early Review by Hanna Regev Rank and Defile 2, 2007 (Detail with inset) Clinton Fein The vision of Americans that emerges from Fein's carefully crafted, nine-panel Abu Ghraib installation pierces into the heart of the scandal. Fein wants us to grasp the magnitude of a spectacle that stripped prisoners of their human dignity. The mocking of religion and treating prisoners of war as subhumans has become the face of America that won't be forgotten by the estimated 1.6 million Muslims around the world. In Torture, Fein has synthesized this unwieldy cache of evidence, producing an indispensable and riveting account of the Abu Ghraib nightmare. The compelling imagery fitted to human scale is in our face and is deliberate in provoking a visceral reaction, a moral stand, and perhaps a national discourse that might and can change the course. Can we let go of the belief that art can change the moral focus of our world? Fein channels his artistic reservoir of explosive energy into a digital camera to expose the dark side of the first 21st century war and its demoralizing and abhorrent effects. In a culture obsessed with violence, as indicative in Mel Gibson's recent movies such as The Passion of Christ and Apocalypto, Fein's Torture series, refashioned in an artistic rendition, warrants a serious look. >>Clinton Fein:Torture: Review by Hanna Regev Select Media Coverage/Reviews One of two digital prints...uses an inflammatory favorite, the American flag, but don't be fooled by the stripes (texts from the shockingly graphic Abu Ghraib report) or stars (50 profiles of the iconic hooded prisoner on a box dangling electric wires -- yikes!). This work has a stunning, subtly nuanced sense of color and composition. Fein's website, www.annoy.com, is relentlessly anti-Bush and a lot of other things, too. This get-tough attitude, in the "Art of Engagement" tradition, is very West Coast but also has the punch of South Africa, land of Apartheid and diamond mines, where the artist was born and raised. (Artnet)...the irrepressible Clinton Fein (The New York Times...This South African provocateur's vitriolic, darkly comic digital montages attack President Bush, his cabinet and his Iraq policies (The New York Times) ... The printing service, called Zazzle, informed artist Clinton Fein on Monday that it would not release two of six images for "Numb & Number," an exhibit of Fein's deliberately provocative political art (San Jose Mercury News) ... Bad-boy political artist Clinton Fein expects trouble and regularly gets it (The San Francisco Chronicle) The company made its decision after determining the prints violated the site's user agreement on the grounds of being both offensive to religious believers--in this case Christians--and excessively violent (C|NET) .. excessive violence as well as derogatory references to religion (Los Angeles Times) ... Clinton Fein's scalding "Numb & Number" show at the Toomey Tourell Gallery features grim photographs of the war dead and wounded in Iraq ... a depiction of Bush as a crucified Christ with a warhead sprouting from his loincloth and a lettered screed on one work about a "crude, pathetic, ugly thief who is propped up by his Daddy's oil interests." The leader of the free world, as Fein reviles him with unchecked, ad hominem poison, is in "a Jimmy Beam-induced, unfortunately non-fatal, pretzel-choking, 'with us or against us' paradigm. (The San Francisco Chronicle) ... Among the rattling images in Fein's "Numb & Number" show is one of Cheney and Dianne Feinstein's faces melded together and another of bin Laden as the Statue of Liberty holding Bush's severed head aloft. (The San Francisco Chronicle) ... A current show by another artist-activist, Clinton Fein, called "Numb and Number" at the Toomey-Tourell gallery in San Francisco features digital montages that take off viciously against the current administration. (San Jose Mercury News) ... No Mister Nice Guy art at Toomey Tourell, just pure blunt force trauma. Clinton Fein's imagery may go as far beyond the line as any in expressing sentiments about the current world situation, and about the United States, the War in Iraq, and the Bush administration in particular. If you want to see complete and total venom conveyed through art, see "Numb and Number" and visit Fein's seditious brainchild, annoy.com. This is the type of stuff that buckets you a first class trip to oblivion in many parts of the world, but not here in America, The Land of the Free (ArtBusiness.com) ... Clinton Fein expresses outright scorn at the Bush Administration ... His show, entitled "Numb & Number," is the most potent political art of the year (The Berkeley Camera Club) ... California artist Clinton Fein is used to getting flak for his blatantly political and often shocking artworks ... ultra-provocative content (ArtsJournal.com) ... Home to geek wizards who invented high-resolution imaging technologies that have revolutionized the art scene - home to a digital printing company that has, alas, in this season of partisan fervor, censored two politically-charged art works: that's Silicon Valley! ... why is it censorship if a private business decides not to do business with an artist? Are we not allowed to run our business the way we want to, to work with whom we want to? Or, was this a ploy by Fein to get some publicity for his show ... which was launching that same week? (Silicon Valley Watcher) His art is not subtle. It can be hard to take. But Clinton Fein is not afraid to make a statement ... Many viewers must wonder whether such low-blow assaults have caused Fein to disown any of his past work... One of the least scabrous but hardest to take pieces in his show lays the words "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" over a grid of photographs from various sources documenting Iraqi war casualties... A lot of Clinton Fein's political art looks facile, even puerile, to those who see only its inflammatory side, not that he really cares. (The San Francisco Chronicle) ... What's Fein's sin? Politically confrontational art that aggressively makes use of emotionally charged imagery (Surface magazine) Capital Roundup artnet Magazine May 22, 2006 'Imprints: Works on Paper' By Holland Cotter, The New York Times March 25, 2005 Everything's Fein By Molly Freedenberg, Ventura County Reporter February 12, 2005 Corporate Policy Leads to Political Censorship By Molouk Y. Ba-Isa, Arab News January 11, 2005 His art is not subtle. It can be hard to take. But Clinton Fein is not afraid to make a statement. By Kenneth Baker, The San Francisco Chronicle November 2, 2004 Clinton Fein and the Art of Political Protest By Deborah Phillips, Toomey Tourell As Nov. 2 nears, artists get in their last licks, sending up Bush and company on center stage By Steve Winn, The San Francisco Chronicle October 20, 2004 2 of Clinton Fein's political works run afoul of his printer's policies By Kenneth Baker, The San Francisco Chronicle October 12, 2004 The Clinton Cabinet Surface Magazine October 2004 CLINTON FEIN, "Warning" By Ken Johnson, The New York Times First Thursday Art Openings; San Francisco By Alan Bamberger, ArtBusiness.com October 7, 2004 Print shop refuses to release political images By Jack Fischer, The San Jose Mercury News October 6, 2004 Annoy.com Webmaster says war art censored Paul Festa, C|NET October 6, 2004 Exhibition Information Location and Times Snapshot Heard 'Round the World, 2007 (Detail) Clinton Fein WHEN: January 4, 2007 - Janaury 30, 2007 Opening Recption THURSDAY JANUARY 4, 2007 5.30 PM - 7.30 PM WHERE: TOOMEY TOURELL GALLERY 49 Geary Street San Francisco, CA 94108 Phone: 415-989-6444 Fax: 415-989-6644 Contact Information Crucifiction 2, 2007 (Detail) Clinton Fein TOOMEY TOURELL GALLERY 415-989-6444 49 Geary Street San Francisco, CA 94108 Stephen Tourell Nancy Toomey Todd Bennett GALLERY HOURS: Tuesday through Friday: 11:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday: 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.