Filed under: art, politics | Tags: barack obama, politics, rolling stone, shepard fairey
Shepard Fairey’s second Obama commentary (because that’s the only thing to call it–more than art, Fairey is a master of cultural criticism), thoughtfully designed and gracing the cover of Rolling Stone. All those college kids summering at home while August slips through their fingers are gonna go nuts.
My first thought was the placement of the presidential seal behind Obama’s crown. Intentional, surely. Approaches a bit of bombasticness. The great Barkley Hendricks used the halo (or an initimation of it) to much more powerful effect in “Lawdy Mama,” his stunning gold-leafed portrait that typifies the 70’s mantra of “Black is Beautiful.
About his second Obama cover, Fairey writes:
However, a lot can and will change. As Joe Strummer of The Clash once said, “The future is unwritten.” In my illustration I make reference to Gilbert Stuart’s famous unfinished portrait of George Washington to capture the idea that, although we’re quick to judge, it’s too early to tell how Obama’s presidency will turn out. Hopefully Obama and all of us who have stood behind him will do everything we can to fill in our incomplete future the way we’ve pictured it.
It’s a great thing to ponder: As he enters the second part of his first year in office, will President Obama step boldly into the fray, fulfilling his promise of hope? Or will he suffer under the necessary weight of compromise?
Filed under: politics, racism | Tags: anti racism, barack obama, john mccain, tim wise, white privilege
The cover art for Francine Prose's seminal anti-racist novel A Changed Man
There are many truthful–yet not easy to digest–points made on the viral essay called This is Your Nation on White Privilege, going around the Web and written by Tim Wise, an anti-racism scholar. Some of the facts that I did not know: John McCain has referred to Vietnamese as “gooks” and “will always hate them”; Sarah Palin attended four colleges over six years (after failing out of one of them); Palin’s husband belongs to an extremist organization that wants to secede from the United States; Cindy McCain obtained drugs illegally (actually, I did know this fact because there’s a great profile in The New Yorker this week explaining how McCain forged the signature of the doctor who worked for her charitable organization–and this little tidbit has been buried by the media in comparison to the media frenzy from Obama smoking some pot in college).
White Privilege is a challenging notion to grasp, but I like Wise’s approach. And the opposition to his views have been downright nasty.
It’s always interesting to me to flip the idea of racism on its head and focus not on how people of color are oppressed, but rather on how whites receive invisible benefits.
On a somewhat related note, Francine Prose wrote a great novel last year called A Changed Man. I absolutely loved Prose’s novel (almost as much as the National Book Award finalist The Blue Angel). A Changed Man is about a racist skinhead who has done a 180, after being released from prison, and then seeks to work for an Elie Wiesel-type figure who survived the holocaust. Good satire, great storytelling.
