Imagining a different Bush.

In The Past is Over, a community art project by Helena Keeffe, 7-to-10-year olds at a San Francisco Elementary School were asked to "imagine a speech given by president Bush that would convince you that he has had a change of heart and could actually be the president of your dreams." The resulting speeches, read by a Bush impersonator, run the gamut, from "Bush" admitting that his Twinkie addiction has harmed the country to this imaginary president promising to provide homes for the homeless. (My favorite is by Lumi Sugazawa-O'Neill.) The winners of Keeffe's project won $50 that went toward a cake party for their class.

Govt. website shows how to down Air Force One

The San Francisco Chronicle points out how this administration can't seem to secure itself (much less the entire country):

the Air Force reacted with alarm last week after The Chronicle told the Secret Service that a government document containing specific information about the anti-missile defenses on Air Force One and detailed interior maps of the two planes -- including the location of Secret Service agents within the planes -- was posted on the Web site of an Air Force base.

The document also shows the location where a terrorist armed with a high-caliber sniper rifle could detonate the tanks that supply oxygen to Air Force One's medical facility.

Eight lies.

George Bush, who allegedly OK'd Scooter Libby's leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson's name, denied it eight times previously. Thus spake Bush:

President Bush, 9/30/03:

"I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action."

President Bush, 9/30/03:

"If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of. . . . I have told our administration, people in my administration to be fully cooperative. I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business."

President Bush, 10/28/03:

"I'd like to know if somebody in my White House did leak sensitive information."

President Bush, 6/10/04:

Reporter: "Do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so?"

President Bush: "Yes. And that's up to the U.S. Attorney to find the facts."

President Bush, 10/28/03:

"I want to know the truth. ... I have no idea whether we'll find out who the leaker is, partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers."

President Bush, 7/18/05 issue of USA Today:

"If someone committed crime, they will no longer work in my administration."

White House Press Secretary, 9/29/03:

"The President has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration."

White House Press Secretary, 10/7/03:

"Let me answer what the President has said. I speak for the President and I'll talk to you about what he wants . . .If someone leaked classified information, the President wants to know. If someone in this administration leaked classified information, they will no longer be a part of this administration, because that's not the way this White House operates, that's not the way this President expects people in his administration to conduct their business."

Holzer does Beckett

Starting at 7:30 pm GMT tonight, Jenny Holzer will bring her famed truisms to building facades across London. Presented as part of the Barbican's Beckett Centenary Festival, celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Irish poet Samuel Beckett's birthday (April 13), the light projections will feature words drawn from the writings of Beckett and others. Jenny Holzer: For London runs through April 14, from 7:30 to 11 pm.

Via Coolhunting. Cross-posted at Off Center.

The I Squish Your Head Flickr Pool

Here.

Roundup

Lots going on these days. A few items of note:

Man of the Day: Harry Thomas told Bush what we all wish we could: "I -- in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency..." There's more: text, video.

Bush busted? Indicted Cheney aide Scooter Libby testified before a federal grand jury that it was Bush himself who "specifically had authorized" the revealing of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to the press. The Smoking Gun has the entire 39-page Fitzgerald filing.

Pot, Kettle, Black: Instead of slinking away quietly, ethically challenged House retiree Tom DeLay has the gall to threaten a ethics complaint against Cynthia McKinney, who whacked a Capitol cop.

Dems on censure: From The Progressive publisher Matt Rothschild's email missive yesterday: "Did you know that 29 Democratic Senators and 9 Republicans were on record as favoring the censure of the President? President Clinton, that is. And if you compare what Clinton did to what Bush is doing, you'd think that more Senators would be on board with Russ Feingold. But only Barbara Boxer and Tom Harkin have signed on to censuring Bush, though Patrick Leahy is leaning that way."

Surprise, surprise: Who did Bush's tax cuts benefit most? Guess. "Americans with annual incomes of $1 million or more, about one-tenth of 1 percent all taxpayers, reaped 43 percent of all the savings on investment taxes in 2003. The savings for these taxpayers averaged about $41,400 each."

Broadcasting BS: A 10-month study by the Center for Media and Democracy found that 77 TV stations nationally used fake news--canned Video News Releases--without indicating that the VNRs were produced not by a news crew but a PR agency.

P.U. Even Fox News has Bush stinkin' up the polls, with a dismal 36% approval rating.

"Food." The government has a disconcerting habit of telling us that the presence of cancer-causing agents in our food is nothing to worry about. Minneapolis' own Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy finds that lots of conventional chicken producers voluntarily add arsenic to kill bacteria and promote growth. The FDA says that cancer-causing "benzene has been found in soft drinks at levels above the limit considered safe for drinking water"--four times as much as allowed in drinking water. Neither of which warrants a public health problem, or so we're told.

Which gallery?

Via The Daily Irrelevant.

Feingold on same-sex unions.

Russ Feingold's got principles. The only US senator to vote against the Patriot Act, he's been a constructive voice of dissent about the Iraq war, domestic wiretapping, and now constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. “The proposed ban on civil unions and marriage is a mean-spirited attempt to divide Wisconsin and I indicated that it should be defeated,” Feingold said. “It discriminates against thousands of people in our communities – our co-workers, our neighbors, our friends, and our family members. It would single out members of a particular group and forever deny them rights and protections granted to all other Wisconsin citizens. It would also outlaw civil unions and jeopardize many legal protections for all unmarried couples, whether of the same or the opposite sex. We shouldn’t enshrine this prejudice in our state’s Constitution.”

The Washington Post:

Feingold called the amendment "a mean-spirited attempt" to single out gay men and lesbians for discrimination and said he would vote against it. But he went further, announcing that he favors legalizing same-sex marriages.

That puts him at odds with many prominent Democratic politicians who support gay rights but not same-sex marriage. Should Feingold decide to run for the party's presidential nomination in 2008, his position would put him to the left of many likely rivals.
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"Obviously, it's a very difficult issue and evokes a lot of emotions," Feingold said in a telephone interview yesterday. "I think it's something ultimately that people throughout the country will accept, but it's not an easy issue." He accused the Bush White House and the Republican Party of using same-sex marriage as a wedge issue "to hurt Democrats who are against discrimination."

In the party of wishy-washy John Kerry and Republican Lite Joseph Lieberman, Feingold is a refreshing reminder of the truly democratic principles the party is named after.

Wisconsin weighs in on war: In a symbolic message to Washington, 24 of 32 Wisconsin cities, from Milwaukee to Lacrosse, Madison to Ladysmith, approved a resolution calling for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Fifty-one soldiers from Wisconsin have been killed serving in Iraq.

Building Beijing's birds nest

Archinect links to construction shots of the Herzog & de Meuron-designed Olympic stadium in Beijing.

Santiago Sierra's synagogue gas chamber

From paying unemployed men to let him tattoo a line across their backs to paying people to publicly masturbate, Spanish artist Santiago Sierra rarely fails to outrage. But some say his latest work--inviting Germans to don gasmasks and walk through a former synogogue pumped full of car exhaust--has crossed a line: it was shut down by officials of the town of Pullheim-Stommeln after Jewish leaders protested.

The project used six parked cars to push toxic exhaust into the space. Visitors, accompanied by a fireman and wearing a gasmask, were allowed in for only five minutes at a time. While Sierra says the work's intent is the opposite of what he's charged with, "trivializing the holocaust," Stephan Kramer of the Central Council of Jews disagrees:

"Anyone who thinks it's art to simulate a 'gas chamber' via highly toxic car exhaust fumes, and in a former synagogue at that, in an attempt to convey supposed authenticity, is hurting not just the dignity of the victims but also that of the Jewish community. This has absolutely nothing to do with a culture of remembrance."

I haven't experienced this work in person, so I'm not sure how I feel about it. I see the resurgence of Nazism in Germany, and a spooky version embraced by pop culture, hip hop, and fashion at that, which makes me wonder if Dachau's "Never Again" is forever a thing of the past. On the other hand, is this really a work of cleansing? If it is, it's cleansing through spectacle.

New Art, where I found this story, tries to put a finger on this uneasiness. Is this Holocaust Porn?

If Sierra was actually after the creepy feeling that all this was real, if he wanted to "remember", he could have simply made a trip to Auschwitz. It is a horrible, horrible place. I'm still not sure if I think it is a good thing for it to exist. Its struggle for memory gets scarily close to a fascination with death, the same one that makes us look at an accident or listen to a horrible story. Yes, it makes us remember. But I'm not sure if the cost is not, well, some sort of a pornography, if you may, an indecent exposure of something that really should have been put to rest. Nonetheless, it exists - it's there to see for anyone unsure if his memory is correct, unsure if he has enough disgust for what people can do to other people. I don't think we need Santiago Sierra to remind us of that.

Rooting out progressives in US academia

The Guardian tracks the rise of progressive-hunting in American academia, from Fox's Sean Hannity, who urged students to record "leftwing propaganda" by professors to air on his show and righwinger David Horowitz's book/blacklist The Professors: the 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America to efforts in Pennsylvania and elsewhere to remove the International Baccalaureate (IB) program from high schools because, among other reasons, it's deemed "un-American," marxist, anti-Christian, part of an international communist conspiracy, and suspicious simply because it was "developed in a foreign country" (Switzerland).

"There is a cunning behind the battyness," says Todd Gitlin of Columbia, one of Horowitz's most dangerous academics. "It's not just the self-aggrandisement. It's an assault on one of the few social enclaves that the right doesn't control. There is a scattershot bellicosity whether the fortunes of the political right are up or down. They find it useful for fundraising if nothing else."

Serial No. 3817131

Born in Ohio but raised in Israel, Rachel Papo found herself serving as a photographer in the Israeli Air Force at age 18. Her serial number then--3817131--is the number in the title of her new photo series, shot in 2004, that captures young women during their mandatory military service in Israel. She writes:

The life of an eighteen-year-old girl in Israel is interrupted when she is plucked out of her environment at an age when sexual, educational, and family values are at their highest exploration point. She is then placed in a rigorous institution, where individuality becomes a secondary matter, making room for nationalism. “I solemnly swear…to devote all of my strength and to sacrifice my life to protect the land and the liberty of Israel,” repeats the newly recruited soldier during her swearing-in ceremony. She enters the two-year period in which she will change from a girl to a woman, a teenager to an adult, all under a militaristic, masculine environment, and in the confines of an army that is engaged in daily war and conflict...

Flipbook novice

I tried my hand at BennetonPlay's Flipbook! application and had mixed results. My flip book of my dog cocking his head ended up looking like him shaking off after a bath. Not nearly as artful as this one of a woman eating a melting ice cream cone or this balloon guy. Make your own here.

I'd hit that?

Sony Playstation 2 delves into skanky territory with a new commercial where two jive-talkin' squirrels repeat the phrase, "I'd hit that," urban slang used "when you see a girl really attractive, and that you would have intercourse with her if the opp[o]rtunity presented itself," according to the Urban Dictionary. But McDonald's beat them to the punch. Read Andrew Teman's post, "McDonalds Wants You To F*ck Its Sandwiches." The best use of "I'd hit that" I've seen is a more literal interpretation, found on a shirt by BustedTees (above).

Culturejamming Chevy

Chevy tries out DIY, user-created virals with a site called Chevy Tahoe: The Apprentice where users can create their own TV spots for SUVs. Naturally, like the Bush-Cheney Sloganator before it, this is rich turf for culturejamming. As Worldchanging reports, the fun has already begun. But did Chevy anticiphttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifate this, realizing that (as one WC commenter writes) "even the 'negative' ads would make the Tahoe more attractive to its target demographic"?

Eyeteeth in the San Francisco Chronicle

An Eyeteeth first: a metropolitan daily has quoted a blog post from yours truly. In a think-piece inspired, partly at least, by the movie V for Vendetta no less. Read "Can art still play a subversive role in society?" by Steven Winn.

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Jill Carroll freed!

Some good news from Iraq: After nearly 11 weeks in captivity Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll has been handed over to Iraqi Islamic Party office in Amiriya then to American authorities.

Biennialbusting.

A commenter at local blog MNSpeak discovered something: Google "Whitney Biennial" and click on the third search result, for whitneybiennial.org, and you're forwarded to what looks like the legit Whitney site. Soon enough, though, you find yourself at a page decrying the biennial's big sponsor, Altria Group, aka Phillip Morris.

Cicerobot.

Agrigento, Italy, is enlisting a robot to lead visitors on tours of the facility. Outfitted with wheels, a keyboard, a monitor, video camera and sensors, Cicerobot will help visitors navigate the museum and provide information on the exhibits:

Harris Dindo, part of the science team at Palermo University that developed the robot, said: "It uses the technique of latent semantic analysis, which means it can answer many of the questions tourists throw at it and have intelligent interaction with them."

ZDNet has more. Via SmartMobs and cross-posted at Off Center.