Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammo

     I haven't been to Arizona since I was a boy several decades ago, and certainly don't remember the political climate at that time. I have been following a little about Jan Brewer, Governor of Arizona, recently, her lucrative connection to State run prisons, her false charge that Mexican drug lords were responsible for "hundreds of headless bodies" in the Arizona desert and her more recent refusal to fund transplant surgeries causing the death of two people in the last few weeks. Please remind me who was accused of having "Death Panels" now? Perhaps Jan could pull the measly few million dollars it would take to save the lives of those waiting for a kidney or heart transplant from the State prison system? It was even more gob smacking to learn on the Saturday of the shooting in Tucson that the upcoming Arizona Legislature's first order of business is to pass a law allowing guns in schools and Colleges, after Columbine and Virginia Tech? Really? What planet are these people coming from?
     When I turned on the TV Saturday morning and heard about a shooting I actually thought someone had shot Jan Brewer, maybe over the death of transplant patients or perhaps over Immigration policies, oh yeah, almost forgot about that one, the "show me your papers" law that smacked of racism and internment camps, the Federal government didn't let them pass it but it shows the kind of mentality we are dealing with here.
     I am still a recovering Breaking News Addict so I accidentally watched the News all Saturday. Since a political figure was shot I just automatically assumed the whole thing was politically motivated. I looked at the shooters UTube postings that day and really could not make head nor tail of his bizarre postings. There was mention of government mind control and currency systems being backed by gold, that's weird because I just saw uber right-wing Rand Paul supporting gold based currency on The Colbert Report a week earlier! There were postings of his favourite literature, among them The Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf and Ayn Rand, but it seemed to me he was so caught up in semantics and this A=B so B=C logic that this guy is clearly verging on schizophrenia. So it probably doesn't matter what books he read because he's going to come up with an insane conclusion. I don't watch or subscribe to FOX News so I don't know how long it took them to come up their twisted view of the whole thing and lay blame, apparently their new narrative is the gunman was a left-wing lunatic who read The Communist Manifesto, see it proves it, that's all you need to know, Fair and Balanced if you only have a smidgen of the facts. We will probably never know or understand a motive, because these kinds of people have a mental disorder.
     Excuse those of us who remember the recent Health Care debate in the US last summer and took a lot of the violence and calls to violence as threatening such as the 1000 posters at a Tea Party rally that read "Bury Obama Care With Kennedy". Remember when outraged Tea Partiers publicly released the home phone numbers and address of Democrats who were supporting Health Care and called for protests on their front lawns, how about when somebody mistakenly targeted the home of a Congressman's brother? And of course the famous Palin website that pictured gun sights over Congressional districts, one of them over Congresswoman Gifford's district, as well as the "don't retreat, reload" comments? Palin also echoed this on her ridiculous reality TV show, Palin's Alaska, I saw it in a clip somewhere, I cannot stand to watch it for more than 35 seconds but she said it again when recreational shooting with one of her kids. I certainly remember the Republicans cheering on the Tea Party protesters on the day of the Health Care signing, when they were yelling "faggot" and "nigger" at certain Congressmen, it's not like John Boehner said tone it down then. Who can forget the Ground Zero Mosque uproar? I'm sorry but people in the Free World have the right to practice any religion they like, even in the US, it's the First Amendment of your Constitution. It sure seemed like a good time for George W. Bush to call for a tone-down of rhetoric, as he did in the days following  9/11, wow, I sometimes wonder if Americans have the memory capacity of a dog?
     There will always be crazy people but God forbid there should be any form of gun control in the US to prevent the multiple tragedies that have occurred over the decades. Have a look at the opening of the Rachael Maddow show from Monday, you can see it online, she pointed out that on the day Jared Loughner was born there was also a mass shooting and then goes through a long list of the mass shootings that have happened over the last two decades. It's total insanity! Does the public really need access to machine gun capabilities? Would you give public access to armoured vehicles? Ground to air missiles? Anthrax? Nuclear Bombs? Of course not. People are not hunting deer with the kind of guns used in most mass shootings and we should all feel more comfortable in the world if criminals or the criminally insane did not have this kind of weapon. I wonder how Americans would feel if a Mexican Drug cartel shot dozens of innocent people at a Safeway in Tucson? I wonder if there would be a step-back from the pro gun lobbyists? You know since they are evil foreigners and not citizens protesting the government.
     Of course I am surveying the media in the past few days and as expected everyone is getting way off track with this story, focusing on making sense of the insensible. How about some solutions? What if victims of gun crime were able to sue the gun seller? Would you give your car keys to an obviously very drunk individual? No, and those who sell guns should be held accountable too. This brings me to my second point about banning the unstable from owning guns by checking their Facebook and UTube accounts. It always seems to happen that we find out after the fact how depressed, or delusional, or angry people were before a shooting spree, yet no one bothered to look up their online profiles? Maybe parents, teachers and friends could be the first line of defense here although I would like to see gun shops do an online profile check before handing over merchandise.
     Who knows if this Jared Loughner was motivated by left or right ideology, and really does it matter what went thru his mind? We do know, however, that the NRA has a huge influence in the US and recently tried to influence gun laws in Canada, unsuccessfully. Clinton managed to push some gun control back in the 90's, remember the very successful Cash for Guns program? and remember how Bush cancelled it and let any gun control laws expire in 2004? Certainly Arizona's gun laws play a major role here too, egged on by the smokey-whiskey throated Republican Jan Brewer herself. Apparently people can walk around with concealed guns in Arizona, just like the Wild West of movies, do you know what the second place runner up for walking around with guns society is? Yemen. Yes, the super dangerous third world terrorist laden hell hole. You've come a long way baby (Arizona)!
     I know most Americans don't give a shit about the rest of the world,or even know of it's existence, although love going around saying they are the "Leaders of the Free World". Well, the rest of us in the free world look on in horror most of the time. We enacted gun control after one mass shooting in Canada in 1989 and as a side note have been political assassination free since 1970, before then 1868! Sure any society has its insane mass murderers but the US is really reaching new heights in the past few years, it gets harder each time to have any respect for American society.
    

For The Benefactors Of Outrage

     Back in my Art School days, in the 1990's, I think we spent about half our time working on projects, a quarter of our time talking about our projects and the remainder talking about censorship in the arts, it was a huge topic in those days. In the 90's Madonna caused controversy with her Sex Book and Sinead O'Conner ruined her career by ripping up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live, Christian groups were outraged! In Alberta the newly elected Premier, Ralph Klein, took issue with a certain lesbian Art Exhibit, maybe it showed vagina's and my parents generation was swallowing their dentures everywhere just at the thought of it. The effect of the media outrage was to have Alberta cancel funding to the Arts. We all knew the Ultra-Conservative Ralph wanted to cancel Arts funding, all Conservatives despise the arts, too much freedom of expression I think, all he needed was an excuse and a media circus to do it. It's funny because I don't recall any outrage when Britney Spears was flashing her kooch any chance she got yet people were upset in my city when the lesbians held their own Pride Parade carrying signs like "Snatch The Pride", I thought that was clever. People always seem to be angry at lesbian lady parts and not angry at Spears, I guess if straight guys think they have a chance then they are all for freedom of expression?
     Considering all the outrageousness of this day and age from Lady Gaga to anything your children are seeing on the internet, it's hard to believe Conservatives still look for this issue in our time. Case in point, a recent exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery,NPG, in Washington DC. For the first time the NPG is exhibiting works by Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trasnsgendered,  LGBT, artists called, Hide/Seek, Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, featuring 105 artists including Georgia O'Keefe and Andy Warhol. Of course this is gold for the Conservative CNS News who is raising a fuss about a certain four minute video piece that depicts a crucifix with ants crawling over it entitled "A Fire In My Belly", intended to depict the suffering of an AIDS patient. So the Catholic League also had to jump into this and call it something along the line of assaulting Christian sensibilities. Now we have House Republicans demanding investigations and cutting funding to the Smithsonian, the NPG is a branch of it. In-coming Republican House Speaker John Boehner, said of the exhibit "American families have a right to expect better from recipients of taxpayer funds in a tough economy." Oh god, spare me the outrage please! Turns out the only funding the Smithsonian receives is for the building, upkeep, care of exhibits, and staff, funding for this and other exhibits comes from private and Corporate donors. Where is the call to freedom of expression rights we hear when the right-wing defends obvious racist slurs from Tea Partiers or the defense of Ann Coulters right to spew her hatred in my country? (Which probably breaks our hate laws). Yeah I know, we learned this during the Ground Zero mosque garbage, the right-wing has the Constitution behind them and they can do and say whatever they like, but if they don't like you or can make political hay out of it, then you don't have the right. You can't argue ignorance though.
     To me, and many others, the Arts are essential to our culture, they entertain and inform, challenge belief and attitudes, reflect, encourage the very democratic and free exchange of ideas, all the things we hold near and dear in Western democracies. I do not give a flying fig what the Catholic League of whoever have to say about anything, please go deal with your own scandals right now, don't get me started on that stuff! I think both our countries in North America have long ago embraced the idea of freedom of religion, that also means freedom from religion, everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and is not subject to a government approved religion. So when I hear whoever religious group is enraged, or engorged, over an idea they find offensive it reminds me of one thing, cartoons. Remember when certain Muslim groups were so angry over a perceived cartoon of Mohammed? I think it ended in the murder of a Van Gogh descendant in Holland, a friend of mine thought World War III was going to start over this cartoon outrage. I don't think I'm wrong in thinking all of us who value Western ideas of freedom of expression were taken aback by the reaction in Muslim countries? This is also what I think when I hear about outrage over pieces of Art. I thought this was why we are at war with the Taliban, because they are dangerous religious extremists who hate criticism and ideas other than what they deem correct?