This is really funny. Max Blumenthal sent it along as “the most creative slam of Zionism ever.” And while I’d like to include it in my brief that Zionism is becoming a dirty word, that would be a stretch.
Activist/scholar/jester Max Geller was invited on to the WGN TV set in Chicago because he is organizing a protest against the over-inclusion of Pierre Auguste Renoir paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago. The anchors joshed with Geller about why he cares. Because, he explains:
Renoir sucks as a painter…
What gives museums a right to peddle this treacle?…
Yes, in real life trees really are beautiful, but if you just took Renoir’s word for it it would just be a collection of disgusting green squiggles and nobody needs to see that.
Geller gets a little more serious: The Art Institute should sell these Renoirs “and instead buy some art that is painted by women or painted by people of color.” Curators should be “intentional” about who they put on their walls.
“But why not let the free market dictate whose paintings are good or not?” asks the male anchor. Geller:
When we let the free market dictate things we get things like climate change, things like the prison industrial complex, like Zionism, and the destruction of sea otter habitat.
The female anchor jumps in. “Let’s stick with Renoir though. I’m curious why him and not Monet…”
Geller crossed a red line with the reference to sea otter habitat!
Here’s #RenoirSucksatPainting.
Ah, such idiocy is priceless.
So, anti-Zionist equals anti-Renoir and anti-free market, and Zionism is a function of the free market.
I just can’t understand why you people can’t break into the mainstream in the United States.
“Geller crossed a red line with the reference to sea otter habitat! ” A good one! Perceptive!
BTW, nice there is another Geller to think about.
i love that he squeezed zionism in there with global warming and the prison complex. way to go max! sea otters — maybe he’s right.
Nice to see him condemn Zionism, and manage to squeeze it in to the broadcast.
“When we let the free market dictate things we get things like climate change,”
That’s a silly thing to say. Even if the “man-made CO2 causes climate change” conjecture were true*, the free market is not the culprit. It is not currently possible for a modern, industrial, economy to run without producing CO2, regardless of whether the production is mediated by a free market or a planned economy.
(*Of course, the available evidence suggests it isn’t.)
‘Geller gets a little more serious: The Art Institute should sell these Renoirs “and instead buy some art that is painted by women or painted by people of color.”’
Women and “people of colour” can paint just as badly as Renoir. Why not buy some good paintings, regardless of who painted them?
(And, whatever his other failings, Renoir could paint hats. That was the most important skill for a nineteenth century artist.)