I’m glad people are still protesting MOCA’s despicable act of censorship.  The idea that an artist cannot make an anti-war statement for fear of offending veterans is Orwellian.

Hey TD, can we get Blu to put the image on a T-shirt? I already have several from Mr. Fish which I wear proudly and would purchase one of these as an honored adjunct to the collection!

Street artists being commissioned to paint for “the Man.”  Then whining when “the
Man” decides to go a different direction.  Both parties are a joke.  Go protest
something that matters.

I recently read an article about the military skittishness about
“Knowing the dead,” and publicly showing images of dead soldiers
and the effect it would have on the psyche of the public.  We only
have to recall the vivid pictures of the battlefield of dead soldiers
at Gettysburg to get the idea.  I was also reminded of presidents’
refusal to let the media show coffins of soldier bodies being
returned from the Vietnam War, the Gulf War and the one in Iraq. 
It did have a delaying effect on the reaction of the public to begin
their protests.  For the gravity of the matter just didn’t sink in from
the overwhelming verbal diarrhea of the media.  Too much incessant
talk tends to numb the ears, and the mind.  Words and more words get
lost in the ocean of words.  But pictures bring home the horror directly
to the heart. 

Art is a form of speech that uses images instead of the written or
spoken word.  As such, it is symbolic speech.  It has the immediate
power to sway opinion.  It has the power to expose shame for human
action.  When art is stifled for making comments on the horrors
humans inflict on other humans, we need to understand its unique
ability to suppress free speech and why it is of ultimate value for people
to intuit the gravity of the actions of humankind.  Vision is the fastest
way to arouse such understanding, it is called insight for a reason. 

The reason why the ten amendments were added to the Constitution
that guaranteed certain freedoms and rights were because much of the
population were concerned that those freedoms were not protected
enough as it was written.

Putting together the image of coffins with money blanketing them is
a jolt to the sense of morality against war.  Destroying that image in
the form of a mural on the wall of the museum was a travesty.  Even
though that image now exists only in memory, and fortunately a few
photographs, a photo of it sans the word censor which I think interferes
with the impact of the image, ought to be made into posters and
plastered all over the country and a middle finger given to the Museum
Director Deitch who had it destroyed.