P.J. Crowley

After World War II and the beginning of the Cold War the heart of the art scene moved from Paris to New York, which debuted with something it called abstract expressionism. This movement was so wildly apolitical it caused certain people sincere paranoia that the CIA was funding it. The thought was that serious intellectuals wouldn't stop to consider what their government was doing because they'd be so caught up considering the expression behind this:



There are obviously a number of reasons why things probably didn't happen this way, but a couple of them are
1. Art is rarely political ever, and there's nothing about impressionism or cubism or dadaism or any other movement from before the war that's any more political than abstract expressionism. In fact most of the 20th century was about extracting the personal from the political, and it was stuff that happened during the Cold War that made anyone start thinking about getting back to macro concerns.
2. The suggestion that any branch of government could do anything remotely this effective goes against everything history has taught us about the government.
3. If the government wants to do something horrible, it just does it. It doesn't bother distracting anyone.

This has been, by any accounts, a fascinating quarter of the year. An earthquake and a tsunami created calamity about a nuclear meltdown which gave us primers in nuclear theory, and when the fears were debunked by SOMETHING EVERYONE ON EARTH SHOULD READ we were, or at least I was reminded of Michael Moore's conviction that the media traffics in fear. Meanwhile Scott Walker, Hosni Mubarak, and Moammar Qadhafi have played out in real time the unassailable property that power's only function is to sustain itself, and have demonstrated by their respective actions how class and standards of living dictate morality the exact same way that demand dictates supply. Essentially, we've had confirmed for us the practical realities of every theory we ever read about in college. We've also watched our socialist president become an ineffectual centrist, been exposed to the enormous hypocrisy of our Tea Party bandleaders, and had confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that Michele Bachmann really is as stupid as you think she is. Oh, and we got to add another name to the fascinating yet inadequately examined list of political assassins.

Today Barack Obama did something that isn't just shameful, but pointless. And while I don't see any Republicans giving him grief about it, I can't think of anyone it could have made happy. It's too convoluted to make him look not-soft on terror, it actually requires every member of his base to ask him why he's allowing Bradley Manning to be, not necessarily tortured, but badly kept, and why he's chosen to do something that is the exact same thing the dishonorably discharged previous administration did. It also provides an open invitation for anyone who wants it to compare him to George Bush, and to hold up statements he made condemning Bush for adopting a for-us-or-against-us attitude while in office. Furthermore, it won't do a thing to make anybody think the government is speaking with one voice if they didn't before. The only way I can look at it is as a terrible political move that will only hurt his image, made for terrible reasons by someone who is otherwise in full pandering mode, in a time where liberty is on everyone's tongue. In short, it was some terrible shit, the kind of terrible shit governments do because governments will do terrible shit whenever it's even an option.

Which brings me to Animal Collective, and the current art scene.



I chose this song for two reasons: 1. I really like it, and it's fully apolitical, and 2. it's video is one of the few that isn't permanently disturbing. That said, if you want some abstract expressionist apolitically gut wrenching art, check out any other video they have made.

Hipster culture is so insulated right now someone could make the argument it's been sanctioned by the CIA to keep people from paying attention to the news. Hipster irony isn't really even ironic anymore so much as it's a kind of paralyzing rabbit-hole of meaning and not meaning things. Wavves I think captures this well. They sing about their own inadequacy over music that's meant to convey apathy but also often tries to sound like Animal Collective, who are clearly perfectionists, and are more creative musically than just about anybody in the scene. And I'm not so sure the "we're inadequate but not really but really we are but everyone is and we're actually really proud of that" has any real end point to tether itself around. They're joking, they're not joking, they're not joking but they're not serious, whatever; they're not going anywhere. They're not saying anything about themselves besides that they subscribe to the culture of their generation, and they're certainly not saying anything about the world around them.

Which is fine. Art isn't meant to be political. I don't think it's meant to be our refuge from the political either. But today our president fired a perfectly decent employee of the government because he pointed out something the government should be embarrassed about. The government should be even more embarrassed now, but it won't be, because now it will speak with one voice again. So today I'm hoisting a picture of Mr. Philip J. Crowley. A man who got fired for doing the right thing. Tomorrow I'll give the government another chance, because it represents a country I love. Then maybe I'll listen to some indie rock.