Title : Have you noticed all the anti-4th-of-July articles?
link : Have you noticed all the anti-4th-of-July articles?
Have you noticed all the anti-4th-of-July articles?
Here's one I'm just catching up on: "Maybe it’s time to admit that the Statue of Liberty has never quite measured up" (WaPo).It's time! Why is it time? Is there a "Time's Up" movement that's sweeping up all the manifestations of love for America? No more enjoyment of the comfortable attributes of everyday patriotism!
Here's an excerpt from the column, which is by WaPo's art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott.
The ironies and blind spots pile up. Liberty was depicted as a woman, at a time when women didn’t have the right to vote. In 1882, the United States passed the nakedly racist Chinese Exclusion Act; a year later, construction of the base of the statue began with Chinese laborers among the workforce. The idea of the statue was associated with the 100th anniversary of the revolution that brought American independence. But Bartholdi created a sedate, classicizing and mostly sexless figure, not the radical revolutionary icon of liberty known in France as Marianne (the bare-chested woman seen in Delacroix’s 1830 painting, “Liberty Leading the People).”
Like breasts slipping out of a bodice, that quotation mark has slipped outside of the parenthesis. Here's the Delacroix:
Lots of guns in that picture. Kennicott implies that this woman (Marianne) is not "mostly sexless," but it's a call to arms, not a call to sex. Does Kennicott think the pantsless man in the foreground is sexy?
Speaking of sex:
I remember yet another moment of dissonance, from the day in 1986 when Reagan celebrated the renovation of the statue with a bland speech about liberty, complete with bombastic music and a relighting spectacle. Only days before, the Supreme Court had issued its decision in a case called Bowers v. Hardwick, which held that states could criminalize same-sex activity without violating the constitution. The week’s newspapers contained both stories, beautiful, choreographed imagery of the president with liberty in the background, and excerpts of a legal opinion that held a law targeted at LGBT people was justifiable because it was based on “millennia of moral teaching.”
I remember thinking, at the time, that a statue that held little meaning to me was suddenly meaningful in a very particular way: I could reject it. “This is your symbol, not mine,” I said, repeating if not the exact words at least sentiments similar to those others had no doubt felt since the beginning of the republic. It may well be that there is more genuine liberty embodied in the rejection of a symbol than the acceptance of it.
The boldface is mine. I believe this has been a theme in the articles I've been seeing — what my post title calls "anti-4th-of-July" materials. I can imagine that the writers of this material would push me back and say, no, we're not anti-4th-of-July — you're anti-4th-of-July! — because we're for the deepest values of liberty and you're not.
It's time! Why is it time? Is there a "Time's Up" movement that's sweeping up all the manifestations of love for America? No more enjoyment of the comfortable attributes of everyday patriotism!
Here's an excerpt from the column, which is by WaPo's art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott.
The ironies and blind spots pile up. Liberty was depicted as a woman, at a time when women didn’t have the right to vote. In 1882, the United States passed the nakedly racist Chinese Exclusion Act; a year later, construction of the base of the statue began with Chinese laborers among the workforce. The idea of the statue was associated with the 100th anniversary of the revolution that brought American independence. But Bartholdi created a sedate, classicizing and mostly sexless figure, not the radical revolutionary icon of liberty known in France as Marianne (the bare-chested woman seen in Delacroix’s 1830 painting, “Liberty Leading the People).”
Like breasts slipping out of a bodice, that quotation mark has slipped outside of the parenthesis. Here's the Delacroix:
Lots of guns in that picture. Kennicott implies that this woman (Marianne) is not "mostly sexless," but it's a call to arms, not a call to sex. Does Kennicott think the pantsless man in the foreground is sexy?
Speaking of sex:
I remember yet another moment of dissonance, from the day in 1986 when Reagan celebrated the renovation of the statue with a bland speech about liberty, complete with bombastic music and a relighting spectacle. Only days before, the Supreme Court had issued its decision in a case called Bowers v. Hardwick, which held that states could criminalize same-sex activity without violating the constitution. The week’s newspapers contained both stories, beautiful, choreographed imagery of the president with liberty in the background, and excerpts of a legal opinion that held a law targeted at LGBT people was justifiable because it was based on “millennia of moral teaching.”
I remember thinking, at the time, that a statue that held little meaning to me was suddenly meaningful in a very particular way: I could reject it. “This is your symbol, not mine,” I said, repeating if not the exact words at least sentiments similar to those others had no doubt felt since the beginning of the republic. It may well be that there is more genuine liberty embodied in the rejection of a symbol than the acceptance of it.
The boldface is mine. I believe this has been a theme in the articles I've been seeing — what my post title calls "anti-4th-of-July" materials. I can imagine that the writers of this material would push me back and say, no, we're not anti-4th-of-July — you're anti-4th-of-July! — because we're for the deepest values of liberty and you're not.
Thus articles Have you noticed all the anti-4th-of-July articles?
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