Month: July 2003

Here’s a word not typically associated with art: appropriate.

It’s at the core of a flap over aborted plans to display work by a respected Tampa artist in the Orlando City Hall. Tampa City Council member Linda Saul-Sena, who likes the work of the artist in question, Jeff Whipple, calls it censorship.

While it’s fair to question Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer’s Kinkadeian taste in art, that’s not the point. The issue is who, other than the artist, is entitled to make the call as to what is appropriate for a given venue?

Former Orlando Mayor Glenda Hood had no problem with Whipple’s work, and she made the decision to exhibit his 25-year retrospective. Presumably, some Mapplethorpe pieces, for example, might not have passed muster. City Hall is a public place, but it’s not to be confused with a museum. Remember the St. Petersburg experience with Jim Crow-era art in its City Hall? It was acceptable for the longest time.

Mayor Dyer may be a philistine, but his input should have standing.

He objected, for example, to Whipple’s self-portrait of the artist with a phone cord wrapped around his neck. And he didn’t much care for a painting that depicts a man with one leg sliced off holding a coffee mug and drill and a woman with bleeding legs holding a coffee mug and a power saw. He either didn’t get the social commentary or, having gotten it, still didn’t deem it appropriate for City Hall.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, Whipple said that the content of art to be shown in a public place “shouldn’t be an issue for someone who’s not an art professional to make a decision about.”

Well, former Mayor Hood made one.

Liberia’s cease-fire is typically described as “fragile.” That’s like saying the United Nations can be, well, disputatious. The return of the abyss seems but another atrocity away.

Liberia has been a mess for a long time, but nothing matches the carnage-filled regime of President Charles Taylor. In the aftermath of Taylor’s coup against Samuel Doe in 1989, virtually the entire population of 3.3 million has been displaced and hundreds of thousands have been killed — often brutally. Taylor has been indicted for war crimes by a special U.N. court.

Now, as the U.S. explores the possibility of sending in troops as part of an international peacekeeping — or peace-establishing — force, Taylor has indicated an interest in stepping down — AFTER the arrival of peacekeepers. Details are yet to be fleshed out, and subplot scenarios abound.

Taylor, who was trained in the guerrilla camps of Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, is a certifiably dishonorable man. He’s earned that rep the old-fashioned way: he’s been accused of trafficking in weapons and diamonds, conscripting child soldiers and backing rebels known for raping and hacking off the limbs of civilians. He is not to be trusted — or believed.

So, suppose he doesn’t go gently into that Nigerian night for some asylum? What if a bunch of henchmen follow suit? What if Liberia starts to look ominously like Somalia, the sequel? What if the “Q” word — quagmire — looks increasingly applicable to Liberia?

Now suppose the U.S. reissues another — Iraqiesque — deck of most-wanted playing cards? Taylor would obviously be the prize catch. Would Taylor be the Ace of Spades?

How politically incorrect would that be?

It’s something we’re all forced to think about. In the event of a catastrophic attack on Washington, what is the line of succession to the president?

Even civics-challenged Americans know that Vice President Dick Cheney is next in line to President George W. Bush. But beyond that?

Arguably, the next most “presidential” person — in experience, demeanor, national reputation and international renown — is Secretary of State Colin Powell. Only he, not unlike Powell predecessor Alexander “I’m in charge here” Haig, is not next in the line of succession.

Powell’s behind Denny Hastert and Ted Stevens. The former is the Speaker of the House; the latter, the Senate President Pro Tempore.

And if you figured Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was right behind Powell, you figured wrong. It’s John Snow. The Treasury Secretary. Yes, THAT John Snow.

But there is change afoot. There is legislation approved in the Senate and pending in the House, that would elevate the Homeland Security Secretary — Tom Ridge — from 18th to the 8th spot.

He would be right in front of Gayle Norton and Ann Veneman. They are the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture, respectively.

Sleep well.

Call it “Japanese Internment Policy, The Sequel.” In effect, the American Civil Liberties Union does. To America’s citadel of all things liberal, the post-9/11 period is all about America’s designated “enemy combatant” detainees and all the governmental gumshoeing and snooping entailed in making life miserable for any Mohammed Atta wannabes.

For the ACLU, John Ashcroft is a scary amalgam of Heinrich Himmler, Benito Mussolini, J.Edgar Hoover, Josef Stalin, Bull Connor, Richard Nixon and Pat Buchanan. And maybe Vlad the Impaler, Francisco Franco and G. Gordon Liddy too. To America’s fortress of all things left, the attorney general is the poster pol for intimidation, intolerance, arbitrariness, xenophobia, domestic spying and garden variety strong-arm tactics.

And as for the USA Patriot Act, it’s tantamount to the legalized jackbooting of the U.S. Constitution.

“You don’t need to be a ‘card-carrying’ ACLU member to know that our government’s response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th has created the greatest crisis for civil liberties in our history,” wrote Howard L. Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida. Those words were part of his message to those gathered recently in St. Petersburg for the ACLU of Florida-sponsored (24th annual) Nelson Poynter Civil Liberties Award dinner.

But there is an upside for the ACLU.

Its Florida membership now stands at 17,600. Two years ago it was 13,000. That’s a hike of 35 percent in just two years.

How’s that for irony? The Patriot Act as recruiting tool.