Michael Gerson on the Republicans
July 23, 2007, 11:05 am
Posted by John McGreevy
Michael Gerson in the Washington Post on the dilemmas posed for the Republicans should Guiliani be the nominee, with an extended reference to Catholic social thought. Fred Thompson’s entrance into the race, expected after Labor Day, and Mitt Romney’s strong showing in the polls and in fundraising, means they might divide the “social conservative” vote and ease the way for Guiliani.
on July 23rd, 2007 at 1:34 pm
I am a liberal but I like Giuliani. Gerson is quite unfair in his comparing Rudy to Nixon. Absurd. Before Giuliani, Dinkins let criminals have too much leeway. That is what makes conservatives out of liberals. Giuliani rightly insisted on small things to maintain law and order. He really did the impossible. He made New York rank high on the list as people to visit.
I am not a Virgin Mary fan, and I do love art, but I agree with Rudy on objecting to that exhibition. Art, after all is a way to communicate. What kind of art is that which offended practically everyone?
on July 23rd, 2007 at 8:24 pm
I hesitate to disagree with Bill, but I think Guiliani, my last ultimate work boss, is a mixed bag. His choice of folks to surround him, e.g Kerik, Msgr. Placa, shows an obverreliance on personal loyalty (something all Catholics should be on guard against.)
While Dinkins was too much of a nice man and some of his clubhouse appointees were abysmal (e.g. in OTB), a number of his criminal justice people paved the way for the Guilaini success in cleaning up New York. take a look at the prologue of Joe Hyne’s “triple honmicide” - a good read in itself - about Ray Kelly and the problem of police corruption.
Katherine Abate was the finest Probation leader i saw in New York.
There are others as well; but, it’s true Guiliani really got the crime scene under control - but, see the Sunday Times on race relations and Rudy.
on July 23rd, 2007 at 8:31 pm
I am a conservative, but I also like Giuliani notwithstanding his abortion stand and his, er, marital pecadillos. My hope is that, if he became president he would moderate his abortion stance.
Now Bill, one need not be a fan of Mary to appreciate her lovely and heartfelt Magnificat, but I appreciate your take on that exhibition. You are that most highly prized entity: an honest liberal.
on July 23rd, 2007 at 9:32 pm
I should or feel compelled to say that I have the utmost regard for Mary , the Mother of Jesus. Especially as the hard working, peasant woman who was in no way privileged as she worked out her salvation. She was indeed full of grace.
on July 23rd, 2007 at 9:42 pm
But here is something that can be a major problem for Rudy. As far as I can see it looks like very bad judgment on Rudy’s part.
http://www.telegram.com:80/article/20070722/NEWS/707220489/1116
on July 23rd, 2007 at 10:16 pm
What kind of art is that which offended practically everyone?
The Rite of Spring (Stravinsky)
Ulysses (Joyce)
Lolita (Nabokov)
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (Picasso)
Olympia (Manet)
Much of the outrage over the Chris Ofili painting of the Virgin Mary was because elephant dung was used in the painting. The New York Times reported:
*****
At his daily news conference, the Mayor said that the museum’s ”Sensation” exhibition, which includes a painting of the Virgin Mary on a canvas adorned with elephant dung, was a ‘’sick demonstration” supported by the city’s ”alleged intellectual elite” who consider people opposed to the exhibition to be barbarians.
”I would ask people to step back and think about civilization,” Mr. Giuliani said. ”Civilization has been about trying to find the right place to put excrement, not on the walls of museums. The advance that we had in our civilization was that we figured out how to deal with human excrement, without putting it on walls. So I wonder who are the barbarians, and who aren’t?”
*****
There was no human excrement on the walls or anywhere else in the museum. The artist, an observant Catholic, was of Nigerian descent and had spent time in Nigeria, where elephant dung has quite a different significance than human or animal excrement does to us in the United States.
Yes, art is a way to communicate, but communication is a two-way street. Sometimes you have to put some thought into what an artist is trying to say, which Giuliani did not do, and in fact he didn’t even have the basic facts right.
And of course he didn’t merely “object.” He threatened to cut off all city funding, evict the museum from the building, and fire the board of trustees. The museum fought back with a suit on First Amendment grounds and won.
This was Giuliani at his worst.
on July 24th, 2007 at 9:14 am
Yes, I agree the BAM controversy was Giuliani at his worst: deliberately finding controversy rather than trying to defuse it through dialogue, and proposing a “resolution” that was disproportionate and, to put it mildly, ultra vires and completely dismissive of the constitutional rights of the people involved.
I don’t live in New York, but my understanding is that Giuliani did impose a sense of order that gave the city some relief from a sense of rule by thugs. But please lets not kid ourselves: in many ways, the police became thugs, they just made sure their targets were dark and not well-connected enough to be supported by voters.
Calling Giuliani’s marital missteps peccadilloes does the mayor a favor he doesn’t deserve. And that’s putting it nicely.
on July 24th, 2007 at 9:24 am
David’s comment is very much on the mark when he says that communcation is a two-way street. I saw the Sensations show and the Ofili Madonna. If the museum hadn’t informed people that Ofilii regularly used elephant dung in his paintings because of it’s significance in Nigerian culture, no one would have known it or made any kind of a fuss. (In other words, you don’t see dung when you look at the picture.) But Giuliani had a perfectly closed mind, and a keen eye for his own kind of sensation. As a New Yorker I can say he was widely loathed. And anyone–anyone–would have done as good a job rallying the city after 9/11 as he did.
on July 24th, 2007 at 9:38 am
David, Your point is well taken. Certainly, Rudy’s attempt to bar funding from the museum was out of order. Later Rudy saw that his action was a mistake. One writer did note that the museum sought publicity and succeeded. Perhaps all of us got taken.
Time will tell whether Olfil’s work is a work of art or not.
on July 24th, 2007 at 10:36 am
Elephant crap is still crap. I would seriously question Ofili’s esthetic judgement and sensitivity to American Catholics’ reverance for Mary. We (Americans, and especially white Americans) are constantly lectured about how we should be “sensitive” to the values of other cultures; apparently those admonitions are only to be obeyed by us, not others.