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Should all works – past, present, and future – by artists caught in the #metoo trap be banished forever?

One really wonders if that’s what it’s coming to, because Harper’s columnist Lionel Shriver, in an essay adapted for the New York Post, has noticed a problem:

 For reasons that escape me, artists’ misbehavior now contaminates the fruits of their labors, like the sins of the father being visited upon the sons. So it’s not enough to punish transgressors merely by cutting off the source of their livelihoods, turning them into social outcasts, and truncating their professional futures. You have to destroy their pasts. Having discovered the worst about your fallen idols, you’re duty-­bound to demolish the best about them as well.

Shriver cites the distributor pullings of works by “great” artists such as Louis C.K., Roseanne Barr, Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby, and others of the Hollywood ilk. I recall reading that Lady Gaga said she got rid of some tape she made with another one credibly accused of sex harassment, so I guess we can add him. ‘Great’ (which shows up in the headline) can probably be argued about some of these guys, but that’s actually irrelevant, they’re all quite talented, and most important, a precedent has been set.

Shriver talks about why that’s such a problem:

What artists of every stripe care about most is what they have made. The contemporary impulse to rebuke disgraced creators by vanishing their work from the cultural marketplace exhibits a mean-­spiritedness, a vengefulness even, as well as an illogic. Why, if you catch someone doing something bad, would you necessarily rub out what they’ve done that’s good? If you’re convicted of breaking and entering, the judge won’t send bailiffs around to tear down the tree house you built for your daughter and to pour bleach on your homemade pie.

For artists, the erasure of their work may be a harsher penalty than incarceration or fines. Eliminating whole series from streaming platforms, withdrawing novels from bookstores and canceling major gallery retrospectives constitute, for those in the creative professions, cruel and unusual punishment.

Stalin used to like to make people into ‘non-persons’ for their political transgressions. Today we are seeing the same thing being done to artists no matter what the public wants. Flawed actor, caught sex-harassing? Erase his memory!

And I can add that this is being done no matter how many innocent people it hurts. Remember the actor who was mocked for being seen working at Trader Joe’s? Recall that he was a refugee from the Cosby show erasures, getting no royalties for his work and reduced to retail work. Apparently, the iconclasts smashing and pulling these collective works of art with a flawed star couldn’t care less about all the other artists whose work also get erased.

Here’s the bigger problem: With a precedent set, don’t think that such erasures of art won’t spread much further than the Hollywood miscreants.

Anybody remember Caravaggio? The man was a thug, a true, bona fide thug, constantly getting into knife fights, constantly losing the trust of his patrons, and dying a miserable death after yet another knife fight on a Mediterranean beach of infected wounds while on the lam from the law. He hung out with whores, took other people’s girlfriends, and seemed as well to have a taste for little boys and was once chased out of a school for his excessive ‘gazes‘ at the kids. Rest assured, it’s quite likely he was a pervert.

And he was also one of the most magnificent artists who ever lived. His work is utterly breathtaking.

Any student of art is always left wondering how a thug could be so guided by angels in the depth and breadth of his beautiful masterpieces. Yet those paintings weren’t done by angels, they were done by a thug. And we can still appreciate them – as well as look on in wonder at the paradox of the flawed personality of the artist and the output of his work.

It’s not just Caravaggio, he’s just the one who leapt out. Chekhov had a mistress, that’s sexist enough in the #MeToo era, do we get rid of him, too? And all of this comes in the context of a broader censorship already going on. There are writers whose work is being erased because of the ignorant misreading of their author’s intentions – think: Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. There are also statues that are being taken down because leftists don’t like the heroes depicted or the thinking of those who erected those statues. It’s not enough to disagree, the work itself must be destroyed. It all constitutes an amazing effort to obliterate history, same as Pol Pot sought to do, and start with a Year Zero, as the French revolutionaries tried to do.

It never ends well. Shriver is persuasive and he is very right: This crap with the television artists needs to be nipped in the bud.

 

Should all works – past, present, and future – by artists caught in the #metoo trap be banished forever?

One really wonders if that’s what it’s coming to, because Harper’s columnist Lionel Shriver, in an essay adapted for the New York Post, has noticed a problem:

 For reasons that escape me, artists’ misbehavior now contaminates the fruits of their labors, like the sins of the father being visited upon the sons. So it’s not enough to punish transgressors merely by cutting off the source of their livelihoods, turning them into social outcasts, and truncating their professional futures. You have to destroy their pasts. Having discovered the worst about your fallen idols, you’re duty-­bound to demolish the best about them as well.

Shriver cites the distributor pullings of works by “great” artists such as Louis C.K., Roseanne Barr, Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby, and others of the Hollywood ilk. I recall reading that Lady Gaga said she got rid of some tape she made with another one credibly accused of sex harassment, so I guess we can add him. ‘Great’ (which shows up in the headline) can probably be argued about some of these guys, but that’s actually irrelevant, they’re all quite talented, and most important, a precedent has been set.

Shriver talks about why that’s such a problem:

What artists of every stripe care about most is what they have made. The contemporary impulse to rebuke disgraced creators by vanishing their work from the cultural marketplace exhibits a mean-­spiritedness, a vengefulness even, as well as an illogic. Why, if you catch someone doing something bad, would you necessarily rub out what they’ve done that’s good? If you’re convicted of breaking and entering, the judge won’t send bailiffs around to tear down the tree house you built for your daughter and to pour bleach on your homemade pie.

For artists, the erasure of their work may be a harsher penalty than incarceration or fines. Eliminating whole series from streaming platforms, withdrawing novels from bookstores and canceling major gallery retrospectives constitute, for those in the creative professions, cruel and unusual punishment.

Stalin used to like to make people into ‘non-persons’ for their political transgressions. Today we are seeing the same thing being done to artists no matter what the public wants. Flawed actor, caught sex-harassing? Erase his memory!

And I can add that this is being done no matter how many innocent people it hurts. Remember the actor who was mocked for being seen working at Trader Joe’s? Recall that he was a refugee from the Cosby show erasures, getting no royalties for his work and reduced to retail work. Apparently, the iconclasts smashing and pulling these collective works of art with a flawed star couldn’t care less about all the other artists whose work also get erased.

Here’s the bigger problem: With a precedent set, don’t think that such erasures of art won’t spread much further than the Hollywood miscreants.

Anybody remember Caravaggio? The man was a thug, a true, bona fide thug, constantly getting into knife fights, constantly losing the trust of his patrons, and dying a miserable death after yet another knife fight on a Mediterranean beach of infected wounds while on the lam from the law. He hung out with whores, took other people’s girlfriends, and seemed as well to have a taste for little boys and was once chased out of a school for his excessive ‘gazes‘ at the kids. Rest assured, it’s quite likely he was a pervert.

And he was also one of the most magnificent artists who ever lived. His work is utterly breathtaking.

Any student of art is always left wondering how a thug could be so guided by angels in the depth and breadth of his beautiful masterpieces. Yet those paintings weren’t done by angels, they were done by a thug. And we can still appreciate them – as well as look on in wonder at the paradox of the flawed personality of the artist and the output of his work.

It’s not just Caravaggio, he’s just the one who leapt out. Chekhov had a mistress, that’s sexist enough in the #MeToo era, do we get rid of him, too? And all of this comes in the context of a broader censorship already going on. There are writers whose work is being erased because of the ignorant misreading of their author’s intentions – think: Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. There are also statues that are being taken down because leftists don’t like the heroes depicted or the thinking of those who erected those statues. It’s not enough to disagree, the work itself must be destroyed. It all constitutes an amazing effort to obliterate history, same as Pol Pot sought to do, and start with a Year Zero, as the French revolutionaries tried to do.

It never ends well. Shriver is persuasive and he is very right: This crap with the television artists needs to be nipped in the bud.

 

Lady Gaga started off her new Las Vegas residency, dubbed “Enigma,” with a political bang. The famous avant-garde singer, now A-list actress, took time out of her Saturday show to blast Vice President Mike Pence as a “disgrace” to his Christianity, and complained to the crowd about the “fucking president” not getting the government back up and running.

For an artist who spent the better part of a decade trying to be as unique as possible, she sure has ended up the same way as the rest of her colleagues: as a sour, angry, liberal.

In a particularly melodramatic and cringeworthy moment, the A Star is Born actress and “Poker Face” singer used some sappy piano ballad as a vehicle to vent her political frustrations, going after Trump. The crowd ate it up.

Gaga, dressed like a mermaid, began, “And if the fucking president of the United States could please put our government back in business … There are people who live paycheck to paycheck and need their money.” None of them were in attendance, of course. According to Ticketmaster, you need $521 to score a standing room only tickets, while actual seats range well into the thousands.

The musician’s diatribe was received by lavish applause, and she continued, choosing Vice President Mike Pence as the target for the rest of her political ire. Gesticulating wildly and echoing the same hamfisted perspective that Huffpo used in slamming Karen Pence as a “Homophobe” last week, Gaga called the vice president the “worst representation” of Christianity.

She claimed, “And to Mike Pence, who thinks it’s acceptable that his wife works at a school that bans LGBTQ, you are wrong. [Cue another ridiculous ovation] You said we should not discriminate against Christianity. You are the worst representation of what it means to be Christian.”

The self-declared arbiter of Christianity reflected on her own faith, of course finding nothing wrong with her way of living the Gospel. She asserted, “I am a Christian woman, and what I do know about Christianity is that we bear no prejudice and everyone’s welcome.” (except the Pences.)

“So you can take all that disgrace Mr. Pence and you can look yourself in the mirror and you’ll find it right there.”

Since she’s a longtime LGBTQ advocate, hating Pence makes sense. The sad thing is that her deluded opinions are amplified by her pop star status — even more so now because she has become an A-list actress. Still there’s hope that, as with most of these Hollywood types, many people are starting to see them as preening windbags whose “Christian” goodwill only extends to those to kiss their butts or spoon feed them the political worldview that they’re most comfortable with.

French authorities have built a ten-foot wall at a Total station in Calais used by migrants who attempt to storm lorries and break into Britain.

The barrier is being erected at a petrol station in the Marcel-Doret area where lorries stop to fill up with fuel before heading to the port and onwards to the United Kingdom. It is set to be finished by mid-February.

Local prefect Fabien Sudry told Nord Littoral that “smuggling networks meet there and take advantage of stations near the port to get migrants in trucks.”

“The situation was rather tense at this station. The police regularly had stones thrown at them,” Mr Sudry said.

A Total spokesman confirmed the barrier was built at the request of the Calais prefecture to “protect customers, staff, and migrants,” the Daily Mail reports, with locals comparing it to the wall that U.S. President Donald Trump wants to build along the southern border of the United States to stop mass illegal migration from Central and South America.

#Migration : Le #préfet du Pas-de-Calais a dévoilé qu’il avait convaincu le groupe #Total de construire un mur autour de leur station de la zone Marcel Doret #Calais https://t.co/0MqHSZCx7F

— Nord Littoral (@Nordlitt) January 17, 2019

Pro-migration aid workers object to the wall, as the barrier between the two spaces is “divisive.”

One Calais-based charity worker who wished to withhold their identity complained: “The wall is ugly and of course divisive.”

“This is very political — it aims to show desperate people that they are not welcome here, and that more and more walls and police will be used to keep them out.

“If you oppose such policies, you can get into a lot of trouble.”

There are an estimated 600 mostly male migrants hailing from Afghanistan, Iran, and Syria squatting in makeshift camps around the port town waiting to break into Britain — down from an estimated 10,000 during the heyday of the infamous “Calais Jungle”.

Le #préfet du #PasDeCalais a convaincu le groupe #Total à #Calais de construire un mur pour bloquer l’accès à un parking où des passeurs emmènent des #migrants pour les envoyer au #RoyaumeUni #immigration #PréférenceEtrangère #GrandRemplacement https://t.co/6s8JRUsn0Q

— Gauloise (@RespireRose) January 21, 2019

It is believed to be the first time that a wall has been so quickly erected in a hotspot area for trafficking with the intention of stopping migrants attempting to make the journey to the United Kingdom.

Illegal migration to Britain via France has been in the British headlines for nearly three months after more than 500 migrants have attempted to cross the English Channel by sea, with three boats arriving on the Kent coast on Sunday alone.

Tens of thousands enter or attempt to enter by stowing away in cars, goods vehicles, and ferries every year, with some even attempting to traverse the Channel Tunnel on foot.

Follow Breitbart London on Facebook: Breitbart London

Tucson Sector Border Patrol camera operators captured video of a bus dropping off a group of migrants at an unsecured portion of the border in southwest Arizona last week. The migrants quickly exit the bus and cross where no barrier exists to stop them.

The Border Patrol video, reported by NBC News’ Gabe Gutierrez and Annie Rose Ramos, shows a bus approaching an unsecured portion of the Arizona-Mexico border during the early morning hours of January 14.

“He (the camera operator) saw a bus stop on the Mexican side of the border,” Ajo Station Chief Fernando Grijalva told Gutierrez “The bus driver got out, opened the doors and then proceeded to have approximately 80 people exit the bus and cross into the United States illegally.”

“This is a crisis,” Grijalva stated in reference to the large numbers of migrant families and unaccompanied minors who are now illegally crossing the border in record numbers.

As Border Patrol camera operators watched, 84 migrants exited the bus and simply walked across the unsecured section of the border and illegally entered the U.S. The video concludes with ground-based Border Patrol agents arriving to apprehend the migrants.

It is apparent in the video that young children are part of the group being dropped off in the middle of the desert.

The outdated barriers in this region provide human smugglers with an easy solution to moving their human cargo across the border.

Tucson Sector Acting Chief Patrol Agent Jeffrey Self also responded to a question about a crisis from Gutierrez. “Is there a crisis on the border?” Gutierrez asked “Yes, there is,” the chief responded emphatically.

This portion of the Tucson Sector, located in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Park, is protected only by a small barbed-wire fence and an outdated vehicle barrier that does nothing to stop pedestrian crossings.

When Gutierrez asked the chief a politically charged question, “Is the stand that the president is taking with it?” Chief Self responded with a non-political answer, “I can only tell you from focusing on field operations that border security is imperative to this nation.”

On the same day as this illegal border crossing, Yuma Sector Border Patrol agents faced the crossing of the largest single group border crossing when 376 migrants exploited weaknesses in the old barrier technology to enter the U.S., Breitbart News’ Robert Arce reported. The 376 migrants managed to dig under the fence which does not have a concrete underground base utilized in newer barriers.

Group of 376 Central Americans illegally crossed from Mexico and inundated agents in #Yumasector on Monday morning. Almost all were families or unaccompanied juveniles. #NationalSecurity #SouthwestBorder pic.twitter.com/dWzS0LCgCV

— CBP Arizona (@CBPArizona) January 18, 2019

Due to the large numbers in this group and the time it takes to process minors and family units, Border Patrol officials were forced to bring personnel from surrounding locations to assist. This opens up other areas of the border to be exploited by drug smugglers.

Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for the Breitbart Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.

Now that the halfway point of Donald Trump’s first term in office has officially come and gone, the Washington media crew has been scrambling to find some way to commemorate the occasion, define the results of the first two years and make projections as to the next two. In nearly all cases, this means identifying some catchphrase to cast the administration in the worst light possible. That’s the theme we’re seeing from Philip Rucker at the Washington Post (among others) in what apparently passes for clever commentary these days.

Trump ran for office on the premise that he would be able to get things done because of his extensive history in cutting deals, primarily in the real estate game. Heck, the guy even wrote a book titled The Art of the Deal, so it’s certainly fair game for criticism. But Rucker has decided to take the lack of any sort of dealing on the part of Nancy Pelosi as a sign that the Great Dealmaker isn’t so great at making deals.

Trump’s management of the partial government shutdown — his first foray in divided government — has exposed as never before his shortcomings as a dealmaker. The president has been adamant about securing $5.7 billion in public money to construct his long-promised border wall, but he has not won over congressional Democrats, who call the wall immoral and have refused to negotiate over border security until the government reopens.

The 30-day shutdown — the impacts of which have begun rippling beyond the federal workforce into the everyday lives of millions of Americans — is defining the second half of Trump’s term and has set a foundation for the nascent 2020 presidential campaign.

It’s absolutely true that President Trump has not had the amount of success in coming to agreements across the aisle that he seemed to anticipate. Whether that was a case of naiveté on his part or simply too much optimism we’ll likely never know. But pushing this theme without context is a seriously dishonest way to approach political analysis. Allow me to explain.

The first thing to remember is that there is a vast chasm between how businesses operate in the private sector and how the government works. (Please notify me in advance if I’m awarded the Understatement of the Year Prize for that last sentence so I can get my tux to the dry cleaner in time for the ceremony.) The fact is that Donald Trump comes from a business world where deals are arranged between parties who share a mutual objective. They wouldn’t be at the table unless they thought there was a profit to be had and that their opponent was a likely vehicle to achieve that goal.

Dealing in the private sector generally doesn’t involve people who hate each other or are seeking the destruction of their opponent. The parties involved certainly want to get the “better deal” so they come away as a winner, but there’s no final deal without both of them getting something they want unless one of them is a garden variety moron. Everyone approaches the table hoping that a deal will, in fact, be made and that they maximize their profit from it.

That’s not the case in Washington. Nancy Pelosi has no personal skin in the game as to whether a wall is constructed, the dreamers get a reprieve or anything else currently under discussion. Her “profit” doesn’t come from getting something accomplished. What matters is the political “victory” of denying something to her opponent (in this case, Trump) and revving up her base with her bravado. She can declare every offer from President Trump to be “a non-starter” as she did with this one and head straight for the MSNBC cameras looking like a winner.

The Art of the Deal only works when people are actually interested in a deal and have something to lose or gain from the negotiations. When all your opponent has to offer are poison pills, the outcome will always be sickening.

A Florida man allegedly used popular video game Fortnite to lure at least 20 teenagers to his house for “sexual activities.”

According to Fox 5 Atlanta, 41-year-old Anthony Thomas has been “accused of using the popular video game Fortnite to lure teens for sexual activities,” where he offered a 17-year-old girl “money and gifts for sex.”

“Authorities tracked the victim down to the man’s home after her parents reported her missing,” Fox 5 Atlanta reported. “Deputies believe there are at least 20 other victims.”

Thomas is reportedly being charged with 22 counts of child pornography, “unlawful sexual activity with a minor,” and several other crimes.

“This case is disturbing not only because it involves child pornography, but also because a popular online game was used to communicate with the victim,” declared Attorney General Ashley Mood. “We have reason to believe there could be additional victims, and I am asking anyone with information about the recruiting of minors for child pornography, or any other type of sexual exploitation, to call law enforcement immediately.”

“Additionally, parents need to know that predators will use any means possible to target and exploit a child,” Mood continued. “I am asking parents and guardians to please make sure you know who your children meet online, and talk to them about sexual predators.”

In May, the NSPCC warned parents of the dangers of Fortnite‘s chat systems, which has led to children being contacted by strangers, and in September, a report claimed child predators were using Fortnite, among other apps and platforms, to lure victims.

Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington, or like his page at Facebook.