Those of you subscribing to the AP-Photoarchive(AccuNet/AP multimedia
archive)can take a gander of this "offensive" statue. Take a look.
Lee Sorensen
Duke University
-----Original Message-----
From: ART LIBRARIES SOCIETY DISCUSSION LIST [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Cara List
Sent: Friday, June 07, 2002 12:37 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [ARLIS-L] censorship of art or the danger of boobs
A colleague of mine forwarded this letter this funny yet disconcerting
letter about what our government is really concerned abou. Pardon any
duplication-- its not exactly breaking news-- but as she said it was too
good not to share.
The following is a letter read by Claire Braz-Valentine, the author, at
this
year's In Celebration of the Muse, Cabrillo College in California. It
is
worth knowing that the author is a woman of 60+ years, conservatively
dressed and obviously quite talented.
AN OPEN LETTER TO JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES
On January 28, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that he
spent
$8,000 of taxpayer's money for drapes to cover up the exposed breast of
The
Spirit of Justice, an 18 ft aluminum statue of a woman that stands in
the
Department of Justice's Hall of Justice.
John, John, John, you've got your priorities all wrong. While men fly
airplanes into skyscrapers, dive bomb the pentagon, while they stick
explosives into their shoes, and then book a seat right next to us,
while
they hide knives in their luggage, steal kids on school buses , take
little
girls from their beds at night, drive trucks into our state capital
buildings, while our president calls dangerous men all over the world
evildoers and devils, while we live in the threat of biological warfare,
nuclear destruction, annihilation, you are out buying yardage to save
Americans from the appalling alarming, abominable aluminum alloy of
evil,
that terrible ten foot tin tittie. You might not be able
to find Bin Laden, but you sure as hell found the hooter in the hall of
justice.
It's not that we aren't grateful. But while we were begging the women
of
Afghanistan to not cover up their faces, you are begging your staff
members
to just cover up that nipple, to save the American people from that
monstrous metal mammary. How can we ever thank you? So, in your office
every morning, in your secret prayer meeting, while an American woman is
sexually assaulted every 6 seconds, while anthrax floats around the post
office and settles in the chest of senior citizens, you've got another
chest
on your mind. While American sons arrive home in body bags and heat
seeking
missiles fly around a foreign country looking for any warm body, you
think
of another body.
And you pray for the biggest bra in the world. John, you see that
breast on
the Spirit of Justice in the spirit of your own inhibited sexuality.
And
when we women see our grandmothers, our mothers, our daughters, our
granddaughters, our sisters, ourselves, when we women see that statue,
the
Spirit of Justice, we see the spirit of strength, the spirit of
survival.
Every day we view innocent bodies dragged out of rubble, and women and
children laid out like thin limp dolls and baptized into death as
collateral damage, and we see the hollow-eyed Afghani mother whose milk
has
dried up underneath her burka in famine, in shame, and her children are
dead
at her breast.
While you look at that breast, John, that jug on the Spirit of Justice,
and
deal with your thoughts of lust and sex and nakedness, we see it as a
testimony to motherhood. You see it as a tit.
It's not the money it cost. It's the message you send. We've got the
right
to live in freedom. We've got the right to cheat Americans out of
millions of dollars and then just not want to tell Congress about it.
We've got the right to drop bombs, night and day, on a small country
that
has no army, no navy, no military at all, because we've got the right to
bear arms. But we just better not even think about the right to bare
breasts.
So now John, you can be photographed while you stand there and talk
about
guns and bombs and poisons without that breast appearing over your right
shoulder, without that bodacious bosom bothering you and we just wanted
to
tell you in the spirit of justice, in the spirit of truth, John, there
is
still one very big boob left standing there in that picture.
Cara List
Art and Architecture Librarian
Architecture and Allied Arts Library
5249 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-5249
541-346-2200
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