How far can the rich and talentless go to stage their own art? Recall legendary, tone deaf Florence Foster Jenkins, who paid to fill up concert venues for her hapless performances.
And now consider Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld, benefactor of CSULB’s Kleefeld Museum, and its Kleefeld Gallery, and – most recently – the Kleefeld Exhibit in the Kleefeld Gallery at the Kleefeld Museum. The LA Times art critic, having paid a visit to her show, does not hold back. Why is a public university featuring the worthless montages of its moneybags?
[T]he art is frankly terrible — by far the worst I’ve seen on display in a serious exhibition venue, public or private, for profit or nonprofit, in years… A CSULB professor, who spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter, said of the exhibition, “If that was a student applicant’s portfolio, they wouldn’t get admitted to the program.” … A gift deal that includes permanent maintenance of a big collection and an archive of the donor’s bad art, plus a gallery dedicated to its display, all in exchange for millions of dollars, makes it impossible not to think “pay to play.” … A permanent chunk of a public university’s tax-subsidized museum facility and artistic program has been effectively privatized to advance the personal interests of a wealthy patron.
Ahem. What now? As Lenin asked: What is to be done?
Oh, I think we can anticipate an entire tarring and feathering for the snobby sexist judgmental LA Times critic. We can anticipate some slave-scribe at the school writing an angry point by point rebuttal of this haughty disdainful pig whose blatant envy of a person who can actually create art poisons his pen. How dare he call this painting bad art?
UD is agog at the names of the real estate agents representing a new beach resort community. Tiffany, Misty, and Whitney? Did the development hire on a first-name only basis?
Ivanka Trump had spent much of the day trying to keep her father from going too far. She had refused to address the rally on the Ellipse but at the last minute was so concerned by her father’s anger toward Mr. Pence that she decided to accompany him there in hopes of avoiding a worse clash. Over the following hours, as rioters rampaged through the Capitol, she ran up and down the stairs in the West Wing from her office to the Oval Office hoping to persuade her father to issue stronger statements calling off the attackers.
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri issued two statements yesterday, one in praise of pro-hijab activists in India, and the other in praise of child bride legislators in Tennessee.
All praise to the noble veiling women of India who defy the law to assert their modesty!
All praise to the noble Tom Leatherwood who has freed the men of Tennessee to marry infant girls if that is their wish!
We are currently advising Brother Leatherwood on the framing, introduction, and passage of female genital removal legislation, for what man of piety would marry a baby with a clitoris?
In the wake of Orban’s massive victory, Les UDs have been going at it hammer and goulash on whether they should give a shit. If you read UD, you know where she stands: Countries determined to shrink to nothingness should be allowed to do so. Hungary’s population can’t even manage ten million (Orban’s efforts to get Hungarians to reproduce are going nowhere — too drunk to get it up.), and many of those are actively trying to kill themselves.
The smartest have left — Hungary is brain-drain central. Maybe these people noticed that the country had one world-class university and itthrew it out. To thunderous applause from its suicidal populace.
The UN estimates a population of only 6.4 million by the end of the century.
“Can you name one famous Hungarian dissident?” UD asked Mr UD – a Pole, and a political scientist extremely well-versed in the region. Long pause. “K-Konrad?” “You can’t even remember his first name?” No. “And I don’t want to upset you, but he died in 2019.”
“Hungary is becoming the center of the intellectual far-right world…”
“Oooh, scary. Karlovich, Vermeule… the freak show freaks in Nyíregyháza!”
Mr UD looked pissed.
“Look,” said I. “The national anthem of modern Hungary is I GOTTA BE ME. Until it invades the Rhineland, Hungary, like all other countries, has a right to drill down to its essence – hyper-conservative, rabidly anti-intellectual, antisemitic, radically insular – and be that thing. The upside for us is that we can safely ignore it forever. Hell, it seems to be ignoring itself. If you want to visit faded post-imperialism, go to Vienna.”
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Update: Hungary is also a big loser in the kleptocracy sweepstakes, with the EU proceeding toward possibly stripping it of the billions of dollars for public works projects that Orban has long been siphoning off for his oligarchs.
This is the first sentence of a 2015 UD post about super-perverted Nebraska, a state routinely forgotten until its university’s football team (see Lawrence Phillips, Richie Incognito, etc., etc.) drills its way into the nation’s head…
Speaking more broadly, you don’t want to inquire too closely into the, uh, political unconscious of Nebraskans, out there on the starry plains all night spinning fantasies…
Frinstance. State Sen. Bruce Bostelman, representing the misnamed Brainard, shared his kitten-with-a-whip scenario with all of Nebraska, and the larger country, during an election debate the other day. The way he sees it, nubile high school students “meow and they bark and they interact with their teachers in this fashion. And now schools are wanting to put litter boxes in the schools for these children to use. How is this sanitary?”
Oooh Little Miss Coed Filthy Kittikens Baring Your Rear Golden Showers Daddy Punish You
