Friedrich --

I'm just back in the city after a few days visiting Western New York, my old stomping grounds. Back to blogging! Many thanks for being such a blogging he-man while I was gone.

My visit was refreshing and renewing. Shhh -- Western New York is a beautiful part of the country, in a modest, storybook-endearing kind of way. For one thing, once you drive out of the Catskills, you exit the NYC orbit, always a delight. For another, well: the Finger Lakes. Apple orchards and other flowering trees. Real live small towns. Vineyards and cornfields. An utter lack of style and self-consciousness.

Seneca Lake: Small-town America really does exist

The ever-collapsing economy, the rotten weather, and the really lousy cooking can be a little off-putting, granted. But the place is still blissfully wonderful, at least in my eyes, and will always be home for me. "It's, it's, it's, well, it's like Middle Earth, and it's full of hairy-toed eccentrics, and I'm a Hobbit returning to his cave," I blurted to the Wife at one point. "That's what it's like!" And it's true. Western New York is a little like Middle Earth. The Wife sweetly pretended to see my point.

On the way back to the city, we stopped in Ithaca for lunch. Have you ever visited? An amazingly pretty hill-and-water academic town at the south end of Cayuga Lake, like a small San Francisco, full of old houses, beautiful churches and proudly repurposed commercial buildings. (I'll pass lightly over the really awful more recent buildings.) Culture, too -- bookstores, clubs, concerts, foreign movies. The biggest downside to life in most of Western New York is what at other moments can be its sweet upside: the pleasant boringness of it all. (I came to the big city not out of dislike for the small Republican town where I grew up but in order to have easier access to the kinds of art-and-ideas things that get my motor going.) And then there's Ithaca -- everything that's great about Western New York, plus culture.

Unfortunately, plus much else too: tie dyes, white kids with dreadlocks, older balding guys with ponytails, local "characters" on bicycles, brown rice, scary postgrad hangers-on -- a little too much Berkeley, in other words. The Wife and I looked at each other at one point and rolled our eyes. "Good Christ," I said. "Just for the sake of a little culture, you don't have to buy the whole package, do you?"

Ithaca: Spot the white kid's dreadlocks

This is part of what annoys me about America and the arts -- the way they come so encrusted with superstitions, styles, and beliefs, so many of them boring and unattractive. I like the arts, when it really comes down to it, because they're sexy. They can be a turn-on; they can touch my emotions; they can get my senses buzzing and my head spinning. And the basic appeal for me of living an arts life is that it can be more naughty and irresponsible than the typical American life. But as you adventure your way through the arts in this country what you usually run into instead of sexiness is worthiness: Dreary, earnest, political, beleaguered, and often in need of deodorant.

My mind, such as it is these days, began churning. This whole checklist of things you're expected to subscribe to if you're an arts person ... It reminded me of something. Ah: Bjorn Lomborg, the guy who wrote "The Skeptical Environmentalist," that book that examined the set of assumptions that environmentalists share. He called it "the Litany" -- the list of beliefs that are the environmentalist's credo. It occurred to me that there's an Arts Litany as well.

Ever since, in honor of Lomborg and my brief visit to Ithaca, I've been assembling my own list -- the Arts Litany: The beliefs and convictions that arts people are expected to get on board with and not seriously question. Swear allegiance, and you're a welcome, card-carrying arts person; dissent, and you're excommunicated. Some of these items may have something going for them; some couldn't be more foolish, at least in the eyes of a Blowhard. But all of them help define the Church of the Arts.

Here it is, so far: A work in progress, much in much need of additions, criticism, and adjustment. Some are beliefs, some are just things. In any case: What an arts person is expected to concern him/herself with:

• Organic food
  
• Literacy in Nepal
  
• The sinfulness of driving SUVs
  
• American suburban life is the most awful, spiritually impoverished way of living ever devised
  
• NPR is the voice of God
  
• Commercial pressure is by its nature a bad thing
  
• Self-expression is by its nature a good thing
  
• All children are creative; all creativity is childlike
  
• Writers are writers because they are smarter than the rest of us
  
• Real culture in American is forever imperilled, forever struggling against the hideous colossus that is business
  
• If only everyone used bicycles more, life would be a lot better
  
• Solar power
  
• Free Tibet
  
• Sex roles are evil, and the only solution to the hell they create is for everyone to become androgynous
  
• Gays are better than the rest of us
  
• Racism explains everything that sexism and homophobia don't
  
• Ethnic, racial and sex differences don't exist. Well, they do, kind of, but only in a positive, celebrating-our-heritage sense
  
• Multiculturalism is a good thing
  
• "Race" is both unreal and a problem, and it will only go away when everyone's a uniform dark tan color, and the sooner this happens, the better
  
• Capitalism and white men are to blame
  
• Incest is not only common, it's a telling indictment of conventional family life, which is by its nature fascist and deforming
  
• Families are dysfunctional, except maybe ones headed by lesbians
  
• Repression and oppression are everywhere to blame, and must everywhere be fought
  
• Shame is always and everywhere a bad thing
  
• Art is a force for liberation, and liberation is a force for the good
  
• Prior to 1970, no woman ever had an orgasm

Still workin' on it, as I say. Tweaks, corrections, and contributions appreciated.

Best,

Michael

"But as you adventure your way through the arts in this country what you usually run into instead of sexiness is worthiness: Dreary, earnest, political, beleaguered, and often in need of deodorant." You are a genius.

Anyone else notice that extent to which someone lives the litany is a reliable indicator of how badly that person will treat waitresses, counter help, and others who work for them?

There's also the confusing issue of using various drugs to reach your true self, a goal which is no way makes years and years of talk therapy unnecessary. And I’m struggling to understand how someone who needs both drugs and talk therapy to deal with simple, everyday things like whether or not to break up with someone or get through one day with ma and pa is nonetheless possesses the insight and awareness to tell me and everyone else on the freaking planet how to live.

Posted by: j.c. on May 22, 2003 02:46 PM

That list looks right to me.

The one I would add is everyone from that group also believes that art's purpose is to "wake people up". Wake them up from what, I've never heard explained. Why every artist who feels this way also believes they have special access to this universal alarm clock, as opposed to the person they assume needs waking up, also eludes me.

Posted by: Yahmdallah on May 22, 2003 03:30 PM

What agreat list. Are these worthy of inclusion?
"Art is for making important political statements"
"Artists are the mouth-pieces of the community"
"Artists are a part of their communities"
"Artists are entitled to be subsidised by the state"
"The state has no right to interfere with the self-expression of the artists it pays"
[Nothing about 20th Century history]

Posted by: charlie b. on May 22, 2003 04:16 PM

Curses, once again outdone by our visitors! More, please.

J.C., can you polish that drugs-and-therapy observation up into a Litany rule?

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on May 22, 2003 04:36 PM

Here's another one: high concept trumps skilled execution.

Posted by: Will Duquette on May 22, 2003 07:06 PM

As always, the Onion enlightens:

http://www.theonion.com/onion3722/christ_painting_under_fire.html

Posted by: jimbo on May 22, 2003 08:21 PM

"And I’m struggling to understand how someone who needs both drugs and talk therapy to deal with simple, everyday things like whether or not to break up with someone or get through one day with ma and pa is nonetheless possesses the insight and awareness to tell me and everyone else on the freaking planet how to live."

Bravo! J.C., you need a blog. (You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile)

Anyway...good list. Here's one I've run into a few times: All of the people living south and west of Richmond VA are ignorant hicks.

Posted by: Lynn S on May 22, 2003 09:45 PM

Is this an arts litany, or just a standard left litany?

I must say, however, during my days in art school, that I was truly surprised at lack of political "diversity" among the students. A few were rigorously unpolitical, but the rest were card carrying lefties. I occasionally asked them how they could have such strong opinions when they had so little personal experience with many of the issues: e.g., that all employers were evil oppressors when they'd never held a job in some cases. (Obviously, one had to be gentle in how such questions were phrased; it helped that I was ten years older than my fellow students.) Not that I ever got much of an answer; nor could these kids actually conduct any kind of political argument, really, beyond some casual invective. Most of them were in art school to escape from their family background, and the strong left ideology was, I think, primarily an aid to that flight. In short, it really didn't matter if left-wing political opinions had any correspondence with reality; the opinions were useful as a way of helping the kids build an identity.

Posted by: Friedrich von Blowhard on May 23, 2003 01:01 AM

I meant to add in my earlier post: "...and east of Sacramento, CA..." I've run into a few people from San Francisco who think quite highly of themselves.

It does seem like most artsy people are lefties. Those I've talked to online (the only place I have any contact with artsy people) mostly don't consider themselves "Lefties," just "enlightened." They have this idea that being involved in the arts gives them superior insight into the human condition, while in reality (IMO) involvement in the arts actually cuts them off from normal life. It's like they're looking at the rest of the world through the wrong end of a telescope without being aware that they are looking through the wrong end - everything outside their own circle is so miniscule and unimportant.

Posted by: Lynn S on May 23, 2003 08:13 AM

What Lynn S. said!

Posted by: Yahmdallah on May 23, 2003 09:26 AM

How true. Funny, isn't it, this assumption that something called "the arts" somehow just arises out of the proper lefty set of concerns? Eat the brown rice, talk to your therapist, vote properly, complain about business ... And thereby arrive somehow at art. Or, as Lynn says, enlightenment.

Friedrich von B raises another interesting point, which is: what's the purpose of leftiness for people interested in the arts. Any further ideas here? Makes you feel special? Makes you feel rebellious and righteous and young? Just a way of fitting in with the arty crowd? I tend to revert to my one little contribution: that there's something attractive about leftiness, that the left has made "attractiveness" its own, and that arts people (being attracted to attractiveness almost by definitioin) are drawn to that. But maybe that's a small part of it.

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on May 23, 2003 11:49 AM

The list really says it all, but:

Appreciating anything produced before the twentieth century is "bourgeois", unless you do it ironically. Actually, just label anything you don't like "bourgeois".

Posted by: Charles on May 23, 2003 01:05 PM

More good ones, thanks.

A few more that just came to me:
*Art is a matter of release
*There is such a thing as "expression," and even "free expression." And these are good things.
*Traditional forms are the enemies of expression, and need to be blasted open
*Unless, that is, the traditional forms are being used by people who don't know any better -- tribesmen, hillbillies, natives. (Traditional people, perhaps? Unlike "us", of course.) In which case their traditional art forms are just great.

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on May 23, 2003 02:50 PM

Ouch! That was funny and unfortunately, very true. The only amendment is, that most of the genuinely artistic people I have met (that are artists because they must be, not because it is PC) are completely out of touch with the touchy-feely litany the "artsy" crowd espouse.

I think that is what you are trying to say, in any case. I mostly don't respect the "art" of most of the people I have met for whom the litany is their art and religion to boot. I respect the art of those who must create.

Posted by: Felicity on May 24, 2003 12:16 AM

That us-or-them thing, that's a good one. Heh heh heh. Gets them Every Time!

But be careful what you say about the left being attractive. That business about, "there's something attractive about leftiness, ...the left has made "attractiveness" its own." Don't give the game away, brother. They're not supposed to know we know. I mean, all we've got is cheap divisive tactics. (Damn fun though, hey?)

Posted by: M on May 24, 2003 12:49 AM

I have to say that I have generally found serious music "artists" to be rather the opposite of the rest - delightfully reactionary by and large. Is this because they have to undergo a rigorous professional training that only a few can achieve? That they are genuine elitists. Is this so only in the UK?

Posted by: charlie b. on May 24, 2003 06:53 AM

Artsy-types are attracted to leftism because it's much easier to pick up some half-assed ideology than it is to actually put in the long hours of boring, repetitive, work that it takes to make art for real.

Posted by: JW on May 24, 2003 06:58 AM

People(even smart ones) have been railing against artists since Plato. This Artist Litany has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. It might even have some trace elements of humor if the total effect wasn't intended to subsume some ongoing anti artist campaign on behalf of the pitiful gerbils that have consigned themselves or have been consigned to the treadmills of this and other great societies.

Do you and the chorus know any artists? Or have any of you ever read about the lives of artists? I see that it is amusing to lampoon silly and trivial mottoes that may attach themselves to any number and kinds of people. But this smells of something more. I would not assign a greater value to creative people. Meaning—as we all are— they are fallible and susceptible to the same silliness and idiocies as all of us. Neither would I create a straw man to insult by ascribing thoughtless slogans and trite buzz phrases to your rather ideological vision of the artist.

I read this list and was not particularly moved but when I read the comments I saw the makings of a lynch mob…

Posted by: Robert Birnbaum on May 24, 2003 07:57 AM

Robert, you're joking, aren't you? I'd think it'd be hard to mistake the people who drop by this blog for anything other than a bunch of arts nuts.

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on May 24, 2003 03:18 PM

Okay, okay.

Excuse my hyperbole. But I read a lot of " love the art, loath the artist" sentiment in the comments to Artist litany — not to mention the ever-present red herring of artists being progressives or as you all like to say 'leftist' (something never held against Sandy Koufax).

Maybe the counterrevolutionary 2 blow hards clique is "nuts for the arts" but one could not tell that from the overheated comments.

Maybe it is time to get this dirty little thing to looked at in the clear light of reason. That is, the relationship between concerns about economic and social justice and the arts and artists.

Posted by: Robert Birnbaum on May 24, 2003 04:57 PM

Response to Charlie B.
For several years I was a regular on an unusually active classical music discussion forum (500+ new posts per day before its decline) inhabited by people from all over the world - US, UK, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. There were a lot of professional musicians and even a few composers as well as students and ordinary music lovers. With a few notable exceptions, the musicians were much more down to Earth than some of the guys who had huge record/CD collections and read a lot about music but never played a note in their lives.

I've had almost no contact with painters and other visual artists but in music at least, the "artsy people" and the actual artists are worlds apart.

Posted by: Lynn S on May 24, 2003 05:52 PM

“That is, the relationship between concerns about economic and social justice and the arts and artists.” Robert, do you mean the relationship that is expressed by artists putting on a show in a gallery that is attended by a group of people who feel exactly the same way the artists do and followed by the artists and the gallery attendees going to some arty-type hangout to discuss, passionately, this way that they all feel? My contribution to that relationship is usually pointing out that social justice demands that one of the artists help my economic situation by spotting me a Scotch or two.

Or are you talking about something much worse – like perhaps the current alarming trend for artists to get substantial financial aid loans that they have absolutely no intention of repaying?

"Do you and the chorus know any artists?"
Speaking from the chorus, I’m posting on someone’s blog. It’s up to you to decide if my comments seem informed and insightful. Are you suggesting that unless I'm close, personal friends with a half-dozen artists, intimate with a couple of important gallerist, and a have a nodding acquaintance with couple of big-name, no-kidding internationally famous artists, I couldn’t possibly have formed a reasonable opinion?

For the list:
* The very latest drugs, or perhaps a retro favorite such as Miltown or Ritalin, is required for the artist to feel “normal” and be the artist's true self.
* Despite the efficacy of these drugs, talk therapy, or a retro favorite such as Freudian analysis, is necessary for the artist to understand the artist’s feelings and goals.
* The need for serious, long-term psychiatric intervention in no way reflects on the artist’s ability to unmask, understand, and instruct the non-artist population.

Posted by: j.c. on May 25, 2003 04:29 AM

JC and the choir

That first surge of caffeine running through my veins might have been responsible for my bellowing (in my head):

C'MON YOU PHILISTINE PUNK THUG RABBLE, I'LL TAKE YOU ALL ON!

Ah, this dark moment (for me) passed.

JC, if your ideas of social justice revolve around your allotment of grog, on behalf of the honorable and upstanding (even by your suspect standards) artists that you slander, I would be pleased to buy (that's American for 'spot') you a few Scotches(Could one trace your ire to the fact that most gallery receptions serve only white wine?)Happy now?

Would that then salve your hysteria about the "alarming trend for artists to get substantial financial aid loans that they have absolutely no intention of repaying?" Personally, I think not, as that bold assertion indicates psychic powers that would—given your bias—certainly uncover other evidence of malefaction. Many people, from all walks of life default on a variety of financial obligations. Me, I am more alarmed at the high stakes scams perpetrated on the body politic by the upstanding citizens of Enron, World Com, Haliburton, Lincoln S& L, Pfizer, Bechtel, Merck, and any number of Wall Street trading firms.

And, as for this speech in the guise of a question—"Are you suggesting that unless I'm close, personal friends with a half-dozen artists, intimate with a couple of important gallerist, and a have a nodding acquaintance with couple of big-name, no-kidding internationally famous artists, I couldn’t possibly have formed a reasonable opinion?"— I say, yes, especially as your remarks show no indication of being anything other than a slanderous tantrum.

C'MON YOU PHILISTINE PUNK THUG RABBLE, I'LL TAKE YOU ALL ON!

Anyone, else?

Posted by: Robert Birnbaum on May 25, 2003 06:21 AM

Battlin' Birnbaum, they call him.

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on May 25, 2003 10:51 AM

A philistine punk thug rises from the rabble!

Battlin' Birnbaum – I can’t trace my ire to the fact that most gallery receptions serve only white wine, or even that the wine it usually a Chardonnay not far removed from cough syrup. My dander gets up even at swanky art parties where very attractive South American cater waiters are pouring something with bubbles. The irritant at these events is the blather and chatter of people who have such a high opinion of themselves and what they imagine to be their very great and informed concern for all the world.
Scotch solves a lot. Nonetheless, even when very mellow with the help of said beverage, I am not hysterical about artists who get substantial financial aid loans with no intention of repaying such loans. My response is entirely level-headed. It strikes me as astonishing hypocrisy. The upstanding citizens of Enron, World Com, and so forth are usually caricatured as grasping, greedy vultures and we should not be surprised when the stereotypes turns out to have a grain of truth. Artists tend to be playing a different angle.

Seriously, the first time someone with more than enough money to pay off student loans told me flat-out that actually honoring the agreement was never part of the plan, I was shocked - and chalked it up to one artist also being a fuck. But when it became clear that there was more than one bad apple...

It wasn’t really a speech in the guise of a question so much as question, but, okay, you found me out. I’m a moron. All I know about art is from seeing two movies about Picasso. Oh, wait, was Picasso a black man who hung out with David Bowie? No? Make that one movie about Picasso and one about Jean-Michel Basquiat. ‘Scuze me while I go play with colors.

There’s a slight little indie movie about downtown arty types making quick assumptions. “The Horseplayer.” Cute, and available on video.

Posted by: J. "I don't evenknow what I like" C. on May 25, 2003 06:03 PM

Well, as someone raised by an artist ("play with the color wheels and art history books all you want, but the air brushes are off limits"), albeit one who had to resort to that dirty dirty bad commercial art to feed his family, I learned a bit along the way about the types of folks in the art world.

And FAR too many of them are the type mocked by this list.

There are people who are tortured by the muses and have no choice but to make art, whether "high art", "folk art" or otherwise, and then there are the kinds of snots and their hangers on that j.c. (and I!) can't stand, whom this list applies to.

I think Mr. Birnbaum's confusion comes from the fact that, near as I can tell, the 2blowhards and most commenters here are intested in the first, tortured by the muses, kind of art, whereever it is found.

And that perhaps his anger comes from being interested in the second.

Posted by: David Mercer on May 26, 2003 07:56 AM

In certain parts of the civilized world I am referred to as El Rojo. So you all can drop the phony bourgeois 'Mr' shit.

If I was confused before (and given the melange of assumptions, half- truths, slurs and distortions and generalizations, it is no wonder.) Mr. Child of Artists has not brought me closer to the Light:

"1)There are people who are tortured by the muses and have no choice but to make art, whether "high art", "folk art" or otherwise, and then there are 2) the kinds of snots and their hangers on that j.c. (and I!) can't stand, whom this list applies to."

Given the categories that are created here then, at the very least, the title of the litany should beThe Arts Poseur's Litany.

But by all means, let us root out hypocrisy, sanctimony, opportunism, exploitation and other evils from the art world. [Attempts at] Humor do need a grain of truth as a fulcrum toward achieving a greater ambition. And every subculture has its social dynamic and —as Wittgenstein observed "language games" that are fitting targets of mockery and derision. So mock away, comrades, if it make you feel better and lightens your life's burdens.

Here's what I am angry about. I saw the same behavior in the high school cafeteria and the college student union: a bunch of people who have done nothing, will do nothing and make nothing, attacking, criticizing, demeaning and ostracizing people who are idiosyncratic and, you know, different. Occasionally, these targets of herd antipathy are artists. Well, so it goes. But all this nattering and chirping and grousing will not (try as it might) obscure the fact that the life an artist is a hard row to hoe not in the least due to the jeering of a chorus of moral pygmies. Catch my drift?

Brother JC, I don't find your faux modesty endearing nonetheless my offer to spot you a couple rounds of your beverage of choice stands.

Posted by: El Rojo Birnbaum on May 26, 2003 08:56 AM

I got nothing against people who are idiosyncratic and different. Big beef with those who are attached to the idea of being idiosyncratic and gifted and different but have, so far, found only one way to be recognized as idiosyncratic and difference and gifted - by making their whole life a series of whining, bratty fits dedicated to bullying and exhausting the rest of us so that we finally say, okay, fine, yeah, you're talented like a mother-fo. What a damn insight you've had there. Not the least bit derivative or fascicle. Happy now? Okay. Shut up for five minutes.

In a few cases, I'm pity the great need that these people have. What must it be like to want to much from other people? Especially when the concept of "other people," meaning both the working of society and the hearts of individuals, is such a great mystery to the manic little Id that rules your world.

Posted by: j.c. on May 26, 2003 02:54 PM

Well, sturdy and valorous chorus member, maybe we are getting somewhere.

I would suggest that the cartoon profile that you outline is one that fits a greater number of people than it might be healthy to contemplate. Fame is the great social disease and that infestation colors every walk of life in Imperial America. I suppose a few movies and the general emptiness of mall life has pushed more than a few people to artistic ambitions and all the perks that go with those. In fact, now that I think of it people do seem to me to be needier than ever. But, I digress…

Whining and self centered—that is part of everyone's story ( go ahead, tell me that's not true).Some people are artful and graceful about it, others—well, others just rub one the wrong way. To sketch this kind of behavior as the special domain of artists is to me some kind of hyper-Calvinist superstition.

But supposing all the assertions and generalizations collected above were true —what should be done about these unter-menschen?

Posted by: Robert Birnbaum on May 26, 2003 04:24 PM

How about sarcasm, shame, ridicule and mockery?

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on May 27, 2003 12:49 AM

Oh, Mr. Burned-Bum wants to sling a bit of ad hominem around...works a bit better when you know something about your targets. "a bunch of people who have done nothing, will do nothing and make nothing": You don't know a damned thing about the people posting here, why don't you dig around in the archives and look up acd's website, sounds like more your style.

And don't call me Comrade, asshat.

Posted by: David Mercer on May 27, 2003 01:49 AM

Wow. Take the weekend off from the web and you miss some great snit-fits.

Birnbaum, I was very involved in the art world both in college and for a few years when I lived in Minneapolis. Helped with installs, went to the openings, hung out after the show to clean up and chat with the artists. The ones who could be described by this post always seemed to be the ones who dabbled in abstract (read "glorified finger-painting") and "found" art (read "garbage glued together and painted"), and seemingly their only skill was spouting this stuff while slurring from too much boxed wine. The ones who had skill came from all over the political, social, and religious spectrum, as you would expect. So yes, this particular characterization/cliche seems apt, and it does have a predictable set of attributes that define the majority of those who fit the cliche. They usually wore a beret at some point in their "evolution" too. And they usually had hygiene issues. And were desperately single.

Posted by: Yahmdallah on May 27, 2003 11:49 AM

Who knew?

Hygienically challenged, beret wearing, cheap wine sipping, lonely people is what this is all about.

Cool. Everybody hates those people.

We are not talking about the guy who painted Guernica or drove around the US in the 50's and published a book of pictures called the Americans or the guy who wrote and played A Love Supreme. Right? We aren't talking about the people who wroteThe Fire the Next Time or V or The Man with The Golden Arm or The White Album. Right? We're not talking about my friends Ken or Annette or Abelardo or Susan or Paul or Emily, right?

Anyway, for those who care to be educated on the au currant infantilism 'asshat' that was bandied about somewhere in this 21st Century Requiem for The Artist, you can examine its etymology and more at www.confusednation.com/asshat/

Remember the great Rodney King's plea, "Why can't we all get along?"

Posted by: Robert Birnbaum on May 27, 2003 11:14 PM

I think these "Leftist" and "Rightist" labellings are highly misleading: the most intelligent people I know are Rightist-thinking individuals. I know lots of people who call themselves "Leftists", but the more intelligent of them will, invariably, when the chips are down, agree with almost all Rightist principles which are intelligently articulated.

I really think it's high time we dropped the directional labels "Rightists" and "Leftists" in favor of more honest descriptions: I suggest "thinkers" and "idiots".

;-)

Posted by: maestrissimo on May 30, 2003 04:49 AM

As a resident of Ithaca, I have to say your description is very accurate.

Posted by: Mark G. Simon on March 23, 2004 10:55 AM






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