The power of art

Powerful art elicits powerful emotions, and when those emotions are tied to strong political sentiment, it is even more powerful and sometimes dangerous.

Heather Goss over at DCist relates the story of DC area artist Dana Ellyn and what happened when some of her anti Sarah Palin artwork got exposed to political sentiment in a DC area store. Read it here.

Winston Churchill once said that "any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains."

Having been both a very dangerous leftwing nut in my young years, and a complacent conservative in my middle years, I am now very happy in my current incarnation as a happy independent, and I am now always puzzled by people who (on both sides of the political spectrum) try to muzzle or interrupt the other side's opinion, such as the idiots in this DCist story or the jerks who crash the other party's convention, or heckle the other politician's rallies, etc.

Nations where only one side of the political spectrum is allowed to express their views are called dictatorships: Cuba, North Korea, China, Iran, etc. and more and more Russia and Venezuela.

Artists: keep painting all the anti-Palin, and anti-McCain, and anti-Obama (is Joe Biden even in the news?) art that you want, for art is a powerful tool of political expression. And never forget that an anti-Castro painting in Cuba gets you 20 years in the Isle of Youth, and you'd probably get whacked in North Korea if you did an anti-Elvis painting there...