[lbo-talk] Re: Abu Ghraib / Robert Mapplethorpe

[Dennis Perrin]

> But now I think I may `see'. It is the US Right's idea of
> humiliation: stacked butt naked with their bed-fellows. Imagine
> Hastert, Frist, and DeLay's hairy butts in all their digital reality
> confronting the public gaze. Would you be outraged? Personally I
> would frame it. I am sure it would sell like hot cakes. These are the
> butt holes who brought you 21st century Amerikkka. Whenever I hear a
> Republican name, I reach for my chemical light stick.
>
> What I've seen of Robert Mapplethorpe by contrast was consummately
> sensual and beautiful in its own darkening strangeness---an utterly
> different universe.
>
> CG

Now Chuck -- you don't honestly believe these reactionaries truly understand
the difference? I mean, yeah, it's an inspired concept, comparing prison
torture and humiliation to a fag's photos. Plays to the rubes who seriously
listen to this shit (and it gives them the sense that somehow they've caught
those of us who are outraged by Abu in a hypocritical position -- now,
suddenly, we're offended by naked bodies?). But the joke, if that's what it
is, is on them. By so casually dismissing these pix, they tell all that they
could give half a fuck for Iraqis or Arabs in general, who are there to be
abused, humiliated, and slaughtered by heavy machinery. They are the prey de
jour. Even if, as the Red Cross estimated, 70-90% of those held at Abu were
never charged with a crime, they still have it coming. They belong to us,
and as Americans, we do as we please.

DP