There's a nice essay on the Rumpus.
From said essay...
Art is crying out everywhere. Piss Christ emerges from Andres Serrano. Robert Mapplethorpe’s images of the gay leather scene emerge. Karen Finley uses yams in inappropriate places in performances depicting graphic scenes of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement. Laurie Anderson sings Yankie Doodle Dandy, differently. Jesse Helms, that blowhard assistic precursor to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, nearly coronaries attacking art, books, film. One of the books I have written ends up among others deemed “pornographic” on the congressional floor. Funding is stripped from artists, educators, and intellectuals. Bill O’Reilly and Fox news are nascent.
Zeitgeists are funny things. The word “Zeitgeist” implies a spirit of the times, as if each one is distinct. But that isn’t how Zeitgeists work. They surface and submerge, then resurface with slightly different names and faces, like Benjamin’s description of Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus.
Flash forward to 2011. Our government just bombed the crap out of Libya in an effort to stop a tyrant dictator. Planned Parenthood, the NEA and NPR are all under the gun as government sponsored frivolities. Education, reproductive rights and unions are under the gun. Speaking of guns, several states are proposing bills to increase gun ownership and usage; some states are attempting to criminalize the bodies of abortion doctors and women who have abortions.
We are under corporeal siege; the bodies of women, children, workers, minorities, immigrants, and gay people are under attack. Art is f’d. Somewhere far away Noam Chomsky is still narrating. I can barely hear him through the white noise that has become my culture.
I know it’s the present tense, but I’ve seen this movie before.
Back to the guy I’m drinking with—back to his proclamation about the use value of books—“Uh huh,” I go. But not really, I think, I drink, I am.
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