Art and cultural retreat

Lileks:

Sign of the times: Type "naked woman cuddling dead pig" into Google, and your first result is not one of those horrid pervy sites whose pictures make you want to bleach your eyeballs.

No, you get a review of a British performance artist. For four hours she hugged a porker while spectators filed past and thought: "There's something you don't see every day, a fact that might be conclusive evidence of a benevolent God."

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... What is Western culture all about these days, anyway? Little but narcissism, lassitude, sneers and muted despair, it seems. No, correct that; it's European/U.S. elite culture that seems unmoored. Standard lowbrow American culture is quite clear about what it likes: snakes on planes, loud cars going around in circles with the occasional airborne detour into the stands, high-quality TV shows, mediocre pop music, naked people without the whole arty pig thing.

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Of course, one could make the case that the greatest threats to the freedoms of the West are posed by the head-choppers, plane-exploders, their many merry supporters, and the nuke-seeking state that supports them.

But don't expect the artists to make the case. They saw what happened to that Theo Van Gogh fellow....

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They take the easy way out, these brave souls; they'll perform "The Diary of Anne Frank," but only because now some people think it has a happy ending....

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Do you think that the Democrats got the ieda for their "culture of corruption" theme from the artists? Nah, they probably like this stuff.