NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
Lou and I are having our weekly lunch in the Quark Lounge at the H bar. Before we arrived, Lou had used a new app. on his phone to place both our orders, from the menu the app. provides. A member of Liberty Tripp’s old band, ‘Toxic Blob’, serves us within a few minutes of taking our seats. Though I remember her by sight, I don’t say anything because I don’t want to interrupt Lou’s reminiscences about old times at the Library of Congress, and she shows no sign of recognition from having served us before. Lou and I had student jobs, photocopying documents in the seventies. We shared memories of bureaucratic life, the monotony of clerical work even though we are in the midst of that great collection, the petty conflicts and tension between supervisors and subordinates, and also their own superiors. We were so close yet far removed from the influence of money and its direction of power, surging like an aphrodisiac rising under the Capitol Dome and out through the House and Senate sides into our lives. It was not all work though on Capitol Hill, where we watched girls in minimal summer wear decorate the sidewalks at lunchtime, on their way to local bars and restaurants; we might try to join them, if they were not already in thrall to someone more important.
All this moves Lou to what has really been weighing on him lately.
“Boris Tarantula’s design to replace the Washington Monument is dead! Buried for good by the committee on Aesthetic Crime.” Lou is uncharacteristically upbeat today.
“Oh you mean that steel and concrete thing?”
“Not just steel, his trademark rusty brown I-beams.”
“He does some selective paintwork doesn’t he?”
“Yeah maybe so! I hope it will be forgotten too with the 2016 presidential elections coming up.”
He goes on to say that the project was stopped due irreconcilable differences between Senator Lee Leavenworth Knox of CUPA fame, and those who want to defund the National Endowment for the Arts. Liberals expected Knox to lead the charge against government-funded art but he shocked his opponents and supporters.
Lou ignores the plate put in front of him minutes ago. I start eating my fries slowly, one at a time, wondering if Lou is in a new manic phase that will have a down side later.
“Lee expects liberal support by calling for increased funding for the endowment, without mentioning he also expects Boris to get a huge grant for building the replacement Washington monument.”
“I read somewhere that he has hired ‘Think Right’ to run his campaign. Well, his investors did.”
“Yes they are not through yet, either. They’ll keep pushing.”
“Aren’t they a part of Fibbonaci corp? I mean, do you think the Fib. supports this?”
“No, no, no, ‘Think Right’ is just a hired gun. The Fib. and its subsidiaries are open for any one’s business.”
“You mean there is a ‘Think Left’ too?”
“Of course, but I forget what they are called.”
“Of course?”
“Fred, advocacy is a business, also called PR!”
“So what is the idea?”
“Basically it is distraction! The controversy over the endowment’s involvement will keep the secretive NY investors, out of the news.”
“Lou that is no secret. The ‘First Amendment Association’ was named in the Washington Post way back, last year? or 2012? I don’t remember.”
“Any way they plan on huge profits from renting the advertizing space.”
“On Federal land?”
“Oh, there will have to be a workaround there!”
“Oh yes, a clause hidden in some ten thousand page legislation with a general sounding name!”
“Something like that.”
“Who conceived of this in the first place?”
“The Association have supported Boris’s project from the beginning. As far as the idea goes, I couldn’t say who thought of it.”
“This controversy has been out of the news for years.”
“I found out what is going on the other night over dinner on Capitol Hill. We got into conversation with Congressman Bean and his associate Ms Flack.”
“Really! are you guys close?”
“No not at all but my friends are.”
“Who are they Lou?”
“Oh people from my old life. We still get together once in a while.”
“Lou, I sometimes wonder about your ‘old life’.”
“Not much to it really, but anyway, Ms Flack pointed out that most Liberals don’t look at conservative media and most conservatives don’t look at the Liberal stuff.”
“Well, that’s not true of us all. I like to look at both sides.”
“I know Fred, so does bel Vionnet, but most people don’t.”
“So the ‘Think Right’ strategy for Knox is to play both sides at once.”
“The Association claims the Park Service denied them their right to speak on public land when their first idea to project advertizing images on to the obelisk was turned down. They threatened to go to court. At the same time, there was a proposal to share profits with the Endowment, but that arrangement for a Government/Business partnership was never worked out.”
Lou’s ring tones sound. He looks down and fumbles the phone in his impatience.
“Oh it is our check. I’ll pick this one up.”
He pays the bill with his thumbs in texting action.
“This app. even calculates, adds the tip and complement the server and or the chef.”
Lou has yet to start his lunch and seems to have much more to say. I ask him if he might consider going back to work as he seems so much more upbeat at the moment. He puts down the phone.
“No way!”
He takes off his thin round gold frame glasses and a deep frown fills the gap between his eyes, now partially hidden by his lowered eyebrows. He has calmed and starts his meal, but goes on more slowly.
“Anyway Fred, privatizing the monument and getting it out of the hands of what Leavenworth Knox calls “the somnambulant Park Service” was high on his agenda. He must be disappointed.”
“Yeah, so must the investors!”
Lou has abandoned his meal, pushed the plate aside and taken renewed interest in his phone.
“Right … look, here’s the official Web Page.”
Lou has brought up the page on his phone and reads: “…“the somnambulant Park Service which is still looking backward, dreaming of the ancient wilderness, ignoring the fact that America has replaced it with productive enterprises.”
After turning his phone off and setting it aside in front of the ketchup bottle he was using just now, Lou goes on to say, “and get this, Lee could also expect generous support from the First Amendment Association when his reelection comes up.”
I thought Lou was finished, but, much to my surprise, he picks up his phone again, turns it on impatiently looking for the web page and starts reading again: “This work of art will feature advertizing space for eight modern brands while also exhibiting five ads from the early 1900s for their aesthetic and nostalgic appeal. That is a symbolic total of thirteen separate screens. ‘Advertizing is the folk art of our time’”
Lou looks up and straightens his glasses. Then he puts the phone down with a soft sigh, saying to himself, “Damn ketchup gets everywhere” and cleans them with his napkin before resuming.
“You know who said that don’t you Fred?”
“Yes, they are quoting Marshall McLuhan.”
“That’s right, and there is no attribution.”
He goes on reading from his phone: “Why should the Mall be full of neoclassical relics that have no electronics and no relevance to our modern digital or cyber society?”
“How about it Fred? I mean … listen to this!” He reads some more; “The Egyptian obelisk has nothing to do with George, while our very own American artist, Boris Tarantula’s five hundred foot steel and concrete sculpture will support millions electronic tessera, each one displaying an image of our first president with embedded LEDs, and programmed to illuminate in sequences showing the many wonderful brands in American commerce. Celebrating our greatest companies, the most productive organizations human beings have ever known. The steel construction reflects the ‘heroic materialism’ of the twentieth century’s pioneering skyscrapers.”
“You get that reference to Clark right?”
“Yes the British Art Historian Kenneth Clark. I think he was looking at the NY sky-line when he said it.”
“Right, the TV series “Civilization”! ‘Heroic Materialism’, and again no attribution! Here’s the description that is supposed to make the sell.
“Concrete rises from the base through the steel work like a ribbon, or ‘the great climb of our road to progress’, which bursts forth at the top with a spray of fifty shining chrome coated rebars over twenty feet long. One for each state shining at the highest point, reaching for the stars!’.
He hands me the phone again.
“Here Fred, check this rendering.”
He passes me the screen again and gets back to eating lunch. I see an image of the soaring structure in miniature with the chrome top shining in the sun with the flag in the background.
“For the stars, no less.”
“It will be film stars next, Lou.”
“Sure why shouldn’t films be advertized on this thing?”
