One of the pleasures of watching the US election was watching the hacks pretending it was going to be close, and the Romney cheerleaders trying to convince themselves their man was going to win. I’m as excited by Obama as I’d be by any moderately competent centre-right politician who isn’t actually insane. That is, I’m glad he beat Romney, but beyond that it’s business as usual.
However, since then there’s been the meltdown from the religious right, who feel disappointed by the lack of respect they got at the ballot box. Now that has been exciting. My favourite dummy-spit is from a guy called George Weigel, in the National Review. It’s wonderfully sexual and self-revealing.
Those who booed God, celebrated an unfettered abortion license, canonized Sandra Fluke, and sacramentalized sodomy at the Democratic National Convention have been emboldened to advance the cause of lifestyle libertinism through coercive state power.
I like Weigel’s leap from typing “sacramentalized sodomy” to thinking of “lifestyle libertinism” being forced on him through “coercive state power”. He’s got his eyes shut and he’s waiting.
It looks like a suppressed gay thing, though that’s a cliche, of course. I suppose it’s just something that springs to mind whenever homophobic Christian Republicans say something more than usually weird. But the bit about him being coerced into libertinage by the state (perhaps by guys in sharp black uniforms?) should be pinging the radars of gay doms in particular.
Who drew that picture? Doesn’t Disney get upset when its characters perform “licensed libertism”?
And where did you find it?
The artist is Mouse Kelly, which means it’s either Stanley Mouse or Alton Kelley, or both working together. They drew a lot of counter-cultural stuff in the 1960s and 1970s.
Just about the only stuff that I’ve seen is their cover for the Grateful Dead Live in Europe 72 album. That’s the only Grateful Dead I’ve got, since I’m not a huge fan. But the cover’s great, and the Grateful Dead do the slowest version of “It Hurts Me Too” I’ve ever heard, and make it work. The rest of the music’s good too.
An artist friend tells me he worships Mouse Kelly because of their pioneering use of airbrush in illustrations. But I guess a lot of it was meant to be ephemeral, – concert posters, underground comics with tiny print runs, and so on – and so it’s lost.
As for Disney, I remember reading about a legal case that probably took place in the 1960s or 1970s, when some radical artist used Disney characters in a satirical story with lots of sex and violence. Disney sued, and spent years and gazillions of dollars trying to destroy the artwork and the artist, pour encourager les autres.
Eventually the artist won, on the ground of fair use in parody. So Mouse Kelly’s Disney picture would be covered by the same case law.
I’m afraid I can’t remember where I found the picture, and I don’t know if there are any others.