But It Won An Art Contest!

In a city renowned for petty squabbles over silly crap, there is yet another round of foolish nonsense involving a painting hanging up in the U.S. Capitol that depicts police officers as swine and of course clumsily trying to reinforce the false narrative that cops just randomly shoot Negro youth. It appears to especially be trying to link the case of the thug Michael Brown in Ferguson, namely that he had his hands up leading to the "Hands up, don't shoot" nonsense which was conclusively proven to not be true but which still appears in the media and entertainment world incessantly because it is a convenient tool to slander White cops.

The painting was put up by Representative Lacy Clay, a black Congressman from Missouri allegedly because it won an "art" contest in his district. The picture is poorly done and about as subtle as a sledgehammer but that is what passes for art today, just as what goes on in Hollywood is considered "acting". Anyway three times now Republican Congressmen have taken the painting down, alleging (correctly) that it is insulting to the very police who keep people like Congressman Clay safe in the Capitol. As of this writing three different White congressmen have removed the painting and taken it back to Representative Clay's office, Representatives Hunter, Rohrabacher and Lamborn. Representative Clay apparently wants the Capitol police to file charges against Hunter, the original Representative to take it down, but shockingly the Capitol police have little interest in taking sides in a dispute where one side thinks they are properly depicted as pigs. Congressman Clay and other colored members of the Congressional Black Caucus protest that this is "blatant censorship" and after all it is just art:

Clay insisted he is not “anti-police” and said he “does not agree or disagree with the painting” -- arguing his intent is to defend the First Amendment rights of the 18-year-old artist, David Pulphus.

He argued the artist’s world view has been shaped by the “animalistic” behavior of police officers, particularly the recent, high-profile cases in which unarmed black males died in confrontations with police.

So the police act "animalistic" but the same is not true of Michael Brown who thuggishly robbed a much smaller store owner and then attacked a cop after being told to stop walking down the middle of the road. Who is really acting like the animal, the people who do stuff like Michael Brown and who shoot each other thousands of times in places like Chicago, or the cops who have to deal with them day in and day out, patiently and with great caution? The painting is clearly politically motivated and it is not a work of art but a childish provocation at the police. I wonder if Representative Clay would be so quick to defend a "work of art" hanging in the Capitol Building if it depicted black members of Congress as gorillas attacking each other or perhaps assaulting white women? I am no art critic but I would imagine such a painting wouldn't pass muster from Representative Clay. I also wouldn't want to see such a painting in the Capitol Building or really anywhere else for that matter.

You might wonder who this Lacy Clay fellow is? Well he is the son of William Clay, Sr. and seems to have simply inherited his father's congressional seat. Clay, Sr. held that seat for over 30 years and then his son stepped right in after Sr. retired. Never let it be said that the Democrats don't have nepotism down to a science. His son William Clay, Jr. aka Lacy, apparently graduated from college and was immediately elected to the Missouri state house, then the state senate and finally to the Congress. In case you are keeping score at home that means he has never had a real job since graduating from college. Clay won re-election in 2016 with over 75% of the vote.

Lacy Clay rousing the rabble

Anyway this is the same Lacy Clay who once told an effeminate Jewish liberal Congressman from a majority black district that he couldn't be a member in the Congressional Black Caucus cuz whites are not allowed.

As a white liberal running in a majority African American district, Tennessee Democrat Stephen I. Cohen made a novel pledge on the campaign trail last year: If elected, he would seek to become the first white member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Now that he's a freshman in Congress, Cohen has changed his plans. He said he has dropped his bid after several current and former caucus members made it clear to him that whites need not apply.

"I think they're real happy I'm not going to join," said Cohen, who succeeded Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tenn., in the Memphis district. "It's their caucus and they do things their way. You don't force your way in. You need to be invited."

Cohen said he became convinced that joining the caucus would be "a social faux pas" after seeing news reports that former Rep. William Lacy Clay Sr., D-Mo., a co-founder of the caucus, had circulated a memo telling members it was "critical" that the group remain "exclusively African-American."

Other members, including the new chairwoman, Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Mich., and Clay's son, Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., agreed.

"Mr. Cohen asked for admission, and he got his answer. ... It's time to move on," the younger Clay said. "It's an unwritten rule. It's understood. It's clear."

The bylaws of the caucus do not make race a prerequisite for membership, a House aide said, but no non-black member has ever joined.

Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., who is white, tried in 1975 when he was a sophomore representative and the group was only six years old.

"Half my Democratic constituents were African American. I felt we had interests in common as far as helping people in poverty," Stark said. "They had a vote, and I lost. They said the issue was that I was white, and they felt it was important that the group be limited to African Americans."

According to the Wikipedia article, Clay also said "Quite simply, Rep. Cohen will have to accept what the rest of the country will have to accept — there has been an unofficial Congressional White Caucus for over 200 years, and now it's our turn to say who can join 'the club.' He does not, and cannot, meet the membership criteria, unless he can change his skin color. Primarily, we are concerned with the needs and concerns of the black population, and we will not allow white America to infringe on those objectives." Notice his dad was of the same opinion.

Now unless you are a properly subservient, "woke", self-loathing white you might be thinking that this sounds like racial exclusion and somehow shouldn't be OK. It almost sounds like segregationist policies from the bad old days. In fact his comments about not joining his little racially based leftist social club unless you change your skin color might seem to be the precise opposite of what MLK said, at least what he said in one highly publicized speech. You would be right.

But in 2017 that doesn't matter. Blacks can choose to associate only with other blacks for black self-interest and that is OK but Whites cannot do the same because of institutional racism and White privilege and a myriad of other reasons that serve to convince Whites to not be interested in White interests. Blacks can depict cops as pigs and it is art but if you were to depict blacks as gorillas that would not be art and would be racist. Thanks to the Obama legacy of 8 years of promoting racial strife, this is where we find ourselves. The real question is, what do we do about it?

(For more on the dishonesty of Representative Lacy Clay, see this article from Thomas DiLorenzo, My Associations with Liars, Bigots, and Murderers.)