Comments

1
You are right.
2
But Seattle isn't allowed to interact with the statue anymore, because Dave Meinert took it upon himself to remove the statue from its public space. Why? Because he's the self-appointed authority on Capitol Hill?
3
Agreed. It's not clever or witty or even a very good likeness and it drags this horror show election even deeper into the muck.
4
Thanks main please explain low art more often. Fools need school! It can be embarrassing to have your art's message be revealed as deeply problematic. But it's needed because Seattle has more than a little problematic low art.
5
Thank you for this.
6
jesus christ, you can enjoy a joke without having to dissect it homie.
7
All good points. I cringe at the thought of a Clinton statue ( although to be fair, it is WAY different when a woman is the target.)

Even as I agree with this article, I can't help just not caring.

I have never been so appalled by a public figure in my life. Ever. I'm appalled at his supporters. I'm appalled at the Rs who continue to endorse him.

I desperately need this public shaming. This stripping away of the expensive clothes.

He is a petty man (who has brought on the whole tiny penis meme on himself by reacting to an article saying he has small hands.)

I want the pettiness to be exposed as the lie that he is.

None of this true is about Clinton. You can disagree with her policies, with her hawkishness. But she is never petty. Awkward, yes.

Petty, never.
8
I doubt anyone will do a statue of Hillary Clinton in an orange jumpsuit, because that's not politically correct!
9
@6: Only if the joke is targeted at the Acceptable Demographics, homie. Which of course this one is (at least triply so), so no foul there.

@7: Please, everyone in politics is petty as hell. Especially those going through presidential primaries. The attacks there can't get much pettier.
11
Meh, who says trump should be embarrassed by his presumed physical shortcomings? That's on you, Rich. If trump had the balls to just drop trou and let God be his judge, then I'd have an incredible amount of respect for him.

But trump will never do that. Which maybe is the point.
12
Thank you, Rich. I am impressed by the action (5 statues in 5 cities appear on one day simultaneously mocking a pompous, hateful vulgarian) but almost immediately I began to cringe at participating in making fun of the naked body of an overweight middle aged man (with a body type not unlike my own...) It's a great piece of agitprop but I'm glad that people are acknowledging the problem of the body shaming aspect. Thanks, again.
13
There was a story of a pagan king,who lived very many centuries ago. This was in the days when the old Roman Empire was still something of a force to be reckoned with, but had been severely reduced in size by Islamic conquests of the Middle East and North Africa. The Muslims were clearly the new, powerful up-and-comers in the world.

This king traveled to Constantinople on the shores of the Bosphorus as part of an embassy. And while he was there he entered the Cathedral Church of Holy Wisdom, the Hagia Sophia, and being so overwhelmed by its unparalleled grace and beauty, its mosaics and frescoes, its liturgies and chants, converted to Christianity right then and there.

How far art has come since those barbarous times!
14
I couldn't agree more. When I first saw it, I laughed my ass off. Then I got a little uncomfortable. Trump is a vile, hateful turd, and represents the worst of us. But most of what that statue mocks is Trump's appearance. Not his bigotry, not his xenophobia, not his greed, not his pettiness. It mocks his appearance. If not for the orange hair and the label, that statue could look a lot like my dad. My dad is old and veiny and a bit saggy and overweight. In another 20 years, I'll probably look a bit like that statue. When I realized that, the statue got a bit less funny.

Still, Trump is a horrible person, so I can't get too worked up over it. And anything that openly mocks Trump is cathartic.
15
Wut? Can't we just enjoy a naughty jab at the powerful? My, how far we've fallen from the Yippie days of yore...
16
@9

That is exactly what I hate most. False equivalency.

Do politicians play "gotcha", taking things out of context, making mountains out of molehills, putting a spin on things to gain political advantage? Absolutely. I don't like it. And it works all too well in reaching voters so they all do it.

That is not what Donald Trump does. He insults. He harangues. He can't handle the least criticism without having to respond. He attacks on personal issues, with no pretense of making it about policy differences. These are facts borne out over many months.

He is a petty man who acts petty, boorish, bullying.

To put that behavior into the same category of normal stupid political games is not intelligent or discerning. Or even truthful.

Hence false equivalency. False equivalency, thy name is Theodore Gorath.

17
Oh puhleez. Trump acts like a petty, tactless cartoon character of himself. It's a normal reaction to make fun of him like he makes fun of everyone else.

Apparently the artist was originally a Trump supporter. Like he was going to vote for him and everything. He became so disgusted by the vulgar way Trump treated everyone that he decided to install these statues. Hell hath no fury like a supporter scorned. So let that be a lesson to you, Donald no balls.
18
Does this mean that one of Seattle's alt weeklies will return to doing voter's guides with nude caricatures of the candidates?
19
@16: So your argument is that no other politician insults, harangues, attacks personal issues, or responds to every perceived slight?

Ok.
20
@17 - it is important here to distinguish between the artist and the commissioned sculptor.
21
File that statue in with the other things of "Why political discourse is getting a little worse each year"
23
Thanks for this, Rich. There is a definitely hypocrisy on display here; when we vilify body shaming of people we like but celebrate it when it's someone we don't like (see @7, shaming of Chris Christie, etc), we are abandoning our own principles.

It will be interesting to see how people rationalize their support for the Trump statues if/when naked Clinton statues appear.
24
Thank god you explained the Emperor Has No Clothes bit for two paragraphs. I'm sure most people were completely baffled by that obscure fairy tale and expression. That's just great journalism. A grateful nation responds with gratitude.
25
@2- SDOT was going to remove it, Meinert found a safe place to store it. Go to No Parking on Pike and have a look. Maybe buy something from a small business while you're there.
26
@20: Wait, what? The person that sculpted this is different from the artist? I can't... what? If someone commissioned someone else to sculpt the piece, what the hell did the artist do? And how does the term "artist" even apply? Wouldn't that person be the patron instead? They're certainly not the artist if they weren't the one that made the piece.
27
The joke is over. The statues are disgusting and should be removed.
28
@13 That would've been the Byzantine Empire. The Roman empire (as we popularly understand it) had pretty much eroded by the 6th century when Islam was founded and Rome had long retreated from north Africa and Egypt by the time the Caliphates started expanding in the 7th century. It was the Byzantine emperor Justinian who built the Hagia Sophia.
29
PS. Man. People really do read into art through whatever petty little keyhole sized prism their insecure worldview permits. And this from our so-called "alternative" paper.

The entire point was show Trump as a human - an old shriveled human like anybody else.

For fuck sake. It isn't body shaming . It's to remove his invisible cloak of false power and show him like he actually is.
30
@19

If you had actually read the original comment, @7/@16's original point was that Clinton is not petty, not that "no other politician" does that laundry list of yours. The subsequent comment clarified what "petty" meant in this context.

But shifting terms of the discussion, like false equivalency, is another one of your standard moves, isn't it?
31
@24

Yeah, but the explanation about the micropenis is even better.

This thing totally reads like it's a high school essay.
32
Statement for the record.

Theodore Gorath does not understand false equivalency.

Repeating a false equivalency does not remove the false equivalency.

His last comment shows a lack of discernment of Trump's utter failings as a human being that even the most dyed in the wool Republican can see.

So.... self-deluded? Troll? Knee jerk contrariness? Lack of intelligence?

Every person who pretends/believes that there is not something seriously wrong with Trump has something seriously wrong with them and does a disservice to the public life of America.

I usually don't engage with trolls -- I learned my lesson a long time ago. It is a waste of energy. This is a waste of energy. I won't be coming back to the comment stream, so Mr Gorath can have the last word.

I predict that his last words will be false, trolling, nonsensical, and devoid of understanding what human decency looks like.

I do agree with him that political games are tiring and silly and I wish that Americans would stop believing every distortion they are told.

That isn't Trump. To pretend/believe that what he is doing is the same thing?

Humanly indecent.
33
Art is often offensive to someone or other. We aren't laughing at this statue because it is fat or has no balls, we are laughing because it is a temporary relief from the feeling that our country is full of screaming bigots, and we are all coated by the hate slime that they spew over everything, and the fear that even after he is defeated, we still won't be able to wash off their filthy slime.
34
@28 that name shift is one historians use to describe the transition of the same entity. The so-called Byzantines called themselves "Romaioi" (in Greek of course!)
35
Put a klan robe on it. That will obscure the body-shaming and highlight a central aspect of Trump's villainy.
36
@34 Yes - greek - NOT latin as the Romans spoke. That's why it was not the same society at all. That's why the division. The Byzantines spoke Greek and were Orthodox christian. They only referred to themselves as "Roman" for the political weight. But Rome fell in the fifth century and never had any contact at all with Islam.
37
I agree that this piece reads like a high school essay, and in particular, the premise that our concept of the 'ideal body' is some shallow social construct that we've all been brainwashed into believing. It is, in fact, a genetic preference. All species, from insects on up, choose their mates based on the characteristics that will best assure the survival and success of their progeny. Ask any female bird who they'd rather go home with at the end of the night - the chubby guy with the drab plumage sitting over in corner, or the cut guy with the flashy feathers and the great dance moves. Unfair? Sure. But to unequivocally assume, as this piece does, that our preference for a fit and attractive mate is some vapid new social norm is as absurd as it is unscientific. We, like all other species on the planet, simply can't help ourselves. It's in our genes.
38
Can't wait to see the Hillary statue ... Hopefully the MSM will report it also..
39
I'd be against it, but Trump has bragged about his dick enough that I think a statue making fun of it is understandable, if not tasteful.
40
Oh, we're all so offended in our little bubble reality.
41
I'm rolling over any comments to the effect of, "This article makes a good point, and Seattleites needed to hear it." You wanna run that over in your head one more time? Speaking as someone who was born and raised here, the last thing this city needs are MORE self-righteous, humorless, smug, finger-wagging lectures about why something is "not ok." Meanwhile, there are real problems, there is real bigotry, and (believe it or not!) there are real bigots in the world. But by all means, fellow liberals, let's continue with this PC p***ng contest and watch ourselves self-combust over BS.

Meanwhile, anti-LGBT hate crimes are on the rise in the very area where this statue went up. Meanwhile, whether this statue was too "low brow" for some of you being neither here nor there, this statue is a reaction to a man who has: 1. objectified women and made it clear their main asset is their looks, 2. ridiculed fat people, 3. ridiculed the disabled, 4. makes disgusting, macho, bragging comments about his own masculinity.

Pointing out the hypocrisy of all this, not to mention how ugly and hateful Trump's attitudes are--this alone is reason enough why the statue matters and takes precedence over whatever "gender binary implications" the author has come up with. That's not even touching on the litany of things he has said and done to promote authoritarianism, suppression of the press, Islamophobia, the mobilization of the white nationalist alt-right, and his lies and posturing.

"The emperor has no clothes," or balls, is a very apropos line in association with Trump. Even if I agreed with the author's argument, the vile nature of everything he stands for and represents far outweighs whatever college essay theory you can posit about why this statue is "bad."
42
This kind of political art isn't exactly something new...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/thi…
43
@36 It's not really worth arguing. I use the term Byzantine in my own research of course because it's a handy reference that everyone who's interested in the era will get.

But, you know, there really isn't a bright line to draw between the two. Justinian published the Corpus Iuris Civilis in Latin in the 6th century. And that was wholly based on prior Roman legal sources. The whole imperial administrative apparatus didn't undergo any sudden shifts. The culture did become markedly more Christian as the centuries passed, but that too was a process rather than a sharp event.

Besides, like I said, they still thought of themselves as Romans. And Greek was always the dominant language in the Eastern Mediterranean, so even that wasn't much of a shift.

In the end, it was a figure of speech. I chose a term that was a little more off the beaten path to our modern ears when talking about this time and place. It's not wrong...there's no one correct answer. It's like calling Charlemagne the Emperor of the Romans. Sounds a bit off to us, but not at all controversial back then.
44
@38, you consider the Stranger to be mainstream? This particular little cultural distributary is so far from the great rivers of media in this country that I'm not at all sure it even empties into the same body of water.
45
The naked Trump statue is funny, but at least it was not Hillary.
That would have made people vomit.

George Vreeland Hill
46
From gothamist.com: In reporting the removal of the statue from Union Square: 8/19/16 - Update 4:29 p.m.: Parks Department spokesperson Sam Biederman provided us with the following statement regarding the Trump statue:

"New York City Parks stands firmly against any unpermitted erection in city parks, no matter how small."

;)
47
@35 OH SNAP

@46 LOL
48
But, but, people LIKE to laugh at other people's bad bodies! What'
49
@48 was an accidental post! I managed to hit a keyboard shortcut I didn't know was there. Another attempt at satire ruined by technology!
50
Dear Mr. Smith,
You have every right to critique, but as a journalist, to incite the public to vandalize and deface public art is not just irresponsible, it is dangerous.
51
I think if people knew what men looked like naked the statue wouldn't have made such a stir. The reaction of the public to the statues that were stalled around the country was that of kids playing a game of 'you show me yours'. If we saw nude men more often, presented in non-sexual context, or if they naked men weren't the usual punchline to adolescent humor we'd shrug and move on. Hence Bare Men http://baremen.net. Get used to it.
52
The analysis here doesn't go far enough... it's playing on stereotypes some, but they're Trump's own stereotypes applied to himself, revealing the irony. Nobody I know is laughing at him as inadequate by himself, they're laughing at him as revealed inadequate by his *own* standards. It's saying see Donald, you're not the tough guy you pretend to be, you're just one of us vulnerable and imperfect creatures under all the bluster. At least that's how I see it, and what I think the artist intended. Trump, revealed... to be average. Art is like that though, it's an ink blot. What Rich Smith sees is what he sees.

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