The Seattle Times Can Suck Our Ball

An editorial in this morning’s Seattle Times calls for a “round of boisterous boos” for an “uber-political artist” who, on behalf of Washington’s 7th Congressional District, fashioned a Christmas ornament for the White House. It’s a big ball with a little message that says, “Impeach Bush.”

How embarrassing.

Everyone involved has a role in our holiday discomfort: the ill-mannered artist and the director of the arts group 4Culture who allowed Lawrence to be selected.

Lawrence is known for her anti-war, anti-torture and feminist views. That should have alerted someone to check in with the artist — or to select someone else who might feel the Christmas spirit a little more acutely. …

Artists from the nation’s 435 congressional districts were asked to create an ornamental ball in the theme of red, white and blue to be displayed at the White House. The only ornament rejected was the one by Lawrence. The White House made the right decision.

Our holiday discomfort, indeed. Someone should have known that an artist from Seattle who believes in women’s rights and opposes torture would be such a feral cat, right, Fairview Fanny? Because we’d hate for Washington’s 7th Congressional District to stick out as a district that radically opposes the Bush doctrine. That’s what this is about, right? Going to war without good reason—that’s the inferred basis of Deborah Lawrence’s impeachment message. But, now that you mention it, we sort of stuck out already when our Congressional delegate Jim McDermott went to Baghdad on a peace mission and voted against Bush’s war. You called that “too liberal for liberal Seattle” six months before we reelected him with 80.7 percent of the vote. We also went on the record against Bush when we slam dunked votes for Gore, Kerry, and Obama. If you’ve been reading your paper, you know our feelings for Bush were not unexpectedly revealed on a Christmas ball.

Why go with an artist so politically motivated? … The smarter plan was to select an artist willing to represent the 7th District with some degree of taste.

Gee—why go with an artist so politically motivated? Perhaps because Lawrence wasn’t making decorations for Bellevue Square. She’s making an ornament for the White House, currently occupied by the most politically divisive administration in decades. But if Lawrence were making an ornament for Bellevue Square, she might have emblazoned the same message across it because, again, if you read your paper, you’d note it’s the “worst” Christmas economy in decades, thanks to Bush’s economic drunkenness. So perhaps Lawrence “might feel the Christmas spirit a little more acutely” if we weren’t having the least spirited Christmas in modern memory, and maybe she’d impart some apolitical Christmas cheer to the White House if “our holiday discomfort” wasn’t caused in large part by the White House.

But what’s flabbergasting about this editorial is that the logic is as absent as Bush’s leadership. Argue the great minds on Fairview Avenue: Lawrence’s art is embarrassing because it’s in bad taste. Fucking brilliant!! Seriously, what the fuck is the point of printing 100,000 copies of your opinion if you don’t explain WHY you reached that conclusion? At least tell us why it is distasteful for an artist to send a message to the highest political office that encapsules our dearest political beliefs. She wasn’t breaking from local public sentiment. We don’t need to coddle our worst president ever with appropriateness, nor do we need a newspaper to apologize for our civic tenacity for political theater; we’re in Seattle (SEE-AHH-TUL), Seattle Times.