Artistic Offense

It makes me want to step outside 
I want to loosen my tie 
Sweet Jesus, my heart 
Is beating faster and faster 
--Modern Art, Art Brut

Nobody does it better 
Makes me feel sad for the rest 
Nobody does it half as good as you 
Baby, you're the best 
--Nobody Does it Better, 
Carly Simon
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And while we are at our day of remembrance, witness the new Purple Heart pin fronting the cover of this month's Military Order of the Purple Heart magazine (on right).

The pin is supposed to be a facsimile of the noble Purple Heart medallion featuring our first president, George Washington.  Instead, it looks vaguely like a Labrador Retriever, or perhaps Veronica Lake.  The features have been so obliterated that it could be some insect's pupa.

This, no doubt, is a Chinese manufacturing effort, lacking the tolerances and oversight that used to be the hallmark of American-made goods. (Efforts to get an answer as to the source of the monstrosity were met with ambiguity.) So Americans fight and die, and buy things from our once great rival, Communist China -- now, Most Favored Nation (MFN) People's Republic of China, the nation who rolls over civil rights as we fight wars to ostensibly install those rights in lesser places.

Meanwhile, we suffer along, calling a bad the "new normal", gobbling up shoddy goods and calling it a day, forgetting that at one time, such items wouldn't sit on the discount table at Woolworths (if we still had a Woolworths.)

Where does pride end, and expediency begin? Gall?  This horrific effort -- fronting a national magazine, no less -- brought to mind the recent botched effort to restore an ecce homo fresco of Jesus in Spain -- "probably the worst art restoration project of all time"  -- by 80-ish parishioner Cecilia Giménez.

Take a gander, if you dare, and tell us which you think is the worse offense: