Tuesday, January 27, 2009

End of the Age of Irony ?

Humor-free zone

The New York Review of Books had an article more or less lamenting the fact that with Barak Obama's ground-breaking election (the first person of color to become the President of the United States) it is such a sacred moment that we can't be ironic about it or perhaps anything else political. That irony as an artform may be dead.

Luckily, subsequent events have shown this not to be true. The Czech Republic commissioned an artist to do some public art about Europe to celebrate the repbublic's turn as president of the European Union. David Cerny the artist then said that he worked with an artist from each of the EU countries to have them represent their country symbolically for the sculpture. When it was unveiled, Italy appeared as a giant soccer (football) field, England was missing altogether, Romania is pictured as a Vampire theme park, Luxemburg is shown as for sale, Poland with priests raising the colored gay flag, etc. It's come out of course that it is a hoax, an ironic one at that.

And closer to home and perhaps more relevant to the concerns of Workers, the New York Times said that President Obama's new spending programs will be "raining money" down on special interests. That is of course ironic but not funny.