Unreal

The image above is an item from an exhibit of objects connected with 9/11 in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and it links to the exhibition site.

That’s enough to make anyone sigh. And it is unreal enough. I, however, am ready to scream when I hear of writing and art being destroyed in the name of a political ideology. And this has recently happened, and the writing wasn't some terrorist firebrand incitement to public disorder.

It was poetry.

In March 2003, a teenage girl named Courtney presented one of her poems before an audience at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Albuquerque, then read the poem live on [her] school’s closed-circuit television channel.

A school military liaison and the high school principal accused the girl of being “un-American” because she criticized the war in Iraq and the Bush administration’s failure to give substance to its “No child left behind” education policy.

The girl’s mother, also a teacher, was ordered by the principal to destroy the child’s poetry. The mother refused and may lose her job.

There was no obscenity. None. An opinion, expressed in verse by a young poet. The Principal of the school, spineless lackey that he is, has ordered that the teaching and reciting of poetry be banned there. Art teachers who refused to tear down pupils’ posters critical of the war found themselves unemployed at the start of the next school year. So who now teaches art there? And what effect does that have on the pupils’ understanding of art and its range?

The National Writers’ Union and the American Civil Liberties Union have pending legal action against the school, up to federal level. Damn right.

Writers and editors who have spent years translating essays, films, poems, scientific articles and books by Iranian, North Korean and Sudanese authors have been warned not to do so by the U.S. Treasury Department under penalty of fine and imprisonment. Publishers and film producers are not allowed to edit works authored by writers in those nations.

It makes me exceptionally concerned for the future of art of all kinds in America. Maybe these artists will rebel when they are released into a permissive einvronment, and my concern will be proved misplaced. But I think this is as serious an assault against the freedom to create as the Iraq prison torture was against the humanity of the prisoners. And it should be pursued with as much vigour. And who will pursue the defence but artists?