Category Archives: Culture wars

Kehinde Wiley is unquestionably a very talented artist. His mastery of painting is abundantly visible in his renderings of African-Americans in contemporary garb posing in the style of European masterpieces such as Jacques-Louis David’s “Napoleon Crossing the Alps” (as seen to the right). Inspired by the debate over Civil War statues, Wiley will display in New York this September a monumental statue of a young African-American in urban street-wear sitting astride a horse in a pose reminiscent of Richmond’s J.E.B. Stuart monument. In December, the statue will be installed in front of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts on Arthur Ashe Boulevard — about a mile from the Stuart statue. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Wiley statue will be the most expensive acquisition made in the museum’s history.

I don’t have a problem with either Wiley or his creation. Wiley is exercising his right to free expression. His work shatters stereotypes and provokes thought. His work displays a mastery of technique, unlike much of the trash that passes for contemporary “art” in museums today. Further, he’s not tearing down or vandalizing Richmond’s Civil War statues; he’s mocking them. I don’t even have a problem with the VMFA displaying the controversial, in-your-face piece outside the museum. I appreciate a diversity of artistic viewpoints and perspectives.

Rather, I see the VMFA’s huge investment in Wiley’s artwork as a sign that the state museum has taken sides in the nation’s culture wars. Indeed, I would go one step further in suggesting that the museum sector in Richmond is being increasingly captured by political progressives and weaponized to challenge — even to assault — the values and beliefs of a large segment of the population. I will develop this theme in future posts. Meanwhile, back to the VMFA… Continue reading →

City Councilor Cathy Galvin — divestment a step in the right direction.

Charlottesville City Council has voted to remove all operating investments in “weapons” and fossil-fuel companies from its $50 million-to-$100 million core investment portfolio, reports WVIR-TV.

Divestment proponents said fossil fuels and weapons do not align with the city’s vision and have negative impacts on community members. In response to calls that the measure does not go far enough, Treasurer Jason Vandever said the city is looking into divesting from fossil-fuel and weapons investments in the retirement fund as well.

Fossil-fuel and weapons companies make up only a small portion of the investment portfolio, so the measure will have a minimal budgetary impact, divestment advocates said.

Bacon’s bottom line: I wish there were some way Virginia could divest itself of Charlottesville, but no mechanism readily comes to mind. As a fall-back position, perhaps Commonwealth should divest itself of the University of Virginia, which sits at the epicenter of the city’s radical-chic culture. Continue reading →

Citing scheduling conflicts, Tony Bennett, coach of the University of Virginia men’s basketball team, announced Friday that the team would decline an invitation to celebrate its N.C.A.A. championship at the White House. The move was particularly poignant, editorialized the New York Times news story, “as it highlighted widespread outrage over President Trump’s response to the white-nationalist rally two years ago in Charlottesville.”

The Times did not need to repeat the infamous Trump quote — that there were “very fine people on both sides” of Charlottesville’s deadly Unite the Right rally — because every sentient creature in the universe has heard it. Through a process of telephone tag-like repetition, the quote has morphed into a defense of Neo-Nazis and Klansmen. Most recently, Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden criticized Trump for assigning “a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it.”

Trump is a repellent person in many ways: for his egotism, his sexism, his amoral business practices, his bullying, his carelessness with the truth, his outright lies, and his bull-in-a-china-shop approach to governance. You don’t have to make stuff up to find Trump a grievously flawed individual. But the president’s very real defects appear to be insufficient to feed the Left’s all-consuming hatred of him. While the president routinely and carelessly makes mis-statements of facts along with deliberate lies, the Left and its media allies make up lies of their own. And the “very fine people” controversy, germinated here in Virginia, is one of the biggest. Continue reading →

Peter Vlaming. Photo credit: Richmond Times-Dispatch

Social mores in the United States are changing so fast, it’s hard to keep up. If you fail to conform to the latest turn in politically correct thinking, you’re toast. You could lose your job. Not just in California, but here in Virginia.

Peter Vlaming, a high school teacher in West Point, was fired yesterday by the West Point School Board for resisting administrative orders to use male pronouns to refer to a ninth-grade student who had undergone a gender transition, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Here are the details: Continue reading →