[Vision2020] Vision2020 Digest, Vol 23, Issue 1

Thu May 1 12:46:25 PDT 2008

Hilary's staff interpretation of the picture is pretty funny.  It reminded me of George Bush's miffed interpretation of a painting he placed in the oval office.  Just goes to show you can only trust someone's view as far as you can throw a shifty eyed used car salesman.

Wait till you see what "Riders of the Purple Sage" was really about!  Don
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(from http://www.slate.com/id/2182222 where even this author missed that the original painting was a depiction of "Riders of the Purple Sage" prior to being used for "The Slipper Tounge")

According to The Bush Tragedy, a new book by Slate's Jacob Weisberg, Bush suffers from a similar inability to distinguish between what he wants to see and what is there to be seen. This is nicely captured in an anecdote about a painting that Bush put up in his office when he was governor of Texas. Weisberg writes:

In an April 1995 memo, Bush invited his staff to come to his office to look at a painting. … The picture is a Western scene of a cowboy riding up a craggy hill, with two other riders following behind him. Bush told visitors—who often noted his resemblance to the rider in front—that it was called A Charge To Keep and that it was based on his favorite Methodist hymn of that title, written in the eighteenth century by Charles Wesley. As Bush noted in the memo, which he quoted in his autobiography of the same title: "I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission. When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves." Bush identified with the lead rider, whom he took to be a kind of Christian cowboy, an embodiment of indomitable vigor, courage, and moral clarity. 
Bush subsequently took the painting to Washington, hung it in the Oval Office, and continued to tell the painting's inspiring story, adding embellishments:

He came to believe that the picture depicted the circuit-riders who spread Methodism across the Alleghenies in the nineteenth century. In other words, the cowboy who looked like Bush was a missionary of his own denomination.
Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled "The Slipper Tongue," published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: "Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught."

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(From  http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2007w17/msg00195.htm  )

W.H.D. Koerner, born in 1878, was a German immigrant who settled with his family in Iowa. After an early stint as a rapid-hand illustrator for the Chicago Tribune before photographs became commonplace in newspapers, he studied at the Howard Pyle School of Art, in Delaware, led by the leading illustrator in the country. Koerner then became a regular illustrator for the Saturday Evening Post, a mass magazine that appealed to small-town sentimentality and mythology in an age before the spread of radio. The magazine's trademark was its hundreds of covers produced by Norman Rockwell, a commercial artist whose ubiquitous work in advertising and his glossy but homey kitsch for the Saturday Evening Post gained him a reputation as one of the definers of everyday Americana.The magazine used Koerner especially to provide pictures to accompany short stories about cowboys. In 1912, it gave Koerner the choice assignment of illustrating Zane Grey's "Riders of the Purple Sage." The Koerner painting that now hangs in the Oval Office first appeared as an illustration for a cowboy story called "The Slipper Tongue" in the June 3, 1916, issue. The next year, the magazine reprinted the illustration to accompany another cowboy story, "Ways That Are Dark." (Both of the writers of these short stories were forgettable figures in the western pulp fiction tradition, originated in the late 19th century by Ned Buntline, inventive publisher of Wild West dime novels and mythologizer of "Buffalo Bill" Cody and "Wild Bill" Hickok, who in the process became the wealthiest author of his time.) Two years after his illustration was first printed, Koerner resold it to Country Gentleman magazine, to go with another western called "A Charge to Keep." The editors of Country Gentleman didn't seem to mind that the picture had been used twice before by another publication.In 1995, at Bush's inaugural as governor of Texas, his wife, Laura, selected an 18th century Methodist hymn, written by Charles Wesley, titled "A Charge to Keep." Its words in part are:A charge to keep I have,
A God to glorify,
A never-dying soul to save,
And fit it for the sky.
 To serve the present age,
My calling to fulfill:
O may it all my powers engage
To do my master's will!
After the ceremony, one of Bush's childhood friends, Joseph I. "Spider" O'Neill, managing partner of his family's oil and investment company, told him that he owned a painting, remarkably enough titled "A Charge to Keep," and that he would happily lend it to the governor. O'Neill and his wife, who attended Southern Methodist University with Laura, as it happened had also played Cupid in arranging the first date between George and Laura. Presented with the cowboy painting, Bush enthusiastically displayed it at the Governor's Mansion and now the White House.The idea of Bush as a Christian cowboy, dashing upward and onward to fulfill the Lord's commandments, inspired him to title his campaign autobiography (written by his then communications advisor, Karen Hughes) "A Charge to Keep: My Journey to the White House." Sample: "I could not be governor if I did not believe in a divine plan that supersedes all human plans."
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(from  Wikipedia  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riders_of_the_Purple_Sage  )

Riders of the Purple Sage was written in 1912 to partly present the influx of Mormon settlers into Utah (1847-1857) as a backdrop for the plot (1871). The Mormons had built the Kirtland Temple in Kirtland, Ohio in 1831, and Zane Grey would have been familiar with the Mormon sect given that he grew up in Zanesville, Ohio. Plural marriage was only officially prohibited by the Mormons with the issuing of the First and Second Manifesto in 1890 and 1904 respectively. In 1871, mainstream American society found plural marriage offensive. Even after the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act was passed in 1862, Lincoln had no intent to enforce it[citation needed] and the practice had continued. Therefore, Zane Grey described the distaste of the institution through Lassiter in 1912 only after the practice had ended.

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(An interpretation of Bush's mis-interpretation from http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2250558,00.html  )

Everyone has a picture on the wall with some personal meaning. When the art lover in question is George Bush, however, and he can't stop telling us all his eccentric views about it, our interest is naturally piqued. 
Bush, it seems, has a great passion for a 1916 cowboy scene by WHD Koerner that hangs in his office. He loves telling people about its significance to him. According to The Bush Tragedy by Jacob Weisberg, published next month, when governor of Texas, Bush told staff the painting was called A Charge To Keep, a quote from his favourite Methodist hymn by Charles Wesley. He urged them to absorb the moral lesson of this "beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us," he said. 

Yet a little digging by Weisberg has revealed that the picture in question originally portrayed a bad man, not a good man. It was first used in the Saturday Evening Post in 1916 to illustrate a story about a horse thief, and captioned as a picture of his flight from the law. Only later did it illustrate a story about Methodism. 
There are a lot of funny things about this story: the art itself isn't one of them. Bush's favourite painting comes from a tradition of 19th- and early-20th-century art that inspired the later film westerns of John Ford. Koerner's painting is a minor but decent example of the genre. 
If you think it's kitsch, look again at those sensitively suggested smoky mountains, that powerful observation of a horse's motion. It is not in itself a shameful thing to love. 
Bush's fantastical interpretation of it is another matter. Of course, it's unfair to laugh at someone for doing what everyone does when we look at art - seeing it his way. You bring the art history books, I'll fetch the rope. 
Lynne Segal, professor of gender studiesThis is such an exhausted cliche of masculinity: the loner on his horse, the heroic, old-fashioned western archetype. It is symptomatic of the fact that Bush lives in a fantasy world, as many American men do, where you can invent a story and place yourself at the centre. You are a hero, not just of your own life, but leading others, too. 
Yet this solipsistic vision seems so at odds with the knowledge - a knowledge that you would expect most of us to have today - that others create and shape our world. Instead, this kind of American masculine imagery suggests that you have to be not just the first among equals but heading the pack, leading the way forward. 
Darian Leader, psychoanalystThe painting itself is fairly dull. What is interesting is that Bush has invested a great deal in it, and seems to use it as a symbol of what he sees as his own mission. He interprets it as the story of missionaries spreading the word of truth and freedom, an impulse that informed the invasion of Iraq, when in fact it is a depiction of thieves on the run from the law. It's a good example of repression: when we want to avoid an unpleasant truth, it has a habit of returning. There is a wonderful complement to this in a speech Tony Blair gave to troops in Iraq, during which he referred to "weapons of mass distraction". This painting is Bush's Freudian slip. 
It also seems to illustrate a legacy being passed from father to son. It is almost impossible to understand Bush's aspirations without thinking of what he saw as the unfinished business of his father. This painting suggests that if you want to understand Bush, you need to understand his father, and that's a psychological truth that has an impact on world politics. 
Joanna Bourke, military historianThere is a military feel to this painting. The men are armed and obviously fleeing, but the enemy is invisible, hidden in a huge expanse of rough, tough landscape. Bush clearly identifies with the main character in the painting: he is the leader of men, tough and masculine, travelling light with a magnificent animal between his thighs. 
The war depicted here is partly against nature. It represents the taming of the great frontier. But there's also a clear link to the American civil war, and to the battle against the wild Indians: the traditional American goodies and baddies. For Bush, the foreign baddies are terrorists, both abroad and within. Of course, the irony is that, in the painting, the men on horseback are the bandits. Bush is interpreting this as a utopian scene, as bandits often do, when in fact what is depicted is simple masculine criminality. 
Derek Draper, psychotherapist and ex-Labour spin doctorBush's mistaken enthusiasm suggests several psychological interpretations. The first will most readily appeal to committed Bush-haters: it is evidence of his tendency to misread situations and confuse right with wrong. A more subtle insight might involve imagining Bush's inner world: for so long inhabited by the demons of drink, drugs and failure. His mind might resist a too-close-to-home image of a troubled man fleeing for his life and have to see instead the strong, heroic adventurer he has convinced himself he has become. 
Most revealing, though, is the simple fact that a healthy mind would look at this image and not be certain what it depicted. Bush, though, as he once told Senator Joe Biden, doesn't "do nuance". Instead he invariably replaces "not-knowing" with prejudiced certainty. A foolish psychological mindset when it comes to art or life; a catastrophic one in politics.
 > Message: 3> Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 10:40:54 -0700> From: lfalen <lfalen at turbonet.com>> Subject: [Vision2020] Fw: How to rewrite your personal> history....Funny> To: vision2020 at moscow.com> Message-ID: <8b9ddffaf2466491c893e53403d9e36b at turbonet.com>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"> > I don't know if this is true or not, but it is still kind od funny.> Roger> -----Original message-----> > From: rafalen rafalen at turbonet.com> Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:03:51 -0700> To: lfalen at turbonet.com> Subject: How to rewrite your personal history....Funny> > > Hillary's Great-great Uncle...> > > Judy Wallman, a professional genealogical researcher, discovered that Hillary Clinton's great-great uncle, Remus Rodham, was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889.> > The only known photograph of Remus shows him standing on the gallows. On the back of the picture is this inscription:'Remus Rodham; horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison 1885, escaped 1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted and hanged in 1889.'> > > Judy e-mailed Hillary Clinton for comments. Hillary's staff sent back the following biographical sketch:> > 'Remus Rodham was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory. His business empire grew to include acquisition n of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montana railroad. Beginning in 1883, he devoted several years of his life to service at a government facility, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889, Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honor when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed.'> > And THAT is how it's done folks.> > > > > > > -------------- next part --------------> An embedded message was scrubbed...> From: rafalen <rafalen at turbonet.com>> Subject: How to rewrite your personal history....Funny> Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:03:51 -0700> Size: 9080> Url: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20080501/d99461d1/attachment-0001.mht > > ------------------------------> > Message: 4> Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 11:05:07 -0700> From: lfalen <lfalen at turbonet.com>> Subject: [Vision2020] Fw: Fw: How to rewrite your personal> history....Funny> To: vision2020 at moscow.com> Message-ID: <4a7c16364fb362502c97ca50d39a2776 at turbonet.com>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"> > According to Snopes this is an urbon legend. They have the same story on Gunther Gore a relative of Al's> Roger> > > > > I don't know if this is true or not, but it is still kind of funny.> Roger> > Hillary's Great-great Uncle...> > > Judy Wallman, a professional genealogical researcher, discovered that Hillary Clinton's great-great uncle, Remus Rodham, was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889.> > The only known photograph of Remus shows him standing on the gallows. On the back of the picture is this inscription:'Remus Rodham; horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison 1885, escaped 1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted and hanged in 1889.'> > > Judy e-mailed Hillary Clinton for comments. Hillary's staff sent back the following biographical sketch:> > 'Remus Rodham was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory. His business empire grew to include acquisition n of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montana railroad. Beginning in 1883, he devoted several years of his life to service at a government facility, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889, Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honor when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed.'> > And THAT is how it's done folks.
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