Paper Monument

© Noah Sheldon

There are plenty of reasons to support Barack Obama, and these have been clearly outlined as newspapers, politicians, and union leaders have lent their support to his momentous campaign. Paper Monument can't hope to match the clout or gravitas behind these other endorsements, nor do we pretend to any special political expertise. Still, we would like to offer humbly what, as an art magazine, we are perhaps best qualified to provide: a short aesthetic argument on Senator Obama's behalf.

Some decades ago, in a political climate considerably worse than our
own, the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert wrote a poem called The Power of
Taste, noticing that the output of his country's communist regime was invariably ugly: "Truly their rhetoric was just too shoddy...chains of tautologies a few flailing concepts...syntax devoid of the beauty of the subjunctive." For Herbert, just noticing this ugliness was the beginning of a useful resistance.

Last week, as we watched the Democratic frontrunners respond to an
innocuous debate question, we were reminded of Herbert's poem. When
asked what his greatest weakness was, Senator Obama responded with a fairly straightforward confession: his desk was a total mess, he needed constant help with his paperwork, and his disorganization drove his staff crazy. A pretty boring answer, and one that wouldn't merit praise, except in contrast to Clinton's answer. Her biggest weakness, it turns out, is her impatience to change America.

Clinton's cloying and badly-scripted response had in fact revealed her greatest weakness, but it had little to do with impatience and even less to do with change. Her plastic half-answer reminded us of nothing so much as the last eight years of cheap, mendacious sound bites, and the fact that it passed for acceptable discourse reminded us how little candor we have come to expect from our leaders. Suddenly, we too were impatient for change.

In the week that followed, as Bill Clinton went on to squander our nostalgia for his reign with a series of dull and inaccurate statements about his wife's opponent, we started to feel an increasing solidarity with the Senator from Illinois. The Clinton campaign had become remarkably ugly.

Given the amount of time the Democrats have had to refine their opposition, it's not surprising that Barack Obama's platform is very similar to Hillary Clinton's. Without major policy differences the most important question becomes: Who will be able to implement the impressive and reasonable Democratic platform? Conventional wisdom says that Clinton has the experience and the political allies to get the job done. Something else–our sense of aesthetics?– tells us otherwise.

We are tired of shoddy rhetoric. It's not enough to replace a faux-everyman's Texas drawl with the badly-harmonized battle-cry of the Clintons; both sound very false to our ears. Given the choice, we would like to reacquaint politics with honesty. We’d rather someone speak to us in plain language, with an eloquence that hasn't forgotten candor. We hear this very quality in Senator Obama, which is one of the many reasons we'll be voting for him on February 5th.



	© Noah Sheldon There are plenty of reasons to support Barack Obama, and these have been clearly outlined as newspapers, politicians, and union leaders have lent their support to his momentous campaign. Paper Monument can't hope to match the clout or gravitas behind these other endorsements, nor do we pretend to any special political expertise. Still, we would like to offer humbly what, as an art magazine, we are perhaps best qualified to provide: a short aesthetic argument on Senator Obama's behalf. Some decades ago, in a political climate considerably worse than our own, the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert wrote a poem called The Power of Taste, noticing that the output of his country's communist regime was invariably ugly: "Truly their rhetoric was just too shoddy...chains of tautologies a few flailing concepts...syntax devoid of the beauty of the subjunctive." For Herbert, just noticing this ugliness was the beginning of a useful resistance. Last week, as we watched the Democratic frontrunners respond to an innocuous debate question, we were reminded of Herbert's poem. When asked what his greatest weakness was, Senator Obama responded with a fairly straightforward confession: his desk was a total mess, he needed constant help with his paperwork, and his disorganization drove his staff crazy. A pretty boring answer, and one that wouldn't merit praise, except in contrast to Clinton's answer. Her biggest weakness, it turns out, is her impatience to change America. Clinton's cloying and badly-scripted response had in fact revealed her greatest weakness, but it had little to do with impatience and even less to do with change. Her plastic half-answer reminded us of nothing so much as the last eight years of cheap, mendacious sound bites, and the fact that it passed for acceptable discourse reminded us how little candor we have come to expect from our leaders. Suddenly, we too were impatient for change. In the week that followed, as Bill Clinton went on to squander our nostalgia for his reign with a series of dull and inaccurate statements about his wife's opponent, we started to feel an increasing solidarity with the Senator from Illinois. The Clinton campaign had become remarkably ugly. Given the amount of time the Democrats have had to refine their opposition, it's not surprising that Barack Obama's platform is very similar to Hillary Clinton's. Without major policy differences the most important question becomes: Who will be able to implement the impressive and reasonable Democratic platform? Conventional wisdom says that Clinton has the experience and the political allies to get the job done. Something else–our sense of aesthetics?– tells us otherwise. We are tired of shoddy rhetoric. It's not enough to replace a faux-everyman's Texas drawl with the badly-harmonized battle-cry of the Clintons; both sound very false to our ears. Given the choice, we would like to reacquaint politics with honesty. We’d rather someone speak to us in plain language, with an eloquence that hasn't forgotten candor. We hear this very quality in Senator Obama, which is one of the many reasons we'll be voting for him on February 5th.
	–The Editors

	We Are For Barack Obama