UC Berkeley’s hateful opinion of America

Now on display at Doe Memorial Library

By Alexander Marlow
From the March 2007 Print Edition

            It is easy to hold beliefs, especially in a country where one can express them with impunity, but it is often difficult to tolerate beliefs detrimental to the causes one holds dear.  For the past month, conservatives on the UC Berkeley campus have tolerated a bombardment of university-sponsored anti-American propaganda on campus, the likes of which I have not seen in my three-year tenure here.

            Currently, 47 paintings and drawings by prominent Columbian artist Fernando Botero are on display in our historic Doe Library. The paintings depict the abuses of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers that took place at the Abu Ghraib prison in 2004.  Botero, who has gained international fame from his signature “volumetric” style (his art is almost exclusively still-lifes of morbidly obese people and animals), has always interwoven social commentary in his pseudo-cartoons. This exhibit, however, extends beyond the realm of “social commentary” and nestles itself comfortably in the realm of propaganda.

The exhibit blatantly exaggerates the torture committed by American troops.  The photography of Abu Ghraib abuses and the paintings in the Botero exhibit simply do not compare.  While Botero does recreate actual photographs on a few occasions, most of his paintings and drawings are original. Botero repeatedly depicts a brutal blood bath, whereas actual photos of the crimes make the perpetrators seem more like wayward fraternity members than the brutal manglers Botero portrays.  Moreover, Botero deftly danced around the fact that one of the principal American perpetrators at Abu Ghraib was a woman — there is not one woman depicted in Botero’s 47 pieces.  If the photos of the American injustices were genuinely powerful, then Botero would not have needed to embellish the imagery.

And let us not forget the infamous history of Abu Ghraib.  Before the Americans took control of Abu Ghraib after invading Iraq, Saddam Hussein used the prison to torture and murder political detainees. The prison was thought to house as many as 15,000 inmates, and up to 4,000 murders were committed by Hussein’s Ba’athist regime on-site.  There are several mass graves in proximity to the prison.  What’s more, there are numerous accounts of prisoners being found with missing limbs that were presumably torn from their bodies.  Abu Ghraib was also reportedly the site where Hussein fed human beings into an industrial-strength wood-chipper.  I assume Botero found these abuses less tragic than the ones committed by the Americans.

During the 10-day period of mainstream-media-induced hysteria following the outbreak of the scandal, approximately 1 million people were executed by mass ethnic cleansing in Sudan. Despite the fact there were zero confirmed murders by American troops at Abu Ghraib, the editors of The New York Times were not discouraged from devoting space on their front page to the Abu Ghraib scandal every day for the next month.  Moreover, I have yet to hear of Botero’s plans to open an exhibit on genocide in Darfur.

 Botero has claimed his Abu Ghraib series is his equivalent to Picasso’s “Guernica.”  Aside from the fact that as an artist, Botero can be more easily compared to Charles Shultz (of “Peanuts” fame) than Picasso, comparing the Nazi bombing of Guernica, Spain to sexual assault at Abu Ghraib is so immoral that it is borderline stupid. 

Despite the obvious hyperbole of the Abu Ghraib scandal, Americans still seem to be chugging the Kool-Aid.  Daily Californian columnist Gazelle Emami stated that “the public reaction toward it at the time was dangerously underwhelming and almost dismissive.”  I wouldn’t exactly call 30 days of front-page coverage in America’s most-read newspaper “dangerously underwhelming.”  Apparently basic research and fact-checking skills are not required for Daily Cal writers, so long as there is a nice leftward slant to their writing.

Emami continues dishing out insight when she notes, Botero’s “trademark voluptuousness loses any positive connotation in a sketch of a bloated hand, which brings to mind a swelling pig’s bladder about ready to burst.”  I am not sure which is more frightening: knowing that Emami must have a hobby that reminds her of a (presumably urine-filled) pig’s bladder or that the Daily Californian would publish this worthless junk.

Yet there is an amusing undertone to this morbid exhibit.  Botero’s pictorial does its part to portray Americans as vicious, warlike imperialists who want to infringe on rights and perpetuate inequality throughout the world.  It is ironic that Botero can portray America as a force for injustice throughout the world from a forum in America’s most prestigious public institution.  In fact, there was no organized protest against this exhibit.  Considering virtually every imperialist power in world history has had an elaborate propaganda machine working for it, how can America be considered imperialist if the propaganda at work in our country (through the media and education) is working to undermine our military endeavors.

While those guilty of the crimes committed at Abu Ghraib needed to be dishonorably discharged and locked up in jail, we have yet to gain proper perspective.  Since 1898, the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in southern Cuba has been one of America’s most prolific interrogations facilities.  In nearly 110 years, out of more than 24,000 interrogations, there have been only seven confirmed instances of prisoner abuse.  And unlike the vast majority of countries on Earth, America disciplines those responsible.

             UC Berkeley certainly feels differently.  Instead of dedicating energy or funds to honoring the thousands of American troops who put themselves in harm’s way to bring peace and prosperity to even the most primitive and barbaric regions of the world, our school has chosen to humiliate them by exploiting one small mistake in a large and arduous war.  While I believe in freedom of speech and expression and do not believe Botero’s Abu Ghraib exhibit should be taken down from Doe Library, I am curious what good UC Berkeley administrators thought this filthy display of anti-American propaganda would bring our campus.

If you enjoyed this article, please consider supporting the Patriot