The Iraqi shouting his love of Bush – “Bush, Bush!” – is likely to have other attitudes as well. If we can run on double lines, now prompted by what we think we think, and now by our deep unconscious, so can Iraqis. Indeed it would be racist to think otherwise.But the minimising of Saddam Hussein’s systematic cruelty – tin-pot dictator, petty local chieftain, etc – is now exposed for what it is: a wickedness in itself, perpetrated opportunely for reasons of anti-West ideology only All’s fair in love and war, I accept that. But those who dirty themselves this way should drop, at the very least, their mask of righteousness.It would help to give the charge of racism, unconscious or otherwise, a rest. Not least as either side to this, as to every conflict, can find instances of it in the other.
The two Iraqi women who sought martyrdom as suicide bombers – only too conscious, alas, of what they were about to do – listed Zionism as paramount among the evils they were hell-bent to avenge. Was there no racism implied in that? No racism in the anti-Jewish propaganda to which they will undoubtedly have been exposed since they were children? No racism in their self-imposed blindness to the fact that the Israel they cannot stomach exists by virtue of the Jews they themselves, among other Middle Eastern nations, expelled?Asked on television why he was returning from the Lebanon to support the tyrant from whom he’d fled, an Iraqi said he wanted to make sure not a single Jew trod upon Iraqi soil. Oh for some deep unconscious racism there! And do not say that he was but a single man, and that we are a system. It takes a system to stuff murderous hatred into a single man.When it comes to bigotry, there is no innocent party. Not even John Pilger who by the day descends into a perverse loathing, not of the hated other, but of one’s hated own That, too, is racism
More from Howard Jacobson.
“I may not know much about art; but I know what I want in my atrium.” That seems to be the considered view of Britart from the nation’s office workers, to judge from a survey this week by ICM for the organisation Arts & Business. The survey found that three quarters of those asked would prefer to work in an environment where there is art. Picasso was the workers’ choice as the artist they would most like on the walls (18 per cent), while Damien Hirst was the least popular choice, securing just 4 per cent of the vote. The Turner Prize attracts huge queues, but who are these people? The majority of people genuinely don’t understand contemporary art. The chattering classes of Notting Hill will go to the opening of the Saatchi Gallery, but most people think it’s rubbish. Most of the general public are revolted by dead cows.”Now, this is alarming I have known the estimable Mr Tweedy for some years.
As the man responsible for brokering partnerships between arts venues and business sponsors, he is an influential figure with the ear of ministers. If the man who leads businessmen and women to the arts and the arts to businessmen and women publicly admits that most people think contemporary art is rubbish, one can assume he is echoing the views of his business clients.The easy response is to brand them philistines But it is too easy a response. For, as the Arts & Business chief also says, most people genuinely don’t understand contemporary art. Not understanding an art form all too easily leads to people labelling it rubbish. Blaming the public for not understanding is the easy solution. I blame the heads of our contemporary art galleries; I blame the judges on the Turner Prize; I blame Channel 4, the prize’s sponsor.
