NYC MAYOR RUDY GIULIANI HAS ANOTHER ART ATTACK

New York's most powerful art hater, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, is at it again. According to the New York Times, "disgusting" and "outrageous" is how Giuliani describes a 15-foot photographic depiction of the Last Supper by distinguished black photographic artist Renee Cox. The work, entitled "Yo Mama's Last Supper," on view at the Brooklyn Museum as part of an exhibition of photographers by 94 black photographers, features the artist herself, in the nude, as the Christ figure.

We just came back from the Brooklyn, where we saw the exhibition, which is called "Committed to the Image." It's pretty good, incorporating the work of Anthony Barboza, Martin Dixon, and the great Gordon Parks; you should definitely check it out. You may remember that the Brooklyn Museum was the scene of Mayor Giuliani's last art attack. In 1999 he tried to close the Museum after it debuted its "Sensation" show, because black artist Chris Ofili had dared to use elephant dung as an artistic material in his wonderfully powerful "Holy Virgin Mary."

Like Ofili, Cox says she was raised Catholic and has issues with that, and it makes sense that those issues would be part of what her investigations as an artist are about, right? Art is supposed to look fearlessly at ourselves and the world and bring us forward into a greater understanding of our humanity, right? Well, don't go telling that to Mayor Giuliani. Apparently he thinks art should look pretty and just sit there. Artist Cox's reaction to the Mayor's attack, according to the Times, was, "Get over it. I don't produce work that necessarily looks good over somebody's couch."

Giuliani was raised a Catholic, too, though it's clear that he's in danger of never even getting close to his issues (which include mistaking of sanctimony for reverence, and prudery for decency). Hating shit that can get you to the next level is pretty bad. That's why we think Giuliani deserves our pity more than our anger.

R.I.P. SMOKING BADDY ALEXANDER SPEARS III

Guess who died? Smoking baddy Alexander Spears III, who testified before Congress in 1994, along with a lot of other top cigarette executives, that he believed nicotine was not addictive and didn't cause disease. Of course, nicotine is highly addictive and does cause disease. Spears, who served as both chairman and chief executive of Lorillard, died of lung cancer at the age of 68.

We say that Spears is a baddy, but on the community level the Greensboro, N.C. resident was actually a pretty responsible, socially progressive citizen. According to the New York Times, he served as fund-raiser for the Girl Scouts, the United Negro College Fund, and Greensboro Historical Museum. Spears also served on the boards of the local United Way and the National Conference for Community and Justice, which is dedicated to fighting racism in America. So it looks like it was just his involvement with an evil corporate agenda-- coupled, perhaps, with a huge salary-- that warped the thinking of this basically good man and caused him to counteract his good works with bad ones, like trying to secretly increase the nicotine levels of his cigarettes.

As we've said before, there are lots of great reasons to smoke, but there's no sense in lying about the downside. On Satan's Patented Scale-O'-Sin, lying is definitely worse than smoking.