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The shameful tomfoolery of the Portuguese police was evident even before the 30,000 page dossier was released. Now it’s out there for the world to see: the Portuguese police lied to the McCanns about DNA evidence in an attempt to extort a confession from them, sequestered an e-fit of two suspicious men despite the world’s interest in the case, and withheld possible leads. Not to mention that they made the McCanns suspects with absolutely NO EVIDENCE, and counter to an official forensic report saying that the DNA evidence was inconclusive.

In fact, I almost don’t know where to begin: the way some sleazy literary agents nickel-and-dime their authors; the way publishing houses refuse to support mid-list authors with pr, placement, and distribution; the cultural mindset that artists should be poor; the way art galleries are, largely, owned and run by dishonest and disrespectful douchebags who take 50% and more from the artists’ sales and do nothing to deserve that except pay rent on a storefront; the way American education from K to 12 fails to educate either budding artists or the budding public in what good art is; or, and yes, I blame the artist too: the way so many artists refuse to grow up and take on adult fiscal responsibility and effect a change in the system. Note to Peter Pan painters and writers everywhere: if you bend over, you will take it up the butt.

The most recent way we’ve all been reamed, individually as artists and collectively as a public: the $25,000,000 sale of that piece of doo-doo Jeff Koons “Balloon Flower (Magenta).”

Note to everyone: Jeff Koons sucks as an artist, and “Balloon Flower (Magenta)” is bad art.

 

Actually, it’s atrocious art. It’s ugly. It’s meaningless. Worse, it’s just silly. When a piece like this sells for that kind of money, the only thing it serves is to make us a laughing-stock in history. In 100 years, art historians and critics will call this the Dark Ages of art, and we will all be cringing with humiliation in our graves.

And, naturally, Christie’s and Jeff Koons are laughing all the way to the bank at the idiocy of anyone who would buy such a piece of crap, and at the gullible media for freely promoting it, and at a public moronic enough to believe that a big number means important art. They’re washing off their fists after wriggling them in our bottoms–yes, NY Times, they’ve fisted you, too–and smirking at the hoax they’ve perpetrated on a stupid, indiscriminate public.

To the public: go to museums and read books and talk to working artists to find out what good art is. Watch Sister Wendy on dvd. Just don’t talk to art critics and art history professors, because, largely, their media are words, overly abstruse theories, and self-importance. The “Blah blah blah” about art doesn’t matter .0001 percent as much as the visceral impact of beauty on the soul. That occupies a space that is mostly inarticulate.

So when you see some silly objet of modern art and you say, “My kid could do better than this,” believe it: you’re right. The emperor has no clothes.

And yesterday, true to its reputation as one of the finest intellectual institutions in the country, the office of the Dean of Students sent her the summer reading: Jon Meacham’s Franklin and Winston. I told her how exciting it was and lucky she was, and she rolled her eyes at me. This kid has worked hard for the past 6 years, and she’d rather have the summer free of homework, with space to enjoy her job as a camp counselor for 9 year olds and all her parties with her friends.

But she is lucky, luckier than she knows at almost 18 years old. I know from the perspective of midlife what she can not: that she is at the start of a grand adventure. That she will learn and question and explore and discover, over the next four years, in ways that she never will again. Not just in books, either. Franklin and Winston indeed.

Watch Traci on YOUTUBE!

It’s not just because I’m a married lady and mom, so what do I know about sex?

Or maybe it is. I openly admit to being unhip and old-fashioned. But I have a valid point. Which is: this show is like “Glamour” and “Elle” and “Vogue” magazines and the celebuculture in general: a glitzed up, ersatz, polyester version of life held up to people as a desirable way to live. It has the shmoozy succubus appeal of a beer commercial, where everyone is happy and skinny and has a gazillion friends and an adoring mate. It’s a superficial fantasy, and a pernicious one, like any other narcotic. 

Adults who have some life under their belts, who’ve been around the block and back and have a few bruises to show for it, who’ve suffered from loss and heartache and unfulfilling jobs and broken relationships and the illness of friends and family members–those of us who are achingly present in our lives–we know that “Sex in the City” isn’t real. It’s a junky piece of pink cotton candy to snack on, hopefully without stomach cramps. But there are plenty of young people who don’t understand this yet.

I tell my daughters: “Don’t be fooled by the glam and the pretty clothes! Real women don’t act like that. The “Sex” women’s values are a hip, sitcom charade of what really matters in life.” All that indiscriminate sleeping around. It doesn’t make it less superficial, degrading, and dehumanizing just because the main character ruminates with pseudo-profundity on the meaning of relationships. I really want my daughters to understand this about sex: it’s not the quantity, it’s QUALITY that matters! And hearts and bodies are indivisibly, irrevocably connected, so whatever the body does makes an impact on the heart! Know the consequences when you sleep with even one person!

And a shoe fetish? Please. I’m trying to figure out how to pay school tuition for my youngest daughter, in a city where the public school teachers have been hamstrung by mandated testing into teaching for tests, rather than teaching a curriculum. In the history of American education, here are the three worst, most idiotic notions to be inflicted upon students by otherwise well-intentioned people: the demise of phonics, new math, and “No child left behind.”

For the record: kids need phonics to learn to read. And they need to be drilled in math tables. No matter how boring it is, no matter how much kids suffer from it, kids need to memorize the multiplication tables and be tested on them until “8X7=56” is a part of the DNA of their cells. Because, guess what: life isn’t fun and exciting every single minute. We need to help our children develop some tolerance for that.

And docking teachers for their students’ low performance on tests is NOT going to improve the quality of education. Teachers are underpaid and overworked to begin with. This strategy will simply induce fear, reduce creativity, and produce a classroom geared toward correct answers on a standardized test, rather than a classroom filled with concepts, ideas, and love of learning.

Back to the viruses and fungi we live with and the athlete’s foot (or should I say yeast infection) that is “Sex and the City.” People will go see it. And how many of them will be young women who believe that wearing $5000 dresses and starving themselves into a size O is the key to happiness and fulfillment?