If I Want To Stick You I'll Stick You (But Not For Money)

Whoo-hoo - it's the lit now:

"Twirling toothpick tips against the skin 'works' just as well or better than 'real' acupuncture. To top it all off, acupuncture and “traditional Chinese medicine” as we know it today were basically reinventions of Chinese folk medicine promoted by Chairman Mao to his people beginning a few years after World War II because his Communist regime couldn’t provide enough 'Western' doctors to supply the health care needs of the Chinese." 

 Repeat as needed,..

 

Speaking In CodE

Orac finally got to Chairman Mao's acupuncture story and fills us in, further, on the "science":

  "Common portrayals of acupuncture paint it as being 3,000 years old, as implausible as that is. Why implausible? For one thing, the technology to make such incredibly thin needles didn’t exist 3,000 years ago,…It has also been argued that acupuncture evolved from bloodletting based on astrology."

Whatever - have it your way:

Integrate that shit - the problem's Big Pharma,...

 

Wha? Say Wha?? The Crack Emcee Is Still Alive? Wha?

Storm Large is Wang Qingren is The Crack Emcee is a liar:

Chairman Mao Invented Traditional Chinese Medicine

Why did the U.S. Senate unwittingly endorse 1950s Chinese Communist Party propaganda?

Doesn't matter - cut it off,....

Shhh: We Got A Little Jihad Going On Here

"This is the point: last November, the American people thought they were electing a 'post-partisan,' 'post-racial' President who would work to restore unity and self-confidence to the country. They woke up on November 5, however, to find that they had elected someone who was deeply ambivalent about America, who distrusted its founding principles of limited government, individual liberty, and local responsibility. Like his radical friends — Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Van Jones, Anita Dunn — Barack Obama wishes to transform the United States according to a model whose basic shape was supplied by the utopian schemes of the 1960s. That’s why Anita Dunn said that Mao was one of the thinkers she most often turned to for wisdom about big-think political problems. It’s not that she admires his penchant for industrial strength homicide: rather, she admires his success at fomenting an egalitarian revolution. It’s not what we bargained for when we elected Barack Obama. But that’s what we’ve got. The question is how much worse will things have to get before the penny drops, before the scales fall from the collective eyes of the electorate? When will voters begin that long countermarch through the institutions in order to take back the country? If not now, when?"

-- Roger Kimball, kinda calling for conservatives to *start something* - what that *something* might be, exactly, escapes most - but then, they're probably too busy posing as hardcore revolutionaries, to be reading anything from Pajamas Media.

Mao Say Dung (Or Barack's Girl Did)

Being An Artist Means Bravery - Not Slavery

"When I first saw the Obama Joker poster on my block in April I tried to read the website featured in the upper right-hand corner, but it was too pixilated to decipher. Is anonymity part of the artist's message? Possibly. However, if anonymity is not a part of the message, can you blame the artist for wanting to remain anonymous given the irrational and racially-charged criticism the poster has received?

I find it hard to believe that the Obama Joker creator is the only serious detractor (assuming that it is a critical commentary) within the art community. And I'm sure the incendiary criticism will keep others from creating similar images. But regardless of political affiliation, the art community must embrace all rational dissenters. Art must not exclusively serve the interests of any presidential administration.

It's time for the art community to return to its historical role in political affairs, which means speaking to power, not on behalf of it. Which leads me to the second case where art enters politics on a mass scale. The power of art, in combination with the suppression of free speech or a free press, has been used as a tool by authoritarian governments to control their citizens. From Hitler, Stalin, and Mao to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il, art has been used to deify leaders while preserving the position of the ruling class. Most artists would not want to be referred to as tools of the state, but in the case of Obama's administration, that's exactly what they've been so far. "

-- Patrick Courrielche, speaking to my fellow artists - who have been acting like a bunch of pussies - on what their actual role is, using Reason.

Seems To Me Like There's A Few Guys Missing

Hat Tip: Niflheim

Making The Really Unreal Real

Cult of Mao

"Exhibition artworks are divided into thematic sections beginning with Cult of Mao. This section examines large-scale oil paintings, woodblock prints, and posters created during the mid-1960s to mid-1970s that depict idealized images of Mao. The best of these were chosen as 'model works,' toured around the country, and were reproduced extensively as posters, acquiring national fame and iconic status. Younger artists, mostly born in the 1940s, endeavored to create realist oil paintings that captured the new revolutionary fervor. Artist Chen Danqing recalled this time in an interview in 2006, 'Nobody told you that you could paint only Mao's portrait. Mao's image was the only thing in the world that you knew you could paint... at the time, I felt that there was no difference between [me and] the Renaissance painters—they painted Jesus, I painted Mao.'"

-- Art Daily.org, on New York's Asia Society exhibition of works made during China's catastrophic "Cultural Revolution."

And let's not forget this art's cultish effect on the present:

If You Go Carrying Pictures Of Chairman Mao,...

“This awakening consciousness of the people is promoting changes in the world, or we might call it turmoil.”

-- Chou En-lai, second in command to Chairman Mao, in 1971.

"If ordinary people don't perceive that our grand ideas are working in their lives, then they can't develop the higher level of consciousness - if I can use kind of a touchy-feely word,..."

-- Bill Clinton at Davos.