trees_are_green ([info]trees_are_green) wrote in [info]oberlin,
@ 2006-11-22 13:43:00
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from cbsnews.com
Gingerbread Nazi Art Display is Too Much

Just curious...did anyone actually see them before they were taken down? I'm wondering exactly what the display involved. Aside from Nazis.

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[info]likeafox
2006-11-22 06:07 pm UTC (link)
I saw a small little nazi flag in the window. The people I was walking with and I were incredibly confused, but I didn't get a good look at the whole thing. I just remember the one little flag that I saw, but there might have been more.

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[info]nicomaureen
2006-11-22 06:39 pm UTC (link)
There's a kinda-grainy picture of it on this article: http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/national/BO34670/
It appears to be a Hitler rally. Of cookies.

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[info]magicekim
2006-11-22 06:48 pm UTC (link)
Hmmm, "beads-and-incense image". That's a new one to me. And kind of apropos of nothing in the article.

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[info]stadtpfeiffer
2006-11-22 08:06 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, tell that to Mark Edwards...

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[info]ilunas
2006-11-22 11:11 pm UTC (link)
seriously. though the psychedelic colors and design of Edwards' viewbook make it look like it was he who was doing some 'incense'.

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[info]princedisciple
2006-11-23 01:33 am UTC (link)
It was a bunch of little gingerbread dudes surrounding a gingerbread Hitler. They were all saluting and surrounding this pit of fire. It was awesome. Next to it was Frosty in one of those salon hair dryers that looks like a bulbous extraterrestrial vegetable, and he looked shocked as he read a book called "Frosty and Me," the cover of which implied it was a tell-all about Frosty and another snowman's homo(snowmo?)sexual affair.

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[info]newpartner
2006-11-23 02:04 am UTC (link)
I didn't get how this was so offensive or any more offensive then a lot of art pieces I see around town/campus
.
Of course, I can understand why Watson's wouldn't want that in its window.

Sounds like the media just got ahold of a story that had a few elements they love to exploit: nazi signs & self-reflexive liberal college towns.

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[info]princedisciple
2006-11-23 03:46 am UTC (link)
The media loves college towns now? Since when?

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[info]newpartner
2006-11-23 04:21 am UTC (link)

I should have been more clear --the media doesn't love liberal college towns. It seems like the media loves to mock liberal college towns.

Almost every story I see in the Plain Dealer and many other publications likes to refer to Oberlin in ways similar to the wire story in this one: "....known for its left-leaning, beads-and-incense image." I think this is often a lazy characterization that doesn't reflect the town at all. And the combo of lib town and controversial art is the sort of dumb shit the newswires like.

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[info]princedisciple
2006-11-23 04:25 am UTC (link)
No, dude, I understood what you meant. I just meant you were being dramatic. Oberlin IS a left-leaning, beads-and-incense place, how would YOU characterize it? The "newswires" couldn't care less about this story, it's shown up in how many papers? It's an article how big?

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[info]newpartner
2006-11-23 04:30 am UTC (link)
it's been picked up by a ton of newspapers. At least a 100. My friends in Houston called me today to say it was in the Houston Chronicle. It got picked up and spread by the UPI.

My sense of the town of Oberlin is that it is actually a rather conservative Ohio town and that while residents identify themselves witn national left wing politicians and causes, on a local level it is actually quite conservative.

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[info]princedisciple
2006-11-23 04:36 am UTC (link)
185, actually. In the whole nation. 185 papers running an article that appears to be about 100 words. They sure are enamored with us.

The town, along with most of Northern/Eastern Ohio, tends left.

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[info]newpartner
2006-11-23 04:58 am UTC (link)
Well, I'm certainly willing to acknowledge that different people have different experiences with the town that shape how they view it on the ideological scale.

But I feel fairly confident in saying that within the broader NE Ohio region, folks in other local governments, financial institutions and philanthropies and non-profits view the town of Oberlin as not tending as left as the region as a whole and actually quite conservative in its implementation of, for the lack of a better term, "left leaning, progressive" public policy. The commonly held view of Oberlin by these entities is usually as a place where changing the status quo is more difficult then it should be relative to the pace of progressive change in neighboring communities.

To give one example, if you were to juxtapose say Oberlin's zoning and planning code with other prominant left-leaning towns, we wouldn't match up.

This has strayed far from gingerbread men and nazis. sorry about that.

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(Anonymous)
2006-11-24 04:43 am UTC (link)
speaking from the point of view of someone who is from northeast ohio, most of the area does not "tend left" and would not support this artwork.

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[info]princedisciple
2006-11-24 04:45 am UTC (link)
Tending left doesn't mean supports the art. Look at election totals. Northeast Ohio went Dem in 2004 and REALLY Dem in 2006.

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[info]newpartner
2006-11-23 04:35 am UTC (link)
also, it was on the cnn.com cover yesterday. to me that's pretty big but i guess that's subjective.

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[info]princedisciple
2006-11-23 04:39 am UTC (link)
And also not really evidence that the media, generally, likes to negatively cover liberal college towns.

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[info]newpartner
2006-11-23 04:47 am UTC (link)
Fair enough. I don't really have that evidence.

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[info]user_undefined
2006-11-27 01:54 am UTC (link)
I personally thought it was funny, but I'm kind of an asshole.

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