[Mb-civic] Murderer at the Bedside - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Murderer at the Bedside

By Richard Cohen

Tuesday, July 12, 2005; Page A21

Thumbing through a decorating magazine recently, I came across a bedroom 
nicely appointed with, among other things, two silk-screens by Andy 
Warhol. One was of flowers and the other was of Mao Zedong, the Chinese 
dictator who died in 1976 and has since been proclaimed the No. 1 mass 
murderer of modern times. As a decorating touch, Mao is about as 
appropriate as Pol Pot or, if you will, John Wayne Gacy -- not easy, 
after a glance, to turn off the bedside lamp. Nighty-night.

<>Warhol's Mao silk-screens, similar to his more famous ones of Marilyn 
Monroe, passed the $100,000 mark at the New York auction houses some 
years ago. They're bright and cheery, but they present a version of the 
Chinese dictator that's a bit at odds with historical reality. Recent 
research holds Mao accountable for 30 million deaths, besting both 
Hitler and Stalin in that department, and leaving them in the dust when 
it comes to kinky, disgusting personal habits. Among other things, Mao 
did not bathe or brush his teeth and satisfied his enormous sexual 
appetite with an abundant supply of young women chosen for their looks 
and ideological purity. It's nice to talk dialectics afterward.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/11/AR2005071101412.html?nav=hcmodule 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20050712/4a152ce2/attachment.htm