ANAL RETENTIVE DC LAWYERS AND CENSORED CONTEMPORARY ART IN THE NATION'S CAPITAL

"Settlement with the Monkeys" by Ming-Yi Sung (uncensored)

"Settlement with the Monkeys" by Ming-Yi Sung (censored)

Thanks to F. Lennox Campello for breaking this story at the time.

The following Op-Ed was sent to the Washington Post for publication in its Outlook section - of course, being the brave liberal paper that it is....

“Some Rude, Crude and Lewd Thoughts about Anal Retentive DC Lawyers, Censored Naked Art Creatures from Outer Space that are Destroying American Civilization and Crocheted Underwear Made by My Grandmother”

WARNING! The following essay contains the words PENIS, VAGINA, BREASTS and GENITALIA, as well as several other disgusting slang terms commonly used on the streets of real life to refer to male and female private parts. If you’re easily offended by these words, or for heaven’s sake, if you’re an uptight live-my-life-in-constant-fear-of-seeing-artistic-renditions-of-sex-organs DC attorney who’s even more offended by the real things that these words refer to, please read no further.

Mandatory Introductory Lame DC Lawyer Joke:

Q: What the difference between a live nude DC lawyer and a marble statue of a nude figure?

A: Nothing. Both are made of stone and neither has a pulse.

I don’t recall either of my grandmothers in Mississippi ever crocheting any cartoon characters in the Full Monty as birthday gifts, Christmas presents or as art objects for display in an art exhibition venue (they primarily confined their limited artistic abilities in this area to designing for personal use ill-fitting sweaters, gigantic comforters with bizarre colors patterns that would make a rave addict think they were having an Ecstasy flash back and salvia-resistant cloth munch balls for their cats and dogs), but if they had, it would be hard for me to imagine that a prestigious law firm in Jackson, upon seeing such scandalous fiber-based naked creations, would have fallen into a collective apoplectic seizure over some funny looking art object aliens from outer space sporting sex organs made out of thread.

Indeed, one doesn't have to be represented by a Mississippi lawyer against a bogus DWI charge for drinking non-alchoholic beer on a Sunday in a dry county to know that attorneys down South specialize in telling some of the funniest damn lawyer jokes around - and to also know that a Mississippi land shark's rich and vibrant sense of humor empowers it with a slap-happy attitude that allows it to bravely face the sheer horror of the nude human form in art without fainting in a panic over an innocently exposed penis, vagina or pair of female breasts if it happens to stumble over such things on the way to work.

Of course, your average highly respected and naturally comedic Mississippi attorney would not only be proud to display a nude pair of my grandmothers’ clumsily crocheted moon bunnies with a dangling Johnson, oversized boobs and spread wide-open crotch with a hairy snatch in the lobby of his office, he’d also be honored to party into a frenzy with those debauched rabbits down in New Orleans on whatever Dionysian Mardi Gras float he was invited to ride on by his Big Easy attorney brothers-in-legal-crimes.

But Washington, D.C. obviously ain’t the Deep South.

And as chilly and humorless as it can be here, apparently a freezing-artic-cold-flaccid-genitalia-inducing wind prevails in the law offices of the downtown Washington, D.C. law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where the mere thought (maybe even the mere imagination) of sex sends an icy chill down the spines, across the buttocks and all around the sex organs of the senior partners.

According to a recent Washington Post, a 1950s style horror movie scenario unfolded in a 14 story office tower in DC managed by Shorenstein Realty Services after some buttoned up anal retentive law partners began to quiver in a nervous sweat upon seeing the penises, vaginas, breasts and other evil and salacious body parts of the crocheted creations by artist Ming-Si Sung at the Eleven Eleven Sculpture Space.

It’s apparently quite frigid over at the firm these days because it seems as though this mountain of naked crocheted flesh that induced sweat to pour profusely from the brows of certain concerned attorneys subsequently condensed to ice after they were horribly subjected to the terribly frightening sight of strange art aliens blissfully exposing themselves in all their Eden-like glorious innocence.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately depending on what side of the legal gun battle one might find themselves positioned with regard to an ongoing or impending lawsuit in which the deeply offended firm is lead counsel), it will probably take several months for some of the more frightened law partners to thaw out after being dropped against their will into a steamy vat of sex drenched art mixed with liquid hydrogen.

Jonathan Padget reported in his Washington Post article, “Crocheted Nudes Cause Brows to Knit”, that John Shenefield, a partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, says that when he first saw Sung's work, "I thought instantly that there will be women in this organization who will be offended because of the exposed genitalia and the exaggeration of the female form."

Well, that is a deep and legitimate concern and God knows that none of us in this city want any female lawyers with exaggerated features walking around DC law firms representing us.

And that alarming comment by Mr. Shenefield was so alarming in fact that it immediately prompted me to take a closer look at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius’s web site to confirm that their female partners are in strict disciplinary physical compliance.

And after peeping in through the window at their web site, with one hand held over both eyes, I must honestly report that I find myself taking Mr. Shenefield at his word about his fear.

It seems as though a close examination of the graphic image of two attorneys pictured on the firm’s homepage, both of whom are holding expensive leather brief cases in hand, no doubt containing very important legal briefs and absolutely no pornography (see it here and I’m assuming one’s a woman and the other a man, even though it’s very difficult to tell because of the near minimalist corporate manufactured unisex look of these partners, which I guess is in keeping with the firm’s firm commitment to downplaying as much as possible the ability of anyone on the planet, especially an expressive artist who might specialize in nude portraiture, to recognize a single human curve on one of the bodies of the firm’s partners), reveals that suit pants for both sexes rule as the only acceptable office dress code policy.

Obviously the girls don’t go wild-on down at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.

I guess it’s attributable to the fact that they have paranoid father figure senior partners who strictly monitor the tightness and security of their chastity belts and who further compel their moral discipline through the firm’s Human Resources Department whose core mission is to keep a constant check on the art viewing habits of the female staff by monitoring potential exposure to nude, rude and lewd artistic propaganda made by such dangerous and seditious porn merchants as Ms. Sung.

It would be interesting to see the employee manual for the law firm; one only wonders if the firm’s partners are required to remove all the mirrors in their bathrooms at home so as to not accidentally see their own genitalia while stepping out of their showers. No doubt sleeping in the nude is also big no no under company policy. And certainly, one can only compassionately hope that these poor attorneys are at least allowed by their firm to have sex at least once a year…in the missionary position, naturally…with the lights off, of course.

Mr. Shenefield continues and says his fears were confirmed as soon as he got to his office and heard people discussing the exhibition in a “beehive of activity . . . and the initial reaction was quite a lot of unhappiness, particularly among female employees and partners."

Yeah, right! Mr. Shenefield may have just blown his credibility and lost me and my small degree of sympathy about this pornographic travesty with that comment because as we all know lawyers love to talk and their talk doesn’t come cheap - it comes by the billable minute.

One can’t help but wonder to whose account this “beehive of activity” will be billed - hopefully that client will at least get a full, unedited and nonredacted transcript of all this panicked conversation about the breakdown of American culture that these sinful fiber balls, cloth tits and weaved pussies have caused and share it with the rest of the prurient interested public that is dying to read it.

Although it would be easy to continue and ridicule the puritanical reactionary fear about sex that seems to envelope the uptight offices of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, I’ll struggle to keep my New Orleans Dionysian soul under control and provide some possible enlightenment on the matter.

Freidrich Nietzsche, the 19th century German philosopher, saw two main forces at work in human socity: All that was rational, orderly and structured he deemed “Apollonian” in honor of the Greek god of light, clarity and form. What that means in the real world is this: if you have a corn cob rammed up your tight ass about having some fun in life, you’re Apollonian.

But on the other side of Nietzsche’s coin, all that is ecstatic, irrational, mad, mystical, drunken, and just plain crazy is “Dionysian” because all reason and will is swept away in a great frenzy of pure joy, oblivion and ecstasy - in other words, if you like to party your ass off, laugh yourself to death, get your groove on and just plain get down on it and have some occasional dirty fun, then you’re Dionysian.

So, what does all that philosophical bullshit mean? Well, unfortunately, I think it means that there must be a lot of folk over at the law offices of Lewis, Morgan & Bockius who are eating corn off the cob faster than a greased pig can slide down a Vaseline drenched French Quarter balcony pole on his way to a Mardi Gras night wet t-shirt contest featuring young nubile sows at the Hot Hog Big Daddy Party Animal Strip Club on Bourbon Street.

Artist Ming-Yi Sung, however, has handled all this controversy about her art in a first class fashion and with supreme dignity. When first notified that her pieces might have to be removed from the gallery, she immediately faced two obvious options:

1.) Get mad as hell, drive down to the gallery in a righteously indignant rage, angrily drag her art out of the building and issue a departing flying finger launched on the wings of a few choice F-words from the sidewalk toward the direction of the offended law firm’s offices. (Which is what I’m ashamed to say I probably would have done had it been me - but my excuse would be that I’m an emotionally eccentric Southerner and everybody knows how crazy artists from the South can act when they get seriously pissed.)

2.) Organize a typical DC-style vegan-protest-against-censorship-protest-against-everything-else party at the local Starbucks that would culminate with a 15-minutes-of-fame mass hunger strike rally against the War in Iraq in front of the White House where all would furiously snap away with their digital cameras so they could quickly metro home to the suburbs in Maryland and Northern Virginia and post their radical action snapshots on Flickr.

But being a clearly imaginative artist who seems to have a genuine soul, wonderful spirit and deep sense of humor, Ms. Sung chose a remarkable and dignified third option - and an option which is far more artistic in my opinion:

3.) Agree to crochet strategically placed coverings over the offending genitalia, thereby bringing increased attention to the ridiculous, laughable and painfully amusing censorious position of those who objected to crocheted nudity.

Ms. Sung is to be congratulated for providing an example of how to effectively protest the inanity of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius’s paranoid position with regard to her art.

I’m actually hoping that – indeed, I’ll go so far as to publicly challenge - Ms. Sung to do an installation at the next Art-O-Matic in which she crochets life-size examples of DC attorneys. I’m sure that one of the primary aesthetic considerations she would immediately face with such a project is whether certain DC attorneys should be crocheted as a human that looks like a big dick, or as human looking shark that has no dick at all.

In reference to Ms. Sung’s wonderfully imaginative, beautifully playful and exquisitely funny creations, Mr. Shenefield laments that "Common sense would suggest that perfectly normal human beings would rather not face that."

Oh my! When Apollonians rage about what “perfectly normal human beings” should be, should do or should not do, such bland chain restaurant indigestible comments always get the artistic crawfish boiling in overdrive in the dark comedy black pot mind of your typical New Orleanian.

As most know, the greatest Dionysian city in the country is New Orleans. Our philosopher king down in the Big Easy is Bacchus. I’m not sure what god inspires the sexual mores of DC attorneys, but I’m sensing that some partners from Morgan, Lewis & Brocius desperately need some down time on Bourbon Street.

Yeah, I'm telling you that one raunchy weekend in the French Quarter with the female partners of the firm hanging in a drunken stupor over hotel balconies exposing their tits to their fellow drunken low class tourists for beads and with the firm’s heterosexual male partners wildly dancing the night away in nothing but shaving cream thongs at a gay hard-core rawhide leather motorcycle bar will immediately open their eyes-wide-shut minds to a greater appreciation for the liberating power of nudity in art.

But in the meantime...corn cobs and DC lawyers, there ought to be a joke.

But there would be no need for such a joke, if I could just somehow manage to convince some of my powerful New Orleans attorney friends who harbor a deep prejudice against their morally uptight comrades in DC to nominate an Apollonian like Mr. Shenefield as the King of Rex to preside over next year’s Mardi Gras.

Yeah you right! Let it be known that I’m convinced from twenty years of life in New Orleans that a Fat Tuesday conversion of Mr. Shenefield from Apollonian to Dionysian might just dramatically result in the law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius becoming one of the leading edge supporters of radical contemporary art in DC.

And wouldn’t that sinful flesh-based reality be a hell of a lot of fun for this city?

But in the meantime, while we wait for sexual epiphanies to manifest themselves in the conservative minds of DC lawyers, would somebody out there please send me a bottle of Gold Bond? I need to prepare my loins for the crocheted underwear that is now required dress by the law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in order to view Ms. Sung’s work.

God knows I truly love Ms. Sung’s creations, but now that I recall it after writing all of this, I do remember that one of my grandmothers in Mississippi did in fact crochet a pair of underwear for me as a birthday present when I was a little boy - man, that damn thing caused me to scratch my butt into a major rash!

I hope Ms. Sung’s creatures aren’t having that same itchy problem with what they’ve been forced to wear. And if they are, hopefully some brave Dionysian DC lawyer out there who’s comfortable in his birthday suit will file a lawsuit seeking compensation for damages on behalf of those poor critters.

And please tell me there’s at least one party animal Dionysian lawyer to be found in this anal retentive Apollonian town...isn’t there?

James W. Bailey
Experimental Photographer Born and Raised in Mississippi
Debauched Dionysian Artist Born-Again in the City of New Orleans