Sean Hannity's favorite artist, Jon McNaughton, has cranked out a sequel to his earlier, blockbuster hit, The Forgotten Man.
Titled "The Empowered Man", the new oeuvre shows the sad sack of the last painting blocking our view of Calvin Coolidge, one of McNaughton's Pantheon of Fiscally Virtuous Presidents (Cal's behind the Constitution. You can see his hands clapping, though. John F, Kennedy barely appears. James Madison is having a paroxysm, while Reagan and Lincoln are telling each other jokes). On the other side, in the Hellish Muck of Bad Presidents, one sees Lyndon Johnson, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt (still, miraculously, standing), along with President Obama, who reacts as though he's a socialist vampire at sunrise*):
Here, The Forgotten Man (who, like everyone in all of McNaughton's works except President Obama, is white) has risen from his park bench, the Constitution in one hand and a fistful of cash in the other.
If you got to McNaughton's website, you can mouse the painting and there are all kinds of explanatory texts that will pop up to clue you in on the deadeningly obvious metaphors. Except, in this instance, the parchment on The Empowered Man's park bench are just "collected papers" and the money isn't explained at all. But, this time, over The White House, McNaughton paints- according to a little box- "Clearing Skies."
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*Where are the other 32 presidents? Did they head down the street to The Old Ebbitt Grill to hear James Buchanan finally fess up? And who was the "real model" for President Coolidge from the waist down?
The other half
Titled "The Empowered Man", the new oeuvre shows the sad sack of the last painting blocking our view of Calvin Coolidge, one of McNaughton's Pantheon of Fiscally Virtuous Presidents (Cal's behind the Constitution. You can see his hands clapping, though. John F, Kennedy barely appears. James Madison is having a paroxysm, while Reagan and Lincoln are telling each other jokes). On the other side, in the Hellish Muck of Bad Presidents, one sees Lyndon Johnson, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt (still, miraculously, standing), along with President Obama, who reacts as though he's a socialist vampire at sunrise*):
Here, The Forgotten Man (who, like everyone in all of McNaughton's works except President Obama, is white) has risen from his park bench, the Constitution in one hand and a fistful of cash in the other.
The Empowered Man—which shows President Obama watching in horror as a thirty something white male, standing in front of the White House holds up the U.S. constitution in one hand and a wad of cash in the other—was released this week.
“I wanted this painting to reflect the hope many Americans are having that we can steer our country back on track,” McNaughton emailed BuzzFeed. “I used real models and it took a couple of months to paint.”
If you got to McNaughton's website, you can mouse the painting and there are all kinds of explanatory texts that will pop up to clue you in on the deadeningly obvious metaphors. Except, in this instance, the parchment on The Empowered Man's park bench are just "collected papers" and the money isn't explained at all. But, this time, over The White House, McNaughton paints- according to a little box- "Clearing Skies."
________________
*Where are the other 32 presidents? Did they head down the street to The Old Ebbitt Grill to hear James Buchanan finally fess up? And who was the "real model" for President Coolidge from the waist down?
The other half
This would merit a C+ in a high school art class. And an F in a high school civics class. What tripe.
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