Did You Know...

I’m as anxious to be done with Aliza Schvarts and her various outputs as you are. But in the NY Sun’s newest report on the she said/Yale said/she said controversy includes an interesting, and cringeworthy, detail:

Ms. Shvarts outlined some of her personal philosophy as she took part in a performance art event Ms. Lindman organized earlier this month at Federal Hall in Manhattan, where members of the public were invited to stand on a soapbox and speak their piece.

“We have this huge f—ing institution telling us: ‘That’s what power looks like. That’s what empowerment looks like.’ It’s these patriarchal, heteronormative trappings of a voice, of a right to speak, but really I think we should think more about it,” the Yale student said, according to a video posted on YouTube but removed last night. “We need to stop being sheep.”…

The Federal Hall event was sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council with the “generous support of the September 11 Fund,” according to the video.

The video’s been pulled, but the LMCC’s blog confirms it.

The September 11th fund closed down in 2004 after paying out to the victims, and the rest of their money is

…committed to construction projects in lower Manhattan and to arts and culture groups that will attract people to the neighborhood.

Subsidized Aliza Shvarts ranting? Honey, fire up the family truckster…we’re going to Manhattan!

Seriously, though, I’m not outraged at this; it’s just sad. The “Soapbox Project” itself doesn’t sound that objectionable, except for its gimmicky “performance art” character: people stacking up soapboxes and ranting for one minute each in Manhattan’s Federal Hall. (Why this is relevant in the age of internet vidcasting, I’m not sure.) Shvarts’s adviser Pia Lindman organized the project, and I guess she brought Aliza along to make sure her project yielded the right kind of performance.

And so it was that a little bit of money dedicated to rebuilding New York went to underwrite Shvarts’s bozonic ramblings.

_______

Hey, here’s some better “concept art“, courtesy of Mrs. See-Dub.

I understand Michelle is knitting up one of these for Allahpundit.