Can we interest you in a toilet?
A fine fine story from the Washington Post:
The emailed response from the Guggenheim’s chief curator to the White House was polite but firm: The museum could not accommodate a request to borrow a painting by Vincent van Gogh for President and Melania Trump’s private living quarters.
Instead, wrote the curator, Nancy Spector, another piece was available, one that was nothing like “Landscape With Snow,” the 1888 van Gogh rendering of a man in a black hat walking along a path in Arles, France, with his dog.
The curator’s alternative: an 18-karat, fully functioning, solid gold toilet — an interactive work titled “America” that critics have described as pointed satire aimed at the excess of wealth in this country.
Do admit.
Pleasingly, they had been exhibiting the toilet in a working restroom for the public to use. I hope it was a gender neutral restroom because otherwise no fair.
But the exhibit was over and the toilet was available “should the President and First Lady have any interest in installing it in the White House,” Spector wrote in an email obtained by The Washington Post.
We know Trump loves to slap gilt all over everything – in fact maybe he was the inspiration for the satire aimed at the excess of wealth in this country.
On the face of it, President Trump might appreciate an artist’s rendering of a gilded toilet, given his well-documented history of installing gold-plated fixtures in his residences, his properties and even his airplane. But the president is also a self-described germaphobe, and it’s an open question whether he would accept a previously used toilet, 18-karat or otherwise.
Probably not. But I’m sure he was deeply flattered by the offer.
That email from the Guggenheim is classic. Depressingly, it causes me to wonder how many threats and hate messages she will receive as a result.
Solid gold is not his style.
His fixtures are gold plate over a base.
Borrow? Why doesn’t he just fucking buy one if he’s so rich?
I’m actually surprised he didn’t accept that offer without hesitation and take it as a compliment. “I’m the best at arts! They love me over there!”
On the subject of golden piss pots and the like, do you suppose if Mueller ever gets to arrest the mobster in chief that in deference to his office and much vaunted love of bling, Trump will be restrained with golden cuffs and fetters?
Great idea, Nogbert.
This pièce de résistance would really underscore the position of the Mage of Maga as King of Shithole county.
When I was younger, we used to have an expression for people like Trump which that toilet sums up perfectly; a shiny shit.
I have to wonder if part of the museum’s reluctance to lend the Van Gogh to Trump was a concern that the thieving shit wouldn’t return it.