safer is gone -- but is art safer

Morley Safer, the correspondent with a face like a human shar-pei, has died, four days after retiring from ‘sixty minutes’ and two days after watching a special tribute about himself on same. He seemed to like his work was the first and last thing said about him, and he went out well, but along the way he earned a reputation for seeing through common horseshit and saying so. Although all his stories seemed to contain elements of honesty and insight, there were two that seemed pivot points in his career, establishing the ‘attitude’ for which he was famous.

The first was during vietnam when he showed american soldiers setting fire to thatched huts and then the huddled crying women who had lived in them. Such went on constantly, but no one sent back pictures until then. The second was an essay for sixty minutes he did in the early nineties entitled ‘Yes, but is it art?’ In it he questioned the aesthetic value of Koons’s vacuum cleaners in glass box, Twombly’s two million dollar scribbles up for auction, such as that. For exposing what no one wanted to see in 'nam he was considered a hero, but for questioning conceptual art he's called a philistine of the first order, and worse. They say it never went away. One episode was applauded as ultra courageous reportage, while the other was taken personally as rank betrayal by the financial cabal that bares its claws from the top of the art heap, scratches on Morley’s wizened head. 

Doing his day job his secret weapon was self-respect, and he ran it right out to the limit when he confronted power, cold-eyed interviews trading truth for lies. Dictators with dark armies were made to squirm in their own offices, Morley deep in enemy territory with only a camera crew, but he felt the heat back home from the rich guys he rubbed against socially who benefited from the great cultural hijacking of the last century -- tax advantages, social prestige, with burgeoning investment opportunities among the planet's new wealthy. Once again Morley was slightly in front of a great wave of people who just can’t hold their noses any longer. 

Be like him. He didn’t let the million dollar soap bubbles, the haughty exclusion from the sky boxes, keep him away from art, looking at art, even attempting to paint. Articulate and awesomely well-traveled, he simply applied the same principles to viewing art he used when seeking truth in myriad other circumstances, and it wouldn’t hurt anyone else. This self respect thing has to do with trusting one’s own experience, having confidence in personal judgement along with a willingness to commit to the best choice available, and don’t it apply to buying art, living with art, and won’t it show?