Cynicism

Recently watched a film titled My Kid Could Paint That. It was a documentary about Marla Olmstead. She came of note do to her paintings. She is an abstract artist. when her work came out it was highly praised. There were immediate comparisons to famous abstract artists Jackson Pollock. One critic was quoted int he film as saying "you could put her paintings into the metropolitan museum of modern art, and people would think it was done by a famous painter". The only catch with the paintings was the artist. Marla was only four years old. she was turning out fantastic, vibrant and beautiful abstract paintings. Eventually scrutiny began to fall on Marla. Was she doing the paintings? Or was she getting help from Her father an amateur artists himself. Eventually a piece was ran on 60 minutes(on a side not who the hell watches 60 minutes anymore, does anyone under 60 watch 6o minutes) that showed her painting and her father lightly coaching her. telling her what area to paint, not doing any of the work or instructing her how to work the brush. the subsequent fallout from the piece, nearly ruined her career. Eventually a full video of her creating a painting was released, and people were still unsatisfied with the result. the result of the painting that was captured on video was that of a work a bit less polished than her previous work. this is a four year old kid we're talking about, her work isn't going to be consistent. maybe she did get a little bit of help from her dad, maybe not. that's not the point of this entry. the point is sometimes the cynicism of the media is completely confounding. was there really a need to run a smear piece on a little kid? why even bring this up. you hurt a little kid and you hurt a family. I'm not even a person who really is the ype to get offended by something like this. I'm no "the most important thing is family" supporter, "or traditional family values is the only way" kind of person, but the piece was wholly unnecessary. It also reeks of journalistic irresponsibility. the piece aired in 2005. In 2005 our failure of a president had been re-elected on a campaign of fear and homophobia. We were in the middle of an unwinnable war(we still are) and were being lied to about the war on a daily basis. There are so many more important stories going on out there. If 60 minutes wanted to be a serious news journalism program they would stick to the news. Leave the Marla Olmstead stories to the people who should be covering them, the art world. Journalism and media responsibility hasn't always been great in this country, but it's been steadily worse in the eight years of the bush administration. Recovering from this journalistic malaise will probably be next to impossible, it has been throughly ingrained into our culture now. I can't believe that when Charlie Rose was in college studying journalism (eons ago) that his goal would be to do a fluff piece on a child artist. It's shameful he slipped to that. Will there ever be another Edward R. Murrow?