I've never liked that Christo punk

Way back when, my late friend Don Sango used to show me photographs of Christo's various art projects. I vaguely recall some sort of fence that he "installed" across hill and dale in, I think, northern California. Since then Christo has done things like wrap buildings in plastic and generally made a nuisance of himself in the name of art.

This week Christo unveiled some nonsense in Manhattan's Central Park. Here's a snip of John Podhoretz reading my mind about it, but go read the whole thing too:

TELL a New Yorker that what he's seeing is a work of art, and you can shut him up instantly. Most Manhattanites hate George W. Bush, but if you told them he was an art installation, they wouldn't be able to criticize him because, hey, it's art.

"The Gates" — the $20 million what-the-hell-is-this-thingamabob that's spread out across Central Park like an endless row of construction cones shutting down two lanes on Interstate 95 — is a perfect example of how you can get the famously argumentative and opinionated leadership class in New York City to march in cultural lockstep.

Anxiety about not being with-it enough continues to be the dominant aspect of the cultural life of New York. Nobody knows that better than Christo and Jeanne-Claude — the brilliantly entrepreneurial snake-oil salesmen who designed "The Gates" and managed after 25 years to foist it (or them) on Central Park for a couple of weeks.

You weren't going to catch anybody in Central Park making a negative peep about the whole project, lest he or she be considered uncool, uncouth, narrow-minded, philistine, incapable of recognizing innovative art when he saw it.

Thanks to powerline.com for the pointer.