Glenn Beck Smells Like Cat Pee

by Whitney Kimball on November 30, 2011 · 3 comments Newswire

Still from video of Nate Hill's "White Ambassador"

Glenn Beck's blog The Blaze momentarily squeezed its head out of Tea Party vagina last night to take a peek at art discourse.  As usual, they were appalled with what they found.  True to Beckian form, wordsmith Jonathon M. Seidl attacked performance artist Nate Hill with a blathering defense for vulnerable white supremacy.

In his newest piece, White Ambassador, the biracial Hill heads to Harlem to campaign against white racism. Donning whiteface and a black umbrella — presumably to protect his melanin-deprived skin — he culls research specifically from his own Twitter account @WhiteSmellBot. As heard from the streets:

They say I smell like cheetos. They say I smell like mayonnaise. They say I smell like cat urine, horse urine, alligator water, whatever that is- I don’t even know what alligator water is. We are white! We smell alright!

These are only a few of the things Hill says white people smell like: wet dog, old rubber, and bologna also make this absurd list.

Predictably, Hill’s protests instantly piss off a few nearby black men. When accused of advocating for the “wrong side,” Hill says, “I’m not saying that one kind of racism is better than the other one.”  His accuser responds, “Yes you are, when [you're] saying you smell like wet dog, you saying that. You still a nigger.”  Another tells him, “White folks set this trend, they set all these negative stereotypes, about every ethnicity, but you defending them?”  To which he replies, “As an artist, I've gotta find somethin that, that no one's lookin at.”  Over the past few days, the art blog world has been abuzz over Hill's ability to generate a rare and productive conversation.

So, given this staunch defence of white people's odors, what the hell is Steil's problem? After implicating Animal New York and Gawker for their praise of Hill’s honest and open discussion about drawing attention to racism in all forms, Steil conjures this bullshit conclusion:

…Is this whole thing really about reverse discrimination, or is it about Hill making a generalization that whites don't care about racism? And if so, is that racist?

So asking whites to consider racism is racist against white people? Steil further quotes Hill as saying “I want…[whites] to recognize racism,” an editorial manipulation of a project that seems to ask everyone to consider racism. That the entire dialogue takes place between Hill and black Harlem residents somehow never gets mentioned.

It would seem a related project would offer Steil just what he needs: Who’s got some White Power Milk for Mr. Steil?

Nate Hill will be performing White Ambassador again tomorrow, December 1st, at 3pm, starting at 125th St and Lenox Ave.

{ 3 comments }

Truth Has No Agenda November 30, 2011 at 11:47 pm

Why would anyone normal person care whatever your write with a name like “ART FAG CITY”? You need to seek a mental health professional asap.

Whitney Kimball December 2, 2011 at 12:52 am

So what, you google searched “cat pee”?

Jason stopa December 1, 2011 at 6:20 pm

@ Truth Has No Agenda – your post makes no sense – in an age when any blog or post can have whatever name it chooses.  Please come up with a coherent argument instead of attacking this blog ad hominem.  Because right now your comment just sounds like a playground insult. 

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