May I Just Say There’s a Reason Dictators Always Want to Censor Artists?

I’ve been feeling overwhelmed by the insanities of the current Administration. Each day the sun rises on new slash-and-burn strategies to destroy the America we once knew. As the assaults rain down, my hope drains out. I feel like watching Love Island and sleeping as long as possible to avoid the day’s news.

Last week a story appeared first in the New York Times reporting that the gifted artist Amy Sherald, best known for her 2018 portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama, had canceled her upcoming solo exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery. Her reason? Smithsonian authorities wanted her to remove a painting of a Black transgender woman.

“I cannot in good conscience comply with a culture of censorship,” said Sherald, “especially when it targets vulnerable communities…. At a time when transgender people are being legislated against, silenced, and endangered across our nation, silence is not an option.” I couldn’t agree more. Silence is not an option. Let the art speak out.

While thinking of Sherald’s courage, I remembered the lone man standing in front of a column of Chinese tanks. June 5, 1989. Protests in Tiananmen Square had become violent. No one knows his name and no one can forget the image of him standing, alone, waiting for the tanks to arrive. A third-of-a-century later, the photographer’s art has left us with a powerful statement of courage and dissent. An unknown man taught us the power of “No” when brought to us by art.

Last week, Conan O’Brien received the 2025 Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. O’Brien’s art is spoken humor. In his acceptance speech, O’Brien lauded Twain’s hatred for bullies because he “deeply empathized with the weak.” He brought the audience to its feet when he said, “Twain was a patriot in the best sense of the word. He wrote that we ‘should support our country all of the time and our government when it deserves it.’” Precisely. Yes to our country and No to any art-censoring government.

For me, art has always been my refuge, a place to go when there is no other place to go. It quiets my restless spirit. In the molding of a sculpture or the weaving of threads, my troubled soul is freed to speak. My art is visual. Sometimes tactile. My hope is that it is always truthful.

In my recently published book, Uneasy Silence, I tell the story of being invited in 1995 to mount a one-woman exhibit in the US Senate’s Russell Rotunda. “My art was going on display between the marble statues of the Great Hall. No female artist had ever been so honored.” Three days before the exhibit opened, it was canceled. One Senator was offended by a sculpture speaking to AIDS and death. I might have saved the exhibit if I removed that one piece, but that one piece told the truth; I couldn’t do it. I remembered it all when taking in Amy Sherald’s story last week.

So what do we do? What have we learned from Amy Sherald, Conan O’Brien, the Tank Man, Mark Twain or , or my coming face-to-face with censorship? How can I be contented and grateful in my studio when every day brings a new slaughter of innocents?

One step in the right direction is to turn to the wisdom of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Tutu acknowledged that human beings are “capable of the most awful atrocities…” We may not “be able to do a great deal,” he admitted, “but start where you are and do what you can where you are. And, yes, be appalled. It would be awful if we looked on all of that horrendousness and we said, Ah, it doesn’t really matter. It’s so wonderful that we can be distressed.”

If we lose the capacity to be shocked, offended and distressed, we lose the capacity to value art or being human. The artist’s role is to remind us of what is troubling and what is beautiful in the world around us, and that in art we can be “wonderfully distressed.” Alone, we may be unable to change “that horrendousness” but in bringing the truth to life in literature or music (or any form of art) we say “No” to the pressing evil and “Yes” to all that bears witness to uncensored truth. It’s enough. Start where we are. For me, it’s a trip to my studio. Come along if you wish.

May I just say that Cardinal McElroy has it just right?

May I just say that Cardinal McElroy has it just right?

I’ve been honored by invitations to preach in congregations of the Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, African Episcopal, Unitarian, Lutheran, Jewish and assorted other faith traditions.

But if I were Catholic, this week I’d be grateful and proud of the hierarchy I sometimes question: grateful, because an Archbishop bore witness to the truth and proud because the truth is being muffled by much of America’s media.

According to a recent CNN report (July 9, 2025), Cardinal Robert McElroy, the Archbishop of Washington DC, spoke his mind (and his faith) plainly when he said of Trump’s immigration brutalities, “This is simply not only incompatible with Catholic teaching, it’s inhumane and is morally repugnant.”

Agreed. To understand that it is inhumane we need to recognize that those being targeted, hunted, slandered and slaughtered – those whose lives are being shattered by Trump’s war on immigrants – are human. They aren’t abstract objects whose agency has been removed. Neither are most guilty of any offense or crime that merits the assaults they are suffering. They are people like you and me, people who are being sacrificed on the altar of political and economic campaigns. It’s wrong. It’s inhumane.

And what’s being done is “morally repugnant.” To reckon with this we need to have some kind of moral grounding, some sense of right and wrong, some notion about what’s okay and what’s not. Trump and his acolytes appear to have none of this. It’s as if there is no moral compass left in either their speech or their behaviors. Law doesn’t matter. Human rights are trampled. The idea of higher principles that should guide civil behavior is merely that: an idea. No matter how morally repugnant their behavior is, it just doesn’t matter to them.

So what are we to do? What will we say if someday our children or grandchildren ask, “Where were you when the atrocities were being put on full display?”

The response I want to give is, as I wrote in my recently published book, Uneasy Silence, that I was busy bearing witness to the truth, even if doing so became dangerous.

“In ways large or small,” I said there, “depending on the opportunities given to us, we’re called not to cower in silence and fear but to stand up, speak out, and bear witness against evil. It may be across the family dinner table. Perhaps it’s in our office or at the store, in my knitting circle or in your congregation. Maybe the opportunities come because we’ve volunteered to serve a community organization. Maybe we’ve had the courage to become election workers. Whatever the platform, my soul demands that I face lies with truth and threats with courage.”

It's all about bearing witness. Recognizing the torrent of lies, discovering and telling the truth. Being fearless in our willingness not only to know evil when we see it but to speak out against it. It’s in bearing witness that we preserve the ideals and promises made to all Americans in our founding documents.

But what if speaking out doesn’t “work,” doesn’t stop Trump injustices?

As nearly as I can tell, our speaking out still has great meaning, even if it doesn’t completely block the evil. What matters is that we bear witness to the truth no matter what the outcome. It’s in the bearing witness that we give meaning to our lives and leave a legacy of courageous truth-telling.

I don’t know Cardinal McElroy personally. I imagine we disagree on lots of things. But to one who bravely bears witness to what’s clearly inhumane and morally repugnant I’d like to say, “Right on, Cardinal McElroy; right on!!!”

May I just say that the world seems officially, undeniably and regrettably upside down?

When I was growing up, and even as an adult, I knew that fiction was “made up” and reality was “truth.” Made-for-TV game shows weren’t reality. They were entertainment. Game shows were just a way to play — all based on knowing that the show was no more than a made-up fiction that amused us. They were intentional distractions.

Reality, on the other hand, consisted of work, relationships, discipline, tending to our children and our elders, supporting our communities, trusting the general good will of Congress, being responsible with whatever resources were given to us and so forth. We shared.

This view has mostly toppled over, and what was once a frivolous entertainment is now reality and reality is a mere distraction. The current occupant of the White House throws out horrendous distractions that we, unfortunately devour like starving cats. American bombers are sent to do what Israeli bombers couldn’t do. It’s a made-for-TV opening to a made-for-TV war. Congress doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t want to matter. And a heat wave garners more televised attention than the edge of nuclear war, the insanity de jour, today’s distraction.

Given the daily dose of distractions, who keeps us from noticing the destruction of decades of promises (USAID) and years of life-saving medical research, among other features of civility? It’s as if we should be looking right but we’re only looking left. By looking the wrong way, we’re spared seeing the harshest of realities.

Maybe it’s that the reality is still the reality but it’s too frightening to accept; we prefer believing that, somehow, against the odds, this is all going to work out.

Or maybe it’s that each day’s violations of all things we’ve held sacred and true about America have lost their ability to provide shock and awe. Innocents are snatched from sidewalks by armed and masked thugs. Children go to school fearing they’ll never see their parents again. Trump amplifies his lying about “criminals” who don’t exist while those who carry out his brutal campaigns in Nazi-like raids have become the new normal. We see it daily in our Los Angeles neighborhoods. It’s an upside down world where justice is trampled and injustice, especially for those whose skin is Black or brown, is commonplace.

To the extent that there’s some truth in here, and to the extent that I can find that truth when my world has been turned upside down, I tried to offer some sense of sanity in my recently published book, Uneasy Silence.

In art that reveals my sense of today’s realities, and words that convey the worry that we aren’t paying attention to the realities of starving children (for example) or growing economic injustices, I was allowed to say what I believe.

In an upside-down world it may be difficult to know what to believe, or what to say. But this is certain: Those who have endured great loss will grieve, and I’m called to offer comfort. Those who are hungry need to be fed. Children being abused need to be rescued. Such things are unchanged by a White House that is the source of relentless chaos and cruelty. What I need to do, at a minimum, is acknowledge the enduring realities and do what I can to prove I am not indifferent. Or distracted.

As I confessed in Uneasy Silence, “Not caring enough to speak out is my version of indifference. My conscience may be screaming at me but I stay quiet. I spend worry-filled days and sleepless nights, knowing that injustice and suffering are calling my name.” My conscience is not a distraction; it’s a ringing fire alarm or, just as often, a soft whisper of danger. I need to listen, and I need to respond.

What matters is still the truth. Let’s see if I can hang onto that without being distracted.