Stephen Colbert last night gave a “tip of his hat” to incoming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) for threatening to defund the Smithsonian National Portrait Museum over a video installation titled “Fire in My Belly.”
The Smithsonian eventually removed the piece, which briefly shows ants crawling over a crucifix, and the decision drew criticism from some art critics. But Colbert thinks the critics “just don’t get” Cantor’s work.
“This defunding threat isn’t some cheap exercise in mindless censorship,” Colbert said. “It’s an anti-paradigmatic revolutionary work of conceptual art banning.”
“Cantor’s art is about the art that isn’t there, making the inaccessible literally inaccessible,” he added.
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But Colbert also gave a tip of his hat to the Smithsonian, who requested Colbert’s star-spangled jumpsuit from his and Jon Stewart’s “Rally To Restore Sanity And/Or Fear” for display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. He welcomed to the show Brent Glass, director of the National Museum of American History, to accept the artifact.
Watch (the Smithsonian bit comes in around 3:30):
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Tip/Wag – Art Edition – Brent Glass | ||||
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