Hock the Pollock?

If you've seen it, you can't un-see it.

You get lost and confused in its chaotic slashes and swipes. There are flourishes of troubling excess that seem to defy the senses, dizzying and disorienting. Aggressive strokes begin bold but go nowhere. It is at once free and boundless, but also restricted and hopeless. Just when you think your mind has managed to untangle its mixed, muddled messages, you're smothered by its density and lack of cohesiveness.

But, hey, enough about the legislative process. Let's talk about Jackson Pollock.

Some Republican lawmakers want the University of Iowa to sell Pollock's sprawling “Mural,” which is reportedly worth $140 million. They would sell the painting for no less than $120 million and use the money to endow art scholarships. Also, “Mural” would visit us every four years, like Newt Gingrich.

Backers claim it's fiscally responsible. But I detect a little jealousy.

After all, what are lawmakers if not frustrated artists, with the Iowa Code as their canvas? They come to Des Moines with a passion to create a governmental masterpiece. Patrons have invested votes and dollars in their talents. Surely, their vision will serve as a beacon for all.

But they get ensnared in process and politics. They find critics galore. The talentless are embraced while good ideas are ignored. And when you finally work through the gauntlet, instead of a masterwork, it looks like one of those sad clown portraits they sell in a parking lot.

So lawmakers see Pollock and scoff. “That's worth $140 million and I can't get a vote on my Ashton Kutcher commemorative license plates?” Sell that fraud, they say.

Lawmakers are fine, imaginative painters, however.

 Democrats showed their affinity for the gauzy pastels of impressionism in 2008-09 when they insisted all is well and spent liberally while dark economic clouds gathered. We saw Edvard Munch's “The Scream” and they added a smiley face.

Republicans promised the clarity of realism. Instead, we get surrealism.

How else do you explain the GOP's claim that we're in a deep fiscal crisis when the non-partisan experts we pay to give us the straight scoop say it isn't so? The GOP is pushing deep budget cuts and hocking our Pollock while also passing a $700 million tax cut and pumping big bucks into corporate tax cuts and incentives.

Add a melting watch to the picture, and Salvador Dali would be impressed.

Lawmakers need to call off the tag sale on squiggly paintings and start playing it straight. Instead of focusing on paint and canvass, how about all the smoke and mirrors?

They also should realize the Legislature has a lot in common with “Mural.” They both confuse groups of schoolchildren.

Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@sourcemedia.net