The Tie That Binds Thomas Kinkade and Obama

In a discussion with friends of mine regarding art, the obligatory discussion of Thomas Kinkade arose; leading to my friend making an insightful comment concerning Kinkade's work, "You can't paint stuff like that and not be a moral degenerate." That's one of those kind of statements you need to ruminate on.

Kinkade's work is in a style that is of the manipulatively sentimental. Kinkade's intentional appeal is wholly different from the sentimentality of say the "Precious Moments" cherubic figurines, which has its place among children and women of a certain aesthetic bent; or a man who has his framed football jersey from his Alma-mater on his wall. The Kinkadian style has a shamelessness in its sentimental appeal, it is bold and frank in its appeal to your heartstrings. The question then is, what kind of person does that?

Kinkade, the self described "Painter of Light" tm, it turns out was something less than paragon of virtue. A snapshot of his escapades range from sending prints of his work to people who paid for the original painting, to scrawling out a will bequeathing his estate to his longtime mistress while obviously under the influence of some substance. Kinkade died of a drug overdose at age 54. The estate battle between Kinkade's wife and his will-written-in crayon-on-a-bar-napkin-wielding-mistress has recently been settled in secret. That's the kind of guy who slaps "Jesus-fish" on paintings or, supposedly hides an "N" in every work out of devotion to his wife, Nanette.

I would like to now assert a link between Barack Obama and Thomas Kinkade. On Wednesday Obama announced his plan regarding guns in America, he did so while surrounded by children. When we look at this spectacle like adults, we see this for the shameless emotional appeal that it really is. The message being delivered here by Obama, is loud and clear, if you care about kids you will support my ideas regarding gun laws. Yet, like the boy attesting to the fact that the emperor has no clothes, to point out the obvious merely invites derision and howls from the boobery.

So, let me conclude on this note, Obama's stunt on Wednesday was so bold in its emotional reaching, so brazen, so obvious, that it might have, it just might have caused Kinkade to blush and murmur a little were he among the living. But, in the end I think Kinkade would have to tip his hat to another master of the same trade. The unfortunate difference between Kinkade and Obama is that we don't have to suffer our homes to be cluttered with Kinkade's work, if only Obama's influence were so.