Art too much for Oberlin
It's kind of a hippy-town thing to regard store windows as a venue for edgy art. My girlfiend, Dianna Talley, was pushing the envelope in Ann Arbor in the late 70s. And in Oberlin, evidently caroler-bashing snowmen and kids making meth with their chemistry sets are OK.
But even Oberlin has its limits. And the edge in Oberlin is...gingerbread Nazis.
Now me, I think it's healthy to regard Nazis as a bunch of crumbs stamped out of the same mold. It's a pity that they're sweet, to be sure. And I haven't seen (and now can't see) their context in the window. I suspect that the same people who say "Never again!" don't want to be reminded that it happened once before. Which is fine, except that things shoved down the historical memory hole tend to come back up. And as a response, it validates shock-art, because, well, somebody was shocked.
The hardware store owner won't be inviting the window dresser back. Understandable I guess. But what did all that weird stuff have to do with hardware anyway?
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