'What was Da Vinci supposed to have done, painted a portrait of Al Gore?'
I’m as concerned about the planet as anyone. I recycle, I limit my driving — but I never would have thought of hitting the Mona Lisa with cake.
Yet that was one man’s response to climate change. Interesting. You never know what might strike a person as a good idea when it comes to agitating for change. Some guy was lying awake in bed one night worrying about carbon outputs, and he thought, “I know, I’ll throw food at artwork.”
According to The Washington Post, “A 36-year-old man disguised as an elderly woman in a wheelchair tried to smear a cakelike substance on the Mona Lisa on Sunday in an apparent climate-related protest at the Louvre in Paris.”
Who knows? DaVinci was a man of science; he might have even approved.
Cellphone recordings caught the man saying, “Think of the Earth. There are people who are destroying the Earth. Think about it. Artists tell you: Think of the Earth. That’s why I did this.”
All right, first problem: When you have to explain what your protest is about, that’s what the marketing people refer to as bad messaging. It’s like having to explain the joke. When you chain yourself to a giant sequoia, everybody gets it. But nothing about the Mona Lisa and cake says “global warming.” At least not to me.
I doubt the chairman of ExxonMobil read the story and said, “Whoa, the Mona Lisa. I guess climate change is real after all … Boys, shut down the wells and start putting up windmills.”
Problem two: The guy’s appeal to artists to think of the Earth. OK, but what do artists have to do with it? Unless he got confused and is blaming a warming planet on Big Oil Paintings.
What was Da Vinci supposed to have done, painted a portrait of Al Gore?
Actually though, the Mona Lisa looks a little like Al Gore. Have they ever been seen in the same room? I don’t think so.
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But in a world where everyone is protesting climate change — everyone, that is, except the people with the power to do something about it — I give the guy credit for getting noticed. I bet someone on the very same day published a brilliant position paper irrefutably proving the link between fossil fuels and a dying planet. And fat chance The Washington Post will ever write a story about her.
By the way, a small part of me likes the idea that a product derived from extinct species will ultimately lead to our own extinction. If you have to die, do it ironically, I’ve always said.
The way the rest of the world is going, however, we may not have to wait for climate change to finish the job. Being an optimist, I try to look for the bright side, so even as ever-bigger and deadlier missiles fly in Ukraine, I did notice that a Siberian oligarch is trying to pick up the pieces of McDonald’s, which abandoned Russia out of humanitarian concerns.
He has been trademarking phrases like “the only way,” “fun and tasty,” “the same one,” which everyone is interpreting as a new take on the golden arches. That ought to be good; I can’t wait to see the Russian take on American fast food. “We order now, comrade. You choose the cabbage nuggets or the McBorscht?"
The real McDonald’s has warned the Russian McDonald’s against using any of its trademarked imagery, but good luck with that. I know that some South American countries get around that by making slight variations in branded names, so you have restaurants like “Windy’s” and “Kentucky Frog Chicken.” It works for them.
But what if Russia steals all of McDonald’s slogans and architecture? What’s McDonald’s supposed to do? It can’t sue, there aren't any untapped sanctions left and they’re already at war. Maybe they can get the Hamburgler to hit the Winter Palace with cake.
Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.