Czech floating finger sends president message

BBC News ^ | 21 October 2013 | BBC News Staff

[lump in the melting pot]

As parliamentary polls get under way in the Czech Republic this week, artist David Cerny has floated a huge purple statue of an extended middle finger down the River Vltava in Prague. The outsized purple hand has been mounted on a barge floating on the river. It is pointed at Prague Castle, the seat of President Milos Zeman. Mr Cerny has shocked and mocked politicians and public figures in the past, says the BBC's Rob Cameron. This latest piece is clearly his message to the leftist President Zeman and the political party recently set up by his supporters, our correspondent says. It is unclear how long the finger will stay there; Cerny himself declined to say too much about the piece, telling reporters the gesture spoke for itself - what mattered, he said, was which way it was pointing. President Zeman, meanwhile, is on an official visit to Ukraine and said he could not comment until he had seen it. The Czech parliament was dissolved in August following weeks of turmoil in Czech politics. Prime Minister Petr Necas's government collapsed in June amid a bribery scandal, and a government of technocrats, formed by President Zeman in July and opposed by the main political parties, resigned in August.

[lump in the melting pot]

Can they float this thing up the Potomac?

[ClearCase_guy]

[Red Badger]

Can we borrow it after they are done with it? We could float it down the Potomac............

[NRA1995]

It's a Sicilian message. It means Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes

[meatloaf]

Interesting! In Greece in the early 70s, the locals had no idea what the Hawaiian good luck sign meant. A Greek showed my a Zippo lighter a sailor had given his girl friend in a bar. He wanted to know what it meant. He did understand the traditional arm pump.

[BilLies]

Isn’t funny how the ex-Iron Curtain countries seem to have so much freedom, even as we lose ours? If an American did this to THE OBAMA, the MSM and their fellatis would be crying for societal censorship as they did with Cruz.
Besides, I would not be surprised if THE OBAMA would hurry out and squat on it.

[lump in the melting pot]

Here’s the really sad thing: my parents emigrated from Czechoslovakia (with 8-year-old me in tow) to the USA to get away from communism. I am facing the prospect of reversing that journey with my own family, for the same damn reason (or, more likely, going somewhere in Asia to a “permanent expat” status).

[BilLies]

I HOPE YOU AND YUR FAMILY WELL for whatever your decisions.
The American problem is that too few first and second generation Americans know the political, personal rights reasons for their parents’ and grandparents’ emigration to the United States, the land of intellectual-&-financial and political freedom.