Is Ryan Mendoza's 'The White House' a tribute to family connectedness and home...

...or an example of "blight porn"?

Ryan Mendoza, a US artist living in Europe, has moved an entire repossessed and blighted home from Detroit, whitewashed it, and filled it with soft lighting and a projection of pictures of the family that once occupied the home and of his own family of origin. It's now on display as a piece of art in Europe.

[Ryan Mendoza's The White House on display in Rotterdam.]

According to Mendoza, the purpose of the piece wasn't to make a work of art that trivializes Detroit's struggles. An article from USA Today says: "[Mendoza] hit on the idea of reclaiming a house, a symbol of familial legacy and protection, as a way of embracing his past rather than running away from it."

But some people feel that glossy photographs or exhibitions like Mendoza's are exploitative:

In a story appearing on the the website of the British newspaper the Guardian, Brian Doucet and Drew Philp wrote of the dangers of reducing Detroit to the single image of an abandoned or gutted home, implying that the city is empty and turning the ruins into objets d'art: "Collectively, the glossy photo books, websites and art projects all serve to produce and reinforce a simplistic narrative of Detroit as a blank slate, in need of white, middle-class saviors."

That doesn't appear to be part of Mendoza's motivation, but I understand the point.

The more basic question for some people might be, "Is this art?" But that's a question that people have been asking ever since the dadaists put things like bicycle wheels on display and called it art.

The thing that intrigues me about this piece, called The White House, is the way Mendoza has woven the sense of home he remembers from his childhood with the life of the Thomases, an African-American family who once owned the house.

Home can be a powerful anchor for us, especially in our growing-up years. One day when my son was in his twenties, he and I took a walk with my father through my childhood neighborhood, the neighborhood where my family and my grandparents both lived. It was a sunny day, a gentle breeze trembling the branches of the trees all along the street, the leaves making that hissing sound, rustling as I remembered them doing so often when I was a boy. I told my father and my son, "When I was coming home from school in the afternoon, walking down this street, I used to think to myself, 'This is the most perfect place on earth.'"

That sense of home, family, and safety, says Mendoza, is what he wanted to evoke, a universal yearning--if not a universal experience--that he surfaces by linking his own family's pictures with those of another clan he never previously knew.

Vincent Thomas, who grew up in the house, for one, doesn't seem to view Mendoza's work of art as an example of "blight porn:

"Truthfully, I wanted to repair [the house], but there was black mold and I couldn't afford to do it," he said. "I'm glad that somebody is doing something with it. But I hope something positive comes out of it for the city. That still needs to happen."

Amen! Detroit needs help and prayers. A once-great city still should have a shot at a great future.

[The way the Thomas house looked before it was dismantled in Detroit and sent to Europe.]

Mendoza claims to be committed to that:

Mendoza hopes to have additional façades of Detroit houses sent to Europe, where he wants to auction them off and send the money back to Detroit for reinvestment in neighborhoods, helping city residents buy or upgrade homes.

That would be one wonderful way for Ryan Mendoza to reassure those skeptical about The White House. I hope that he can follow through on his plan.

In that other big game...

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, is the first choice of possible Iowa Republican caucus-goers, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is the top choice, by a huge margin, of potential Iowa Democratic caucus-goers. Iowa, of course, holds the first formal presidential contest of the two major parties' presidential nominating processes.

Clinton appears to be a prohibitive favorite there:

Clinton, the former U.S. secretary of state and a fixture in national Democratic politics for more than 20 years, is the first choice for 56 percent of poll respondents. That's 40 points ahead of the next potential contender, liberal populist Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is the top choice for 16 percent.

Clinton's numbers seem to be scaring off most potential candidates for president in her party.

Things are quite a bit different among Republicans. Lots of candidates are either committed to or looking at the race. So, Republicans in Iowa haven't made any real choices yet. Walker leads the pack with 15%. But then, there's this:

The Wisconsin governor is...the No. 2 most popular choice for likely caucusgoers who want an establishment candidate, and he's the No. 2 for those who want an anti-establishment candidate.

In other words, people don't know Walker very well yet. He's a blank slate on which potential voters are imposing their own versions of Scott Walker. Surely, voters in Iowa, which shares a border with Wisconsin, know something of Walker who, by virtue of his three statewide runs in Wisconsin--in first election campaign, his recall campaign, and his re-election campaign. But some see him as an establishment (i.e., Bush, Romney) Republican, while others see him as an anti-establishment (i.e., Ted Cruz, Rand Paul) Republican.

This means that Walker has a delicate task ahead of him. As he rolls out his campaign, he has to be careful to portray himself as the anti-establishment establishment candidate, or maybe the establishment anti-establishment candidate. That, of course, is impossible and Walker is going to have to just be himself--or a reasonable version of himself--and let the chips fall where they may. To me, he seems a likely viable contender for the nomination, along with Jeb Bush.

Bush, by the way, needs, I think, to hope that one or two others emerge as viable contenders for the Republican nomination besides Walker and himself so that Walker can't position himself as the new and conservative voice over against Bush as the older establishment candidate. Bush's chances are enhanced, at least through the early primaries and caucuses, by a multitude of anti-establishment types like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Mike Huckabee.

Of course, if Bush fails to win the nomination and the person who garners it has painted their candidacy as distant from Bush's perceived mainstream conservatism, that nominee will have a tough time "re-positioning" in the general election campaign.

In recent history, voters have tended to turn out the party that's been in the White House for eight years. That would suggest that the 2016 race is the Republicans to lose. But, demographics right now give the Democrats an advantage. If they can lock up the coasts and ad a handful of flyover states, they can win routinely, it would seem. These two imperatives will collide in the next election.

Clinton faces her own land mines. As she learned in 2008, being the frontrunner doesn't ensure a candidate of the nomination. She also will be seen by some as a vestige of an unwanted past, even as others see her as a harbinger of a new American future. She will also be assailed for the Benghazi incident during her tenure at the State Department.

Having said all of this, two things:

• 1. I express no preferences here. If you think that I have, you misunderstand. I've come to believe that pastors shouldn't make political endorsement or get involved with politics. And I'm not doing that here at all. It's just that, against my will, I'm still afflicted with my lifelong interest in the politics of politics. Even when I make my choice about who I vote for in 2016, you won't know it.
• 2. I wish that presidential campaigns were shorter and that, at least publicly, those in government spent more time governing and less time campaigning. I wrote about that back on January 20, 2007, here. It's worth reading, not so much for what I wrote, but for the interesting conversation that came out of it, either recorded or linked to, there.

Okay, go back to Super Bowl coverage. (Can you tell that I got my sermon finished early today?)