PARODY: Iran Announces Holocaust Cartoon Festival; NY Times' Frank Rich to Serve as Judge

The Iranian government has announced the rules for its much-anticipated Holocaust Cartoon Festival, details here.

That's the fact. Here's the fantasy:

In a related development, the New York Times columnist and cutting-edge social critic Frank Rich has enthusiastically signed on as a judge of the festival.

"I'm excited by this tremendous opportunity to stand up for free speech. The Iranians are going to show Americans what the First Amendment is all about," said Rich. "It's about time that somebody paid attention to the terrible decline of quality in Holocaust and anti-semitic artwork. These genres have suffered greatly from the relentless assault on artistic expression by the Bush Administration."

In fact, argued Rich, anti-semitic art has been in an "alarming" freefall "since the classical era of the 1930s and 1940s."

"Some of those artists were astoundingly hip and edgy, and very post-modern in their use of ironic images and juxtapositions," argued Rich. "They remind me a lot of Warhol, Basquiat, early Rauschenberg."

Brushing donut crumbs off his tweed jacket during an interview at his sprawling New York co-op, Rich said German artists perfected the genre "during a time of great social ferment, you know, the New Deal, the WPA, fuel-efficient 'green' Volkswagens, autobahns, those gorgeous black German uniforms, great Broadway musicals, lots of interest in stuff like nationalism and socialism."

"European Jews were isolating themselves in gated communities at the time, turning their back on the rich diversity of life in Europe," added Rich, "and many ignored this wonderful explosion of creativity around them, but Germans did their best to distribute anti-semitic art in these all-Jewish communities. That was the Germans' way of speaking truth to power."

Asked about his expectations of the Holocaust Cartoon Festival, Rich said he hoped to find works that would capture the "shock of self-recognition" found in the best of what he called "avant-shoah" artwork.

"A viewer should see these works and recognize their wry truths about himself, or at least recognize his bubbe and zayde," explained Rich.

He will also write an introduction to an upscale coffee-table book of the collected submissions to the festival. It will be published in English, Farsi, and French editions. The Times will feature the book in its holiday gift-giving guide.