The million dollar Ai Weiwei challenge

Chinese artiste Ai Weiwei (#aiww) has been getting major face-time in Western media because the Lego folks denied his request for lots of free Lego blocks.

That’s resulted in a tsunami of free-Lego-block offers from the gullible public across the Western World.

That’s a great PR coup for Aww, but it doesn’t change the fact that Ai Weiwei is a fraud and a charlatan.

Let’s take a step back to Ai Weiwei’s last big burst of mainstream publicity, when he had that “Straight” show touring the major art markets.

That was when major galleries around the world were featuring a pile of reinforcement rods lying on the floor. That rebar symbolized the totalitarian Chinese government’s lack of caring for the people who had lost their schools in the recent earthquake, because every single piece of rebar in that exhibition came from a school that had collapsed in that earthquake.

Really?

That was bullshit then and it’s bullshit now.

Here’s your million dollar challenge, Mr. Ai Weiwei; let’s find twenty linear feet of rebar that’s been embedded in cement. (Remember, you straightened 70 miles of it for that “Straight” exhibit.) Lets hack it out of the cement and see how it piles up. I’ll pay you a million dollars if it looks anything like the exhibits you had on display in Toronto and Venice a couple of years ago.

You’re right, I don’t have a million bucks, but I’m in no danger whatsoever of losing this bet.

The reason Lego isn’t giving you free Lego blocks is because they know you’re a fraud.