I don’t know anything about Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, except that he famously said, “I can’t define pornography, but I know it when I see it.” It’s the dilemma of the censors. Sorting art from junk is a hopeless task, it’s a matter of context as much as content. Some of what I see on mainstream TV and in PG movies seems to me so toxic that I think it should be buried. I never saw the movie ‘Pretty Woman’, the whole concept gave me the creeps

On the other hand, I think that Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky are artists. Gross, vulgar artists, I admit. But I can’t be their only fan — they get entire pages of the New Yorker to draw on. A long way from the days when only underground press like ‘Last Gasp’ would publish them. Maybe I just have to say of art, I know it when I see it.

One great underground classic is Justin Green’s ‘Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary’. Green suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder and he spent his adolescence tormented by blasphemous thoughts. He illustrated them, totally unsparing of himself and the crazy world he grew up in. It’s hysterically funny. Everyone who’s ever worried about whether they turned off the stove can relate to the anxiety Green suffered every waking moment. Recently I read a collection of his comix, and it was a revelation. First of all, he didn’t get better. He has OCD and he just has to live with it. Second, he was one of the … uninsured.

Green went to RISD and was admired by other artists who’ve made a name for themselves, like Robert Crumb and Art Speigelman, but that don’t pay the rent. For that, he ran a small sign-painting business. Like many small-business owners he couldn’t afford health insurance, but he got by. Until the day he fell off a ladder. Here’s his account of what happened at the emergency room–

When the admitting desk nurse asked him whether the accident was work-related, Marion [his wife] had blurted out, yes. He once again realized the enormity of the stakes. Unless he did some fast talking, he’d either incur a massive debt, or would be shuffled from one clinic to another, doomed to languish in interminable lines, receiving the kind of health care which uninsured, self-employed laborers like himself usually did.

He called Marion aside. Look, we might as well go to another hospital. We can’t put anything about my work on your policy because it won’t be covered!

The nurse caught the gist of his argument and said, I can change that if you like.

There’s lots of people who can’t afford health insurance, or are denied because they are seen as a bad risk. Some of them are small business owners, artists, young adults gambling on staying healthy, and older people who are not covered by their job, waiting until their Medicare starts. There are quite a few people who give health care but have no insurance themselves. I meet them all the time. Some people are caring for their children, or their parents, and can’t work enough hours to be included in their employer’s plan. Small businesses struggle to cope with the constantly increasing cost of insuring their employees.

When even the underground comix are discussing the health care crisis, we have a problem, eh?