CREDENTIALED BUT NOT EDUCATED: Modern Art Critic Assumes 1939 Painting Is All About Homophobia. It’s About Murderous Union Thugs. “The critic in question is no slouch: Jerry Saltz, a Pulitzer Prize winner. The painting is Paul Cadmus’s Herrin Massacre, from 1939. It depicts an angry mob brutally murdering a group of men in a cemetery field. . . . But as Saltz briefly acknowledges, in a single sentence, the subject of Herrin Massacre is a real historical event: a mob attack that resulted in the deaths of 23 strikebreakers in Herrin, Illinois, in 1922. The Herrin massacre had nothing to do with homophobia; it was a labor dispute that ended with union workers massacring a bunch of people who had been hired to replace them.”

But that’s not an acceptable narrative. Homophobia, on the other hand, is a narrative so acceptable it’s basically mandatory. As we see.