THE RISE OF BRONZE AGE PERVERT

HOW A FASCIST BODYBUILDER CAPTURED THE IMAGINATION OF THE FAR RIGHT

- GRAEME WOOD

In 2014, the actor B. J. Novak, best known as Ryan, the weaselly temp from The Office, went on the Late Show With David Letterman and confessed to a small role he'd played 17 years earlier in the history of the American far right. The significance of this role could not have been obvious at the time, either to Novak (who was in high school) or to its victims, the bewildered patrons of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. Novak had recruited a Romanian classmate with a deep voice, and together they'd recorded an audio tour for the exhibition "Tales From the Land of Dragons: 1,000 Years of Chinese Painting." With the help of friends, they then slipped cassettes containing their tour into the museum's official audio guides.

Art lovers must have wondered abou the thick Eastern European accent that greeted them, over the twang of a Chinese string instrument. The Romanian soon became opinionated ("Personally," he said, "I think this painting is a piece of crap"), then deranged. He alluded to his "disgusting anatomical abnormalities." He called his listeners "decadent imperialist maggots" and confessed a desire to smash a glass case with a sledgehammer and "rip [a] scroll to shreds with my teeth, which, by the way, are extremely long and sharp ... more like fangs than human teeth." At last he offered an interlude of "idiot music" while he fumbled with his script. "This should keep you occupied, you drooling imbecile!” he bellowed at the listeners, by now either amused or complaining to management. The last several minutes were a cha-cha by Tito Puente.