Willy Wanker and the Chocolate Flappery
Willy Donohue, the wanker behind the Catholic League for Civil Rights for Straight Catholics Only, has his rosary in a twist over a sculpture of Jesus made out of an unapproved material (chocolate) and showing an unapproved body part (the, er, willy). According to Donohue, the sculpture is “”one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever,” apparently ranking right up there with the Holocaust, slavery, Darfur, and, probably, even the actual crucifixion itself.
Now if an anatomically-correct Jesus is so offensive, perhaps we should ask Donahue where he stands on all those medieval representations of Christ crucified without a loincloth. Like this one. In fact, as Leo Steinberg documents extensively in his classic treatise The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and Modern Oblivion, Renaissance artists frequently depicted a crucified Christ showing the part that Donohue dare not name. Sometimes, mostly during the sixteenth century and in the Low Countries, those depictions were — how shall we say it? — quite turgid. Where, I ask, is the Catholic League on this? Why are they not flooding museums with phone calls, outraged emails and threats of boycotts? Maybe it’s just the chocolate. Or maybe it’s just the dark chocolate; white chocolate might have been okay with these folks.
Of course, the other great thing about a chocolate Christ is the opportunity it provides Donohue to take a swipe at Muslims:
All those involved are lucky that angry Christians don’t react the way extremist Muslims do when they’re offended
The hotel and the gallery were overrun Thursday with angry phone calls and e-mails about the exhibit. [Matt] Semler [the gallery’s director] said the calls included death threats over the work of artist Cosimo Cavallaro, who was described as disappointed by the decision to cancel the display.
“In this situation, the hotel couldn’t continue to be supportive because of a fear for their own safety,” Semler said.
(Cross-posted at Outside the Tent.)
April 1st, 2007 at 3:44 am
The liberal haters of religion are positively Satanic in their spew. Death threats? When and where? Donohue is just fine and gave the moron fraud Cosmo Cavallero a good verbal spanking on CNN. Good for Bill.
The libs suffer from projecting their own hatred onto others. They also suffer from displacement, where a real dangerous threat [terrorist Islam] is replaced by a non-threat[Christians offended by Holy Week blasphemy].
Most libs are clinically insane re religion.
April 1st, 2007 at 12:04 pm
“Melts in your mouth,
not in your hand!”