Conservative uppityness never takes a break, even on World AIDS Day. While millions of people around the planet are marking Dec. 1 with activism and awareness, the religious zealotry dream team of John Boehner and the Catholic League's Bill Donohue (that guy again!) has successfully bullied the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery into removing a work from the country's "first major museum exhibition" of gay and lesbian art -- by an artist who died of AIDS-related illness.The work, a video called "A Fire in My Belly" by David Wojnarowicz, features a brief depiction of ants crawling over a crucifix. Wojnarowicz, who died in 1992, created the film, which includes images of a statue of Jesus covered in ants, as an homage to a former lover and colleague who succumbed to AIDS complications in 1987.
The video, along with the rest of the Hide/Seek exhibit, had been humming along without a single complaint since Oct. 31. But then on Monday the right-wing CNS News suddenly got the vapors that "the federally funded National Portrait Gallery, one of the museums of the Smithsonian Institution, is currently showing an exhibition that features images of an ant-covered Jesus, male genitals, naked brothers kissing, men in chains, Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her breasts, and a painting the Smithsonian itself describes in the show's catalog as homoerotic." It didn't take long for the Catholic League to get in on the act, sputtering that the video was "designed to insult and inflict injury and assault the sensibilities of Christians." Just breathe a sigh of relief they left Ellen's breasts alone.
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Suddenly smelling the makings of an old school culture war, Republicans Jack Kingston, Eric Cantor and, of course, John Boehner were all over the story like ants on a plastic Jesus. Boehner soon issued a statement that "American families have a right to expect better from recipients of taxpayer funds in a tough economy ... Smithsonian officials should either acknowledge the mistake and correct it, or be prepared to face tough scrutiny beginning in January when the new majority in the House moves to end the job-killing spending spree in Washington." Brrrrr! Hear that, Smithsonian? Remove or lose it.
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Never mind that only 55 percent of the Smithsonian's budget is federally funded, that generally exhibitions are mounted through private fundraising, or that, as the Washington Post notes, Hide/Seek in particular "was funded by the largest number of individual donors for a Portrait Gallery show … underwritten by foundations that support gay and lesbian issues." Never mind the truth -- that your tax dollars really aren't supporting a whole 11 seconds of hot, hot Formicidae on Yahweh action.
Disgraceful. Should the Smithsonian have stood its ground? Are the threats of the Senate majority that serious?
I'm not American, but isn't freedom of speech supposedly a big deal there?
*edit*
Forgot the link.
That pretty much says it all for me.
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Yes.
I'm guessing it's early pandering for votes, or some such. Or just to say later that they said anything, once a hot-ticket issue with similar effect pops up ("I was against the ant-christ! I'm against this! I don't flip-flop, blah blah blah"). I doubt much would actually come of it.
Yes and no. It's supposed to be, but when you come down to it Americans are generally so apathetic they veer directly into complacence territory. That's why the Tea Party is such a big deal at the moment-- Americans that are actually fighting for what they believe in, however inarticulate they may be?! Can't be!
American families have a right to expect more from their elected officials, recipients of taxpayer funds, in a tough economy.
Politely rude. Briskly vague. Firmly uninformative.
That's how I saw it. A little talking point the Republicans can throw up that says "Look! Now that we're in office we're going to stop all this godless nonsense that the Democrats were funding!" Heck, half my friends already believe the Democrats primary goal is to eliminate Christianity in the US. A guy I graduated with who is now a pastor even goes so far as saying he doesn't believe it's possible for someone who is actually a Christian to also be a Democrat. The Pubs have made a career in the last 20 years of being the pro-Christian party. This is great press for them.
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Yes, end the job-killing spending spree by taking away the Smithsonian's funding thus costing quite a few people their jobs.
Sounds like he's a really good Christian. /sarcasm
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I can see the Smithsonian's point that they removed one piece from their exhibition because the controversy over one image in that video piece was detracting from the larger (and unrelated) message of the whole exhibition.
In that light, it's not so much pandering to the right as silencing them so that the real message can be heard.
You've never known true joy until you've shaken a lich stick at someone.
Hey, at least if Boehner and Donohue are right about the existence of a Christian god, then they'll be on an express train to hell when they die.
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Raise your hand if you had no idea about this exhibit before the Catholic League and Boehner stepped in? I am among them.
Two things, this only serves to make most Americans even more disillusioned with these groups, and fans the flames(not a pun) to set focus on the exhibit.
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Well, Boehner and company reacted a *lot* faster than when the pederast priest scandal broke... I guess blasphemy depends on who is wearing the collar.
Anyway, if 11 seconds of video in a highbrow art exhibition is truly a threat to Christianity, it's not long for this world.
The two sides to every story are true and false, not yours and theirs. Facts are not political; lies are. - Deven Green (Mrs. Betty Bowers)
Is it just me, or does Boehner have the best name ever?
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haha. yeah. In this case, the Smithsonian is, apparently, Super Meat Boy, and John Boehner is PETA.
The last few churches I attended were like that, and along with other related attitudes they had, it pretty much drove me away from church. Was one of the major contributing factors to my disillusionment with much of organized religion.
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That's only if you assume that he's pronouncing his own name correctly, which I find suspect.
Likewise. If they had just ignored it, it would have gone away and nobody would have known. Now that artist is more famous than ever. Well done.
Maybe if it weren't pronounced like "Bayner."
If my name was Jon Erection, I'd probably pronounce it Eray-shan.
You've never known true joy until you've shaken a lich stick at someone.
This has happened before. The Enola Gay controversy.
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I was totally expecting somebody to be outraged by the name of the plane.
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I found this on Facebook, so I'm not sure that there's an easy way to link this:
You bastard, Tanglebones. :)
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That's what I thought, too. I mean, when you think about it... Fat Man and Little Boy? It's like NAMBLA had its hooks in the Manhattan Project.
That, and those new Pedotor drones flying over Afghanistan.
NICE!
The perfect comment.
The name is German in origin, and "Bayner" is a very close approximation of the original pronunciation due to the "o-umlaut" represented in English by "oe". So yeah, he's saying it right.
Besides, "Boner" would not be the most dignified name in Congress...
The two sides to every story are true and false, not yours and theirs. Facts are not political; lies are. - Deven Green (Mrs. Betty Bowers)
A Congressman who acts, in my estimation, like a phallus, and has a name coincidentally close to a synonym for a phallus, and you bring up German pronunciation? tsk tsk.
Doesn't ö/oe phonetically sound more like "ew" than "ay"? His name would be pronounced "Bew-ner" if he were going for the Germanic pronunciation. I'd say "Boner" and "Bayner" are each about as accurate as the other, since phonetically his name should be pronounced with a mix of "bay" and "bow". I'd even argue that "Booner" is more accurate than either of those pronunciations. Also depends on what part of Germany the name originates, I guess, but I only ever learned Hochdeutsch.