A Stitch in Haste

Slow news day, so I'm reduced to blogging about chocolate naked Jesus:

A life-size sculpture of a naked Jesus made out of chocolate has angered a Roman Catholic organization and forced a Manhattan art gallery to reconsider exhibiting it during Easter week.
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"This is an assault on Christians during Holy Week," said Kiera McCaffrey, director of communications for the [Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights], which describes itself the largest U.S. Catholic civil rights group.

"They would never dare do something similar with a chocolate statue of the prophet Mohammad naked with his genitals exposed during Ramadan," she said.

I'm not so sure of that. Never underestimate the capacity of abstract artists to create sick, disgusting garbage.

Meanwhile — "Catholics for civil rights"? That certainly wins the "Oxymoron of the Day" award.

News flash: "Civil rights" includes freedom of artistic expression. If some jackass "artist" wants to mold a chocolate naked Jesus, then "Catholics for civil rights" ought, one would think, to at least abstain for throwing a conniption. Perhaps the Catholic League could clarify precisely which "civil rights" it cares about and which it considers offensive?

And as a matter of pragmatics, what does holding news conferences and calling for boycotts accomplish other than to give the jackass artist the attention he, like all jackass artists, so desperately craves? This stupid idea, like most modern recently created art, would have come and gone with little fanfare had the Catholic League not declared war upon it. Go figure.

I meanwhile, would be far more interested in asking whether this jackass artist received any taxpayer-funded grants. There is a vast labyrinth of bureaucracies that wouldn't think twice about squandering tax dollars to fund chocolate naked Jesus. It is the only way these jackass artists endure. Stated differently: The reason there are so many "starving artists" is because most artists suck.

At least this one can eat his junk art when he's finished displaying it.

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POST SCRIPT: Any contradiction in Catholics getting uppity about showing, in chocolate or otherwise, Jesus' genitals when they themselves celebrate the Feast of the Holy Circumcision?

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For Discussion: The jackass artist apparently wants the public to eat the sculpture upon the close of the exhibit. Would you munch on some Chocolate Savior? (Catholics of course would never eat ... oh, wait.)

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UPDATE: That was fast — the exhibit has been canceled by the hotel that houses the gallery that was to display it. The gallery's creative director has resigned in protest. Remind me again who has a greater commitment to "civil rights" — him or New York's Cardinal Egan, who led the Catholic League's protest against the exhibit?