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Outrage comes cheap these days, and death threats come cheaper

Bill Donohue, head of the watchdog Catholic League, said it was “one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever.”

“It’s not just the ugliness of the portrayal, but the timing — to choose Holy Week is astounding,” he said.

My God! What could it be? What could be making the little vein throb in the forehead of anti-Semite and professional pearl-clutcher Bill Donahue now? ONE OF THE WORST ASSAULTS ON CHRISTIAN SENSIBILITIES EVER??? MY GOD, MAN, WHAT CAN IT BE?

Chocolate Jesus.

No, not that one. Or that one. Nope, not that one either. This one .

That there is “My Sweet Lord,” a work of art by Cosimo Cavallaro, an artist who often works in foodstuffs. This 6-foot sculpture, made of 200 pounds* of milk chocolate, was to have been on display in the Lab Gallery, an exhibition space inside the Roger Smith Hotel in Manhattan.

Was to have been. The hotel shut down the entire exhibit after Donohue got his flying monkeys out:

The hotel and the gallery were overrun Thursday with angry phone calls and e-mails about the exhibit. [Gallery creative director Matt] Semler 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.

Such good Christians. Full of the love of Christ at this holy time of year.

So. I looked at this photo, and I couldn’t see what was wrong. It’s not defaced. It’s not a caricature. It doesn’t have elephant dung on it, and it’s not immersed in urine. Chocolate is an unusual choice of materials, sure, but if God created the cacao bean, I don’t see the problem. In fact, it wouldn’t look out of place hanging above the altar of your average Catholic church.

Well, except for one little thing, which is apparently the thing that has Donohue in such a lather:

He’s naked.

Yes, the very idea that Christ, who took male human form, might actually be depicted with a PENIS — you know, equipment that comes standard on male humans — is so anathema to Donohue and his minions that they’re MAKING DEATH THREATS.

Just take a gander at the Catholic League press release (you’ll have to Google it, since I won’t link to that asshole) to see the dogwhistling to the minions (my emphasis):

Catholic League president Bill Donohue outlined his game plan today:

“The Roger Smith Hotel is located in the heart of New York City, and it boasts on its website that its Lab Gallery ‘is a high traffic, fast paced’ venue. Indeed it is: the gallery is located on street level, easily accessible to the public. But it is sure bet that in the years to come there will be little in the way of high traffic coming from the Christian community.

“As I’ve said many times before, Lent is the season for non-believers to sow seeds of doubt about Jesus. What’s scheduled to go on at the Roger Smith Hotel, however, is of a different genre: this is hate speech. And choosing Holy Week—the display opens on Palm Sunday and ends on Holy Saturday—makes it a direct in-your-face assault on Christians.

All those involved are lucky that angry Christians don’t react the way extremist Muslims do when they’re offended—otherwise they may have more than their heads cut off. James Knowles, President and CEO of the Roger Smith Hotel (interestingly, he also calls himself Artist-in-Residence), should be especially grateful. And if he tries to spin this as reverential, then he should substitute Muhammad for Jesus and display him during Ramadan.

“I am contacting hundreds of organizations about this assault. Our allied list contains scores of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu organizations, as well as secular groups, that share our concerns about religious hate speech and the degradation of our culture. The only thing that those who operate the Roger Smith Hotel understand is when they get hit in the pocket book. So that’s exactly where we’ll hit them. The boycott is on.”

Got that? He’s ostensibly calling for a boycott, but as we know, the kind of people who would call this hate speech and make threats because someone dared sow doubt about Jesus are not going to be visiting many avant-garde art galleries. No, all this talk of hate speech — and the reference to impending Dhimmitude! — is to stir up the lizard brains among his followers:

Nice head you got there. Shame if anybody cut it off, or cut off something else. You should be especially grateful Christians don’t do that.

And, oh, I’d so love to see that “allied list.” When even starfucker and camerawhore Shmuley Boteach calls you out for your anti-Semitism, you know you have a little hate speech problem your own self. And I’d especially love to know which “secular groups” he’s talking about. Fox News? Hell, even they found the naked chocolate Jesus amusing.

Donohue’s reaction to this work of art — not to mention his reaction to Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan — made me think of something Violet Blue wrote in the SFGate in response to the Kathy Sierra death-threat situation (via Reno and its Discontents):

Sierra’s haters — and the man behind the hate, in my friend’s case — are doing this not because they’re immature. They’re doing it because they want women out of their worlds. Every female tech and sex writer I have contact with knows this — every girl whose work has been Dugg, Slashdotted or commented on in a forum that allows trolls to fester. When someone goes this far, to make death imagery and maintain a 24/7 hate blog, we’re not talking about a lack of social skills, we’re talking about a desire to destroy.

Donohue wants to destroy secularism, and kick anyone who doesn’t want to capitulate to his vision of Christian supremacy out of public life in America.

___________
* Seems that chocolate is heavier than flesh. Who knew?

** Semler submitted his resignation after officials at the Roger Smith shut down the show. I don’t blame him.


151 thoughts on Outrage comes cheap these days, and death threats come cheaper

  1. I grew up in Catholic schools/church K-college and absolutely, positively never ran across people like Bill Donohue. Where did these loons come from and why are they always on television being the voice of Christianity. I keep thinking I was asleep for the first 21 years of my life. I missed all of this anger, vitriol and threats. People cannot use Jesus’ one temper tantrum with the money changers as an excuse to be perpetually angry, mean and hateful. Where is the Christ in that?

  2. that share our concerns about religious hate speech and the degradation of our culture.

    Aren’t they imprisoning cahtolic americans, and taking the little catholic babies of catholic american women away from their mothers for reasons of overt racism right now as I type!??

    What is this christ eating weirdo waffling about? This jesus too brown for him or something?

  3. The words “wolf” are constantly being cried, and yet every time I read an article that deals, even obliquely, with Christianity, I see this bloviating fool being quoted by otherwise serious journalists.

    Sure, we give Mel Gibson a thorough roasting for his anti-Semitism, but Donohue’s neuroses are so much more plentiful, and we treat him as though he’s a perfectly respectable person—no, worse than that: these news articles seem to treat him as their duly appointed representative for Christianity in general, as though this nutjob doesn’t have more in common with drooling malcontents like James Dobson than the average self-confessing Christian.

  4. With a name like Cosimo Cavallaro, the son of Italian immigrants to Canada, what are the chances that this artist is anything other than Catholic?

    That’s what really drives me nuts about Donohue — not only does he run around accusing non-Catholics of being anti-Catholic, he insists that his fellow Catholics are anti-Catholic, too, because they actually believe in stuff like Vatican II.

    The Catholic League’s first big coup was getting the TV series “Nothing Sacred” canceled, because Donohue was convinced that he knew Catholicism better than the show’s producer Bill Cain, who is a Jesuit priest.

    Yep. Nothin’ like the laity getting above themselves …

  5. That sculpture is making me seriously reconsider my stance on blowjobs. If only all men could follow in the Christ’s footsteps . . . by being made out of chocolate, I mean.

  6. Pingback: Thought Leadership
  7. If you display Jesus’ dick, people will get upset. This business of the artist playing shocked and offended is ridiculous. You make an artistic reference to or depiction of the genitals of a revered figure, you will get people angry. Heck, if an artist made a statue of John Kennedy with his cock out in full glory, I would get offended.

    That said, Donohue is a $300K opportunistic media blowhard and antisemite looking for a reason to have a fight.

  8. Caught part of the Cavallaro/Donohue interview on CNN and boy did Cavallaro make Donohue look stupid. Donohue ended up blathering about how Cavallaro dislikes him because he (Donohue) has a job. Bloviating media whore is a respectable job in Donohue’s world.

  9. Mnemosyne’s points about Donohue are good. If I were the Vatican I’d be genuinely worried about his usurping their role. He’s making his own broadcast theology, a weird mixture of Evangelical Protestantism and Sister Mary Ignatius. He’s really speaking for Catholics in the media’s mind, but what he’s saying is twice as loony as what the clergy really have to say (except our own Bishop Morlino, who is close to the same wavelength).

  10. I have never been able to understand this.

    I don’t think the Romans were interested in draping Jesus’ loins so as not to offend the passerby before they crucified him. The Romans were masters of humiliation and displaying a convicted criminal on a cross, naked, would have emphasized to the locals, “You don’t do this, or you’ll end up dying this way.”

    But we can’t offend sensibilities, so, depicting Jesus in a realistic way is obviously out. Weird.

  11. Bruce –
    there have been quite a few representations of Jesus with his penis visible, although most of them are of Him as an infant (there are plenty of medievel paintings and sculptures showing the Circumcision of Christ in at times quite explicit detail). But there have also been a few depictions of the Crucifixion where Jesus appears completely naked, as he actually may have done in reality (IIRC the gospels make mention of His clothes being divvied up, but not of any of them being left on his body).
    And of course there have been many depictions of Mary bare-breasted (nursing the infant Jesus, a type of depiction so common that art historians have a name for it – Maria lactans) and of course Jesus’ famous ancestor David has been famously portrayed in the buff by Michelangelo (anatomically incorrect though, with his foreskin)…

  12. Is anybody thinking about the obvious intent of this sculpture? Chocolate, crucified Jesus, Easter? It’s obviously about the incongruity of the cutesy, mundane way we typically celebrate this holiday (eggs and bunnies and all), vs. the incredibly brutal and sublime events we’re supposedly celebrating. One would think that this point would be near and dear to the War on Christmas crowd, if they could get past the penis.

  13. Qusan Says:
    March 31st, 2007 at 12:06 am
    I grew up in Catholic schools/church K-college and absolutely, positively never ran across people like Bill Donohue. Where did these loons come from and why are they always on television being the voice of Christianity. I keep thinking I was asleep for the first 21 years of my life. I missed all of this anger, vitriol and threats. People cannot use Jesus’ one temper tantrum with the money changers as an excuse to be perpetually angry, mean and hateful. Where is the Christ in that?

    I went to Catholic school in the 70’s too. But only high school. I didn’t see any of this anger either. But then the 80’s came along and my mother took up with a wingnut, and their favorite passtime was watching talking head/outrage-at-the-liberals shows. Many of the Catholic Reagan Democrats have turned into Bill O’Reillys and Chris Matthews. These death threats are not necessarily coming from Catholics. I’m sure there are plenty of protestant fundies and plain old nonchurch-going dittoheads posing as Catholics to increase their credibility when they make complaining phone calls. These are just angry, f*cked up people looking for a fight. They are the core of the culture of victimhood. Catholics are no more or less likely to be among them.
    They obviously have no sense of irony. Why is it OK to celebrate easter with chocolate eggs and bunnies, and xmas with chocolate flying church bells (in some countries), when those holidays are about Jesus, and those customs smack of paganism? And of course the last supper was about eating the body of christ, the reenactment of which is the central event of every mass. I’ll take a chocolate Jesus, dick and all, over a tasteless wafer any day.

  14. Mirele, you are right.

    I went to Catholic school (k-12) and they made it abundantly clear that Jesus was crucified naked, but that the loin cloth was there because apparently the nudity is inappropriate.

    Rewind.

    A giant, violent effigy of the death of some bearded cloud wizard is ok, but seeing said giant violent effigy’s penis is not.

    I’ve never been so glad to be a renounced theist.

  15. This is all about Donohue flexing his muscles. I don’t think it even matters if he finds it offensive, or if other right-wing Catholics find it offensive. There are naked people on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, after all (although I don’t remember if Jesus is one of them).

  16. The differences between the Taliban and the Talivangelists are nothing more than time and opportunity.

  17. Is anybody thinking about the obvious intent of this sculpture? Chocolate, crucified Jesus, Easter? It’s obviously about the incongruity of the cutesy, mundane way we typically celebrate this holiday (eggs and bunnies and all), vs. the incredibly brutal and sublime events we’re supposedly celebrating. One would think that this point would be near and dear to the War on Christmas crowd, if they could get past the penis.

    Exactly!

  18. Christ was naked in the Michelangelo’s “Last Judgement,” the huge mural behind the altar in the Sistine Chapel. But the Donohues of the day hired someone to come in and paint loincloths on all the nude figures. The poor guy was known as “The Breeches Maker” till his dying day.

  19. If you display Jesus’ dick, people will get upset. This business of the artist playing shocked and offended is ridiculous. You make an artistic reference to or depiction of the genitals of a revered figure, you will get people angry. Heck, if an artist made a statue of John Kennedy with his cock out in full glory, I would get offended.

    That said, Donohue is a $300K opportunistic media blowhard and antisemite looking for a reason to have a fight.

    What menshevick said. And don’t forget Adam.

    And also, artists should expect suppression if they depict revered figures naked? That’s an incredibly burdensome standard. Especially given the number of revered people whose careers are, to put it kindly, controversial. Especially given the many different symbolic meanings of nakedness (just right here we’ve got vulnerability, humanity, humiliation, death, resurrection, sexuality, and probably a few others if you were writing a paper). It’s like saying you can’t depict the flag to communicate anything but patriotism by the lights of people like Donohue. Fuck that.

  20. Besides, I don’t think artists should be expecting calls for their decapitation, if angry Christians did that sort of thing, you understand.

  21. In the course of my Jesuit education back in the 60’s, I acquired an interesting bit of trivia: no man can be ordained a priest unless physically intact. This means no amputees, no eunuchs (I guess baldness or missing tonsils or appendices are not considered imperative to intact maleness). This means that EVERY Catholic priest at least started out with a penis, and it seems that many have not been too reluctant to put them on display for selected young parishioners. I sincerely doubt that if Jesus was missing that particular piece of plumbing, the requirement for priestly office would have persisted.

    That being said, the possibilities are fascinating. You know the perennial fights about ‘Who ate the ears off my chocolate bunny?’ It could morph into ‘Who ate the ____ off My Sweet Jesus?’

  22. ” Lent is the season for non-believers to sow seeds of doubt about Jesus.”

    Excuse me?

    WTF is this maroon dithering about?

    Lent is the season for Christians to reflect on their own doubts about their faith, in concert with the coming jubilation and triumph of the embodiment of the resurrection and the life of our spirits.

    Donahue is an ass, and apparently doesn’t know squat about Christian virtues, especially charity.

    And it’s lucky for him that the secular law doesn’t follow “common sense” rules, or his language for a call to boycott would be actionable as a call to violence.

  23. And really, it’s ironic for a Catholic to make reference to the Muslim prohibition on images of their Prophet, since it’s quite possible there wouldn’t even be such thing as Protestants if the Catholic Church didn’t so prominently display images of Jesus. Or at least, that’s how I learned it back in the day – that Martin Luther thought the large depictions of Jesus in the Catholic churches were idols/graven images.

  24. Revered figures,naked? So depictions of Strom Thurmond,adolph, St.Ronnie,Nixon,and other rwingers,in white chocolate are out of bounds? And isn’t Ann Coulter a Michaelangelo female suffering from anorexia?

  25. Not only is Bill Donahue’s hue and cry over “My Sweet Lord” ridiculous politics, but it’s bad Catholic theology in terms of the incarantion of Christ and the fullness of his humanity, which includes Christ’s penis (the Chrenis?). A fuller discussion from an art and theological perspective is over at my place (ArtBlogByBob.blogspot.com).

  26. “…if God created the cacao bean, I don’t see the problem.”

    Ah, but the product of the bean — refined chocolate — was invented by the godless Dutch! (Well, they weren’t godless then, but they are now; might as well make a sculpture out of hemp — which God also created, but hey.)

  27. Boycott, huh. . .

    Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act prohibits agreements in restraint of trade. Among classes of agreements in restraint of trade that are so anticompetitive to be considered per se unlawful, which thereby do not receive the benefit of a cost/benefit analysis under what is known as the “rule of reason,” are boycotts.

    Is the Catholic League violating, or organizing a group violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act?

    Am I an utter law geek?

  28. Donohue has the nerve to claim this sculpture is “hate speech,” and then immediately say, “Boy it’s a good thing we’re nice people, or we’d cut you to pieces.” Because threats aren’t really a problem, not like physically hurting someone, I guess. Has somebody called him on his shit? (Would it make a difference?)

  29. I had read that the sculpture was made of bittersweet dark chocolate, not milk chocolate.

    I am not sure WHY it makes a difference, but somehow I think if it had actually been made of milk chocolate, Mr. Donahue’s head would have exploded.

  30. My thinking seems to be in agreement with the other comments in that Donahue’s work here is more about controlling the content. In the first article put out by Donahue concerning this latest crime against christ, there is not so much an explanation of the problems, but an issuance of a directive on how others are to respond. This outrage on his part is a great way for him to affirm to himself and everybody that when he says, “jump”, people jump. If he and by extension the Catholic church and Christianity overall can force their reality tunnel on the public during their holy period, then they have a foothold on doing similar throughout the year.
    I’d like point out one of his central lines of this latest public statement. As I imagine it, yes any religion’s holy days would be the time in which non-believers become more pronounced. A basic reason is that non-believers just by going about in manner akin to normal day demonstrate in some aspect a superficiality of the holy day and cast some doubt to the religion as a whole. Kinda like the instances I’ve experienced where I have declined to participate, let alone give the pre-meal blessing. Some people get very irked if one just sits quietly, head unbowed while the blessing is done. Donahue is doing similar here, he does not like that all people are not going through the same rituals as he does.

  31. ” Lent is the season for non-believers to sow seeds of doubt about Jesus.”

    Oh, shit, really? Well, I’d better get to work on that, then.

  32. What Dr William Dyer said, and I would add this:

    It’s about exerting power through continuous outrage, no matter how thin the context. As long as there’s something to get mad about (and let’s face it, there’s ALWAYS something to get mad about if you look hard enough), BillDo can stamp his feet, make threats, and get attention.

    This makes BillDo look larger and more influential than he really is, which magnifies his power.

    Until “The Base” understands that he’s full of crap and ignore his rantings, there’s not much that cen be done…

  33. i’m pretty sure that in at least one of the gospels it is stated specifically that jesus hung naked on the cross.

  34. You need to track down the video of Donohue and Cavallaro on Anderson Cooper. Donohue got his fat ass handed to him.

    The artist said he was a Christian, and Donohue, arbiter of religion, flat-out called him a liar. (I guess all christians know christ was penisless)

    And at the closing statements Donohue said “WELL, I HAVE A JOB AND YOU DON’T” and Cavallaro called him a child.

  35. I had read that the sculpture was made of bittersweet dark chocolate, not milk chocolate.

    I am not sure WHY it makes a difference, but somehow I think if it had actually been made of milk chocolate, Mr. Donahue’s head would have exploded.

    It makes a difference as far as the artist’s message: Christ’s sacrifice is considered to be quite literally bittersweet in Catholicism. On the one hand, he suffered and died for our sins (bitter) but by doing so, he redeemed us all (sweet).

    Proving once more that Donohue doesn’t even understand the religion he claims to profess. More than once, he’s claimed that he understands Catholicism more than actual priests do, and yet he’s constantly on TV as the “official spokesperson” for American Catholics.

  36. “All those involved are lucky that angry Christians don’t react the way extremist Muslims do when they’re offended—otherwise they may have more than their heads cut off.”

    I’m pretty sure that this counts as a death threat in legal terms. So, jail for Mr. Donohue, yes? It might do his martyr complex some good.

  37. And the Eucharist is supposed to be Jesus’s body and blood. So what’s the big deal about making a statue of Jesus from something edible?

    I like Mnemosyne’s analysis of “bittersweet”, and the “chocolate bunny” analysis. And I didn’t know there were nude crucifixed Jesuses. I wonder how BillDo would react if one of those were displayed.

  38. I ask you to be more sympathetic to Mr. Donahoe. He is a longtime friend of my family and what I need you to understand is that he is a eunuch.

    So, he has exaggerated sensibilities to the depiction of a penis. The thought of a chocolate penis stirs so many of his latent desires and melts him. You would understand the importance of showing more reverence for a penis if you didn’t have one.

    Oh, I’m sorry someone just informed me this is a blog run by people without a penis. Nevermind.

  39. Found it:

    COOPER: Cosimo, I want to start by asking you what your intention was with this piece of art.

    COSIMO CAVALLARO, ARTIST, “SWEET JESUS” SCULPTURE”: My intention was to celebrate this body of Christ and in a sweet, delicious, tasteful way.

    COOPER: Why use chocolate?

    CAVALLARO: Because it’s a substance that I like, and it’s sweet. And I felt that the body of Christ, the meaning of Christ is about the sweetness.

    COOPER: Were you trying to shock? To cause attention? Usually when Christ is shown, he’s wearing some form of clothing. This is a naked Christ, which has also caused some concern.

    CAVALLARO: No more than the religion the way they use it. I was just using it as an iconic figure. My intention was to shock people? No. My intention was to have them taste and feel what they’re looking at in their mouth.

    COOPER: Bill, you called this exhibition hate speech and you said it’s quote, “one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever.” What specifically offends you about?

    BILL DONOHUE, PRESIDENT, CATHOLIC LEAGUE: Well, of course, asking the public to come in and eat Jesus with his genitals exposed during Holy Week I think would be self-explanatory.

    If we took an image of this artist’s mother and made her out of chocolate and with her genitals exposed, of course, to be equal, and the ask the public to eat her on Mother’s Day. He might have a problem. Maybe he wouldn’t.

    You know what bothers me? It’s not even the artist. We have a lot of these loser artists down in Soho and around the country. What bothers me is this guy knows, he’s the artist in residence, the owner, the president and CEO of an establishmentarian site, the Roger Smith Hotel, 47th and Lexington, in the heart of Midtown Manhattan.

    That’s what bothers me. Now we have the establishment kicking in. And you know, to put this out during Holy Week on street level when kids can walk in off the street, these people are morally bankrupt and my goal is to make him financially bankrupt.

    COOPER: Cosimo, do you understand the outrage this has caused? Do you think it’s overreaction? Do you get it?

    CAVALLARO: Yeah, I get it. I think it’s an overreaction. You just heard the gentlemen calling artists losers or me a loser. I think his assault is on the public at large, artists and freedom of speech and every Catholic. I’m a Catholic and I’m a Christian. And I think this gentleman doesn’t even represent the people that are in his faith.

    DONOHUE: That’s funny. You said I put out a fatwah, right? That was the guy who ran the lab. Says I put out a fatway. I put out a news release. You’re accusing me of being like the Taliban, is that right?

    CAVALLARO: Who, me? You’re not that intelligent.

    DONOHUE: Let me tell you. You’re lucky I’m not as mean because you might lose more than your head.

    COOPER: Cosimo. Did you want people to eat this? Was that part of this?

    CAVALLARO: No. Did you hear what this gentleman is saying, that I’d lose my head?

    DONOHUE: You heard what I said. You’re lucky I’m not like the Taliban, because you’d lose more than your head. That’s why you didn’t do this to Muhammad at Ramadan.

    CAVALLARO: No, Because I’m a Christian …

    DONOHUE: You’re a Christian? Please. Don’t lie about it. All right?

    CAVALLARO: I’m not lying about it.

    DONOHUE: Yeah you are.

    CAVALLARO: I want to ask you a question, Mr. Donahue.

    DONOHUE: Yes.

    CAVALLARO: Where do you think I should exhibit this? You’ve bamboozled an art gallery and you’ve bamboozled an establishment and you’ve put fear in people to listen to your rhetoric. And to believe – just because a man has got his arms extended and he’s made of chocolate, it’s your Christ and it’s offensive.

    DONOHUE: That’s right.

    CAVALLARO: And by the way – excuse me. I’m going to talk to you for a minute. You keep quiet.

    You go to the Catholic Church …

    COOPER: Let Cosimo finish his point.

    CAVALLARO: You go to the Catholic Church and you are going to see statues of Michelangelo that are nude. Are you going to clothe them for the Holy Week? Are you telling me apart from the Holy Week we can do anything we want with the genitalia? What are you talking about?

    COOPER: Let Bill answer.

    CAVALLARO: First of all, Leonardo you’re not. Quite frankly, where should you have this displayed? In New Jersey is where New Yorkers put their garbage. There’s a big sanitation dump. That’s where you should put it.

    COOPER: Bill, let me read you something that David Kroll (ph), the former assistant to President Bush who worked in the office of faith-based community initiatives said in reference in your protest. He said, quote, “Instead of getting all amped up over this art Christians should spend time facing the real and very challenging Jesus of the Gospels and encouraging others to do the same.”

    Are you making a bigger deal out this than this deserves? Doesn’t this in fact give it more attention than it would have received otherwise?

    DONOHUE: If in fact it was at some dump in Soho, I probably wouldn’t pay too much attention. But the fact that the Roger Smith Hotel right here in New York City is doing this thing — If I don’t pay attention to it, than my people should ask me to be fired. By the way, I’m delighted with the response from Jews, Muslims and others, not just Catholics and Protestants with this. People are basically saying enough is enough. This is revolting and what you’re saying, sir, is totally disingenuous. No one belives — I don’t even think you believe it.

    COOPER: But Bill, don’t people have a right to express themselves, and isn’t that what art is about? Aren’t artists supposed to provoke thought? DONOHUE: That’s right. If we put a swastika out on a stamp in the United States, we could call that art. An art exhibition. I don’t think Jews would go for that. Just because art is art, doesn’t mean it’s a right that’s absolute. Art can be insulting and it can be offensive. And when these people are whining claiming victim status as this guy is doing because of my exercise of my First Amendment right of freedom of speech, I didn’t call the cops to come in and censor this.

    I am simply am saying I called up about 500 of my friends in different Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and nonsectarian organizations to boycott the Roger Smith Hotel. They’re morally bankrupt and I want them to be financially bankrupt.

    COOPER: Cosimo, I’ll give you the final thought. Do you plan to display this elsewhere?

    CAVALLARO: Yes, I do. I’d like to add to the gentleman who referred to the swastika, he’s actually acting like a Nazi. And I would like to ask one question, where do you suggest that I exhibit this? You basically pulled it out of a gallery for me. Where do you think that an artist should exhibit his work that you don’t infringe on?

    COOPER: Go to some dump in Soho where nobody pays attention?

    CAVALLARO: There is a church in Soho that’s a dump, too? Let me tell you something.

    DONOHUE: Yeah, yeah.

    CAVALLARO: There’s two priests that want to exhibit this in their church.

    DONOHUE: Is that right?

    CAVALLARO: Absolutely.

    DONOHUE: Give me their names.

    CAVALLARO: I will not you’re a bully. And you know what? I believe there’s people in your organization that would like you to resign.

    DONOHUE: Is that right?

    CAVALLARO: Absolutely.

    DONOHUE: I haven’t heard from them.

    CAVALLARO: I have to tell you something. There’s more filth that comes out of your mouth.

    DONOHUE: Is that right? You lost. You put your middle finger at the Catholic Church, and we just broke it, didn’t we pal?

    CAVALLARO: No, you’re wrong.

    DONOHUE: You lost. We won. You’re out of the job.

    CAVALLARO: I’m a Christian and there is a lot of people like me who are opposedto what you’re doing.

    DONOHUE: I have a job and you don’t.

    CAVALLARO: I have a job and you don’t? You’re acting like a five-year-old and I feel sorry for you.

    DONOHUE: I won on this and you lost, didn’t you?

    COOPER: Let’s leave it there. You both expressed your opinion. Bill Donohue, I appreciate you being with us and Cosimo Cavallaro, appreciate as well. Thank you, sirs.

    CAVALLARO: Thank you, Anderson.

    DONOHUE: Thank you.

    (END VIDEOTAPE)

  40. Fundamentalists, particularly those with any measure of public notice, are often overcome with the desire to replace their god with themselves. “Martyr syndrome.” “Cross climbers.” “God complex.” Call it what you will, but the festering and incessant compulsion to project themselves as crucified subjects in their own right betrays a deeper desire to replace their god. In other words, Donohue is frightened his god might get more attention than himself.

  41. Show Us The Chocolate Jesus Penis!! Chocolate Jesus Penis!!

    Some people (Dobson, Donohue, Robertson, Im lookin’ at all a’ you) just need to get off the cross, ’cause we need the wood.

  42. I live in Canada, where our religious fundies aren’t quite as bold or rabid (yet). But the art community is an international one, and the shutting down of this exhibit is cultural (as in the arts) censorship within the entire community.
    As an artist , this offends me—another artist losing an exhibition opportunity, and the power given to a religious wingnut and his minions to determine the availability of the artist’s works to those who would want to see them. I think someone needs to explain to Donohoe what art is about—it is meant to elicit an emotional response in the viewer. Art also belongs to everyone. How dare this man censor this artist’s work, simply because he did not like the message. Although in this case, I would have to believe, as others here have said, the message he saw and objected to in “Chocolate Jesus” was that Jesus had a penis.

    I myself have begun to explore some religious themes in my work as well, and this whole debacle makes me wonder what will happen when I exhibit a painting entitled “Acid-Green Mary”. To be honest, it makes me feel a bit afraid–but it also makes me feel more defiant and determined, too.

  43. Why isn’t Donohue chastising his god for creating penises (penii?) in the first place?

  44. i’m pretty sure that in at least one of the gospels it is stated specifically that jesus hung naked on the cross.

    I’m pretty sure it said he was chocolateon the cross. Jesus is delicious!

  45. This is my favorite part of that interview:

    DONOHUE: First of all, Leonardo you’re not.

    Uh, Bill? Leonardo da Vinci wan’t a sculptor. You’re thinking of Michelangelo. Or possibly Donatello. Actually, while you’re at it, you should be going after Donatello’s David, because he’s about sixteen years old, wearing nothing but some relly sexy boots and holding an extremely phallic sword.

  46. This passage: biblegateway Luk 23:34

    “Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” And they divided His garments and cast lots.”
    implies that Jesus is naked since people are squabbling over his clothes.

  47. DONOHUE: I have a job and you don’t.

    Hahaha! “You cut me deep, Shrek!”

    I can see why a lot of people would be offended by this display – if they didn’t take the time to think about it. It’s actually quite a beautiful statue. But you obviously have to do some soul-searching when confronted with something like that, and soul-searching is not in vogue with Donohue & Co.

  48. One note to a comment way above. Jesus whipping of the merchants in the temple wasn’t a temper tantrum, but righteous disgust with opportunists who were exploiting the sincerely devout for their own gain.

    Kind of like, oh, William Donohue?

    By the way, I have seen chocolate crosses sold in stores in years past with no protest whatsoever. I always figured it was intended for chocolate lovers who felt bunnies were too pagan to indulge in. Go figure.

  49. “Uh, Bill? Leonardo da Vinci wan’t a sculptor.”

    There’s very little DaVinci didn’t do. Sculpture is not included in that set.

    How do you feel about this versus the Mohammed cartoons?

  50. CAVALLARO: I have a job and you don’t? You’re acting like a five-year-old and I feel sorry for you.

    DONOHUE: I won on this and you lost, didn’t you?

    I think Cavallaro is slightly off here — Donohue is actually acting like a three-year-old. Someone needs to tell him that men in their 50s don’t generally go on TV and go, “Nyah-nyah, you suck!”

  51. Bill Donohue is a bigot and the worst ambassador for the Catholic faith that anyone, anyone could possibly imagine. What an idiot. He and his ilk are who give Catholics a bad name.

  52. Someone needs to tell him that men in their 50s don’t generally go on TV and go, “Nyah-nyah, you suck!”

    You kidding? That’s all that Fox News is!

  53. It’s the fantasy of every self-styled “controversial” artist to be attacked in mainstream press by the religious right. But the chocolate Jesus gets a big New Yawk yawn here. Art school undergrad stuff, except few students can afford 200 pounds of chocolate. No losers on this one.

  54. Donohue, and “Catholics” like him are the main reason so many have left the fold. The Catholic League should remove him from his job immediately. I left the Catholic faith for many reasons. One reason is that the Church tolerates and perpetutates the hate and hypocrisy of the world’s Bill Donohues. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bill was aligned with one of the many other groups that have come to symbolize the problems of the Catholic church recently. 🙂

  55. s anybody thinking about the obvious intent of this sculpture? Chocolate, crucified Jesus, Easter? It’s obviously about the incongruity of the cutesy, mundane way we typically celebrate this holiday (eggs and bunnies and all), vs. the incredibly brutal and sublime events we’re supposedly celebrating. One would think that this point would be near and dear to the War on Christmas crowd, if they could get past the penis.

    I, like others, think that Charley is completely on the money here.

    I’ve often referred to Easter as “the festival of chocolate”.

    Em: hee-hee.

  56. DONOHUE: Is that right? You lost. You put your middle finger at the Catholic Church, and we just broke it, didn’t we pal?

    Anderson: What’s you fave part of Jesus’ teachings, Bill?

    Donohue: Well GayBoy, my favorite quote, if I may put it that way, of Jesus’ is when he reminded us, “You send one of our guys to the hospital, we send one of yours to the morgue. Go ahead boys, break his thumbs, THEN pull out his fingernails.”

    Anderson: What gospel is that found in again, Bill? I know you have me a cite earlier, but we’re having a hard time locating First Blood, Chapter One, of course all we have here is an old King James, Is that before or after Jesus grabs the M-16 and puts on the bandanna?

  57. Hey, death threats and actual killings are working for the Muslims so why shouldn’t the Christians relearn these basic tools of absolute religion?

    Of course the Christians have more cause here since the whole point of this exercise in chocolate was to humiliate their religion. Sort of like making a naked statue of Darwin screwing a monkey and putting it on public display as if it made some intellectual or moral statement.

    The Muslims are threatening and killing people to silence valid criticism of their religious tenets. Not just that but killing people over the fact that some Jews were purchasing land in their ancestral homeland and then defended themselves when attack by the large proportion of Arabs who were religious bigots. Heck they even passed a law to try to prevent Jews from buying land there, and were slaughtering not just Jews but fellow Arabs who had sold their land.

    Somehow the liberals minds this all gets turned around where the Muslims are the victims and the people that their religion denigrates are the criminals.

    Liberals have no problem recognizing atrocities committed by Christians in the name of their religion, even if the moral philosopher who is the basis for this was a pacifist. On the other hand the religion of the Muslims is based on the teachings of a moral leper who wasn’t merely a non-pacifist but actively advocated mass murder and practiced it. Yet somehow in the liberal mind these teachings are not only sacrosanct but anyone criticizing them is labeled an islamophobe, as if they were the ones who are moral lepers.

  58. Of course the Christians have more cause here since the whole point of this exercise in chocolate was to humiliate their religion. Sort of like making a naked statue of Darwin screwing a monkey and putting it on public display as if it made some intellectual or moral statement.

    Actually, I wouldn’t find that offensive. I doubt very much that most scientists would give it a second thought. I’d assume that the person making the statue had a pretty bizarre working definition of natural selection, but…honestly, given the reputation Darwin has amongst certain segments of the population, I’m sure he’s been treated to worse. Why should this artist’s choice of subject matter be any concern of mine? Is it somehow more offensive than the nasty things people say about Darwin, or less protected?

    It is an intellectual and moral statement: it’s an objection to the theory of natural selection, and Darwin’s role in spreading it, based on a certain reading of the Bible. Art employs symbolism to make its arguments. Sometimes, that symbolism is crude.

    I’d also point out that this Jesus wasn’t portrayed having sex with anyone, only (a) naked as he probably was on the cross and was in many artistic representations since (b) sculpted in a material that Bill Donohue doesn’t happen to like (come to think of it, that explains a lot about his personality).

    And all that aside, it would never occur to me to threaten or attempt to censor the artist who sculpted Darwin screwing a monkey.

  59. He’s ostensibly calling for a boycott

    I see. This is morally equivalent to stabbing the artist after shooting him 12 times like Theo Van Gogh. Besides, Its such a violation of the free-speech rights of the artists to boycott their works. Doesn’t the 1st amendment protect the artist’s right to free speech? Therefore I propose that the police round up all the clergy and force them to spend an afternoon at the hotel viewing the “Chocolate Jesus”

  60. Apparently, the chocolate part isn’t all that unprecedented, either (I knew I’d seen stuff like this before).

    I wonder if the good people at Chocolate Fantasies get death threats? Their edible Jesus is apparently wearing a shirt.

    And here’s a Jesus lollipop, apparently a variation on the same image.

    And now you can make your own!

    And here’s another chocolate Jesus, as well as a chocolate crucifix and a cartoon Moses.

    And a chocolate baby Jesus!

    Also, yay.

  61. I see we have a troll infestation.

    Donohue is pretending any Jew would knowingly take his call?

    Can’t stop the blast fax. I’m sure that’s what he means when he says he contacted hundreds of organizations on his list.

    Okay, Brian and Jimmy: What, exactly, do you find offensive about this sculpture? What, exactly, about it humiliates the religion of the artist (a practicing Catholic himself)?

    Also, the comparison to the Danish Mohammed cartoons is utterly inapt. In that case, a conservative-Christian newspaper solicited offensive cartoons of Mohammed precisely to piss off the Muslims. In this case, a practicing Catholic artist made a sculpture in the tradition of Catholic art (yes, even the nudity — do you think the Romans let him have a tasteful drape on his nakedness?), using an unusual medium that can be seen as a comment on the commercialization of Easter. And now a professional outrage mill has expressed outrage.

    Not quite the same thing.

  62. Haven’t read through all of the comments, but as a Christian myself, I just want to add my $.02…

    When I look at that picture, it makes me giggle. Not because I find it ridiculously offensive – quite the opposite – I think it’s absolutely *perfect*!

    And the title, “My Sweet Lord”, what could be more fitting?

    I like it. I really, really, like it. It makes me smile. I can’t explain it any better.

    I just wish there was a better picture. Jesus looks bald in that one. Would anyone happen to have more links?

  63. There’s very little DaVinci didn’t do. Sculpture is not included in that set.

    Yes, of course. Pardon me, what I meant to say is that Da Vinci is as noted for his sculpture the other two. Leonardo celebrated the painting as the highest form of art, whereas Michelangelo and Donatello were primarily sculptors.

  64. Brian apparently hasn’t spent much time reading the tenets of the religion he claimed to follow, if he shuns lepers. Moral or otherwise.

  65. Zuzu,

    I don’t find anything personally offensive about the sculpture since I’m an atheist. I do however see how someone who is a Christian could find it offensive on several levels.

    It trivializes the host for instance. I actually find that quite hilarious. It’s sort of a mock ceremony where they hand out little bits of Jesus like they do in church with the wafers. This would be even more funny if this “piece of art” was done as a giant chocolate covered cherry. Then they could pour that red syrup in glasses and pass it around as a sacrament. To pretend that this aspect isn’t designed to provoke is ridiculous.

    That chocolate Jesus lollipops exist doesn’t really refute this insult either. These lollipops may be offensive to this guy Donohue also. There’s always a double standard on such things. Those lollipops might have been done by non-Catholics and are certainly designed to promote and not denigrate the religion. I’m sure they don’t have their genitals exposed. Remember, it’s one thing for a homey to call his pal the N word but quite another for a white dude.

    The whole reason for fig leafs and painted on loin cloths was precisely because this type of thing is offensive to some people.

    The venue itself has become a signal for the intent of the “art”. There have been so many “Piss Christ”s and “Dung Madonna”s displayed in art galleries that I’m sure that plays a part in how the message is received. A naked marble icon of Jesus on the cross that was commissioned by the church is not the same thing as a naked chocolate Jesus being displayed in what has as of late been an anti-Christian venue.

    This guy Cavallaro doesn’t exactly inspire my confidence. He says, “And to believe – just because a man has got his arms extended and he’s made of chocolate, it’s your Christ and it’s offensive.” Which directly contradicts that other fabrication he’s trying to feed us that this was some kind of celebration of Christ. He’s going back on his story that “My intention was to celebrate this body of Christ and in a sweet, delicious, tasteful way.” Even alone that sounds like a Monty Python line. If he thought that then he should have tried to get this piece commissioned or at least displayed by a church.

    I’m not the least upset that he’s giving offense but let’s be truthful about this, he is. Most likely it was his intention all along. That and getting publicity are the most likely motives. Remember he belongs to an authoritative religion and this sort of stick a thumb in the eye of their authority. He did this to provoke. He can do what he wants but expecting them to greet this with open arms is just silly. These aren’t the Unitarians.

    His whining about not having a venue is silly. I’m sure there will be lots of galleries more than willing to display it, or even the original gallery in a different building. There were two parties involved in the display, a hotel and a gallery. The hotel is pulling out. I don’t see any behavior by Donohue that violated his rights.

    BTW, stop whining about trolls. That’s just lame.

  66. Brian, you do realize the thing is not meant to be eaten, right?

    And so what if it’s provocative? “Provocative” doesn’t autoatically equal “degrading” or “insulting,” and even if it did, why should Bill Donohue and his outrage mill get to decide whether anyone else should see this piece and decide for themselves how they feel about it?

    I don’t see any behavior by Donohue that violated his rights.

    Dude, he LITERALLY called for the heads of people at the hotel, and he repeated this threat to the artist during his appearance on CNN. And, gosh, people were sending in death threats to the gallery and hotel. Still think Donohue didn’t do anything wrong?

    This guy’s a bully and a thug, and he’s inciting violence. And yet the Church says nothing, and the media just glosses over the threats and treats him like he’s got a legitimate beef. He threatened the artist right in front of Anderson Cooper, and Cooper did nothing.

    Just as the artist and the gallery are well within their rights to offend, Donohue’s well within his rights to take offense, and he’s well within his rights to call for a boycott or picketing. What he cannot do — but which he did — was call for a violent response.

    And somehow objections to this violent response, to incitement to murder, gets cast as disrespect of religion.

  67. Piny,

    Actually, I would find a statue of Darwin fucking a monkey offensive. Goes to show you that different people have different standards. I wouldn’t find it intellectually persuasive and frankly from an intellectual perspective it would say more about the person making the statue than it would about Darwin.

    However, you are wrong to think a monkey fucking Darwin stature is an intellectual statement. Certainly not in the way I meant it and I couldn’t find any alternate definition in the dictionary that fit the bill. I don’t think you would have taken it as an intellectual statement if I had posted a reply to your comment that consisted of one of these pictures.

    Flipping you the bird does act as communication but not of the intellectual or moral kind. It has no moral or intellectual content in and of itself. Nor does crude art serve the purpose of making intellectual or moral statements. If it did then you’d think scientists and the religious would make more use of them to make their points. I’m not aware of any of the supporters of Lamarck or other anti-Darwinian schools of thought using such art to make their intellectual statements. I don’t see this happening in the moral realm either.

    I’m sure their may be exceptions but you’d think that with the vast history of the use of art in both religion and science to make intellectual and moral statements they would have caught on to the idea that offensive stuff was the way to go. (Yes those drawings in Scientific American are art.)

  68. Zuzu,
    Brian, you do realize the thing is not meant to be eaten, right?”
    Err… no.
    CAVALLARO: No more than the religion the way they use it. I was just using it as an iconic figure. My intention was to shock people? No. My intention was to have them taste and feel what they’re looking at in their mouth.
    Sounds like he planned to have people eat the thing to me. Of course he could have been speaking figuratively. Donohue seems to think he planned to cut it up and serve it. Of course, he could have been trying to inflame. I see that later the artist claimed he wasn’t planning to have people eat it but you can see where people might get that idea with the kind of statements he makes.

    Remember this is the guy who thinks covering a hotel room with cheese is art. He’s not exactly know for making his messages clear. What exactly is the message sent by that? He had to know he was playing with fire here.

    Remember the premise of my first comment was that liberal acceptance and acquence to Muslim outrage was emboldening the Christians. They aren’t anywhere near where the muslims are on this however. A couple of threatening phone calls is nothing compared to what the Muslims have been up to.

    I could understand if you got on my case about my loose use of “liberal” or said “well non-liberals like Dinesh Desousa are sanctioning Muslim bullshit also”. I think he’s a idiot also. However that’s not what your doing here. You are trying to convince me that no one should be offended by this art. Well, surprise, surprise they are. Really this is a no brainer. Of course, somebody is going to get upset over this. Even if it’s just grandma.

    “Dude, he LITERALLY called for the heads of people at the hotel, and he repeated this threat to the artist during his appearance on CNN. And, gosh, people were sending in death threats to the gallery and hotel. Still think Donohue didn’t do anything wrong?”
    When did he call for the heads of the people at the hotel? Got a quote? I had already assumed that someone threatend the artist that was the premise (and it doesn’t matter to my argument). But I’m interested whether this is true or not. Your reading of the interview leaves me skeptical.

    “He threatened the artist right in front of Anderson Cooper, and Cooper did nothing. “
    Really? Not the way I read it. Care to provide the text where he did so? It’s certainly not this part:

    “DONOHUE: That’s funny. You said I put out a fatwah, right? That was the guy who ran the lab. Says I put out a fatway. I put out a news release. You’re accusing me of being like the Taliban, is that right?

    CAVALLARO: Who, me? You’re not that intelligent.

    DONOHUE: Let me tell you. You’re lucky I’m not as mean because you might lose more than your head.

    COOPER: Cosimo. Did you want people to eat this? Was that part of this?

    CAVALLARO: No. Did you hear what this gentleman is saying, that I’d lose my head?”

    This is not a threat. It’s an expression of his anger. Not very Christian if you ask me. 🙂 I think Donohue is testing the waters and it seems like the temperature is just right. This isn’t yet up to the level of Muslim agitation but it’s going in that direction.

    Again, the premise of my post is that people knucking under to Muslim use of violence to violate peoples rights is going to embolden members of other religions. Christians have a long history of this and I don’t want any of them backsliding. I certainly don’t want this kind of muslim legislation. Now the UN is going to be telling me what I can say about Islam?

  69. Brian,

    The thing about art is this–yes, it does provoke. It creates thought. It creates emotion. That is what is is meant to do. And yes–somewhere, someone won’t like it. What becomes distasteful in this whole episode is the fact that some religious zealot has decided for all of us that we don’t get to see it. It also isn’t for you to decide what the artist’s intention was here–the only one who knows what that is is the artist himself, and I believe he indicated what that was. Calling his intention a “fabrication” just comes off as arrogant. You might not like his message, but there it is. And calling his whining about not having a venue as “silly”, and that you are “sure” there are lots of galleries willing to show it—are you positive about that? Last time I checked, the crazy religious right seems to have gotten a pretty strong foothold in the US , and seem to have quite a bit of power. Not to mention the death threats these good Christians seem to so easily toss out when things don’t go their way. What’s to stop them from making more death threats at another gallery that wants to exhibit the sculpture?

    I somehow doubt Cavallaro decided one day to create something just to piss all the religious freaks off. That’s the thing about creating art– there is the a vision, and THAT is what creates the drive. Not dreams of publicity, not plans to provoke. I never start the creative process with the thought “Now let me see….who can I piss off next?” Artists don’t self-censor while creating,either. “Oh, I shouldn’t paint that, because it will offend someone.” Nope.

    It isn’t the job of the artist to tippy-toe around the sensibilities of various groups who would be offended, including religious groups . A chocolate Jesus isn’t going to create censure or hate against the Catholics and Christians. Art isn’t desecration. This is a chocolate Jesus we’re talking about, not a sculpture of Jesus having buttsex with Mary. But because Jesus is made of chocolate? AND has a penis??? Horrors! (yawn)

    Art is real easy to not look at. If it offends you, don’t look. But to tell the rest of us that we can’t see it either is just wrong.

  70. Also, the comparison to the Danish Mohammed cartoons is utterly inapt. In that case, a conservative-Christian newspaper solicited offensive cartoons of Mohammed precisely to piss off the Muslims.
    That’s a mischaracterization. Here’s a more accurate description from wiki:

    On September 17, 2005, the Danish newspaper Politiken ran an article under the headline “Dyb angst for kritik af islam” [5] (“Profound fear of criticism of Islam”). The article discussed the difficulty encountered by the writer Kåre Bluitgen, who was initially unable to find an illustrator who was prepared to work with Bluitgen on his children’s book Koranen og profeten Muhammeds liv (English: The Qur’an and the life of the Prophet Muhammad ISBN 87-638-0049-7). Three artists declined Bluitgen’s proposal before one agreed to assist anonymously. According to Bluitgen:

    One [artist declined], with reference to the murder in Amsterdam of the film director Theo van Gogh, while another [declined, citing the attack on] the lecturer at the Carsten Niebuhr Institute in Copenhagen.[5]

    In October 2004, a lecturer at the Niebuhr institute at the University of Copenhagen had been assaulted by five assailants who opposed his reading the Qur’an to non-Muslims during a lecture.[6]

    The refusal of the first three artists to participate was seen as evidence of self-censorship and led to much debate in Denmark, with other examples for similar reasons soon emerging. Comedian Frank Hvam declared that he would (hypothetically) dare to urinate on the Bible on television, but not on the Qur’an.[7][8] The translators of an essay collection critical of Islam also wished to remain anonymous due to concerns about violent reprisals.”

    That was primarily about freedom of speech. Specifically it was a protest against acts being perpetrated by Muslims. I don’t think Donohue would have a leg to stand on if this chocolate statue had been of one of the victims of the inquisition. Now that’s a moral statement.

  71. “Brian apparently hasn’t spent much time reading the tenets of the religion he claimed to follow, if he shuns lepers. Moral or otherwise”
    I’m an strong atheist and an igtheist. I think the bibilcal god can be proven to be nonexistant. Other notions of god that make no sense what-so-ever aren’t disprovable but really don’t mean or say anything.

  72. Again, the premise of my post is that people knucking under to Muslim use of violence to violate peoples rights is going to embolden members of other religions.

    Um, if you think that Muslims are the only ones who’ve been using violence to violate people’s rights, you need to do a little research about the Irish Republican Army and the Tamil Tigers. And you might want to watch Hotel Rwanda, where I’m sure the religion of the Hutus will come as a shock to you. (Hint: it was the victims who were Muslim, not the perpetrators.)

    The current violence that we’re seeing now is part of a continuum that we’ve seen for the past 40 or 50 years, not a brand-new thing that’s sprung up because Muslims Is Bad.

  73. I could understand if you got on my case about my loose use of “liberal” or said “well non-liberals like Dinesh Desousa are sanctioning Muslim bullshit also”. I think he’s a idiot also. However that’s not what your doing here. You are trying to convince me that no one should be offended by this art. Well, surprise, surprise they are. Really this is a no brainer. Of course, somebody is going to get upset over this. Even if it’s just grandma.

    You mean Dinesh D’Souza, Catholic League board member?

    Like I said: of course people are going to get upset. Someone always gets upset. It’s part of life. But you don’t threaten beheadings if you get upset.

    Also: the whole “liberals are in league with the Muslims” thing is tired. Are you seriously arguing that it’s liberals’ fault that Christianists like Donohue are making death threats? That they would never, ever have thought of threats of violence and death had liberals somehow not “emboldened” them — how, exactly? I still am a bit unclear on what you’re claiming is the emboldening liberals have done.

    But that’s just bullshit. Death threats are an old friend of people like Donohue. Remember Piss Christ? Robert Mapplethorpe? Chris Ofili? All of those involved death threats by good Christians prior to 9/11.

  74. Also, to clear things up for you guys, saying something is offensive is not the same as justifying death threats. I see Donohue acting like an ass but that’s not a death threat. As for the three calls the guy got, well I was assuming they were death threats, but I never excused them.

    I don’t see how you can fail to read the sarcasm into:
    “Hey, death threats and actual killings are working for the Muslims so why shouldn’t the Christians relearn these basic tools of absolute religion?”

    I do believe that Christians have been provoked more than the Muslims have over this and other things. That’s what I’ve stated. Piss Christ, Dung Madonna, and not Chocolate Jesus. All these artists would be stoned by legal authority over in the some Muslim countries, or while the law looked the other way in others. Not only that but they are killing artists like Van Gogh in western countries.

    And when this stuff happens we have liberals (and a few Conservatives like DeSousa) making excuses for them. Like they’re poor, or they suffered from western imperialism, they have different customs, etc. Well guess what, most every European imperial power had been colonized or imperialized long before they got into the act. Islam itself spread via imperialism, a fact convienently forgotten. Muslims invaded their way all the way to Poland, and France before they were beat back. They were making slave raids on England up into the 19th century.

    Any bad behavior by Donohue is far outclassed by what Muslims have been up to lately in the name of their religion. I don’t even see that Donohue has commited any crime. If you read the Koran you will see real death threats, and not ones called for by a mere mortal. Death threats, commands to kill non-believers, grossly bigoted slander of other groups, and worse. Plus the founder of this religion was a mass murderer who Muslims are told to emulate. I’m glad they don’t emulate him too closely in most cases.

    As for the three death threat callers. Well if they can catch them they should be put in jail.

  75. When did he call for the heads of the people at the hotel? Got a quote?

    It’s right there in the press release quoted in my post:

    “All those involved are lucky that angry Christians don’t react the way extremist Muslims do when they’re offended—otherwise they may have more than their heads cut off. James Knowles, President and CEO of the Roger Smith Hotel (interestingly, he also calls himself Artist-in-Residence), should be especially grateful. And if he tries to spin this as reverential, then he should substitute Muhammad for Jesus and display him during Ramadan.”

    Please don’t insult my intelligence by calling that an “expression of anger.” It’s a threat. A veiled one, but a threat nonetheless. And his minions dutifully responded, sending death threats to the hotel.

  76. I don’t see how you can fail to read the sarcasm into:
    “Hey, death threats and actual killings are working for the Muslims so why shouldn’t the Christians relearn these basic tools of absolute religion?”

    Sarcasm? Suddenly, Donohue is taking an ironic-hipster pose here?

    And when this stuff happens we have liberals (and a few Conservatives like DeSousa) making excuses for them. Like they’re poor, or they suffered from western imperialism, they have different customs, etc. Well guess what, most every European imperial power had been colonized or imperialized long before they got into the act. Islam itself spread via imperialism, a fact convienently forgotten. Muslims invaded their way all the way to Poland, and France before they were beat back. They were making slave raids on England up into the 19th century.

    Who says this? When? What context? You’re going to have to do better than “some liberal somewhere.”

  77. If you read the Koran you will see real death threats, and not ones called for by a mere mortal.

    There’s a lot of that in the Old Testament, too. Your point?

  78. I do believe that Christians have been provoked more than the Muslims have over this and other things. That’s what I’ve stated. Piss Christ, Dung Madonna, and not Chocolate Jesus.

    Piss Christ: 1989
    The Holy Virgin (aka the Dung Madonna to you): 1996
    My Sweet Lord: 2005 (displayed 2007)

    Why, yes, that’s quite the constant barrage of hideously offensive art coming out ONCE A DECADE. That’s certainly worthy of the death threats surrounding this piece of art — someone else did something offensive in 1996! Stop the presses! We’re being constantly attacked by having this art appear every 10 years!

  79. Actually, I would find a statue of Darwin fucking a monkey offensive. Goes to show you that different people have different standards. I wouldn’t find it intellectually persuasive and frankly from an intellectual perspective it would say more about the person making the statue than it would about Darwin.

    Well, yeah, different people do have different standards. That’s a point for my side, not yours.

    And you initially asserted that we would of course find that sculpture offensive, which, well, I don’t. It wouldn’t impress me one way or the other, but I’d have a hard time being offended on Darwin’s behalf or concerned for his reputation or the feelings of people who don’t adhere to creationism.

    However, you are wrong to think a monkey fucking Darwin stature is an intellectual statement. Certainly not in the way I meant it and I couldn’t find any alternate definition in the dictionary that fit the bill. I don’t think you would have taken it as an intellectual statement if I had posted a reply to your comment that consisted of one of these pictures.

    It would have been a symbolic jab at Darwin’s link (as read by the artist) between men and apes, and the use of visual language to imply that such comparisons are deeply offensive, bestial, and profane. It would be crude, but it would be an artistic statement based on an interpretation of Darwin’s work. It’s speech; it’s an argument. Your example would be a visual “fuck you:” not an argument, but also speech.

    Flipping you the bird does act as communication but not of the intellectual or moral kind. It has no moral or intellectual content in and of itself. Nor does crude art serve the purpose of making intellectual or moral statements. If it did then you’d think scientists and the religious would make more use of them to make their points. I’m not aware of any of the supporters of Lamarck or other anti-Darwinian schools of thought using such art to make their intellectual statements. I don’t see this happening in the moral realm either.

    Then you need to read up on your art history, sweetie. There’s a proud tradition of crude language and visual language to make statements about people and belief systems.

  80. But that’s just bullshit. Death threats are an old friend of people like Donohue. Remember Piss Christ? Robert Mapplethorpe? Chris Ofili? All of those involved death threats by good Christians prior to 9/11.

    I think you overreach by a long shot. I remember those and I don’t remember Donohue issuing any death threats. You haven’t produced any from him now either.

    You ask how some liberals are enabling this behavior. I say by example. Multiculturalism, plus hate speech laws, plus profiling, plus the way liberals excuse and side with Palestinian terrorism are a start. The way the jump on every false news story about the US as if they were true is another. The way liberals are finding every excuse under the sun for the bad behavior other than the scriptures of Islam and a need by Muslims to dominate discourse using violence and not persuasion. Liberals seem to have the time to protest everything but terrorism and Muslim intolerance.

    You mean Dinesh D’Souza, Catholic League board member?” Yes, the guy who came out with the book that blames Muslim behavior on Brittany Spears. Yes, that’s the guy. Our president is another with his nonsense about “Islam means Peace”.

    I don’t know why you keep trying to play this game like I’m a member of the Catholic League or something. They have a right to boycott, which is a very different thing that the “speech codes” that the left has been promulgating, or the hack and stab of the Muslims. You don’t want to be a target of a boycott then don’t immerse a cross in urine.

    One specific example of liberal sanction of Muslim behavior is the term Islamophobe. This term was coined specifically to shut people up when they try to criticize the religion. I’m not talking about pissing on the Koran here. I’m talking about valid intellectual criticism. There are scholars like Robert Spencer who are trying to inform people of exactly what the religious thinking is behind these terrorist plots, riots, fatwas, Arab hatred of Jews, anti-homosexual laws, and general intolerance of Islam. Yet, instead of taking up the mantle of disproving these claims in a scholarly fashion all liberals seem to want to do is show up at forums and throw cream pies at them and make them out to be racists.

    Another example is the treatment that Hirsi Ali got from the liberal government of Holland. She gets the death threats, real credible ones, and she’s the one they expose. I bet this chocolate Jesus artist doesn’t even have to go into hiding. He’ll probably find a new venue and become even more famous.

    You know the religious are unreasonable, but it seems you don’t understand just how unreasonable some of the non-religious are too.

  81. There’s a lot of that in the Old Testament, too. Your point?

    In fact, if you look really closely, you’ll notice some mild connection between those bits in the OT, and those in the quran…

    Quickly! crucify some jews! It’s what Aryan Jesus would have wanted!

    They were making slave raids on England up into the 19th century

    Actually british companies were already securing oil rights in the middle east by the 18th century, and napoleon had already invaded egypt by the 19th.

    So no. No british slaves were being captured by those fiendish moslems and their long boat raiding parties as they toar up the english channel.

    Jesus, you’re talking like good proud american christians didn’t spend most of the 60’s burning beatles records and sending them death threats.

    This is not a threat.

    Ironically, it’s actually a veiled threat.

  82. “Please don’t insult my intelligence by calling that an “expression of anger.” It’s a threat. “
    That wasn’t his expression of anger. His expression of anger is saying that if he was mean like the Muslims he would have done worse.

    It wasn’t Donohue who first brought up the Taliban and Muslims it was the other side. They were comparing him to the Muslims and he was pointing out, quite rightly, that if he were like the Muslims this guy wouldn’t have a head. That’s not a threat, get it.

    The left has been comparing Bush to Hitler and he could quite rightly of said, “Look if I was Hitler then wouldn’t you all be cooking in ovens right now.”

    Your reading of Donohues statements are less than charitable. They’re false. I don’t mind you criticizing the man but please stay outside the realm of fantasy. It wasn’t a threat, veiled or otherwise, and there is no danger that Donohue or one of his “minions” is going to kill this guy. Mainly because there’s no evidence he has “minions”. That’s just your paranoia acting overtime.

    Go out, do some internet searches and you can find plenty of well respectid Imams calling for murder, imperialism, rape of uncovered meat (women), etc. I don’t think you are going to find any calls by members of the Catholic clergy to kill artists.

  83. I think you overreach by a long shot. I remember those and I don’t remember Donohue issuing any death threats. You haven’t produced any from him now either.

    I didn’t say Donohue, I said people like Donohue.

    And I realize your position is that Donohue isn’t making a threat. Even though you’d see the threat if a Muslim were making it.

    One specific example of liberal sanction of Muslim behavior is the term Islamophobe. This term was coined specifically to shut people up when they try to criticize the religion. I’m not talking about pissing on the Koran here. I’m talking about valid intellectual criticism. There are scholars like Robert Spencer who are trying to inform people of exactly what the religious thinking is behind these terrorist plots, riots, fatwas, Arab hatred of Jews, anti-homosexual laws, and general intolerance of Islam. Yet, instead of taking up the mantle of disproving these claims in a scholarly fashion all liberals seem to want to do is show up at forums and throw cream pies at them and make them out to be racists.

    No, “Islamophobe” was coined to address the blind, unreasoning knee-jerk fear of Muslims (with a soupcon of racism) so on display since 9/11. There’s a hell of a lot to criticize, but much of what’s out there masquerading as “intellectual” and “scholarly” criticism is really fear, hatred, racism and stereotype.

    Try again.

  84. It wasn’t Donohue who first brought up the Taliban and Muslims it was the other side. They were comparing him to the Muslims and he was pointing out, quite rightly, that if he were like the Muslims this guy wouldn’t have a head. That’s not a threat, get it.

    It’s quite clear you don’t really know what you’re talking about, or you’re simply being intellectually dishonest. Read the press release from Donohue; look it up on the Catholic League website. He’s the one who talked about beheading people, not the artist. Cavallo wasn’t interviewed until AFTER Donohue called for heads.

    Your reading of Donohues statements are less than charitable. They’re false. I don’t mind you criticizing the man but please stay outside the realm of fantasy. It wasn’t a threat, veiled or otherwise, and there is no danger that Donohue or one of his “minions” is going to kill this guy. Mainly because there’s no evidence he has “minions”. That’s just your paranoia acting overtime.

    Oh, honey. I’m not the one living in a fantasy world. I’m quoting Donohue directly. And events have borne out my interpretation — he calls for violence, and his followers threaten violence.

    But do go on believing that the real problem here is liberals and Muslims.

    Go out, do some internet searches and you can find plenty of well respectid Imams calling for murder, imperialism, rape of uncovered meat (women), etc. I don’t think you are going to find any calls by members of the Catholic clergy to kill artists.

    One more time: THIS IS NOT ABOUT MUSLIMS. The actions of imams has no bearing on the incitement to violence by Bill Donohue and the death threats issued by his followers. The fact that you can see that the Uncovered Cat Meat sheikh was “calling for” rape when he didn’t use those precise words but won’t see that Donohue was calling for violence against the hotel officials and artist tells me a lot about your mindset. You only see threats for what they are when they come from Muslims.

    Why are you working so hard to excuse Donohue’s behavior by bringing up Muslims?

  85. Multiculturalism, plus hate speech laws

    In other words, Brian believes it is wrong to treat Muslims as people with just as much rights as Christians, and it’s wrong to make it a crime to issue death threats to Muslims or leave a bomb threat at a mosque.

    Sounds to me like Brian’s real objection is that teh imamz be stealin his flava!

    You know the religious are unreasonable

    Because only Christians are “religious”. Muslims are not “religious”, and Jews, well, we put up with their shit so they’ll keep Israel ready for the Rapture.

  86. “If you read the Koran you will see real death threats, and not ones called for by a mere mortal.”
    There’s a lot of that in the Old Testament, too. Your point?

    Perfect example of exactly what I’m talking about. You are making an excuse for calls to murder me right to my face.

    In Christian religion the Old Testament doesn’t carry the same weight as the New. Nor does it directly call for slaughter. God slaughters innocents, god tells Jews to slaughter other tribes, god asks for sacrifices, etc. The rules change with the new testament for the most part.

    There are sections that call for stoning homosexuals and the like. Well I object to those too. You seem happy with them since you seem to think they excuse Muslim behavior.

    Despite the violence of the Bible and it’s denigration of non-believers there is no open ended command to wage holy war against non-believers in the way the the Koran does. Have you even read the vile thing. It has entire Surahs titled “The Spoils [of War]” and “The Ranks [of War]” which are all about glorifying and commanding the military conquest of non-believers, while at the same time profiting in this world of the gained booty.

    Look I rejected Christianity for many reasons. Many of which are related to the intolerance that is inherent in the Bible. Thing is that Christianity is structured such that such intolerance can be disowned. For one thing, the Bible is not the direct product of God. For another, Jesus is not a barbaric mass murderer and child rapist. Islam doesn’t have those advantages.

    It’s an empirical fact that Christianity was able to work it’s way out of it’s intolerance, of course not without lots of proding by atheists, and other non-Christians. Islam will not be able to make that transistion without a full disclosure and criticism of not only their religious texts but their religious law.

    Its also an empirical fact that Muslims are killing and oppressing people around the world now. I’m not just talking about terrorists either. Their lynching non-Muslims for using the muslim only water cup at the fountain in Pakistan and we have liberals here whining about a boycott and tryng to make it out to be a death threat.

    There is a mile wide strand in the liberal camp that wants to keep a lid on this. They don’t want it discussed and they make excuses for Muslims whenever they can. Isn’t it clear that if you teach your followers that others who are nonbelievers are evil and that Allah wants you to deal with them directly yourself that some jerks are going to act on it.

    This is quite different than Donohue getting upset over some sacreligious art. He never told anyone to kill the artist, period. Yet, Islam has not veiled death threats, but direct commands to murder others coming directly from The Pen of Allah. Directly and in clear and unambiguous language as a command for all times and all places. Not just a ancient story about how God commanded some Jews to kill some ancient tribe. A direct command to take up arms and spread the religion via force.

  87. There is a certain kind of person who cannot argue his position so he lies about the position of others. You are one of them.

    As are you:

    Perfect example of exactly what I’m talking about. You are making an excuse for calls to murder me right to my face.

    There are sections that call for stoning homosexuals and the like. Well I object to those too. You seem happy with them since you seem to think they excuse Muslim behavior.

    You’re lying about my position. I’m asking you what relevance the Koran has to Bill Donohue’s incitement to murder. You can’t come up with anything, so you lie and say that I must be “excusing” Muslim violence.

    I’m done. You’re not arguing in good faith.

  88. comparing him to the Muslims

    No, “comparing him to the taliban“, on the basis that both the taliban and donohue had serious and violent (or shall we speak apologistese and call it merely the scent of the hint of a threat of violence?) objections to forms of art that they felt went against their religious views – the taliban destroyed a shit load of buddhist and pre-islamic afghan art remember, so the comparison between donohue and the taliban, was not just valid, but specifically appropriate, unless you generalise “the taliban” out to “the muslims”, which are not really synonymous or reversible groups in the context of the precise statement you’re rationalising donohue’s not quite veiled threat with.

    That donohue generalised out from the taliban to any random muslim who did what every nutcase – from members of peta, to timothy mcveigh and like minded anti-choice types – on earth has done at least once is also interesting, because it marks him as a racist ontop of being a disengenuous and vile fuckstain of the lowest kind.

  89. Why are you working so hard to excuse Donohue’s behavior by bringing up Muslims?
    I haven’t excused his behavior. That’s all in your mind. I pointed out my fear that the bad behavior of Muslims is embolding other religions.

    This is Donohue’s exact statements:
    ““All those involved are lucky that angry Christians don’t react the way extremist Muslims do when they’re offended—otherwise they may have more than their heads cut off. James Knowles, President and CEO of the Roger Smith Hotel (interestingly, he also calls himself Artist-in-Residence), should be especially grateful. And if he tries to spin this as reverential, then he should substitute Muhammad for Jesus and display him during Ramadan.”

    After your misreadings of my statements and my frame of mind I’m certainly not impressed with your reading of this.
    He is precisely correct that if this was a chocolate Mohammed during Ramadan the results would be a beheading. That isn’t a threat but a fact.

    I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that same argument made about Piss Christ and the rest. It’s an argument and not a threat.

    I’m saying that your claims are factually false. Donohoe didn’t make at threat. The reason I do so is because I want to base my beliefs on the truth. Come up with a real threat and I’ll entertain your position.

    Yes, the meat Sheik didn’t directly call for rape, that was not precise but your comment in reply is a nit pick. The sentence was structured poorly, I’ll admit. I started the list saying one thing and then got into the moment by listing things that these Imams were doing that I found offensive. What the Sheik called for was the women to cover up and to blame them for any rapes that might occur if they didn’t follow Sharia. Certainly a distinction, but a fine one at that. I guess you are ok with all the other stuff that’s being directly called for since you are nit picking that one item. These clerics are vile and their at the highest levels of the Islamic religious hierarchy.

    This is not the same as what Donohue was doing either. This Imam was addressing a crime after the fact and excusing it based on his religion. No one has killed anyone with regard to the Chocolate Christ, furthermore Donohue was not making and excuse for anyone who would do so. He merely stated what Muslims would do and wanted people to reflect on that when they consider whether the act was offensive.

    Direct question, if this Artist had made a chocolate Mohammed on Ramadan do you think Muslims would be offended? How do you think they would react? Asking those questions of course in no way is a call for any of you, my minions, to act on this. 😉

  90. Perfect example of exactly what I’m talking about. You are making an excuse for calls to murder me right to my face.

    Wait, it actually says in the Koran, “We need to kill Brian Macker”? Really? Can you give me the citation, because that would be one hell of a call to violence if you can show where it says in the Koran that there are “calls to murder me [Brian Macker] right to my face.”

    In Christian religion the Old Testament doesn’t carry the same weight as the New.

    Tell that to the people who insist that homosexuality is an abomination because of what it says in Leviticus. It’s pretty much the only piece of evidence they have, so they’re hanging onto it even though they’ve discarded every other law in Leviticus.

  91. “That donohue generalised out from the taliban to any random muslim who did what every nutcase – from members of peta, to timothy mcveigh and like minded anti-choice types – on earth has done at least once is also interesting, because it marks him as a racist ontop of being a disengenuous and vile fuckstain of the lowest kind.”

    Yet another example of the kind of excuses I’m talking about. The Taliban isn’t equivalent to some isolated nutcase. Did you know that in Saudi Arabia most of the historical sites have been destroyed by … guess who, Muslims. Not just non-Muslim historical sites but Muslim ones also. Under the direction of their religious authorities. This isn’t the behavior of a lone nutcase.

    It was I who made that quote. There is nothing nefarious about it. Here’s the quote and it includes the Taliban.

    “It wasn’t Donohue who first brought up the Taliban and Muslims it was the other side. They were comparing him to the Muslims and he was pointing out, quite rightly, that if he were like the Muslims this guy wouldn’t have a head. That’s not a threat, get it.”

    As far as I knew from the interview this was true. I’m not sure of the order of the press releases and the interview. Some of the releases seem to include information from the interview and occur on the same day. It’s hard to tell what was said when. But within the interview he was making a point, and I see the same point made a press release at the Catholic league.

    Doesn’t matter anyway. It wasn’t a threat.

    This was an example of two jerks out for publicity One jerk makes a naked chocolate Jesus and another blows it way out of proportion. That question Donohue asked about a chocolate Mohammed really is a question that the artist should have asked himself if he wanted to know if it would offend someone. He was definately treading on thin ice given the history of using piss and dung to make these things. He got what he wanted. He’s a hero to some and an bigot to others.

    Donohue is and was a jerk but he wasn’t entirely wrong on the Piss Christ and Dung Madonna either now was he? Those certainly were meant to be offensive.

  92. Mythago,

    You are playing games, again. The Koran calls for the mass murder of everyone who is a member of the group I belong to. Just guessing that they didn’t write a specific exception that said “everyone of them except Brian Macker”.

  93. “Tell that to the people who insist that homosexuality is an abomination because of what it says in Leviticus.”

    It also calls for stoning. Do you have a clue why that isn’t happening?

    You are pointing things out to me I have already considered. I am already on the record that Christians should NOT be allowed to teach these passages as true and should be held accountable when they instigate people to act on them.

    There is a problem with Christianity too but it is quite minor compared to what’s going on with Islam. Really, get a clue.

  94. Sorry, that we’re excusing calls to murder you. I’ve tried searching “Macker” in an online Koran and, darn it, nothing comes up. Are you sure that there are calls to murder you in there?

  95. It’s pretty much the only piece of evidence they have

    Well there’s a bit in daniel I think, but they never quote that, despite “abomination” not meaning what they think it means… But Leviticus was the sole justification for slavery as well so quoting leviticus has always been part of america’s proud tradition of idiot bigotry.

  96. Its also an empirical fact that Muslims are killing and oppressing people around the world now. I’m not just talking about terrorists either. Their lynching non-Muslims for using the muslim only water cup at the fountain in Pakistan and we have liberals here whining about a boycott and tryng to make it out to be a death threat.

    It’s also an empirical fact that Americans are killing and oppressing people (especially Muslims) around the world now. I’m not just talking about terrorists either. They’re killing tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians for the sole crime of being Iraqi and being “collateral damage.” They funded Saddam Hussein in the Iran/Iraq war, which killed millions of Iranians. And we have conservatives here whining about a chocolate Jesus and wondering why the awful Muslims hate us.

  97. which killed millions of Iranians

    we also supported Iran at various times during the Iran-iraq wars, killing millions of Iraqis.

    And that support of Iran helped us to in turn support far right south american dictators, who tended to kill left leaning south american catholics en masse if you’ll excuse the pun – including nuns and priests.

    Pakistan is currently our “ally” in the war on terra btw.

  98. And I realize your position is that Donohue isn’t making a threat. Even though you’d see the threat if a Muslim were making it.

    Jesus, this is such a fucking joke. No threat?

    Here’s what happens:

    Some artist (or, ahem, blogger) labors in relative obscurity. At some point, they create a piece of artwork that usually isn’t all that controversial by the standards of the artists contemporaries.

    It exists, sometimes for years, without arousing much controversy.

    At some point, a pathetically out-of-touch self-appointed watchdog like Wildmon, Dobson, or Donohue gets wind of it. This happens more or less at random.

    The watchdog starts a mailing-list campaign. It doesn’t work, per se. The artist doesn’t particularly care that this segment of the population doesn’t appreciate their art, and most of the time the mainstream is far less repressive than this yahoo anyway.

    Then certain of the watchdog’s followers start making death threats to the artist, bomb threats to the gallery or museum or theater, and assorted other threats of physical brutality as the whim takes them.

    Then–and only then–does the watchdog accomplish his goal of suppression. Only after the artist starts to fear for his safety, only after the gallery or theater or museum starts to fear for its security and the security of its visitors, is the work in question taken down.

    Donohue fucking knows this. Death threats follow his campaigns like a bad smell. He knows that all of his targets will inevitably be threatened with brutality. If he had a shred of decency, he would at the very least make a strong public statement against any such intimidation. But he doesn’t, because he knows that he won’t achieve his goal unless and until the people he wants to destroy receive credible threats against their lives. He needs the wackos to succeed. He needs them to pretend that he is relevant, that he has power himself. His whole enterprise would fall apart without them.

  99. That was primarily about freedom of speech

    Freedom of Speech? Um…Denmark has a blasphemy law. That means that publications can and have been punished for publishing material that’s offensive to religious groups. Muslims complained citing the blasphemy law and we told to screw off, the blasphemy law doesn’t apply to their religion because, like here, there’s rampant bigotry against them in Denmark. And just to be assholes, Danish publishers published the cartoons as a ha ha if you were Christians or Jews we’d be in jail right now (or at least subject to hefty fines) but since you’re subhumans under our law, we can do whatever we want. Look, we actually do have a free press in this country, and yes under the law the publisher of the New York Times can choose to make his paper into the house organ of the Nazi Party. But just because he has that right, that doesn’t mean that wouldn’t make him an asshole or that we’d all have to applaud him and give him a medal because we support free speech. Likewise, Denmark had the right to enact a blasphemy law that only applies to “favored” religions, and publishers had teh right to revel in ignorance and bigotry and beat up on a persecuted minority. Give them a cookie, but don’t expect everyone else to react the same way.

  100. It also calls for stoning. Do you have a clue why that isn’t happening?

    Yeah, because Donohue and his ilk haven’t yet managed to establish their ultimate dream theocracy (see Gilead, Republic of), and also because we have developed more advanced weapons (which proves our superiority as a civilization). The only real question should be do we waste a whole daisy cutter on this one artist, or do we send him to the Middle East so we can blow him up in concert with a lot of those evil irrational foreign beings who use violence in lieu of persusaion and discourse?

  101. The Koran calls for the mass murder of everyone who is a member of the group I belong to.

    I rather doubt you’ve read the Qu’ran, Brian. I, on the other hand, have read the Bible. The fact that you are ‘on record’ about the parts you’d wish didn’t exist means nothing. The passages quoted in the Bible are “true”, unless you’re suddenly going to pretend that Brian is the arbiter of what parts are really God’s word and which parts aren’t.

    Of course, you’ve made it pretty plain that you are going to stomp your feet and shriek “LIAR!!!!11!!!” whenever somebody notices what you’re actually saying.

  102. You are pointing things out to me I have already considered.

    Yes, most racists will claim that they’ve “considered” whether or not the group that they consider to be subhuman might actually have a few human characteristics after all. But then they’re able to find a few people within that group who are bad actors, which of course “proves” that all people within that group are bad. Really, it’s so classic as to be positively tiresome.

    I am already on the record that Christians should NOT be allowed to teach these passages as true and should be held accountable when they instigate people to act on them.

    So you’re now calling for government regulation of private religious beliefs. And this makes you different than the Taliban … how, again?

    See, you’re still not quite getting it. The despicable part of what Donohue is doing is not what he privately believes. He has the right to believe any damn thing he wants to. He can believe that Hollywood is run by Jews who love anal sex if he wants to. It’s a free country.

    What he’s not allowed to do is to incite other people into making death threats. That’s a line that cannot be crossed in this country.

    I know it disappoints you that we live in a country where we have freedom of speech and religion, but we do. That means that even Muslims can believe whatever they want to in this country. Do other countries have the same freedom of religion? No, they don’t. But that’s not an excuse to take our freedom of religion away in the United States.

  103. 1. Did Donahue think Jesus was a Eunich?

    2. Did Donahue disagree with the protrayed porportions of Jesus’s penis? Should it have been 2 penii?

    3. Would Donahue et all be less/more/as angry if the work of ART had been done in WHITE chocolate? Maybe white chocolate with dark chocolate for hair?
    4. Was Donahue upset with the um… “state” of Jesus’s Penis? Would he have preferred a more… straightfoward approach?

    *I can’t stop myself from the juvenile humor… Donahue just begs for it… .. ~snickers~

    …man, so many questions I wouldn’t have asked or thought, if not for Donahue’s outrage, thanks Donahue!

  104. Late to the thread, but I’d like to make a couple of points crystal-clear for clue-impaired Macker and his ilk.

    Donahue is essentially wearing a black fedora and pinstripe suit, while he gets out of a black 40s-era sedan and steps into the hotel. He walks up to the artist, gets right in his face, and says “Nice head you’ve got there, all attached to your neck and whatnot. Be a shame if anything happened to it.” Pretending this isn’t a threat (while simultaneously criticizing Islam as universally violent) is awfully disingenuous.

    Second, I’m not an either/or kind of person. I’m perfectly capable of thinking that both Donahue and his Islamic counterparts are knuckle-dragging idiots who need to wake up and smell the Enlightenment.

    Finally, note that atheism, like mine and apparently yours, is extremely offensive to many of the religious. Letting Donahue off the hook for his blowhard brand of zealotry is like throwing a Milk-bone to a junkyard dog: he’ll certainly enjoy the appetizer, but he’s still thinking about your leg as the main course.

  105. Brian, just one nit-pick,

    When Cavallaro said that “you think it’s your god” I think he was trying to differentiate himself from Donahue. Like when another Christian tells a different flavor of Christian that HIS god does this that and another thing: it’s actually a subtle way of saying “You aren’t really a Christian”.

  106. They were comparing him to the Muslims and he was pointing out, quite rightly, that if he were like the Muslims this guy wouldn’t have a head. That’s not a threat, get it

    Oh, puhleeze. And, “Baby, you’re just lucky I’m not one of those guys who hits women” isn’t a threat either.

    also: see Thomas Beckett.

  107. “Baby, you’re just lucky I’m not one of those guys who hits women” isn’t a threat either.

    Correct, that is not a threat if it is true. It would only be a threat if he did have a history of hitting women. In that case, of course he would be lying and it certainly would be a threat.

    I’m not aware of anybody that’s been killed by Donohue. There isn’t a history of anyone being killed by members of his organization as far as I know. In fact no ones died at all. Even in the piss Christ case.

  108. I’m not aware of anybody that’s been killed by Donohue.

    *yawn* and for the recap; You know donohue’s last moral outrage led to death threats, we know you know donohue’s last moral outrage led to death threats, but will we be trolled by you feigning ignorance about such things?

    Probably.

  109. I guess the main thing that’s bothering people around here is that I make finer distinctions than they do. I understand that some people just can’t tolerate that but sorry that’s just the way I am.

    Donohue is doing something immoral but he isn’t making death threats. I know that’s not a distinction you’d care to make but I don’t care to be so loose about it.

  110. Piny,

    I state:

    “Of course the Christians have more cause here since the whole point of this exercise in chocolate was to humiliate their religion. Sort of like making a naked statue of Darwin screwing a monkey and putting it on public display as if it made some intellectual or moral statement.”

    You state:
    “Well, yeah, different people do have different standards. That’s a point for my side, not yours. And you initially asserted that we would of course find that sculpture offensive, which, well, I don’t.”

    I didn’t say any such thing.

  111. See I think that is the problem with a lot of people who are getting upset here. You guys are reading way too much into what I’m writing. People are assuming I’m a Christian, assuming I find Donohue’s behavior morally acceptable, assuming all sorts of crazy stuff. The problem is I’ve said none of it. You are jumping to conclusions based on too little information.

    There’s nothing wrong with being mad at Donohue, he did some bad things. Nothing that was illegal. But here some of you are doing same bad things he did, being irrational, jumping to conclusions, claiming to know someone elses true motives, being intolerant of the way other people think, etc.

  112. Mildred,

    Again, that’s not a death threat. What Donohue did was wrong and complex reasons but it wasn’t a death threat. If you want I can explain more deeply but I don’t think you really care.

    See you want to claim that Donohue made a death threat to make it appear that he is guilty of something worse than what he actually did. Which is very similar to what Donohue did do.

    You see I never did provide my take on Donohue other than saying he’s an ass. I never gave any of you a detailed analysis on what I thought about it. You can’t tell anything by that. Unless you think your a bunch of mind readers.

  113. “It’s also an empirical fact that Americans are killing and oppressing people (especially Muslims) around the world now. I’m not just talking about terrorists either.”

    Another example of excuse making.

    Actually you are right about one thing I was not precise enough in my sentences. I’m only human after all.

    “It’s an empirical fact that Muslims are directly targeting people then murdering and oppressing them around the world currently, because their ideology specifically calls for such behavior.”

  114. “Donahue is essentially wearing a black fedora and pinstripe suit, while he gets out of a black 40s-era sedan and steps into the hotel. He walks up to the artist, gets right in his face, and says “Nice head you’ve got there, all attached to your neck and whatnot. Be a shame if anything happened to it.” Pretending this isn’t a threat (while simultaneously criticizing Islam as universally violent) is awfully disingenuous.”

    Nope, not a good analogy because the guy you are using already has a history of bumping people off.

    “Letting Donahue off the hook for his blowhard brand of zealotry is like throwing a Milk-bone to a junkyard dog: he’ll certainly enjoy the appetizer, but he’s still thinking about your leg as the main course.”
    You see that’s the difference between me and some of you. You’re motivated by this kind of thinking. I’m a little more concerned with justice. I’d prefer that he be shamed for what he’s actually done. You guys are just a lynch mob willing to throw out any old charge and see if it sticks.

  115. An example of this lack of concern for truth being this vile attempt, and again an example of what I was talkng about before:

    “You are pointing things out to me I have already considered.”

    Yes, most racists will claim that they’ve “considered” whether or not the group that they consider to be subhuman might actually have a few human characteristics after all. But then they’re able to find a few people within that group who are bad actors, which of course “proves” that all people within that group are bad. Really, it’s so classic as to be positively tiresome.

    See the trick here. Take one word used by another person and then paste it into a sentence that’s totally out of context.

    Here’s the context:

    “Tell that to the people who insist that homosexuality is an abomination because of what it says in Leviticus.”

    It also calls for stoning. Do you have a clue why that isn’t happening?

    You are pointing things out to me I have already considered. I am already on the record that Christians should NOT be allowed to teach these passages as true and should be held accountable when they instigate people to act on them.

    What I had “considered”, of course, was the bibilical literature, and living religion. I was not and never did say any sentence remotely like what Mnemosyne wrote.

    “Yes, most racists will claim that they’ve “considered” whether or not the group that they consider to be subhuman might actually have a few human characteristics after all.”

    Wow, let’s try this with one of Mnemosynes quotes:

    “That’s a line that cannot be crossed in this country.”

    Hey, Mnemosyne you know, most racists are against allowing the color “line” being “crossed”.

    Mnemosyne, you said that, you racist you.

  116. Brian, you’re a) getting obsessive; b) serial-posting, which is frowned on; and c) indulging in ad homs.

    Then there’s d) you’re boring, wrong, and for some reason you think this is all about you.

    Consider this a warning. Whining about the unfairness of it all will get you nowhere.

  117. “So you’re now calling for government regulation of private religious beliefs”

    No actually, I’m against defamatory statements that are obiously gross overgeneralizations and general calls to murder. I don’t think you can make anyone “believe” anything. But you can certainly enjoin them from directly inciting people to violate another persons rights. I also have additional conditions that I didn’t mention.

    Of course, I didn’t mention that in order to fully explain it to anyone. I mentioned it just to disprove several peoples claims that my beliefs only apply to Muslims. They don’t. They apply to the members of any ideology.

  118. “What he’s not allowed to do is to incite other people into making death threats.”

    Well now your getting closer to what he did. But you’ve named an actually crime. Does it bother you intellectually that the police have not arrived at his door? Doesn’t that make you think that perhaps this exact statement is wrong.

    Now if you could find this Donohue quote then I would agree:
    “I want members of the Catholic League to phone this man and threaten to kill him”.

  119. Zuzu, Just replying to my fans. Lots of people want to talk to me. I’ve got many people that posted comments and I’m replying to them. This isn’t a conversation so my replies appear next to each other. Understand?

    I didn’t whine. I owned. Do you see me calling for the person to be banned like you seem to be doing?

  120. Bryan, you’ve convinced me. I don’t want to part of a lynch mob, I want to be part of your subtle distinctions club. As a result I concur that Muslims are scary and dirty and probably smell and are an undifferentiated mass of killers who want to destroy humanity based on their evil ideology and evil text–why, the very existance of Islam is in itself a death threat. One sky god religion is evil and irrational, the other despite its seeming similarities is completely and utterly different in intent and effect, indeed, it’s pure and faultless and beautiful and civilized, and no hard will come to any of us if we turn over control of our government to its denizens, and nothing they do can ever be wrong or bad or even what it is, if what it is is something wrong or bad like, say, a death threat. All Muslims are responsible for anything done in the name of Islam, no Christian is ever responsible for anything either done in the name of Christianity or anything that results from a Christian’s incitement to violence. So let’s go forth and wipe an entire region of the world off the map secure in the knowledge that our ideology doesn’t require us to oppress or kill, and therefore the fact that we do it anyway makes us extremely moral. Satisfied?

  121. Ugh. I really hate it when boring, repetitive people show up and ruin a perfectly good thread.

    I’m a Muslim, and I don’t know any Muslims who want to take over the world. Yes, even when I visit that powder keg known as the Muslim world. I know it sounds crazy, but there’s shitloads of people there who are just TOO FUCKING POOR to worry about America. They’re just trying to survive, and avoid the bombs.

    Yes, there are bad Muslim people. There’s a nice cross-section of bad people in every group, and they use all sorts of stuff to justify themselves.

    WHY is chocolate such an offensive medium? Why is a substance made from a bean so much worse than clay, which is just dirt? Why is it different from images of Jesus in paints that were derived from plants? And even if the guy SAID that he wanted people to “taste Jesus in his mouths,” why would anyone automatically assume he meant it literally?

    And this IS different from Muslims getting upset. Because Christians have images of holy figures all over the place, and Muslims do not. We never, ever use images of our holy figures. We think it’s creepy, wrong, and the most pagan thing EVER, and anyone doing it is ONLY doing it to incite anger. (I wouldn’t riot over it, but I’m not really the rioting type.) Honestly, after being raised with such beliefs, I found it really creepy when I walked in an American government office and found a picture of Bush staring back at me. (I’d never seen a Canadian official on display like that.) I even get weirded out by money occasionally. It’s just a visceral reaction.

    Donahue doesn’t have anything like that to justify his actions. He just has a problem with it not being made to his exact specifications.

  122. The chocolate Jesus seems to me an interesting work of art. But is it offensive? I personally am not offended, but I would be hard pressed to explain this anatomically correct artistic display of Jesus to my children. If this statue would have been of anybody other than Jesus, nobody would have given a damn. The artist wanted attention and knew he would offend christian sensibilities. He might deserve angry letters from offended christians. But death threats? Coming from believers of Jesus and his message of love? Now that is offensive.

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