Some of you may have heard the term "make water" as a
euphemism for urinating. Some of you may have an idea of what "holy water" is. Well, in 1987 one artist put the two together and literally
made holy water. Serrano Andres'
Piss Christ was an instant
scandal. The picture of a small plastic crucifix in a glass of the artist's urine was displayed around the country (and World) much to the dismay of many. At first their vociferous opposition was just that, a loud noise, but it eventually ended up in the courts as a Catholic Bishop filed to have it barred from a public museum. The effort failed, and after months, and even years of "stirring the pot", Americans forgot about the photo and their
furor waned. While many in the Arts saw the opposition levied against the photo as an affront to Andres' freedom of speech, I can understand how they may have been deeply offended. You see, I used to be part of a religious group whose skin is so thin it makes velum look opaque. I'll give you a recent example.
In last week's college basketball game between the Brigham Young University Cougars and the Aztecs of San Diego State University, about 30 of the home crowd Aztec fans dressed in white shirts, ties, and dark slacks,
mimicking the familiar Mormon missionaries sometimes seen in our larger cities and towns. They held up signs that poked fun at polygamy, made fun of the players, and even used some pretty harsh pejoratives. As you can expect, the Cougar faithful were
incensed. Now I'm not advocating lewd or unbecoming behavior in a public place, nor am I commenting on the tastefulness of
Piss Christ, but what kind of response do you think those offended Catholics and Mormons would have gotten had they complained to relatives of Anne Frank? That's what I thought. But in today's world, anything that infringes on a "portected" group's collective sensibilities is all too quickly labelled "hate speech" and barred from the public discourse. It won't be too long before the US gets as bad as...well...as bad as
Holland. You know Holland, the land of wooden shoes, giant lance-defying windmills, and tulips? Well, now it's the land of missing
nads. Yeah, they've lost them. In an effort to protect the protected classes (i.e.- religious and ethnic minorities) the Dutch pendulum has swung way to the other
side. A politician in that country,
Geert Wilder, is being tried for "inciting racial hatred". What exactly did he do? He compared the anti-
Semitic statements in the
Koran with similar ones in
Mein Kampf. The irony of the whole situation is almost too much to believe, and won't be lost on the attentive student of history and culture. I won't get into that in this post (perhaps another time?), but instead want to focus on the
precedent that this might be setting, not only for Holland and the rest of Europe, but for
the US too. We all know how the current administration has a history of appealing to international law and worships "enlightened" European ideals. So should we fear a gravitation by him and his administration to the attitudes in vogue in England, France, and now Holland? How long will it be before the US justice system will be carrying out a proxy war, a proxy "holy war" on those who would dare to question Islam? Profiling?
Naw, too racist. Islamic terror? Nope,
extremist terror, or better yet,
man-made disasters. That's better, right? So while a man "making holy water", literally pissing on Christ, is celebrated as an artist, a cartoonist who pokes fun at
Mohamed is derided as a racist and a hatemonger. Score: 1 for the Muslims, 0 for the US. But the real losers are the Jews. Who worries about offending them anymore? Hell, they gave us Billy Chrystal and he's made a career making fun of his own people. Maybe we can all take a page from their book, get a thicker skin, and realize that making holy water is NOT the same as making holy war.
