We live in a country where you can use the Bible as toilet paper. You can even post a video of this use on youtube. (I hope not.)
It’s a country where you are allowed to draw horns on the President, a country where you do not generally have to memorize poems for fear that your scribbles will be discovered by the local police. (The downside of this is that no one is much interested in poetry.)
It’s also a country where silly self-promoters, like Terry Jones and several other copycat “ministers”, have a right to do silly self-promoting symbolic things.
Of course, the rules that allow for Jones are also the rules that allow for artists and writers, museums and collectors, many of whom are also self-promoters, some of whom are also foolish. (Some not.)
Remember Chris Ofili and the Virgin Mary painted with Elephant Dung, part of the Brooklyn Museum’s 1999 show Sensation, which exhibited works from the collection of Charles Saatchi. Ofili’s Virigin Mary caused such a….sensation that it inspired then Mayor Giuliani to start a lawsuit to evict the Museum, the Museum to countersue Giuliani, and all kinds of politicians, artists, religious groups and concerned citizens to speak out. The U.S. House of Representatives (typically!) passed a nonbinding resolution to end federal funding for the Museum, the City of New York actually stopped the Museum’s funding; a federal judge restored it.
I am not sure that people around the world, Muslims particularly, understand this aspect of our culture.
I’m not sure that many of us always understand it. Especially some of the ones doing silly symbolic things. (And why do so many have to center on 9/11? Ground Zero? Do these people even like New York?)
But what do you do? We live in a country (thankfully) where people do not have to swallow their poetry, but can post it on the internet. Even though no one is terribly interested in it. With or without elephant dung.
More tomorrow.
ManicDDaily 
Recent Comments