As you've probably heard by now, the New York art gallery that was slated to display Cosimo Cavallero's sculpture in chocolate of a totally naked Christ titled "My Sweet Lord" during the Easter season has decided it didn't need the controversy and cancelled the exhibit.
Too bad. One has to admire an intrepid artist like Cavallero. Surely he knew what a risk he was taking by portraying an unclothed Christ. He knew that depicting a Christian icon in such a pose would probably result in riots in the streets, death threats, fatwas against his life, and a possible beheading. Nevertheless, he remained faithful to his art, undeterred by the fanatics who would suppress his freedom of expression.
No doubt the New York art community is feting him for his heroic stance against the fearsome theocratic mobs stalking Manhatten. We hear, in fact, that his next project is a chocolate Mohammed in conjugal embrace with his nine year-old wife, but we're skeptical. That might require more courage than should be expected of one man. Offending the Christian Sisters of Mercy requires one level of fortitude, but offending Muslims demands of one a whole different category of courage.
In any event, the valorous MSM has not shrunk from reporting this incident. Newscasts of the exhibit even included photographs. Ironically, these were the same people who were too punctilious about religious sensitivities to run the Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed a year ago, offering instead pious demurrals like these:
"CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons in respect for Islam."
"CNN is not showing the negative caricatures of the likeness of Prophet Mohammed because the network believes its role is to cover the events surrounding the publication of the cartoons while not unnecessarily adding fuel to the controversy itself."
"They [the cartoons] wouldn't meet our standards for what we publish in the paper," said Leonard Downie, Jr., executive editor of The Washington Post. "We have standards about language, religious sensitivity, racial sensitivity and general good taste." ...
At USA Today, deputy foreign editor Jim Michaels offered a similar explanation. "At this point, I'm not sure there would be a point to it," he said about publishing the cartoons. "We have described them, but I am not sure running it would advance the story." Although he acknowledged that the cartoons have news value, he said the offensive nature overshadows that.
And the Boston Globe sniffed that "Newspapers ought to refrain from publishing offensive caricatures of Mohammed in the name of the ultimate Enlightenment value: tolerance."
It's not clear how many of the above newspapers which refused to show the Mohammed cartoons chose to show photos of "My Sweet Lord," but CNN did, or at least more of it than they showed of the Mohammed cartoons. Likewise MSNBC which did not run the offensive Mohammed cartoons nevertheless showed the naked Christ repeatedly throughout an entire segment of Hardball the other night. It all makes one wonder which is greater, the media's pusillanimity or their hypocrisy.
Anyway, thanks to Michelle Malkin for digging the above quotes out of her archives.
RLC