New York Post: "Rethinking the anty-Christ", December 1, 2010

Rethinking the anty-Christ, Editorial, New York Post, Last Updated: 4:30 AM, December 2, 2010. Posted: 11:41 PM, December 1, 2010. Copyright New York Post.

Excerpt

Rethinking the anty-Christ

Score one for the taxpayer -- and for common decency.

Under pressure from Congress and the Catholic League, the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery has yanked a video about AIDS in which ants crawl all over an image of Jesus on the cross.

The anty-Christ video also showed "the bloody mouth of a man being sewn shut . . . a man's genitals, a bowl of blood and mummified humans," as one report said.

Just in time for Christmas, don't you know!

But don't shed any tears for the film.

It constituted a federally funded attack on Christianity, and an assault on what the artist called America's "diseased society" -- brought to you by an American museum on the taxpayer dime.

Make that 58 million dimes: The gallery received $5.8 million in federal funds this year, the vast majority of its budget.

Incensed Republicans threatened to withhold future funding when the GOP takes control of the House in January.

And, surprise -- the Smithsonian actually blinked, in an effort to be "sensitive to what the public thinks."

Better late than never.

But why are Christian icons -- like the Virgin Mary spattered with elephant dung that hung at the Brooklyn Museum a decade ago -- ever desecrated in museums that benefit from public largess?

And why is the avant garde so terrified of stepping on . . . other toes?

Forget the Smithsonian's taxpayer-funded free-entry policy -- we'd pay to see an artist dare to place ants or any other arthropods on a copy of the Koran, or even -- gasp -- the visage of the Prophet Muhammad himself.

. . .

That kind of work would be offensive, to be sure, and as unworthy of public funding as the National Portrait Gallery exhibit.

But it would also require a level of courage -- foolhardiness? -- that the American artists busy defiling the fruits of their own culture simply lack.

The point is, art designed simply to offend American sensibilities doesn't have to be supported by taxpayer dollars.

Thankfully, the Smithsonian got that much-needed wake-up call.

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