The Attorney General’s screening off of (horrors!) partly nekkid sculptures in the Great Hall of the Justice Dept. has properly been criticized by many. Of course, as this article notes, similar draping has been done elsewhere in recent years, just from a different motivation.
Vermont tends to consider itself a quite progressive state — but the state government was years ahead of John Ashcroft in covering up works of art. In 1993, female employees in a state office building complained that they were being sexually harassed by a mural of Christopher Columbus arriving in the New World, because the painting depicted native women without shirts. State officials hung bedsheets over the harassing mural.
The Central Intelligence Agency is supposed to be led by courageous people who defend American freedom. But in 1993, when the CIA planned a headquarter display of paintings by the artist Carmen Trujillo, and some employees objected that some of the paintings showed women’s breasts, and were thus “verging on sexual harassment,” the Agency’s leadership meekly cancelled the exhibition.
Is it any more defensible doing this because someone is offended from a sexual harrassment standpoint than that it offends their religous sensibilities? Not to my mind.
Perhaps I lack the correct body parts or cultural heritage to appreciate this properly, but I do find this more than a little depressing.
(Via InstaPundit)
Interesting in light of Oscar Wilde’s theary of art that says art does not carry any message other than the one we attach to it. So women see nakedness (their own?)as harassment. What does that say?
Interesting.
Of course, they might retort that Wilde was a white, Anglo-Saxon male, and so not worth listening to, either. Heh.
yes, but he may have been gay, so they would have had to nod thoughtfully first.
yes, but he may have been gay, so they would have had to nod thoughtfully first.
I doubt you’d find that much political correctness amongst those clamoring for political correctness.