April 19, 2005
So the new pope, eh?
Wow. Simply Wow. He is God’s rottweiler. Isn’t that what we needed? More religious fundamentalism?
fun fun… Really needed this leader against the muslim onslaught of religious ferver. What we need are well defined leaders in the religious war of today. The last Pope was a pansy, and was way to welcoming. We need religious ferver. We need more crusades! We need more Inquisitions!
We need more bomb shelters.
April 19th, 2005 at 9:20 pm
i liked the other pope better. he was nice. but don’t worry. this one’s 78. and look on the bright side. maybe over the next couple years with bush president and ratzinger pope, we can get [b:368ce64388]just[/b:368ce64388] to the brink of – but not quite to – holy world war III, so that the next election people will be so scared of religious fundamentalist fascism that we’ll elect a green party president and an atheist pope! woo-hoo! partay! on the other hand, maybe the last pope was out of touch. and god’s angry and wanted a watchdog. <— not in the least bit serious about any of this
April 19th, 2005 at 9:30 pm
rottweiler is pope. bush is president. and the french and italians are banning fashion ads. did you hear about this? [quote:8d88d73b8b]France’s Catholic Church has won a court injunction to ban a clothing advertisement based on Leonardo da Vinci’s Christ’s Last Supper. The display was ruled “a gratuitous and aggressive act of intrusion on people’s innermost beliefs”, by a judge. The church objected to the female version of the fresco, which includes a female Christ, used by clothing designers Marithe et Francois Girbaud. The authorities in the Italian city of Milan banned the poster last month. [/quote:8d88d73b8b] [url=http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24244] view this scandalous advertisement (scandal!!!)…[/url] i am honestly starting to think we’re —-ed.
April 19th, 2005 at 9:57 pm
that ad was offensive to me and i’m not even religious… WTF is that guy doing there with his pants below his crack.. i don’t like being mooned. And is he masturbating against that woman?! wow.. what an ad. -=Edited=- Let me clarify. It isn’t offensive in it’s content, i could careless if christ was a male or a female, it is offensive due to the graphic portrayal of the starved women next to man who has a foot in an empty plate (significance anyone?). The picture does address the bible and not just picture, btw. The last supper used the biblical version of the story literally. This takes the biblical source material and alters it. If i were to make a crucifix with a female christ and call it a crucifix with all intentions on it being interpreted as a female christ, i’m making a comment about the religion/source material itself. I’m saying christ is a female in my understanding. Which might offend them. I’m torn i hate the fact that advertisers use public figures for their advertisements after they have died. Einstein drinking milk anyone? It disgusts me. On the other hand, i’m concerned about religious ferver dictating law. Is it unlawful to create a work of art that contradicts religious teachings?
April 20th, 2005 at 12:28 am
Sex is all you can think of. What bothers me about the ad is the legs to body ratio and alignment? I know how the picture was taken but they are fucked up I cant put them together. People facing different directions from their legs or are seperated completely from them. Damn its a messed up poster. In 1995 or 1996, Michelle made the statment that after the millenium we would move to a more society concerned with the individual and that meant that religion would diminish. Wow, its been a slow transition. PS – Mary, there is no reason to believe I would ever be upset with you.
April 20th, 2005 at 2:03 am
OK. I usually use only lowercase letters, but this content inspires me to use proper mechanics. I know. I know. Whoa. Okay… But here I go… <rant> You guys! WHO THE —- CARES WHETHER THE ADVERTISEMENT IS OFFENSIVE!?!?! Do you really think the government – any government – should be in the business of labeling what “offensive” is and banning it? Do you have any idea how subjective the label “offensive” is? I find that ad offensive not in the least, and I was raised Catholic. In fact, when I saw it I kind of giggled. Thought it was a kind of trite amusing feminist statement that – yes, I admit – doesn’t take religion that seriously. But so what? Tori Amos has a song that goes, “We both know it was a girl back in Bethlehem.” Should she not be allowed to sing those words? How is that any worse than saying God doesn’t exist? Do you know how many people might find atheism “offensive”? And you want to be able to talk about that, right? Or should we take down this whole blog? And why should we, as individuals, have more rights than a group of individuals (i.e., a corporation)? Do we really want to regulate political correctness (of SPEECH)? I understand and agree completely with regulations that force corporations to TREAT people FAIRLY and DECENTLY without preference or discrimination based on age, gender, race, sexuality, disability, etc. But forcing corporations to only propagate PC messages – that seems fascist. Is it really a slippery slope to assume that if corporations are regulated into being PC, then individuals are next? You know, I might go so far as to say as this ad makes a political/artistic statement and in America – if it were put up by an individual – would be protected by freedom of speech. At least I would hope so. </rant> Then again, Marithe Francois Girbaud could just have decided to do it for the free press. To be edgy. Who knows. They mighta called the rottweiler on themselves… [quote:aed32429c7]PS – Mary, there is no reason to believe that I would ever be upset with you.[/quote:aed32429c7] I think “ever” is too strong a word, personally, but thank you for the sentiment. I will try my best to keep being un-upsetting.
April 20th, 2005 at 5:18 am
There are also plenty of times when we accept their censorship. In fact there are stages in historical development (House of Un-American Activities Committee – McCarthy trials to name one unpopular version and a more recent example would be we censor the display of the ten commandments in courthouses) where censorship is used as a sword. Religion has been drastically censored in our culture. Complete verbal freedom is a pipedream, and always has been. An even more interesting point i’d like to make concerns whether corporations actually should have the protection of the freedom of speech rights. Corporations are not individuals, they do not act as individuals normally act. A corporations primary concern is profit, even at the cost of it’s existence. This means ultimately it can and will utilize methods to achieve such an end result, take Enron for instance. As stated earlier, I have sever problems with giving advertising agencies the ability to free speech. Their goal is selling a product and if that means inundating us with sexuality and ignorant misleading (false some would say) information, then shouldn’t we stop them? I mean how can we expect an adult to know whether a drug is safe if the government didn’t run tests on them, because if we left it up to the drug companies to reveal their hazards etc we would be shit out of luck. We mandate that the companies give a listing of all possible side-effects. You see what their response is to this censorship? They hire the one individual in the world to actual compile the list in a five second splotch at the end of the commercial. That is a form of censorship, Government tells the drug companies what they have to say while mandating what it is they cannot say. (I.E. A drug company cannot say “The government made us say this but it isn’t true. Our drug could cause…blahlblah”) They would be fined. Censorship isn’t a clear cut issue. In a society where information is power (Cliche perhaps, but true) the corporations have the freedom to manipulate the information and maintain power. As for individual censorship, i can say briefly i think that individuals on their own merit should be granted the ability to say what it is they feel when they need to. *Disclaimer*This is not a well thought out argument, simply an off the cuff statement. I have a feeling there are ways in which censorship can be used to both guarantee the rights of expression, while limiting the information that gets innundated to our children. *End disclaimer*
April 20th, 2005 at 5:32 pm
i don’t think the issue of censoring advertisements or news media for “truth” is relevant here. obviously, we need government watchdogs to protect corporations from lying to us for their own gain. that is a separate issue from what we’re talking about, imo. but like i said last night on the phone, i realized after the excitement of my initial rant that there is a commonly-accepted need in society to preserve the innocence of youth and to allow us to go peacefully about our daily lives without being accosted visually by disturbing sights – again, i hate having to use the word disturbing because it’s so subjective – but, to use an obvious example, i wouldn’t want to have to walk my child through times square to get home from school to our apartment if there was a picture of 100 dead and rotting iraqis on a bulletin board there, even though i might agree with the sentiment that motivated the person(s) who put up the display. so censorship of public forums like bulletin boards from accosting you visually with images of death and explicit sex is reasonable. still, when you start throwing religious imagery into the mix… my separation of church and state bells go off.