In the face of declining ad revenues*, we have decided to become a full-time porn blog. You’ll find an example of our new content to the right.
You might say that’s not porn, that’s art…but pornography is in the eye of the beholder, and that’s porn in Florida**.
On Thursday, the Tallahassee Democrat reported that the principal of a local charter school, the Tallahassee Classical School, was forced to resign after three parents complained about an art teacher showing a picture of Michelangelo’s 16th-century sculpture of David. “Parental rights are supreme, and that means protecting the interests of all parents, whether it’s one, 10, 20 or 50,” the chair of the school’s board, Barney Bishop III, told the paper. To figure out exactly how this happened, I called Bishop, who is also, according to his biography, a consultant, a lobbyist, an “outspoken advocate for the free enterprise system,” and an Eagle Scout.
I notice that “educator” isn’t on his CV, but that never stops anyone from taking control of a school board.
You should read the whole thing — Barney is totally bonkers. He’s got strongly held opinions, that’s for sure, but he seems to be using “classical” as a synonym for Desantis’ version of conservatism. He also has peculiar ideas about education.
He denies that the principal was fired over showing the statue. No, they were fired because they didn’t send a note to the parents warning them about it.
So the issue, Dan, isn’t whether children should see these pictures or not. Gosh, we’re a classical school. Why wouldn’t we show Renaissance art to children?
Right. We should expect that the students would see Renaissance art already (warning: some of it has boobies in it, too). Apparently, though, Florida parents are too stupid to be aware of this, so they have to be sent trigger warnings.
Dan, 98 percent of the parents didn’t have a problem with it. But that doesn’t matter, because we didn’t follow a practice. We have a practice. Last year, the school sent out an advance notice about it. Parents should know: In class, students are going to see or hear or talk about this. This year, we didn’t send out that notice.
He also says the statue is not a problem, but they’re going to have to do age-related censorship.
We’re not going to show the full statue of David to kindergartners. We’re not going to show him to second graders. Showing the entire statue of David is appropriate at some age. We’re going to figure out when that is.
And you don’t have to show the whole statue! Maybe to kindergartners we only show the head. You can appreciate that. You can show the hands, the arms, the muscles, the beautiful work Michelangelo did in marble, without showing the whole thing.
He also wants to disregard teachers, and give all control to parents — you know, the parents who need to be informed that a class on Renaissance art might include some nude images. Educators, pfft. They know nothing. Barney is the expert. He was an Eagle Scout!
We’re not gonna have courses from the College Board. We’re not gonna teach 1619 or CRT crap. I know they do all that up in Virginia. The rights of parents, that trumps the rights of kids. Teachers are the experts? Teachers have all the knowledge? Are you kidding me? I know lots of teachers that are very good, but to suggest they are the authorities, you’re on better drugs than me.
Barney is a confused individual who defends his regressive views with contradictions. He also mentions that they use the Hillsdale College curriculum. Hillsdale is a conservative and extremely Christian institution, and I expect the only consistency we’ll find is dishonesty and dogma.
Maybe all those repressed weirdos will start reading my blog for the porn now.
*Wait, what ad revenues? We’re ad-free!***
**Maybe they won’t find it pornographic down around Miami. I can’t forget the time I attended a conference in South Florida, took a break and sat down with my laptop on the beach, when an attractive young lady in front of me stood up, stripped naked, and started oiling herself down. I couldn’t get any work done at all. That wasn’t pornographic at all, that was art.
***Maybe when I start showing the spider porn and visits surge, we’ll be able to overcome the lack of ads with volume.****
****I know nothing about economics. Does it show?
If that’s porn, the bible is slasher fic.
And he’s chair of the school board!
The problem with classical porn like this is that delivering the centerfold every month requires a huge truck, costs a fortune and fills up the ballroom pretty quickly.
@1 you’re behind the curve: https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2023/03/22/utah-parent-says-bible-contains/
A parent angry at book banning has filed a formal complaint to get the bible removed from school libraries as porn – with a long list of citations referenced in the news article.
I’m sorry, but WHO are the snowflakes here?!
Why not? It’s not like they wouldn’t have seen naked people at that age.
Ironic, given David was commissioned by the Roman Catholic Church. Guess those parents would’ve preferred Jesus’ birth be prevented by Goliath or something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_(Michelangelo)
Guess we’ll have to nuke Florence now, gotta think of the parental rights of one over the parental and fundamental rights of the entirety of humanity.
So, he says “Parental rights are supreme, and that means protecting the interests of all parents, whether it’s one, 10, 20 or 50,”, so if those ‘rights’ insist he and his school board be summarily executed with a flamethrower, is he going to get someone with a flamethrower?
Screw it, give Texas back to Mexico and Florida can go to Cuba. Then, we can build a wall…
Until then, out of an abundance of concern for our federal personnel’s welfare, health and safety, close all federal offices in the offending states, as well as all military facilities and bases and evacuate all government personnel and property.
Watch how quickly tunes sung get changed when economies and emergency response disappears.
They’re welcome to being a flake, even a snowflake, I’ve plenty of thermite.
Remember that the fetus is a full-fledged “person” with rights from the moment of conception, but an actually born child is the property of its parents until it turns 18.
Is this what they mean by “cancel culture”?
Looks like they are canceling a lot of history, art, and common sense among other things.
I love that dig, “They teach that up in Virginia”, which, of course, they don’t. That was a boogie-man lie in order to try to take over the Loudoun school board (hint: it worked) and then got used by Youngkin to take over the state. Given that it was a campaign promise and he’s been in office 2 years, clearly, CRT is no longer taught here in VA, so Youngkin got to fulfill the promise.
Because, of course, it was never taught to K-12 here in the first place. An easy pledge to win.
This morning I taught a small class of 17 year olds about the Pronomos Vase – a piece of Greek pottery art central to our understanding of Satyr Drama and the changing nature of Athenian theatre culture at the end of the 5th Century BC. There are penises all over it. Lots of them. Fifteen or so. We counted.
Then I did a Latin translation from the third book of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria with a class of 18 year olds. The text was a catalogue of sex positions and which mythic heroines preferred each one. I had to point out several smutty allusions that need close knowledge of 1st Century Roman slang to appreciate.
After break my class of 16 year old girls got on with Aristophanes’ Frogs. We debated whether the famous “lost his oil jar” routine at the end was a barely-concealed sexual reference or not, given the suggestive shape of the lekythion in question. We also had a serious discussion of whether art really can teach people to be morally good, and what role it plays in society – one of the key themes of the play.
Running up to lunchtime I spent some time with my 13 year old Year 8 class. They’re looking at Roman Britain, and between translating some inscriptions on the tombstones of Roman soldiers sent to pacify the province we looked at the depiction of Claudius raping Britannica at the Sebasteion in Aphrodisias. That has boobies too.
It’s lunchtime now, and, after I cover an English lesson for a colleague, I will be teaching a lesson on the use of the subjunctive mood in Latin to 15 year olds. There will be practice sentences involving Roman sculptures and their various body parts, which may or may not still survive.
I teach at a Catholic girls’ school in Surrey. Which is about as Tory as you can get in UK terms. I expect precisely zero push-back on any of this.
I’m not sure what to call all this.
Another moral panic over a classical statue seen by at least many millions of people.
Right up there with nonbinary M&M cartoon characters.
A witch hunt for normal people who can look at a famous statue by Michelangelo that we’ve all seen pictures of many times, without thinking twice about it.
Or fundie xian terrorism.
After all, the principal of this school was fired.
Strangely enough, he wasn’t the one who showed the picture. It was an unnamed art teacher. Who, most likely will follow the principal out the door.
I’m sure all the teachers left in this charter school have learned a useful lesson here. Keep your head down and pretend your school is a Sunday school in a fundie xian church.
The biology teacher is undoubtedly revising the curriculum to make Darwin an unperson and evolution verboten.
The astronomy and geology teachers have got a lot of work to do censoring their science books as well.
Reginald Selkirk:
Remember that the fetus is a full-fledged “person” with rights from the moment of conception, but an actually born child is the property of its parents until it turns 18.
Which is why I think abortion should be legal until they turn 18. It’d be tough on the young conservatives, though.
Republicans: protecting students from classical Renaissance sculpture and black history and literature but allowing them to be slaughtered in schools on a regular basis.
“…, Florida parents are too stupid to be aware of this, ….”
Isn’t that the default expectation in a state that elects republicans?
Bishop is a Catholic authoritarian pandering to the Ignoratti, the Dunning-Kruger wing of the GOPQ. Obviously, Bishop has political ambitions as there is little else in his background that would qualify him for a J.O.B. that requires no work. (Yeah, he’s a dime-a-dozen lawyer; par for the GOPQ course.)
This whole Parents Know Best schtick is tiresome. My neighbor is a heart surgeon, but over drinks through the years I learned that he knows shit about biology or evolution. His knowledge of basic First Aid is pretty slim, too. He once told me in his Bones voice, “Dammit, Jim, I replace heart valves, not tend to scraped knees!”
The notion that parents “know better” than teachers about education is ludicrous if it weren’t so dangerous. However, pandering to the Ignoratti is easy if you have no ethics and a vote is a vote. Unfortunately, we’ll see more of this sweeping trend.
Wow, this is bringing back memories at least a half-century old.
When I was a kid, we had a book about Greek mythology in the house. I don’t remember details (I think it was by Edith Hamilton), but the cover had a picture of a statue. I think there were boobies.
My mother drew a nice bathing suit on her.
@1 Marcus Ranum: If that’s porn, the bible is slasher fic.
My reply: WOW, you nailed it. The bible has every kind of obscenity known.
@7 wzrd1 sounds angry. I am too. The insanity plague has now infected too much of the united states. The words we choose are important: We are angry, the rtwingnut-xtian terrorists are mad.
@14 Larry: Republicans: protecting students from classical Renaissance sculpture and black history and literature but allowing them to be slaughtered in schools on a regular basis.
My reply: Welcome to our deteriornation! Land of the macho and home of the imbeciles. Here’s your Masochist’s Badge!
PZ: Oh, what a twisted web we weave, when first we publish spider porn . Hey, look at those sexy spinnerets! Will you send the magazine SuperSpiderPorn Monthly in a plain brown wrapper so my rtwingnut xtian terrorist neighbors in Scarizona don’t see it? How much will it cost?
Says ignorant idiot Barney Bishop, using a pronoun.
@9 Yep, sure looks like cancel culture to me.
A British Museum (possibly the Victoria and Albert) has a full sized replica of the statue cast in concrete. So as not to offend Victorian era sensibilities a hammer and chisel was used to emasculate him. The offending organ was kept in the custody of the chief curator in a velvet lined case. Each time a new curator was installed the ceremony included a ceremonial handover of the offending member. A few years back the museum underwent a major restoration and it was was decided to also restore the statues dignity. It now stand fully intact in all its naked glory at the top of the entrance stairs so it flashes in the face of visitors as the climb the stairs.
Censoring of offending artworks is not a new thing. When i was at high school the librarian had censored all the art books by obscuring all the nudes with the library stamps. There was a=lso a display of New Guinea native carvings in the library. These of course were well endowed until she removed them to the woodwork room where they were subjected to radical amputation with a sharp chisel. The art department was not amused.
I assume they’ve already removed all copies of National Geographic from the library.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniele_da_Volterra
“Daniele is infamous for having covered over, with vestments and fig-leaves, many of the genitals and backsides in Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel. This work was begun in 1565, shortly after the Council of Trent had condemned nudity in religious art. It earned Daniele the nickname “Il Braghettone” (“the breeches-maker”).”
KG @20
Nice catch! I missed that one.
What do you mean art will be over? There will be plenty of art allowed after the imminent fundamentalist theocracy is firmly in place: Church hymns, Christian Rock, PureFlix movies, Robert Kincaid paintings…
I read decades ago of an old Italian villa, complete and replete with statuary, which had been transformed into a museum.
One of the statues depicted a nude man on horseback, depicting sheer exuberance – and not just by his outflung arms. This caused enough indignation that the management had the rider’s tackle replaced with a fig leaf, but preserved so that it could be reattached after the American-tourist season.
That worked, sort of, until visitors observed that the regular handling had made the phallus conspicuously shiny…
@ 7
I suspect that these clowns are part of the “Catholics aren’t REALLY Christian and the Roman Church is a ‘Babylonian’ religion” wing of Christianity.
@ 7
I suspect that these clowns are part of the “Catholics aren’t REALLY Christian and the Roman Church is a ‘Babylonian’ religion” wing of Christianity.
@ 20
They don’t care. THEY know what THEY mean and that’s all that matters.
AkiraMacKenzie @26
As a regular listenener of God Awful Movies, I think the idea of Pureflix movies dominating the American film production would effectively make the American dominance of world culture evaporate overnight.
Imagine “Bells of Innocence” being the template for US film production (with the son of Chuck Norris pushing his daughter’s cycle in front of a car, or insisting on touching children he does not know).
OT
More Republican idiocy, this time about serving millionaire tax cheaters
https://youtu.be/YpqO7GVtMfY
PZ beat her to it, but Digby Parton has a good article on this insanity, too.
https://digbysblog.net/2023/03/23/get-out-the-smelling-salts-and-the-fig-leaves/
Seems lots of people are upset about the art coverup (groan):
https://mockpaperscissors.com/2023/03/24/heres-some-stupid-to-start-your-day-20/
they have a great image of the ‘david cover-up’ kit.
This is not just happening in Florida.
It is happening other places as well, to no surprise, in other Red states.
Oklahoma board enacts new restrictions on ‘pornographic’ materials in schools
More moral panics, more witch hunts, and some book burning.
.1. The books they are banning are not really pornographic.
They just contain content that far right wing fundie xians find objectionable such as the existence of gay people.
.2. They are requiring school districts to out gay and Trans kids to their parents.
Because school district employees are well trained in searching out and outing kids that are different than the average. (In times past, this would be called a witch hunt.)
Then what?
So the parents can beat up, abuse, kill, drive to suicide, or kick their gay and Trans kids out of the house?
That happens a lot.
A huge number of kids on the streets aren’t runaways. They are pushouts and many are gay or Trans.
Can we officially classify “the idiot” as a pronoun? It would be quite useful, these days.
Let me stress that this is a charter school, not a public school. (Note for Brits: over here “public school” means the opposite of what you think.) That’s why its curriculum is from Hillsdale College. These are thinly-disguised religious schools, funded by public tax dollars, because Republicans are scam artists. (Or fill in your own reason.)
https://media.crooksandliars.com/2023/03/52186.mp4_high.mp4
Well, there is an upside to the corrosive effects upon education. Eventually, higher education will entirely fail in the STEM fields and not a single soul will eventually be alive who knows how to make or repair a nuclear weapon.
The plagues, taking care of population excesses and the dearth of a large population making war totally incomprehensible.
Still, I’m reminded of a place where Islamic versions of the Christian Taliban ran the show and every text in the medical school on OB/GYN was blacked out on all of the “naughty bits”. Literally and seriously.
Needless to say, diagnosis and treatment of problems just can’t happen in those nations. Oddly, their maternal death rate still remains lower than in the US, but then they import physicians from Europe and Asia.
@ahcuah #37:
Thanks, but most of us have sussed this out by the age of 13 or so. Perhaps you think we never pay attention to international news, watch Hollywood films or read American literature.
The historical David was likely only 13 years old, making Michelangelo’s statue an early form of child porn. It should be destroyed immediately, along with all classical paintings, statuary and drawings depicting women or men in any stage of undress (including Lady Liberty). But dirty magazines and video porn are okay because they’re businesses supported by the GOP.
@29. Akira MacKenzie :
Or, in other words, yes, art will be over..
PS. Yeah I know technically ‘Art’ includes even those but yeesh..
A mother was concerned her 13 year old son was becoming fixated on sex. She took him to a therapist who showed him rorschach pictures and asked the boy what he saw. The boy said:
1. a couple making out
2. a nude woman
3. a couple fooling around in bed
When the session was over the therapist asked the boy if he had any questios.
The boy asked, “Hey, can I have those dirty pictures”
Also, please see:
https://claytoonz.com/2023/03/25/penis/
cartomancer @11
Good for you!
I once taught Latin in an all-boys Catholic prep seminary.
Some of my students were complaining about how boring Latin was and saying that “those old Romans were
too boring to be of interest to them”.
I copied a page from my copy of “Ovid for Americans” which was an English translation of Ars Amatoria.
They were intrigued. I made a deal with them that we would translate some of Ars Amatoria if they brought up their grades and improved their translating skills before the end of the semester.
They did, and we had a lot of fun translating some of Ovid’s poetry the last couple of weeks of the semester.
This was before I taught using The Cambridge Latin Series.
Those textbooks gave me even more ways to make the language and the culture more interesting to my students.
I’m glad that I’m no longer teaching in Texas!
OMFG!
Cathy Wilcox sums up what she titles the American obscenity perfectly here :
https://twitter.com/cathywilcox1/status/1640819746315833348/photo/1