Restoring the Sacred

Monday, April 26, 2010

Kurt Westergaard & Southpark



That's Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist who depicted Muhammad as a suicide bomber in 2006. You'll remember the furor that caused in Muslim circles around the world. You probably don't remember the same furor being caused in Christian circles back in 1987, when photographer Andres Serrano exhibited a photograph of a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of his own urine, and won an award for it from the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art's "Awards in the Visual Arts" competition (sponsored in part by our very own National Endowment for the Arts). You won't remember that "furor" because the "uproar" wasn't much of an uproar. No Christian groups threatened Serrano with beheading: what they did was ignore him and his "art."

Poor Kurt Westergaard, though, offended the wrong religion, and has been living in hiding ever since as you learned from the above video. Now the Danish cartoonist has, in effect, been fired by his employer for "security reasons." You can read about that (and its unfavorable comparison with the Southpark debacle) in this piece by John McCormack from The Weekly Standard.




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