Knowing It When You See It, Part II

On the heels of our discussion on warning the public about mature art, Tyler Green points us to an indication that one can indeed be idiotically prissy:

This notice ran on the front page of today's Raleigh News and Observer, North Carolina's second-largest newspaper and a three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner. [via] Here is the story behind the penis that threatened Raleigh, and here is (pretty much) the image about which they 'had' to warn their readers.

I'll accept that a pop singer's exposed breast threatens to burst the coquettish bubble some folks wish to live in, but the notion that any human on earth needs to be warned before viewing a work of art from the collection of the Roman Catholic Church, one of the most conservative organizations in the world, sexually speaking at least, suggests the Enlightenment was a fleeting human accomplishment and that Darwin was mistaken when he asserted that the members of a species who could not learn would be "selected against" by nature.

Now perhaps the editorial staff of the News and Observer was simply pre-empting complaints they knew from experience they would receive for publishing a painting of a penis, but that still doesn't make them look any less ridiculous for caving into such prudish predilections. An image of God Himself appears in that painting, for Pete's sake. Do the N&O editors really need to worry they're going to offend anyone (anyone whose objections are worth considering at all, that is) by publishing an image renown the world over as a masterpiece of religious art?

What's really bizarre (and truly sad) about this warning is that it suggests the editors assume that a significant percentage of the N&O's readership may have never seen this image before. If so, I submit that the fine folks of Raleigh have a much more immediate crisis to attend to than any potential PTSD (Post-Traumatic Schlong Disorder).