I Don’t Give a Fig!

In the picturesque Medieval/Renaissance town of Trento in Northern Italy, the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church was held from 1545-1563. It was naturally called the Council of Trent and was prompted by the Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation.  Vying for all the available lire, reals, pesos, ducats, florins, guilders or thalers at the time, the Catholic Church’s Council of Trent could just as easily be labeled the Take What You Can Get Counter-Reformation.

The Council condemned what they called heresies committed by Protestants and laid down the law on Church doctrine and teachings. Among other things, the Council of Trent hunted for all the nude sculptures in Rome and started a campaign of carefully placing fig leaves to cover up the genitals. But some fanatical religious leaders went beyond this by mutilating the beautiful marble statues with hammer and chisel.  What started out as The Fig Leaf Campaign ended up being censorship through slipshod circumcision.  The mallet-wielding prelates could be overheard wickedly warning, “It won’t be long now!”

There is little doubt that the fig leaf campaign became the most dramatic event in history to censor art and nudity……. Until…. This week parents in Florida were upset that their K-12 (17-18-year-old) kids were exposed to the classical art of the Renaissance, including Michelangelo’s David, and images of the paintings “The Creation of Adam” and “Birth of Venus.”  One parent complained specifically about the nudity, equating it to pornographic material.  Upon hearing about this pornography, Tramp immediately issued a statement that he did not pay any hush money to Michelangelo Cohen!  Even Ponce (DeSantis) claimed children should not be exposed to such vulgarity.  “Besides,” he claimed, “Anyone can see that David was not Woke!  He wasn’t even excited.  It’s nothing more than a bunch of junk!

The bottom line seems to be that certain parts of Florida wish to turn the clock back 5 centuries.  It is a dilemma with very few solutions other than the one I just came across.  There is such a thing as Fig glasses.  I presume that whenever you put them on, an image of a fig is superimposed in your field of vision.  So, anyone who wants to can view artworks with a fig strategically covering the…… parts in question.  The glasses will also come in very handy for anyone attending certain political rallies, except that it’s likely that the entire field of vision will be blocked, since most people attending are a bunch of ……anyway.

Things don’t appear to be getting better.

Poor Richard                                                                             March 28, 2023