Politics, Religion, & The Founding Fathers

So this site's greatest critic, my Dad, had another editorial comment for me. As you may or may not know, the address of the blog was changed very early on because my Dad didn't like "Rantinglikeamoron.blogspot.com"

This last missive was to lay off of Jesus. I guess between the action figure and the painting I got a little far afield. So I just want to state that it isn't the intention of this site to belittle any religion (or maybe more like it could be the intention of this site to equally belittle all religions).

He also felt that perhaps the commentary being made through my founding fathers pictures wasn't hitting the mark. A comment on an earlier post directed me to seek out Robert the Monk's account of Urban II's speech at Clermont late in the 11th century. So I did.

This is a speech where the Pope directs his followers to mount the First Crusade:

"Go, brothers, go with hope to the fight against the enemies of God, who for so long have dominated Syria, Armenia and the countries of Asia Minor. They have already committed many outrages: they have taken the Sepulcher of Christ and the marvelous monuments of our Faith; they have forbidden pilgrims to set foot in a city whose worth only Christians can truly appreciate. Are these facts not sufficient to upset the serenity of your faces?"

Thanks to:

http://www.traditioninaction.org/SOD/j031sdUrbanII7-29.htm

I guess I am supposed to cross this with George W. Bush. That would look something like this:

I'm not sure the artwork here is really recognizable enough to make the point. W rallying his followers to go and fight for the Holy Land. Still, it does express the idea, and fairly well.

I guess my stumbling block here is that I think that this particular approach would not be desirable to the right wingers, nor humorous to the left wingers that I thought would be a market for the first set of images I proposed. In the end I think that perhaps the upshot of that thought is that the first set of images really ought not be desirable, or comical, and that they are is a more cutting statement about the times we live in that the images themselves.

Looking at the two images. Knowing the figures and the context of each, I think that actually this image is much more disturbing, and could be offensive in a way that the Washington/Jesus image just isn't. I think that could be attributable to the stature of the constituents. This image uses what are to us true people, where the previous image uses figures that although exist in history are also in some ways superheros - icons, and there seems to be a little more latitude in satirizing icons than real people.

So much for that.