Patterico's Pontifications

3/26/2023

Allahpundit — Er, “Nick Catoggio” Opines on the Stone Salami

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:32 am



If you have read the Weekend Open Thread you saw Dana cover the controversy over a sixth-grade Renaissance art class being shown Michelangelo’s David in all its unclothed glory without prior notice to parents . . . and the forced resignation of the principal (as a result? We’re not entirely sure).

Nobody, and I mean nobody, covers this subject like Allahpundit over at The Dispatch, with more synonyms for David’s naughty bits than you can possibly imagine. Just a sample:

The debate that raged in the site’s internal Slack this morning had nothing to do with banning TikTok or the latest 2024 polling or the decompensating lunatic who’s taken to warning of “death and destruction” to come if he’s indicted. The subject was more urgent, and closer to home.

It was wieners. We were talking about wieners. One wiener in particular.

. . . .

Excluding David from a class on Renaissance art history because of a moral panic is indefensible, but it wouldn’t be the first time adults have gotten the vapors upon glimpsing a schwanz rendered in gleaming marble.

. . . .

There’s a second problem with the pat narrative. If you believe Bishop, the problem with the David episode wasn’t that a group of 11- and 12-year-olds espied a stone salami. It was that the school had a policy of notifying parents about “controversial” elements of the curriculum in advance and in this case that policy wasn’t followed.

. . . .

Call that the “tossing kids into the cultural ocean to teach them how to swim” approach to child-rearing. It’s not the style I’d follow if I had children and it’s not the style many, many parents follow either. The fact that some do—and that, as my colleague noted, they’re overrepresented in media—encourages some moms and dads to put their guards up and err on the side of overcaution about what goes on in schools.

Which, in some cases, means being sticklers about demanding advance notice before their children confront history’s most widely viewed willy.

I laughed out loud several times. Yes, I am an immature child. But in addition to all the fun with the phallus, it’s a nuanced view of the matter, in a world where most takes adopt the “pat narrative” and move on. How could there be any nuance here, you ask? Click and learn. And if you’re not a subscriber to the Dispatch, what are you waiting for?


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