Bolsavik.com

The Register’s Martin Wisckol (pictured) had this column today in which he mentioned the Bolsavik three times in three different contexts.

Wisckol is the Orange County Register’s Politics Reporter and writes a regular column named “The Buzz.” With Peggy Lowe he also writes a blog for the paper, named “Total Buzz.”

Martin Wisckol has not won the Pulitzer. Compare this.

A reporter once asked the Bolsavik about the reaction to the “flag in the foot spa” picture (see artist Chau Thuy Huynh’s work here). “Do you think it’s cultural?” she asked. “Because nobody in the office understood why anyone would find it offensive.”

The Bolsavik had been at the reporter’s work station just a minute earlier. It was in a large undivided room with something like 20 desks. Not to mention other rooms “in the office.” Twenty journalists couldn’t figure out how the picture was offensive?

Then the Bolsavik found this on ScripturePics.org, a blog/website offering a devotional picture a week.

This picture puts the face of Jesus Christ in a foot bath, even with a bare foot next to it. And the fact is nobody finds it offensive, nobody is protesting it — because everybody apparently just knows this artist’s intention. While others would just refuse to accept artist Chau Thuy Huynh’s stated intention and would just insist on accusing her of insulting the flag.

That suggests there’s something that causes certain people (say, Christians of every ethnicity) to view art in their context. And then there’s something that causes some Vietnamese (not all, but also not just Vietnamese-Americans – the Bolsavik has received similar reactions from Vietnamese-French and Vietnamese-Australians) to automatically and irreversibly equate a foot bath with an intent to insult, regardless of context or backstory.

What’s that ”something”? Apparently it’s not genetic. So can it be cultural?

Food for thought.

Happy Passover. Hag kasher vesame`ah.