Something about that painting just reminds me of one of those scenes from the original Star Trek, when the advanced aliens of the week use their powers to choke everyone in the room.
It just needs the right music. (“Duuuuum, dum Dum DUMMM! Duuum, dum DUM duuuuum…!”)
According to the mouseovers, one of the guys standing in the back is a Black Knight. I’m torn as to whether make another back-of-the-bus-joke, or to reference Monty Python. What say you?
Since he’s to the back I’m guessing he’s Azeem from Robin Hood. (Maybe the MLK estate doesn’t allow people to paint Morgan Freeman either.) If he’s stewed it could be Dinty I suppose, but there’s already a Scot there so why be redundant?
Did England ever have Moor(e)s (however many or few 'e’s there may be?). Maybe he read Hound of the Baskervilles and thought the “if you value your life stay away from the moors” part was a warning against the cross dressing Arabs down the road.
I love the “there has never been a painting more timely than the new masterpiece from Jon McNaughton” review. That isn’t sourced. Because it’s obviously written by Jon McNaughton.
I honestly wonder if Mr. McNaughton has ever read the history of Everson, let alone the decisions. If he had, he’d have known that the SCOTUS sided with the Board of Education in a 5-4 decision; that is, that the use of taxpayer funds did not constitute improper government aid to religion, and that the Board of Education could pay to bus little Catholic kids to school. (IIRC, it was a public-safety issue, not really a religious one.) If Mr. McNaughton had really wanted to get his panties in a knot, he should have used Engle v. Vitale or Lemon v. Kurtzman instead. I will grant that Everson was the start.
Gore Vidal, who claims to have written most of the screenplay for Ben Hur (Heston said he didn’t), mentioned the huge significance of Romans in Christian movies. While they could never show a mainstream movie in the conservative flyover areas that involved anything remotely like S&M or orgies or the like, they crammed the religious movies chock full of 'em with Roman orgies, constant lashings, buff gladiators wrestling, etc…