Christ replacing sex as the taboo subject

I wasn’t going to make a big deal out of this:

The White House asked Georgetown to cover a monogram symbolizing Jesus’ name in Gaston Hall, which Obama used for his speech, according to CNSNews.com.

The gold “IHS” monogram inscribed on a pediment in the hall was covered over by a piece of black-painted plywood, and remained covered over the next day, CNSNews.com reported.

But remember how the press and sophisticated folk laughed when Attorney General John Ashcroft had a statue of a naked woman covered so that it wouldn’t be in the background of one of his speeches?

This reminds me of a line from Flannery O’Connor, in her unforgettable short story “The Displaced Person”: “Christ in the conversation embarrassed her the way sex had her mother.”