Perhaps my eyes had fallen victim to the bigger, bolder typography, which spelled out the headline on the day's newspaper, “Smithsonian Christmas-Season Exhibit Features Ant-Covered Jesus, Naked Brothers Kissing, Genitalia, and Ellen DeGeneres Grabbing Her Breasts,” because before I could note the smaller text below it (the substance), I got up to make some tea. I would return to the article, but in some ways my brain felt it could take a break because I’d had a teaser of what was to come. I laughed at the thought of Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her breast. I thought about the ant-covered Jesus. Then I remembered another article I’d read that said something about an offensive video of Jesus and ants at the Smithsonian. The kettle whistled like a broken organ. I poured the hot water and shut off the stove. Questions, images of a huge screen marking the entrance to an exhibition full of naked images and Ellen marched through my mind, and before I’d reached the end of a six foot path to my couch, I had branded the message with visuals.

The article seemed to be about reporter and conservative mouthpiece Penny Starr’s outrage over tax dollars funding the National Portrait Gallery exhibition, called "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture." I imagined a gigantic video taking up half the exhibition, with artist David Wojnarowicz's ant covered cross on loop. But when I looked to the side of her words, an image depicting the video that she found so offensive put things in perspective. The video looked about an eighth of the size of a few paintings around it, and having visited the National Portrait Gallery previously, I knew their ceilings to be large. Besides, A Fire in My Belly is a relatively minor work by Wojnarowicz, and was surely a tiny part of a much, much bigger exhibition.

Research assistant Jennifer Sichel (an independent contractor not affiliated with the Smithsonian) helped curate the "Hide/Seek" exhibition along with Jonathan Katz and David C. Ward. Sichel said that while it would have been naive to think that there would not be a little opposition, since the point of the show was to undo a historical blacklist, she did not think the Wojnarowicz (pronounced voy-nah-ROH-vitch) video would be the spark. This is because, according to Jennifer, the video was on a small kiosk in the back of the exhibition.

“There was no way on earth that that video actually offended someone,” she said. “It was at the back of big exhibition you had to touch the screen to see it.” Even the Associated Press noted that, “the piece in question was on a video kiosk, and visitors had to call it up to view it”. The video, they wrote, “ was not a dominant part of the exhibit.”

The question to be asked of Penny Starr, then, is why one of two videos on a tiny kiosk in the back of an exhibition would inspire her to write a 3450-word editorial disguised as a descriptive “report” on tax dollars and ants. Of those 3450 words, 1018 were used as a weapon against Wojnarowicz’s video. And if you ask Sichel, no one watches whole videos unless they’re looking to stir up controversy. ”Penny Starr has a history of stirring it up, in fact. She is a senior staff writer for the Cybercast News Service (formerly known as the Conservative News Service until they realized, in 2007, that their cause seemed too obvious). CNS is a conservative watchdog group designed to “restore balance” in the media. It is highly funded and run by The Media Research Center (MRC), an organization based in Alexandria, Virginia, which was founded in 1987 by conservative activist L. Brent Bozell III, whom Penny Starr quotes as a source in most of her articles.

The Media Research Center, according to its mission statement, sets out “to not only prove — through sound scientific research — that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines traditional American values, but also to neutralize its impact on the American political scene. “ That’s, I sue you and then decide I’m right.

Still, Penny Starr delivered the facts: the name of the artist, the name of the piece, when it was made, and a description of the video’s length. “The full-length version of this 1987 video, according to the description at the exhibit, is 30 minutes long. The version viewable in the National Portrait Gallery has been edited down to 4 minutes.” Why was this video edited? You wouldn’t show 4/30 of a painting.

Starr proceeded to survey the visuals. “The four-minute version of the video shown in the exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery shows, among other images, ants crawling over the image of Jesus on a crucifix, two halves of a loaf of bread being sewn together, the bloody mouth of a man being sewn shut, a hand dropping coins, a man undressing, a man’s genitals, a bowl of blood, and mummified humans.”

But why are these two paragraphs important? Her description of the subject matter in the video implies that the ants, the loaf of bread, the bloody mouth, the coins, the genitals are the essence of not only the four-minute version, but the 30-minute version as well, which is incorrect. See for yourself and let me know if you believe Penny Starr’s descriptive bowl of blood sums it up.

Still, words matter. As Emerson said, “If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to blind, imprison, and destroy.” In her next article, titled “Boehner and Cantor to Smithsonian: Pull Exhibit Featuring Ant-Covered Jesus or Else,” Penny Starr revealed she had “asked both congressional leaders if the exhibit should continue or be canceled and both indicated it should be canceled.”

The New Yorker recently described John Boehner, the new Republican House Speaker, as the most powerful Republican in the country. There's substantial pressure on Boehner to appeal to the whole spectrum of Republican thinking in that time, including members of the Tea Party. According to the New Yorker, “Boehner was among the first Beltway Republicans to recognize that the rise of the Tea Party represented, for Republicans, a near-miracle of good luck.”

It's no surprise, then, that when John Boehner saw this news from Penny Starr, he jumped at the opportunity to comment. Obscenity, families, and tax dollars -- easy fodder for outrage. I’ll quote Penny Starr quoting John Boehner’s spokesperson: “American families have a right to expect better from recipients of taxpayer funds in a tough economy,” Boehner’s Spokesman Kevin Smith told CNSNews.com. “While the amount of money involved may be small, it’s symbolic of the arrogance Washington routinely applies to thousands of spending decisions involving Americans’ hard-earned money at a time when one in every 10 Americans is out of work and our children’s future is being threatened by debt.

“Smithsonian officials should either acknowledge the mistake and correct it, or be prepared to face tough scrutiny beginning in January when the new majority in the House moves to end the job-killing spending spree in Washington,” Smith said.

Eric Cantor, the new Republican House Majority Leader, had an expressive response, too. He called for the Smithsonian to not only take down the video, but the whole "Hide/Seek" exhibition, asserting, “This is an outrageous use of tax payer money and an obvious attempt to offend Christians during the Christmas season.”

Next came the Catholic League’s President Bill Donohue.

You may recall Donohue from the eleventh season episode of South Park, in which he was parodied as a Catholic Church official who overthrows the Pope and sentences Jesus ("The Jew") to death for going against him and contradicting Catholic belief. Jesus later kills Donohue. The New York Times wrote, “In the picture, Mr. Donohue is shown wearing the pope’s tall hat, his unmistakable receding hairline and square-framed black glasses captured, uncannily, by the pen of the artist.”

Donohue is, according the Huffington Post, “The guy who brought you the flare-up over President Obama's speech at Notre Dame last year. He's the guy who took out John Kerry's religious outreach director in 2004 because she once spoke at an AIDS rally on behalf of an anti-poverty group, then defended Bush's Catholic coordinator when allegations surfaced that he had date raped one of his students at Fordham (Donohue blamed the victim).”

Now 63, Donohue has headed the Catholic League for nearly 20 years, campaigning against what he considers Anti-Catholic defamation and discrimination. But this, he declared, was “hate speech pure and simple”. Fox News got a hold of this information, declaring the video “one of the most controversial items in this exhibit.” The Drudge Report linked to it. Pressures mounted from the House, the Catholic League, and within 24 hours, the Smithsonian’s secretary had pulled the video from the show.

And that’s when it all came tumbling down.

What began as a fire in Wojnarowicz’s belly was now ripping through the internet, igniting a searing rage from within the far left and in many artists. Tweets like “Smithsonian=fascism” erupted and the People for the American Way released a statement about hypocrisy of the GOP. The liberal Catholics slammed the Catholic League for their comments. Open letters to the 111th Congress, open letters to the Smithsonian, and open letters to the Tea Party spilled all over the web. Facebook groups formed over night. Articles accused the Smithsonian of censorship. Pretty soon, 500 people were marching on the Upper East Side of New York City in protest.

Smithsonain workers began quitting their jobs to make a statement. Within hours of pulling the Wojnarowicz piece, the Transformer gallery across the street started projected A Fire in My Belly against the Smithsonian’s wall. Jennifer Sichel, who emphasized that she is not an employee of the Smithsonian (she's an independent contractor), was not happy about the museum’s decision to pull the piece. What shocked Sichel most was that, “No one ever issued an official request to pull down the video,” she said. “It was the Smithsonian’s choice.”

John Henry Merryman is a professor of Art and Cultural Property Law at Stanford University and the author of many books, including Imperialism, Art and Restitution. When I asked him about the debacle at the Smithsonian, he said, “In our legal system the ruling principle is that the museum does not have to respond to the public's dislike of something if in the museum’s professional opinion, the history of acquisition of the work or entertainment of the display is carrying out its mission.”

The Smithsonian’s mission can be found on their Web site: “Shaping the future by preserving our heritage, discovering new knowledge, and sharing our resources with the world.”

"Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture" is, according to the National Portrait Gallery, “the first major museum exhibition to focus on sexual difference in the making of modern American portraiture.” The exhibition considers, among many things, “how art reflected society’s evolving and changing attitudes towards sexuality, desire, and romantic attachment.” Wojnarowicz was only 37 when he died from AIDS in 1992, a time when the disease was called a “gay cancer," even a “plague”. A Fire in My Belly was Wojnarowicz’s response to the disease, and the AIDS-related death of his friend, lover, mentor, and colleague Peter Hugar.

Artworks like this are important for documenting the reality of AIDS, which played an important role in the national understanding (or misunderstanding) of homosexuality. The Washington Post recently reflected on the Portrait Gallery’s initial decision to include the video in "Hide/Seek": “Wojnarowicz perfectly captured a raw Gothic, rage-filled sensibility that defined a style of outsider art that was moving into the mainstream in the late 1980s,”

Wojnarowicz’s video was by example a reference to the onset of a whole new chapter of American history. Sichel notes, “The show was intended to start a national conversation that has been surprised out of museums basically forever, especially since late 1980s.” Politics should not affect history, although if you ask James Taranto, of the Wall Street Journal, that’s not even the issue. “The problem here isn’t Boehner or the Catholic League; it’s the politically correct ‘arts community,’” he said. “Try getting an artwork that depicts Muhammad in ways offensive to Muslims into a government-sponsored venue, and you’ll see my point. The solution is to get government out of the business of funding contemporary art altogether.”

“The Catholic League was doing its job, ferreting out what it interprets as bias against the Catholic religion.” But, notes Clift, “the controversy no doubt helps with fundraising.” Bethany Bentley of the National Portrait Gallery explained the funding situation quite clearly: “The National Portrait Gallery is a part of the Smithsonian Institution which is funded both publicly and privately. Private funds are raised for exhibitions and federal funds support museum staff, buildings and maintenance.”

In the case of "Hide/Seek" exhibition, funding came from nonprofits like The Calamus Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation, and The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. All three of those foundations have since threatened to cut off future funding. “It would be nice if the Smithsonian didn’t have to rely on government funding, but that’s not realistic,” said Eleanor Clift, a contributing editor of Newsweek and a regular participant of the McLaughlin Group on PBS.

Similar controversies involving arts funding crop up all over American history, most notably in the late 1980s when Senator Al D'Amato of New York ripped up a catalog containing Andre Serrano's "Piss Christ" on the Senate floor, inspiring Republican Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina to declare Serrano "not an artist” but a “jerk!” The object of their dissatisfaction was a photo of a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist's urine. Called Piss Christ, the photo had been (indirectly) sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The photographer Robert Mapplethorpe faced similar scrutiny in 1989 when conservatives and even some liberals slammed “Centuries of sensual art,” a retrospective at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., for being pornographic, racist, and obscene. Out of fear of reprisal, the exhibition eventually closed. As his long-time pal Patti Smith said last week to an audience of listeners at the Smithsonian (where she discussed her book Just Kids), “Robert wasn’t even alive to defend himself.”

The late 80s and early 90s marked a period of Kulturkampf. To the far right everything was anti-family, pornographic, immoral, sacrilegious, or too “government.” For the far left, everything was racist, anti-feminist, offensive, or inhumane. Censorship bounced back and forth like a handball between these two groups, and art was often caught in the middle. In “Displays of Power”, a 1999 study of museum controversies, Steven Dubinforetold wrote, “All is not quiet on the cultural front.” He continued, “As Americans begin a new century…expect to witness more of these struggles over representation."

That same year, Bill Donohue asked Catholic League members to stand outside the Brooklyn Museum with vomit bags to protest the opening of “Sensation,” because it featured a painting of the Virgin Mary adorned with elephant dung. Giuliani got involved and demanded the removal of the exhibition. He threatened to cut off funding, much like John Boehner. This one went to court, but Donohue's side lost and the Brooklyn Museum was allowed to do what it is supposed to do -- educate on all kinds of beliefs through art made with public funds.

It’s hard to determine what Penny Starr’s intention was in writing this article. Who sent her? Or was it self-promotion? After all, nothing so becomes a conservative than to be slammed by a liberal on national television. That said, she's also inadvertently responsible for many thousands more people having viewed A Fire in My Belly.

Looking back at her prior articles, it appears that Penny Starr strongly opposes a few things: abortion, taxes, and science. She spends a lot of time searching for earmarks that don’t do exactly what she wants them to do. She is not a fan of evolution. She cites polls “commissioned” by the media center for whom she works.

Amy Scholder, an editor who worked closely with Wojnarowicz, was unhappy about the museum’s choice to edit the video in the first place. “The version shown [at the Nation Portrait Gallery] was not David’s work or intention,” she said. There are, in fact, three versions of the video. A YouTube video which was, according to Amy, edited by a publishing company to use as a backdrop for avant-garde music by Diamanda Galás. When the controversy flared up, people googled David’s name and came across this version of the video, which Scholder describes as “strong.” But it is not the original piece.

The version shown at the National Portrait Gallery features the beginning of each original scene. It's only four minutes long and set to a background of sound from a protest in which the artist participated. Katz had sewn together the beginnings of each scene. “To me that just seems like a really bad decision about how to present an activist artist,” said Scholder. “It would be like curators now looking at the Mona Lisa and saying, oh we'll just turn up the smile a little so its more easily understood." The original video, according to Amy, was silent.

"Just because an artist is not around to make decisions for himself does not mean curators and institutions can take [his/her] work and make something that's possibility not of its intention,” she said. Jennifer Sichel confirmed that the video had been edited by Katz, noting “There’s something to be said about that.” But, Sichel directed me to one of the horrifying results of the explosion occurring the first place.

"One of hardest things to swallow is that the big blow up could have effect on the conversation that his show so insisted and so wanted to start.” She talked about how other museums may not be afraid to have their works removed, which sounds to me like a kind of censorship. “Now it’s the Smithsonian’s job to make sure that conversation doesn’t end here,” she said.