Gov. Spencer Cox flunks the art history test with freakout over Paris Opening Ceremony. 

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In September I'll join the annual City Weekly Trip to Greece in order to get my bearings straight, relax, hit a beach, have an ouzo if I want and to otherwise cavort pretty carefree, as anyone would do on their own vacation.

If you're not aware of our trip, you should be. We go yearly (send me an email for info) and I'm only guessing here, but so far it's approaching 200 different people who have joined the excursion.

Among our stops this year will be to the home of the Olympic games at Olympia, Greece. The games began in the year 776 B.C., which even a Bingham High School graduate like me can figure out was a very long time ago.

I recently wrote about how outside the entry to the ancient Olympic stadium, athletes were paraded past a series of statues called the Zanes. The Zanes did not pay tribute to the winners of an event, but rather were carved to immortalize the cheaters, so that one might never be inspired to cheat lest their name, family and hometown would be forever shamed.

I like that idea. That column proposed Utah build a giant statue of Mike Lee for such a purpose, to remind all human beings and those to come that the attributes of folks like Lee should never be emulated.

It's too bad, then, that the Zane statue of Mike Lee was not created in time to save Gov. Spencer Cox from traveling down the same craphole as has Lee. All of Utah now understands that Cox has jumped feet first into the party-before-people element of his once proud Republican Party. It's the Trump party now, where no Goldwaters, Reagans, Romneys nor Bushes need apply.

Trump's icky magnetism must be awfully contagious and strong for men such as Cox to jump aboard, casting their ethics and morality aside in order to better covet the ring of power. But Cox is just another iron shaving.

That's nothing new, really. Indeed, the Ancient Greek philosophers wrote of men who were the same type as Cox. So did Shakespeare. As well, philosophy, drama and other such crafts were at one time equal to physical competitions, with playwrights and poets competing for championship olive-wreath laurels no less than did javelin throwers.

You might say then, that there was a time when being smart, clever, literate and worldly were prized values. You might also say that is no longer the case today—case in point, the frickin' stupid kerfuffle regarding the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympic Games this past week.

Center to that was our own Governor Cox who—speaking for all Christians, apparently—woefully said a particular portrayed segment of that ceremony was "a blatant mockery of a sacred event that my faith cherishes." Really? Do you really want to go there, Spencer?

Ok, well he did, so I contacted a Greek Orthodox monk I know who lives at St. Catherine's Monastery in Mount Sinai, Egypt, to ask what he thought of it all.

Stop for one second here: Spencer, do you know anything about St. Catherine's Monastery, the oldest Christian Monastery in the world? Do you know the relevance of it to the 230 million Orthodox Christians worldwide? If not, sit down and put your sore thumb away.

The original Olympic games were composed of pagans who worshiped pagan deities, among them the god Dionysus and others who celebrated a life of bacchanalia. That was what the French organizers were paying tribute to—the origins of the games themselves.

But Spencer, in his newborn ill-wisdom to post stupid things without being fully informed, likened the scene—as did others—to the painting of The Last Supper by the Italian Leonardo da Vinci. The monk pointed out that the Orthodox Christian interpretations of that scene were theological in nature, and have been since the origins of Christian belief, carried forth during Byzantine times, primarily via icons such as Mustikos Deipnos (Mystical Supper). Byzantine iconography began around 300 A.D. and visually told the Bible stories to followers who could not read. In that way, icons were biblical.

By da Vinci's time, his own artistic impression was questioned, and has often been, no less so than was the display in Paris. Da Vinci was an artist, not a theologian, and his work was, therefore, interpretive. A great work of art it is—it's massive, but that's what it is, an art piece. If Spencer wants to hang his holy cowboy hat there, so be it.

Eastern Orthodox homes often hang Mystical Supper icons. It represents what was beheld in the Bible, the most pointed being that it was to represent the mysticism of what had recently transpired (including the end of animal sacrifice among the Jewish people and Christ's fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy), not who passed the toast and jam, which I believe is the depth of knowledge Cox possesses about the Last Supper painting.

He just wanted to squawk to his newfound friends comprising the red meat base. That's common in Utah, to bleat of something religiously from a spire of superiority but from which one usually just gets stuck upon.

But I will give Cox his due. I'm sure that he's far more religious than I am. Therefore, he may also know the parables of doves and olive branches. So, come on over to dinner at my home some time, Spencer. You can sit at our kitchen table and look out at my coteries of Mourning and European Collard Doves who feast outside. And above your head you will see the Mustikos Deipnos that has been in our kitchen for years.

We can unify around it if you want to know something other than how to drive clickbait. And come October, watch your mail. I'll send you an icon from Greece regardless. Sorry, I make no apologies it's not a work by Utah-born artist Jon McNaughton, who actually does betray faith with his art.

Send comments to john@cityweekly.net