Topless striptease acrobats perform for Pope

Nothing remotely homosexual about this whatsoever.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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isaacb2

“Merry Christmas, Pope — here are some half-naked men for you to ogle!” (And yes, he does seem to be ogling them.)
Boba Fett Diop

Wow, the delegates from the Romulan mission to the Vatican look really fit.
mtdna

Don’t make fun of it. They have always vetted new clergy that way.
IamVerificationimage

They are far to old for the Pope.
Anonymous

My favourite is the lady in black takes their tops and walks off smiling.
Anonymous

I was expecting them to do more of a routine… All they did was balance on top of each other and push up. What a two-pump chump.
ToMajorTom

Kudos to the event planner for knowing his/her audience.
donniebnyc

Hands down the creepiest video of 2010.
Mitch_M

Boring, except for the lady who took their jackets.
frankieboy

saw this earlier on Chateau Thombeau dot blogspot. Did you notice His Holiness standing erect at the finale?
Mitch_M

Here they are:
http://www.pellegrinibrothers.com/
Loraan

I think you’re really stretching to call it homo-erotic. It was just an acrobatic performance by an all-male troop. The fact that they took their jackets off at the beginning doesn’t even qualify it as a “strip-tease.” Honestly, I was expecting so much more from this video.

Given all the genuinely creepy things there are to say about the Catholic church and the pope, it only seems to hurt the cause to appear to have to try so hard as to read something salacious into this video.

Also, on a more subtle note, over-characterizing all-male activities as gay is a form of fag-hate. A hyper-awareness of potential for gay-ness is a way that our culture communicates the message that gay-ness is absolutely unacceptable. At no point in the video did these guys do anything vaguely sexual, never mind homo-erotic, so why jump to the “gay” conclusion?
- mdh
  
  You seem very concerned that other people have a sense of humor different than yours. I didn’t see anyone claiming the pope was gay, or that the dance was erotic. Reading layers upon layers into otherwise simple ironic things things so you can claim offense on behalf of others, is it rewarding?
- Quiche de Resistance
  
  But it’s a bit gay, isn’t it?
- Mitch_M
  
  More like Pope hate! It’s a play on the stereotype of Roman Catholic clergy being homosexual pedophiles. You’re right, there is nothing overtly sexual about the performance, but it’s not that unusual for a performance by hairless, muscular, shirtless men to be perceived as having homoerotic overtones. I think the perceived humor in this is in wanting to find incongruity, irony, and/or hypocrisy in the leader of a church which is against gay sex enjoying a supposedly homosexual performance, and it’s also a reference to priests molesting boys.
  
  Honestly, my impressions watching the video were 1. The lady taking their jackets looks hot in black, 2. The pope seems to be not very interested but is watching to be polite, and 3. Why are the nuns waving their handkerchiefs?
  —
  What’s interesting is that when secular school teachers are busted for f_cking students no one makes fun of the superintendent of schools or the principal.
  - Mister44
    
    re: “3. Why are the nuns waving their handkerchiefs?”
    
    Either that was edited in from another scene – or hey – they’re nuns, they aren’t dead.
    
    And as a note, Protestant churches suffer a similar rate of pedophile abuse as the Catholics. They also have their share of gay scandals. How many mega church leaders were outed this year?
  - Ocker3
    
    In response to #2, not very interested. Really? Replay 0:14 to 0:20, he looks really interested. As for striptease, I think that’s more about the music than anything else (which I’m assuming was added later). But “not very interested”, look at 0:56 to 1:00 and get back to me.
    
    I also was really hoping the lithe lady in black was going to be part of the routine, but the high heels should have been a giveaway, she’s just the coat-check girl here (assuming she’s not their manager/agent or something).
    
    @Mister44: Have the Protestant churches covered up and refused to atone for their pastor’s failings in the same way that the Catholic church has? I wonder if the centralised vs decentralised nature of these who organisations has something to do with that.
    - Mister44
      
      Some of them. But reaction to abuse is different from the actual rate of abuse.
      
      Unfortunately, it isn’t all cut and dry, and just like everything else, there are politics involved. For sure, there has been wrong actions with church leaders not dealing with the offenders properly. On the flip side, not everyone accused is guilty. Indeed, one can not just condemn and ‘fire’ someone on an accusation.
      
      “I wonder if the centralised vs decentralised nature of these who organisations has something to do with that. ”
      
      It has probably everything to do with that. If Rev. Maynard of the Backwoods Baptist Church is sued for abuse – well – good luck getting blood from a stone. The Catholic church is ripe for lawsuits because of their large hierarchy, although each region, IIRC, acts independently in a lot of ways. So suing in NYC won’t reach to the Vatican. Also, being the biggest makes them a great target.
      
      Again – not saying the Catholic leaders are all innocent – but that they haven’t deserved the demonizing they have received in the media, and the Protestant churches aren’t any better when it comes to actual abuse.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Protestant churches aren’t any better when it comes to actual abuse.
        
        Well, that’s a load of hot air. Citations?
      - Mitch_M
        
        A Lutheran minister told me “Sexual deviance in clergy is common. People really don’t like to talk about it, though.” It would be unfair to quote her by name since she was speaking off the record when she said it.
        
        Why would protestant clergy be less likely to abuse children? I would really like to believe that because I have a strong bias toward mainline protestant churches, but sexual abuse it a problem common to all kids of people, not a denominational problem.
        
        Protestants themselves acknowledge that there is abuse by protestant clergy.
        
        http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2007/06/18/80877.htm
        http://www.reformation.com/
      - Mister44
        
        Google? The episodes of abuse are similar. Just because one gets more press doesn’t mean it isn’t so.
    - Mitch_M
      
      I can’t read the Pope’s mind but it was my subjective impression that he was feigning interest to be polite. People who feign interest usually do try to look very interested. Of course I might have a bias toward assuming he was feigning interest because the performance was boring for me.
  - Anonymous
    
    “when secular school teachers are busted for f_cking students no one makes fun of the superintendent”
    
    This would be interesting if there were a comparable global pattern of shielding pedophiles in secular schools by a world-wide secular hierarchy. Your outrage is misdirected.
  - Hal
    
    If a school board spent years covering up and lying about incidents of abuse, moving abusive teachers to new schools where they continued to abuse, paying off victims to keep them quiet and then lying about having paid them off, would the entire school board be in prison when they were exposed?
    
    Sure abuse can happen in any organization but it has taken the Catholic Hierarchy decades to just begin to deal honestly with the problem of abusive clergy and I’m still not sure they get it.
    
    https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Ivan_Payne
    - Mitch_M
      
      A teacher near me was arrested for having improper sexual contact with students. This was at his third teaching job within a small area of the state and he had been fired from his prior teaching jobs for sexual misconduct, yet he went for years without being arrested and he was able to get hired by other school districts in spite of his history. Denial of sexual abuse and failing to report perpetrators to the police is common everywhere- in schools, in families, and, yes, in churches, but I’m not seeing all the jokes, innuendos, and sweeping generalizations about it when it happens in more secular circumstances.
      - Mister44
        
        The NEA along with states not sharing info between them have kept more than one abusive teacher at the job.
        
        It is important to note that among our clergy and teachers, a vast majority aren’t abusers.
- sinisterscrawl
  
  Are the performers all male? I hadn’t noticed. I guess I don’t look at people and immediately impose gender roles upon them the way some people do…
  - Loraan
    
    “It was just an acrobatic performance by an all-male troop.”
    
    You’re right. I should have said something like, “an apparently male-sexed troop.”
  - Anonymous
    
    You didn’t notice that the four performers were all male? That’s taking intentional genderblindness a bit too far…
    
    Unless you’re considering the possibility that they don’t all IDENTIFY as male. That I could understand. But that was some mass, shirtless beefcake if I’ve ever seen it.
franko

it’s good to be pope!
- Anonymous
  
  Loraan, apparently you didn’t watch the video. It’s ‘gay’ in the giggling middle schooler sense of the word. Lighten up.
  - Anonymous
    
    On the contrary, it’s “gay” in the half-naked-men-crawling-on-top-of-each-other’s-half-naked-bodies-while-a-solitary-old-codger-leers-at-them sense of the word.
- Anonymous
  
  what?!
  the catholic church has just endured years of hundreds of thousands of accounts of priests molesting boys, to the point that attendance is bottoming out – this is a room full of high-end priests being entertained by scantily-clad contortionist beefcakes with make-up on.
  if a sort of equals b and b sort of equals c then that grinning old pervert in the front row sort of equals trouble for the church
Art

Who does their eyebrows? :)
Mitch_M

I never claimed that the Roman Catholic church has always dealt with sexual abuse appropriately or that the church hierarchy was never in denial of it. I said that there are not the same stereotypes, jokes, and innuendos when sexual abuse happens in public schools, even though school districts also fail to deal with it appropriately and allow teachers with a history of abuse to be re-employed in different districts.
IronEdithKidd

Not exactly OT.
Mister44

I didn’t know that male acrobats were considered to be homoerotic. I guess I need to keep better tabs on these things. (Basically what Loraan said)

At any rate, the Polish Breakdancers put them to shame:

http://cnettv.cnet.com/holy-break-dancing/9742-1_53-50007577.html
Antinous / Moderator

I can’t read the Pope’s mind but it was my subjective impression that he was feigning interest to be polite.

He looks to me like he’s wondering who thought it was a good idea to bring the Chippendales to the Vatican.
Trnck

That is amusing.
Anonymous

The Pope isn’t the only all worked up over these guys. The nuns appear to be waving their panties at the, um, “acrobats.”
Napkins

Christ, what an asshole!
Enormo

Nothing remotely homosexual about this whatsoever

I respectfully disagree.
Anonymous

Sexual abuse does not “pervade every part of society”; that statement is simply ludicrous. Someone is trying mighty hard to use the “tu quoque” fallacy to divert attention away from the Catholic Church.

Someone else here cited stats showing the Catholic Church has a much higher rate of sexual abuse than Protestant Churches. Now I don’t know the facts on the matter, but it seems to me the proper way to argue the case that Protestant Churches are just as likely to harbor sexual abuse as the Catholic Church, is to cite some actual proof, not to make vague and unprovable tu quoque arguments about sexual abuse “pervading” every part of society.

Bullsh!t. I’ve been involved in many parts of society where there was absolutely no sexual abuse of children whatsoever, so this statement that sexual abuse of children “prevades every part of society” is flatly contradicted by a lifetime of personal experience, and I don’t think I’m unusual in that regard. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. Put up the evidence to support this allegation showing that sexual abuse pervades every part of society, or retract the statement.

IMO your statement is simply unsupportable hyperbole and gross exaggeration, which is a polite way of saying that it’s a f_cking lie. Wild false accusations of sexual abuse of children are easily as big a problem as covering up real sexual abuse of children, and you’re not helping the matter by making wild, unsupported allegations.

“What’s interesting is that when secular school teachers are busted for f_cking students no one makes fun of the superintendent of schools or the principal.”

They do if the superintendent of schools or the principal were guilty of covering the crimes up.

“And as a note, Protestant churches suffer a similar rate of pedophile abuse as the Catholics. They also have their share of gay scandals. How many mega church leaders were outed this year?”

Not a single shred of evidence has been cited to support this allegation that Protestant Churches “suffer a similar rate of pedophile abuse” as the Catholic Church.

Moreover, most of the gay sex scandals amongst Protestants I have noticed have been anti-gay Church activists getting caught hiring gay male prostitutes and/or having consensual gay sex with gay adults. People make fun of these people for being hypocrites, as they should, but these at least are people engaging in consensual sex with adults. That’s a hugely different issue from sexually abusing children.

This doesn’t mean that Protestant and other non-Catholic religions, or secular institutions, don’t have problems with sexual abuse of children, obviously they do to some extent; but I have seen no one present any evidence so far that their problems in this area are equal to, or even of the same order of magnitude as, what has been going on in the Catholic Church.

So far all I’ve seen is a lot of vague handwaving and tu quoque. Put up (some facts) or shut up, says I.
- Mitch_M
  
  “Sexual abuse does not “pervade every part of society”; that statement is simply ludicrous. Someone is trying mighty hard to use the “tu quoque” fallacy to divert attention away from the Catholic Church. ”
  
  Ok, I’m gonna list some of the victims and perpetrators I’ve known firsthand:
  1. Two different familes of folk singers who were into New Age spirituality, with several victims and perpetrators in both families.
  2. Physician’s daughter molested by father.
  3. Lawyer’s daughter molested by brother and also by son of folk singers family.
  3. Son of farmer/paint sales route driver and social worker who molested at least two different girls his parents babysat for.
  4. Leader in twelve step groups who sired a child with stepdaughter.
  5. Farmer who molested stepdaughter.
  6. Gas station attendant who molested girlfriend’s daughter, stepdaughter of twelve step group leader, and at least one other girl.
  7. Factory worker and lay preacher who molested his stepdaughter.
  8. Developmentally disabled thrift store worker convicted of attempting to entice boys at the mall.
  
  Professional, blue collar, religious, and secular are represented just within the handful of people I’ve mentioned. It’s everywhere.
  - Hal
    
    maybe you’re deliberately missing the point, but I’ll try one more time – the problem for the Church isn’t the initial abuse, it’s how the allegations of abuse and the abusive clergy were and are dealt with, and how long the denial and lying has continued within the Hierarchy.
    
    The news today in Ireland:
    “The Murphy Report outlines how Tony Walsh abused children in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s even though priests, canons, monsignors, bishops and the Archbishop in Dublin knew about it.”
    
    http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/1217/abuse_murphy.html
    
    There may not have been a culture within the Church designed to deliver victims to abusers, “fuck little boys” as the commenter inelegantly put it, but if there were the results might not have been much different.
- Mister44
  
  re: “Now I don’t know the facts on the matter,”
  
  And yet it doesn’t stop you from talking. That there is your first problem.
  
  I’m not going to be your personal live action Google. I trust even with your over sized mitts, you can manage on your own. I will start you on the path:
  
  http://www.newsweek.com/2010/04/07/mean-men.html
  
  While I try to find ‘neutral’ sources, this commentary is well done: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,286153,00.html
  
  As other pointed out, schools and especially the NEA have been bad at weeding out abusive teachers. http://badbadteacher.com/
  
  And finally, in all likely hood it wont be your preacher or your teacher or your soccer coach that feels you up, but Uncle Ronny or Cousin Jimmy, as 68% of abuse comes from family members.
  
  http://www.childhelp.org/pages/statistics
  
  Again – this doesn’t excuse Catholic abuses, but points out that one shouldn’t overly focus on them when abuse is as likely to happen in many other places.
Anonymous

This was awful. Agree with those who think that. With everythibng the Catholic Church has faced with claims of sexual abuse these last decades, to go and schedule and overtly sexual performance of men in front of the head of the Catholic Church is heresy. Just plan heresy. Who allowed this to happen? This is so blasphemous. I am not Catholic but was taught to respect the Catholic Church for what is it stands for and how it single handedly saved and preserved mankind’s knowledge during the Dark Ages. If this had been showgirls, with skimpy outfits there would have been an outcry!!! Shame Shame Shame says those of us who love God and Jesus Christ!!!!!! Shame Shame
Anonymous

Despite Mitch M.’s made-up “facts” and catholic apolgism, the rate of pedophile abuse among Catholic Clergy is more than double that of any prot church, and more than ten times that of the Methodist Church.

The Catholic Church’s system either attracts or creates pedophiles in far greater numbers than any other form of Christianity. It has done so for at least 1500 years. The Pope knows this, the priests know this.

The Catholic Church could move effectively against this problem just like the Boy Scouts did. But they won’t. Instead they protect pedophile priests.

The inescapable conclusion is that the Church, as an entity, likes to fuck little boys. That’s what it does, and it refuses to stop, to this day.

No different from NAMBLA, except NAMBLA is honest about it, and as far as I know the head of NAMBLA does not wear a dress.
- Mitch_M
  
  Sexual abuse pervades every part of society. Where there are human beings there is going to be sexual abuse.
  
  I don’t like the Roman Catholic religion because of all the heirarchy and I am very strongly biased toward Protestant denominations but it would be unrealistic form of denial to think that our own clergy are less prone the be sex offenders than other clergy or people in any other occupation.
  
  Comparing the Roman Catholic church to NAMBLA is ridiculous but it does say a lot about your credibility.
- Mister44
  
  re:”The inescapable conclusion is that the Church, as an entity, likes to fuck little boys. That’s what it does, and it refuses to stop, to this day.”
  
  What in incredibly false and inflammatory statement. Where is a big billy goat when you need one?
edwinx2

This is obviously a look behind the scenes at the rarely-seen vetting process in which the Pope selects werewolves for the next “Twilight” movie.
mercator

Any latin lipreaders here? What does ratzi say at the end of the performance? I’m guessing something like: “Excellent, have the one on the left sent to my chambers after vespers”
Anonymous

See, the weirdest thing for me is the fact that the dudes were played off by the soundtrack to Armageddon.
Johnny Fronthole

Get some!
ethancoop

Who thought that would be a good idea? I mean… what?
Anonymous

Oh, that longing gaze at 0:58.