by John Leo

About the author: John Leo is a syndicated columnist and a contributing editor for U.S. News & World Report.

Call me perverse, but I spent an evening last week checking out Karen Finley’s new act. Trivia buffs will recall Finley as the chocolate-covered nude performer who did colorful things with yams and federal arts money in 1990, thus attracting great attention as either an embattled artist or a national laughingstock, depending on your point of view.

Return of the Chocolate-Smeared Woman was staged in a tiny theater in lower Manhattan, with the audience sitting quietly in amazing discomfort on empty paint buckets instead of chairs. The warm-up act, the Dancing Furballs, consisted of several chocolate-marked young people dancing with enthusiasm but not much coordination. Other Furballs distributed free glasses of beer...