Paul Sheehan nails Artsville
I like reading Paul Sheehan's columns because you never quite know what to expect. While the lefties are ziggin' and the righties are zaggin' he's, er, gafooganoogling ... or something.
And he can nail a culture's shortcomings as pithily as anyone. Take this description of Oz arty wankers in this thoughtful piece about the Bill Henson ruckus:
Where has the arts community been on the issue of adolescent sexploitation? The same as it has been on every issue that is morally difficult: a claustrophobic, reactionary one-party state. Artists, writers and the film industry have all been consistently gutless and censorious on difficult moral issues for fear of offending prevailing orthodoxies about gay rights, artistic freedom or moral apartheid for Aborigines. Never underestimate the desire for martyrdom among artists - raising the cry of censorship or sedition laws or various other oppressions - even though artists in Australia are almost never in any physical danger, or lose their liberty, or even pay a financial penalty for depicting or defending morally dubious behaviour.
How true is that?
