Thursday, February 23, 2006

David Williamson rejoins the culture wars

The Australian: David Williamson: Culture, yes, but please, not in their backyards [February 23, 2006]

I guess this will be blogged about in many places, but let this be an early entry on the piece.

I love it when the Left complain about the "shrillness" of conservative commentators. It's an excuse for not engaging in the actual detailed criticisms of their writing, I think. Furthermore, Williamson says some of the commentary against his controversial Bulletin piece reflected a "fascist attitude." (Well, he calls that "perhaps an overstatement", while immediately saying that ridding themselves of artists is exactly what fascists usually do.) Oh, that's not shrill at all, I suppose David?

He claims that his Bulletin piece was "mildly satiric". It doesn't read that way to me, at least if you expect satire to have an element of humour to it. While he is entitled to use a cheap fun cruise in the South Pacific as a metaphor for Australia generally not caring enough about its sustainability in the future, the main part of the article that most people found offensive (and rather bizarre) was his sneering at the passengers for not being there for cultural enlightenment. (Unlike those on a British cruise he had been on from Hong Kong to Vietnam, which sounded for all the world like a specialised educational cruise.)

David, you're a dill if you don't recognise why that comparison was stupid and offensive.

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