It interesting to note that many here would not consider Alan Jones,
John Laws, Janet Albrechtson, and others as part of the cultural elite.

Is it because they are all Right Wing - thus rendering anything cultural as Leftist?

Pay tell?

Talk about losing perspective. I am also rolling in the aisles laughing.

Who are these so called cultural elites - can anyone join or do you have to be invited in? Unlike any other group in society it seems the 'cultural elite' are a homogenous group with no differing opinions on anything arty. :)

Your article is suggesting that this one issue alone is going to make or break Rudd. PLEeeeeeeeeeeeeeese! Is this how low we have sunk that this is one issue out of all possible issues is what will determine future voting patterns? ie. whether or not the photographing of underage children in sexually suggestive poses is Art or not? Sheeesh. Give me a break, we are talking about children here - not mature consenting adults.

I can't imagine any of the cultural elites voting in Turnbull once he is leader of the Opposition, he is cashing in on feigned intellectual hysteria.

By the time of the next election we might all be more concerned with issues of the environment, energy, the economy and how we best take care of the most disadvataged in our communities.

I would like to see these people do what they can to punish Rudd for his bigotry. Whether they do or not will determine whether laughing at them is justifiable.

pelican>"Give me a break, we are talking about children here - not mature consenting adults."

Both the model and her parents consented and fully support Henson and the art. They are proud of it. And they blame any damage on people like you who presume to speak for them or demonise them.

yet another spin machine pr article defending the right to pervert the innocence of minors ,[

Is this now the 6 th article on this topic?]

It is a cleverly written piece [ carefully preparing the reader and the ground for the expected rebuttal

Even going so far as defining the meaning of porn ,

Note non-flagging of headline to topic and the soft destractive [indefinate] ending ,
carefully designed to distract rememberance of the main body of the statement

We have the same crop of respondants responding [defending] the acts of a pervert ,
who think a 13 year old nakid child has the_legal requirments to offer informed-concent [or that a parent can give any legal title to permit the child to be photographiclly abused ]

but what broke me up ..>>The problem is here that he’s crossed an absolute line by associating himself with a crackdown on high culture itself.<<

...[noting writer is'nt saying the pervert but the pm !!]

...>>Rudd-in-these-circumstances becomes_unsupportable for a cultural and intellectual elite
for whom free speech is-everything ..<<

Note that use of elite , for whom THEIR own rights to free speech is everything ,

Its a typical proffesional pr spin damage response designed to bring up distractive visualisations and bias to make the reader things arnt as clear cut as they look
because by their word images THEY use visual imagry selected carefully
that are made to make the clear moral issue's ,look like they are not,

[no , bill and his ELite are just like you
[so dont respond thus let theAuthers double speak pretend tobe speaking for you]

..>>(that-and-grant-money, but freespeech first, please]<< ..

wow the icecream on the cake [and we missed the bitter pill under all the double speak
[ie defending a perverts right to pervert civil; morality ,

into condoning the_abuse of an under-age-child ,into acts that have a possable life long consequance ,much like the gateway affect from childModeling to nudeModeling to porn for cash to prostituting the law , then getting into the 'hardstuff commenting on politics.

READER ; read george-w-busches spokesmans boo

hi all,

wow what interesting posts, I should come in here more often

cultural elite ? is there such a thing
elite being usually referred to someone who is expert in their trade ?
or perceived to be expert in their trade ?

re Henson works, I did a ton of research, on his images, found many

there is no denying that some/ of his work has a sexual undertone

particularly the nude children

simply put and I am a little out of my comfort zone here

its about the children

using children for photography

posing children for photography

posing children for ones own art work

any person can say they are an artist, and photograph underage
children

what happens is that children, get posed, or conditioned to
certain ideas
and this conditioning, and or posing

creates ideas, and confusion, in minors

australia does not want a society of gamblers and pornography
of that I am sure of

and can someone tell me why I can type in teen porn brisbane
and get a heap of sites

perhaps the makers of these sites, can be promptly removed

only took them a day for Henson's works to be removed
some from the net
if it can be done with his works, it can be done with online
teen sites

JHH

That grand old "Cultural Elite" is not so old as we might imagine, and perhaps more self-deluded about the granduer of the Arts than the rest of anybody finds imaginable.

Basic fact: Kevin Rudd's power base is Church oriented not Arts, and the contemporary Arts scene, nationally, is based in the Whitlam era having transferred much of the worth of government funding, out of the religious context, and into the Arts. (meanwhile the church charities have had to scrabble around in the muck of work-for-the-dole being labelled as training, or even education, just to help patch over all the problems that are too ugly for artists to want to think about)

At the bottom line, the Religious world still has a fairly large quadrant of the Arts world within it.

Perhaps it yet remains to be seen whether more harm has been done to our society by religious weirdos like Fred Niles, or by Artists trying to parade almost any sort of trash as Art worthy of government funding.

Kevin's just up there where the real debate is, you know, that one which most folk like to ignore, because it is about how to enable individuals to accept responsiblity for social justice.

After all, if the power to built a society by adhering to real social justice outcomes, ain't in the hands of individual workers, we'd all be in the poo-pile by now, because the employers, who want to keep wages down, are just not motivated to the same degree as the rest of us.

Therefore, I hereby charge the "Cultural Elite" with having been ignoring the need to make Art real by making Art be about the real work of staying alive, rather than corrupting young girls with flattery about how good they look naked.