IamJoseph you really do not sound like you know the slightest thing about art. It can be anything. It is, anything. No one certainly not non-artists, define art. Similarly it would be like non-religious defining what parts of the bible are religious and what are not.

No doubt the kiddie porn supporters also saw great value in the big turd that recently flew away. Why is it that these sick peoples minds are so admired by artist?

hmm. is it worth defending myself? no, but what the hell?

1) i 'm anonymous: so what?

2) i wasn't defending artistic freedom: i was attacking a really obtuse argument.

3) bowden's response to my examples (use of children in movies) is just as obtuse. the fact that children are being used to entertain children doesn't change the fact that these children are being used by adults. (or, simply substitute my use of children's movies with a hundred movies for adults).

this issue is not about children and art, it's not about the use of children. bowden should be honest about what bugs him: nakedness. then at least there could be an honest and reasonable discussion.

How very revealing! And yet again, on reflection, how very creepy...

More circumlocutions, offered repeatedly and with tenaciously obstinate refusal to attempt balance or recognize the most basic facts within the writer's argument. The stark contrast with Bowden's discipline invites for me a conclusion that Bowden and OLO have once more provoked response from those more pathologically motivated among the Hensonites.

Notice how Bowden keeps his discussion rigorously in the subject's core or central arena of concerns for morality and legality (unlike my own digressive venturing into ideology, class and aesthetics, for example). Or to acknowledge Bowden's even more specifically defined focus: he confines his considerations to that esesential, problematic matter of “adults making and/or using photos of naked children for entertainment purposes”; he even encapsulates this in the title, making it screamingly obvious! My use of the term “entertainment” should not be misinterpreted and thereby deemed any intrinsically controversial insinuation here: art libertarian and academic Donald Brook himself introduced the term in this context in a related debate elsewhere (see: http://newmatilda.com/2008/07/07/getting-away-muder).

Therefore, it seems quite outlandish, and outrageously contrived, to claim that Bowden has some more general problem with nudity, as though opposition to pedophilia is just another manifestation of old-fashioned prudishness. To reiterate: Bowden has a problem with the permission and even endorsement given to a certain activity i.e., “adults making and/or using photos of naked children for entertainment purposes”.

So the extraordinary anti-Bowden hostility of certain Hensonites clearly reduces to a correspondingly fundamental opposition case i.e., “enmity towards those opposed to adults making and/or using photos of naked children for entertainment purposes”. Such Hensonite reactions offer very enthusiastic, derogatory assertions and personal attacks, but they make little or no effort to explain their insinuations and judgements, let alone explain the supposed merits of their enthusiasm for that oeuvre of art made from photos of naked children.

Now why would that be?

"Now why would that be?
Posted by mil-observer, Sunday, 17 August 2008 2:06:02 PM"

Because the "pro-Hensonites" have already covered this ground over and over again on a plethora of other discussion threads permitted by OLO

leaving...

only the EXTREMISTS on BOTH sides of the debate.

mil-observer “Henson's activity against the will of myself and many others”

You and your band of whoever, have the power to turn away.

You do not need the power to curtail the artistic discretion of others.

That IS the point regarding my observation and comparison to Klimpt by the Nazis.

If you think that Henson is ‘harming’ you by daring to challenge your sensibilities on any creative or artistic matter, whilst you have the right to ignore Henson’s product, then I will refer you to the famous poem by Pastor Martin Niemoeller.

Regarding “I suspect that you (like most of us) have had much neoliberalist brainwashing to that point where we develop a reflex to consider as “bad/harmful” any effort to curtail any enterprise that involves consenting parties.”

I do not recall ever being “brainwashed”

Concerning

“Libertarians/neolibs may as well complain (as some do!) when the state acts to prevent someone from following through on their free choice to become a degenerate, dehumanized ice junkie.”

I would like to know (so I can read it myself and better understand who I am),

what critical academic reference(s) and professional credentials you relied upon to formulate your assessment of me and “Libertarians/neolibs” like me.

I await your response.