I made a resolution to leave OLO, but this is just too funny not to share.

They're old but some may have missed them...

Self-styled vigilantes attacked the home of a hospital paediatrician after apparently confusing her professional title with the word "paedophile"...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/aug/30/childprotection.society

Brass Eye

From Wiki...

Celebrities including Gary Lineker and Phil Collins appeared in videotaped interviews, in which they endorsed a spoof charity "Nonce Sense" ("nonce" is a common British slang term for a sex offender), Collins going so far as to announce, "I'm talking Nonce Sense!" Tomorrow's World presenter Philippa Forrester and ITN reporter Nicholas Owen amongst others were tricked into explaining the details of "HOECS" (pronounced "hoax") computer games, which online paedophiles were supposed to be using to abuse children via the Internet.

Viewers were also told by the then Labour MP Syd Rapson that paedophiles were using "an area of Internet the size of Ireland", and by Richard Blackwood that internet paedophiles can make computer keyboards emit noxious fumes in order to subdue children (Blackwood even sniffed a keyboard and claimed to be able to smell the fumes, which he said made him feel "suggestible")

The Capital Radio DJ Neil "Doctor" Fox, for example, informed viewers that "paedophiles have more genes in common with crabs than they do with you and me", before qualifying his remarks with "Now that is scientific fact - there's no real evidence for it - but it is scientific fact".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7jVnrfoZD8

The show caused a furore among sections of the British tabloid press. The Daily Star printed an article decrying Morris and the show next to a piece about the then 15-year-old singer Charlotte Church's breasts under the headline "She's a big girl now". The Daily Mail featured pictures of Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, who were 13 and 11 at the time respectively, in their bikinis next to a headline describing Brass Eye as "Unspeakably Sick". Defenders of the show argued that the media reaction to the show reinforced its satire of the media's hysteria and hypocrisy on the subject of paedophilia.

Paul.L

The scary thing is that the likes of CJ could be lecturing your kids at university. No amount of reasoned argument will get through to those who are blinded by their own dogmas ( the very thing he accuse others of).

Vanilla, thanks for the link. It's a great blog by the way. I've visited it a few times before.

Especially Laura's really disturbing experience and her response is very sobering.

CJ, I always enjoy reading your reasoned, and especially non-hysterical, comments.

Paul, children of all ages are sensual beings. That is why they are vulnerable to abuse, especially by those close to them, those they should be able to trust.

There is a world of difference though between acknowledging children's sensuality and equating this with a suggestion that children are part of the adult sexual world.

Vanilla, from what I've seen, Henson's work is Art and definitely not pornography

Paul, you're grasping at straws (and being typically waspish about it).

<< Well make up your mind CJ. You are blatantly contradicting yourself. >>

Asserting that there is little attribution of a value to something is in no way the same as saying that the value is absent. There is no contradiction in what I said about that aspect of Henson's work.

<< The idea that babies posses any kind of sexuality is ridiculous. >>

There is a huge corpus of psychological lierature on that very subject, Paul - going back decades, if not centuries since at least Freud. While some of the interpretations of that research and theory may have at times been ridiculous, I don't think the idea that children exhibit nascent sexuality is.

<< You just don’t have a clue! You just made that up didn’t you? I dare to try and prove that!! You might like to start here. >>

Mea culpa. The situation's somewhat more complex than I suggested - I confess that I wrote from past experience rather than from more reliable sources. Although Wikipedia is not authoritative, its description

[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_Australia_and_Oceania ]

seems to me to support the gist of what I was trying to say. That is, that the age of sexual consent is not 16 everywhere in Australia, particularly if the child is homosexual.

<< I’m not being obtuse, I’m merely pointing out that you are admitting that taking nude photos of children should be limited. Your limit is clearly that the picture taker should be an artist. So after all you do recognize that a line must be drawn somewhere. I just draw it in a different place. >>

Paul, that was a great start to your post, but it just went downhill from there. However, the fact that you can be reasonable (however fleetingly) is why I continue to interact with you. However, it becomes incredibly boring when you go into attack mode - as you usually do.

Tip: try to write a post without using the term "soft left".

Cheers :)

P.S. thanks to Vanilla and yvonne, and welcome back to Usual Suspect, who should stick around, I reckon :)

Runner will undoubtedly be pleased to learn that my academic days are probably well over. I haven't given a lecture in nearly a decade.

Your kids are safe ;)

Vanilla

“Surely that isn't legal? I'm ringing my journo friends to find out.”

Yep, there it is, in all its glory; Henson’s portrait of a nude 13 year old girl. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/05/24/1211183189567.html

Enough to get him into all sorts of strife…..enough to be ‘blackbanded’ (presented with a large black band across the girl’s breasts) on the TV news and current affairs on all channels……but the Age gets to print it in full!

How duplicitous is that?

Two days ago on this thread, immediately following the ABC's documentary on Henson's art, I wrote;

“So are the police now going to charge the ABC for showing Bill Henson’s pictures of nude adolescents, beamed directly into peoples’ living rooms, reaching a more diverse and probably wider audience than any art gallery?”

No one has been interested enough to address this question.

How on earth can Henson have any case to answer if the exact stuff that he is in trouble for can be legally reproduced and distributed in the general community…to a much wider audience than his exhibition would ever reach??

Everyone is concerned about the divide between acceptable art and pornography/paedophilia. But hardly anyone is in the slightest bit interested in the absurd duplicity of the law and/or its regulation.

I’m most interested to know what your journo friends have to say about this Vanilla.