Autumnal lull

My apologies for the poverty of posts lately. There's only so many times you can get into a lather over the latest fatuity from Radio National; the Age seems to be just treading water during the Commonwealth Games; even the AWB scandal-that-isn't seems to have gone quiet - maybe they'll have to photoshop an image of John Howard bare-chested and waving a handgun around. In the meantime, they're scraping the bottom of the op-ed barrel. Unlike professional journalists, I can't just beat up a story when I need to fill a quiet day - and even the pros seemed to have stopped bothering. Not even the latest antics of Nest favourite Azlan McLennan - who bids fair to become the Peter Hore of contemporary art - can raise much of a flutter.

Actually, I take that back: let's have another look at Azlan. The normally sensible Australian writes that McLennan's playschool agitprops have been "censored" three times in the past two years. Let's see: his shopfront display about evil Israel was painted out when the City Council that had funded it actually bothered to find out what they were spending ratepayers' money on. Then his posters about wannabe jihadi Joseph Terrence Thomas (subsequently convicted) were quickly removed from bus and tram stops when the company which had paid to put them there - as an 'art' project - bothered to apprise themselves of the content.

So that's two cases where patrons exercised their right to change their mind about the art they were paying for. Not exactly censorship, is it? The third case is presumably the removal from public display of Azlan's partly-burned Australian flag, by two policemen, although it's not clear what grounds they were acting on. I believe Azlan has got his flag back. I'm prepared to grant that 0.1 points. Oh, and if you want to sign a petition supporting young Azlan - a U.S.-born Muslim, by the way - please be my guest. (Be sure to read the comments).