gatewatching

Update: For those prepared to contemplate the erotic allure of blogspot profile photos in relation to the Henson debate, the NSFW (language) Grodsthink for this week should provide some food for thought.

This week, in the tissues and the blogosphere, there has been a lot of discussion of art, and its “evil twin” pornography, in relation to some photos. A lot of it’s been that simplistic - either Bill Henson’s photos are art or porn, either we should plump for “freedom of expression” or the “protection of children”. In this sense, many responses have amounted to little more than a less-than-helpful jerking of the knees.

For mine, neither one side’s claims to be speaking for common decency and the Law, nor the other side’s gratuitous displays of cultural authority or browbeating dismissals of “philistinism” have been particularly enlightening. The whole debate so far has caused nothing but confusion for some people, not least pollsters in some metropolitan tabloid newspapers.

(Image from Yesterday’s Crikey) Read more…

Daily Telegraph academia, art, Bill Henson, Bolt, Crikey, criticism, Daily Telegraph, Larvatus Prodeo, Mentalization-Positive, Sorrow at Sills Bend

UPDATE: Grodscorp’s weekly podcast, this time including discussion of the Blair move, is here. NSFW - frequent coarse language.

I think it’s fair to say that we here at Gatewatching have had an… interesting relationship with Tim Blair’s blog since we started posting here last year. I won’t go over the details of our spat - you can check out the archives if you like. In some ways a fight with Blair has probably become a rite of passage in the Australian blogosphere. Anyway, news is that he’s moved his blog onto the site of his main employer, the Daily Telegraph.

Blair’s blog has been one of the most successful Australian efforts in terms of traffic, not least because he’s been able to draw an international readership. He’s moved through several hosting set-ups - first on blogspot, then spleenville, then to the place he was blogging until today, timblair.net. All of this, apparently, has been independent of his work on the Bulletin and then the Tele as an editor and columnist. Now his blog has been integrated on the paper’s main site, and it esembles those of his News Limited colleagues Andrew Bolt, and Tim Dunlop (author of Blogocracy).

Read more…

Blair, Daily Telegraph, blogging Blair, blogging, Blogocracy, Bolt, Daily Telegraph, Dunlop, Grods, Larvatus Prodeo, MSM, news.com.au