David Clarke, pop art, Ho Chi Minh, and the dangers of the bikini

David Clarke, perhaps single handedly, or at least with the help of his very own clique of right wing loons, has kept the Liberals from power at a time when the Labor government in NSW is singularly inept at best and woefully incompetent most of the time (how else to explain a string of political chooks of the likes of Michael Costa turned into squawking featherdusters as they fall like nine pins).

Clarke is the conservatives' conservative, which is to say a loon out of step with the times, and with a decidedly censorial approach. Sure he's not a columnist of the kind we normally cover - he likes to keep his works growing in the dark like mushrooms - but every so often we reserve a special place for activist loons, and Clarke's attendance at Casula Powerhouse museum to shout at a pop art depiction of Communist leader Ho Chi Minh must surely take the cake for loonery.

"Anyone who is trying to make out I went there to throw my weight around is being rather cute," the SMH quoted Mr. Clarke as saying.

So what did you go there for Mr. Clarke? Since you weren't invited to an invitation-only opening? To silently and reverently admire the art works, and decode their semiotic significance? 

You can just imagine the hapless Liverpool councillors and exhibition staff quailing under the peculiar cry of the Clarke-ian loon - though what result they think writing to Chairman Rees to complain about Clarke will produce boggles the imagination. (The exhibition by the way has been touring for a decade before lobbing up at Casula, and it received funding from the Howard government).

You can just imagine what Clarke would make of Andy Warhol - no, not his pop art portraits of the mass murderer chairman Mao, but his defamatory and insulting portraits of Campbell's soup cans (which as we all know reduced visiting an art gallery to the level of visiting the local grocery store).

Clarke's excuse? He'd been invited by members of the Vietnamese community, who had in fact no power to issue the invitation.

You know, the one concern about electing a Liberal government to control the state of NSW is the thought that it might empower a git like Clarke, who's already power mad, and when it comes to many matters, deluded in the most conservative way.

That's why I call on Mr. Clarke to join my campaign to ban the bikini. It can't have escaped his notice that the exhibition contains a portrait of a woman draped over a chopper gun ship in the most obscene and phallic way imaginable (see above), bringing to mind the worst excesses of the sixties. And this is what they allow children to see as a so called educational and artistic experience!

Indeedy, the bikini is likely responsible for the decline of western civilization, and not even nuking Bikini atoll could stop it. The display of scar tissue, folds of fat and tattoos have led to a decline in western male sexual enthusiasm and fertility, and help explain why totally covered Islamic women are in a breeding frenzy.

So come on down David Clarke. You haven't got a shred of aesthetic sense or social deportment skills to lose, and it's time we combined to stop the rot. 

In the meantime, I urge everyone to go to Casula and stage a 'happening' - a sixties word for aesthetic mugging - in the very best Clarke manner, protesting art works containing bikinis.

Though perhaps I should add a note of caution. Unlike Clarke, you might get evicted by security, and fined for being very, very silly. Second thoughts, why not stage a jamming at the upper house in Macquarie street, by throwing bikinis at it? What have we got to lose by admitting Opus Dei is right about everything? 

Back to the one piece I say, it's a woman's right not to be bifurcated.