Sunday, February 15, 2009

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.



4 comments:

Nick D said...

I worry for you Dorothy, immersed in this loonatic world each day. Like those poor investigating sods who have to sift through hours of child porn when putting together a case, or the minimum wage souls who hose shit and condoms out of sewer pumps beneath city streets.

Do you feel unclean reading the loons each day? Is there any lasting stench or shame? Can you tell your closest friends what it is you do? I'm so glad and entertained when you do it, but again I worry, it can't be good for you to swim in this stream of righteous idiocy so often.

dorothy parker said...

Hi Nick,

fear not. First of all, I like to cloak myself in plastic (unless it's a rubber or leather fetish day). A clothes peg on the nose is a necessity of course, while shoes require a dash of odor eater. I also favor the sterile gloves you can find in an operating theatre, and after each exposure the mind must be given a good suction with a powerful vacuum cleaner. Luckily my computer is a Mac and relatively immune from infection.

Thus armed, I find daily dalliance with the loons most stimulating and rewarding. I've found I've cut to zero my desire to write comments in online forums, or as a response to columnists online. So for a small amount of time a day - it's amazing how little time it takes to read a Piers Akerman or a Miranda the Devine - I can exorcise all desire to debate idiots, savants, loons or true believers of any kind.

I'm sorry this therapy has to be public, but my therapist says it's an important pre-condition for me being cured, along with Woody Allan, by the year 2020. She has allowed me to tell my partner, who says it's improved my humor from choleric to sanguine. My partner now recommends the therapy to everyone. provided suitable precautions are put in place and exposure is limited to 25,000 millirems, as per a space shuttle mission.

cheers

Nick D said...

Much relief.

Incidentally you don't tear into the Dolt as much? Andrew, that is.

dorothy parker said...

Andrew Bolt is beyond reading, beyond reasoning, beyond humor. He's a Hiroshima sized explosion of irrationality. Any sensible human being would perish from extreme radiation poisoning if they got too close to him and his circle of loons. Even a T1000 Terminator couldn't survive that red hot lava pool of illogicality, hysteria, paranoia and fear.

Now David Clarke ranting about pop art - that's so sixties and fun. Next we might get David Clarke ranting about Jackson Pollock pissing in the fireplaces of rich people while selling Gough Whitlam globs of paint - so fifties.

It's always fun to go back to the future; with the Dolt, the fear is there is no future, or if there is better turn ourselves into Morlocks quik stix. So yes like Woody Allen, I'm a coward (I get beaten up by Quakers), and I flinch from the ultimate black void of despair. There's only so many sewers a graffiti artist can visit in any given day and hope to survive ...