Your editorial ”In obscenity trials, everybody`s wrong” was a long-overdue breath of reason in a debate polluted by nonsense.
However, I would raise one cautionary point concerning the positions that the scholars, curators and critics have taken in defense of some of the alleged ”art.”
For three generations, would-be censors and the courts have worked together to create a situation in which a creative work has to be either defended as ”art” or abandoned to the censors as ”smut.”
As someone working in the arts as a writer and reviewer, I can understand anyone`s reluctance to throw even what they think is garbage to the book-burners.
So the defenders of rap music and Mapplethorpe may have uttered nonsense; but can we be sure they believe it, rather than being forced by the political climate into saying it?
It`s time to recognize that creative work is not necessarily either art or filth. There is a vast middle ground, in which both the creators and the critics should enjoy the protection of the Constitution.
