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In reply to the discussion: This message was self-deleted by its author [View all]CTyankee
(63,908 posts)racist comments. I just read the thread. That is the kind of thing that takes place here. Different DUers evaluating and making their own judgments about the content of people's comments. It is happening now. And that is fine. I am no more an arbiter of that conversation than I would be about anyone's on sexism and misogyny, altho I have my own opinions. And, really, we do have a jury system, for better or worse, that decides a lot of this. sometimes it goes the way i agree with and sometimes it doesn't. What I am trying to say is that so what?
Just as an aside: I do a Friday Afternoon art quiz regularly (kinda like Salmon's LOL cats series) just for enjoyment of art. About a year and a half ago I did a Challenge entitled "The Male Gaze." It was a serious look at European male artists' nude works over the years. I self censored from my selection two famous paintings that I thought might offend some DUers sensibilities. One was by Francois Boucher, of the young mistress of Louis XV. I felt she looked like a child (which she probably was, given that era) and it bothered me that she looked like she could be my own grandchild. The other was a very graphic (and voyeuristic) painting by 19th century French artist Gustav Courbet entitled "The Origins of the World" which is exhibited in the Musee d"Orsay in Paris. It doesn't offend me but I could understand why it would someone else. And there is a John Currin work that I saw in the Franz Hals Museum in Haarlem, Netherlands that was probably too graphic for Americans but not for the Dutch (who seemed unfazed). Different cultures, different times, different audiences.
So we'll have to hash this kind of thing out and do our own self editing where necessary. I have no doubt this will work out. Not without controversy, but it will work out.