Pathetic, Telegraph. Bloody pathetic

There will be people who would ask 'who's Robert Crumb?' But a great many of those would recognise some of his artwork.

Crumb is a cartoonist. Some of his images are absolutely iconic, like these two:

Now I find some of his stuff quite vulgar and tasteless. And others are clever, funny and even thought-provoking. But, please, let's put this in its rightful place. Crumb and his work came out of and to prominence in that quite wild and strange place and time - the late 1960s US. Guess what - a lot of things have changed since then. Things found funny then would not necessarily be seen as funny today.

Here's another thought. Does every artist think everything they have ever done is forever beyond reproach? Of course not. I had the good fortune to spend some time with Tim Ferguson about 18 months ago. I took the opportunity to ask a few things about those heady days with the Doug Anthony All Stars. Tim freely admitted that sometimes they would go off-stage and ask themselves 'Oh God - did we actually just do/say that?' In talking about some of the old DAAS stuff, Tim actually became a little embarrassed.

So what does that have to do with Robert Crumb? I watched a quite interesting documentary about him a few years back. In that, Crumb admitted somewhat shamefaced that some of his work was pretty terrible in what it depicted.

In a simply staggering display of gutter journalism and hopeless fact-twisting, the Daily Telegraph produced this piece of absolute shit. Crumb is depicted as some sort of crazed sexual deviant, not fit to be let loose on the streets. They then attempt to give this garbage some validity by having anti-child abuse campaigner, Hetty Johnson, giving her take on this 'depraved' person ie let's give the world the impression that he's a child abuser as well.

Here's a little test for y'all. Go and look up Robert Crumb artwork in Google. Or better yet with Bing as I believe that is a better search engine for finding images. I'll just sit here, sip my coffee and daydream a bit while you do it. Go on - I'll still be here when you get back.

Jessica Simpson...big grapefruit...flowers....Marieke Hardy...veggies...have I done the shopping yet...did I remember to throw that old milk out this morning?

Oh you're back. Goodo. Did you find some tasteless and vulgar stuff. Yep. OK, now how many child molestation images did you find? I couldn't find a single bloody one. T & V does NOT equate to perverted etc etc.

Now for the next question. According to the Telegraph, "A spokesman for the federal Attorney General's department told The Sunday Telegraph that Crumb's work cannot be shown in Australia unless he submits his illustrations for classification. The spokesman said his work would almost certainly be refused classification."

What? We now supposed to believe that ALL of Crumb's work will now "almost certainly be refused classification?" Oh give me a frigging break. How many decades has 'Stoned Agin' been sold on posters, t-shirts and Lord knows what else in Australia. C'mon Tele - give us a name and prove that complete utter bullshit quote.

How the Daily Telegraph can justify calling itself either 'news' or 'journalism' is getting well and truly beyond me. Why don't they just pack up and piss off to the UK - the Poms seem to appreciate gutter journalists and journalism there. That way you pack of fucktards won't have to ever worry about letting the facts get in the way of your story ever again. As for Hetty Johnson - hey lady - how about worry about the REAL issues rather than pandering to cheap, nasty sensationalist so-called journalism.

Pathetic, Telegraph. Bloody pathetic.