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I am a Tabloid Police Moralist

Anti- Censor | 13.03.2001 14:33

The Saatchi gallery is so far refusing to comply with police 'requests' to censor the content of its current exhibition.

According to saturation coverage in yesterdays' Tv broadcasts, the curator and the artist are adamant that there is nothing improper in the exhibition 'I am a camera' and it should be open as usual (whatever that is in today's Britain) on Thursday. At the moment the matter is pending with the Crown Prosecution Service and it is difficult to say how the state will act next.
The most worrying aspect of the case is perhaps not that the cops are trying it on, for this is an almost routine action on their part. But such is the background of the investigation, being incited by the News of the World, that it lends a much more sinister aspect to the case, for the dust has scarcely settled on the horrendous howling mobs the paper raised late last year. In short, there is a populist movement behind the police action; it is not simply the state bureaucracy any more.
The scum morals that the NotW has incited are cause for concern in themselves; one wonders if the narrow-minded, ill-informed supporters of the paper have any notion of what the supposed folk-demons they are chasing really are, for so vague is the malaise they are trying to pin down, that it renders any movement meaningless, except to play into the hands of populists and demagogues. moreover, one senses they have a certain bad conscience for some reason.

Anti- Censor