Earlier this year a mate and I drove 300km across North Carolina to have a pork sandwich. The town of Lexington is the capital of what our American friends call “barbecue” –slow-cooked, shredded pork shoulder served with a vinegary chilli sauce and coleslaw. You can feel your heart slowing down as you eat it and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Heading west from Lexington, towards the hillbilly heartland of the Appalachian Mountains, we saw a huge billboard on the side of one of the backroads.
It said: “You are now entering Klan Country” and bore the swastika-inspired logo of the Ku Klux Klan and a huge Confederate Flag.
My first reaction on seeing the billboard was to wonder how anyone could have got away with putting it up. A more difficult question perhaps is how anyone could get away with taking it down.
The right to put an opinion, however inflammatory or troubling or offensive it may be, is one of the hallmarks of democracy.
In the United States it is enshrined in the Constitution. The First Amendment means that you can not only put up a billboard celebrating the work of a despicable organisation which has historically supported the lynching of black people, it also means that in this most hyper-nationalistic of nations, you have a legal right to burn the American flag.
This week in Sydney, hilariously enough in the counter-culture suburb of Newtown, which is positively crawling with lefties, artist Sergio Redegalli faced universal condemnation over his inflammatory mural featuring a veiled Muslim woman inside a circled red line reading “Say no to burqas.”
Marrickville Council – one of the first in Australia to declare itself nuclear-free, thus preventing an arms race between Petersham and Stanmore – said that while it had no legal power to force the removal of the mural on Mr Redegalli’s private wall, it had sent staff to the artist’s house and asked him to cover it up voluntarily.
You can see why the council would do so. As the president of the National Muslim Women’s Network Australia, Aziza Abdel-Halim, said in Sydney, Mr Redegalli’s mural is “an immature way of starting a debate.”
It’s certainly that. It’s already been defaced, twice. It will probably get defaced again now that it’s been the subject of so much media coverage. The council has received several complaints about the mural, and is understandably concerned that it could become the flashpoint for a nastier brand of payback.
It’s not a particularly good bit of art either. The woman looks cartoonish, and it’s unlikely Mr Redegalli will be making the shortlist in the Archibalds any time soon.
For all these considerations, it is still an impertinence for the council to approach Mr Redegalli about taking down his silly mural.
In demanding its removal, Ms Abdel-Halim thundered that the image was “disrespectful and insulting” and had no place in modern Australia.
The problem with this mindset is that it overlooks the long-standing role of free speech in Australia.
Ms Abdel-Halim should be politely reminded that if you are going to make your home in a country such as Australia, and benefit from all the freedoms on offer in this open and democratic society of ours, you can’t be picky as to how those freedoms apply.
The right to start debates in an immature way, to be disrespectful and insulting, is among those freedoms.
I am not sure what Mr Redegalli’s mural adds to the debate about whether burqas should be banned. In this country, where people are generally political ambivalent, where we don’t march down the street unless we’re going in a fun run or walking to the footy, Mr Redegalli stands as one of those mildly annoying trouble-makers who makes the rest of us roll our eyes.
As such, the only people we should really feel sorry for in this little episode are his poor neighbours. They have suddenly found that their once sleepy side-street in hip and groovy Newtown has become the venue for one man’s poorly-painted crusade against a religion that’s still grappling with the pretty simple idea of freedom of speech.
Facebook Recommendations
Read all about it
Punch live
Up to the minute Twitter chatter
Greece makes the final and Ireland gets in on a golden ticket. How awkward and embarrassing. Love it. #sbseurovision
The weird thing about #eurovision is you've got this massive collection of dorks in a room and no one is wearing Spock ears #sbseurovision
Europe has the large hadron collider which is light years ahead of its time and #eurovision, where the eighties never die
Recent posts
The latest and greatest
Eurovision can’t drown out the human rights abuses
Last year, thousands of Azerbaijanis spontaneously took to the streets of Baku shouting and chanting.…
Revenge. It doesn’t get a whole lot better than this
Last month, Katy McCaffrey boarded the Disney Wonder cruiseliner. At some point during the trip, a sneaky…
Friday dilemma: can school bullies grow out of it?
ClubsNSW is set to introduce a fresh new effort to combat schoolyard intimidation, insisting on a principal’s…
Nosebleed Section
choice ringside rantings
From: They must pay for one’s bitter disappointments
Michael S says:
"A teacher at Geelong Grammar had criticised her for using words that were too long, which had left her confused and had made her doubt her ability to write essays. She became ''quite distressed'' when her English marks began to fall." I can sympathise. My scholastic mentors conveyed to me a causal relationship… [read more]From: Welfare for breeders is a bonus for everyone
Change Up! says:
I have no problem paying my taxes. As a single, childless person on a very decent income, I can afford it and not have my life severely altered. Plus I understand that my taxes paying for things like schools, childcare and infrastructure is ultimately a good thing. A better community is better for me… [read more]Gentle jabs to the ribs
They must pay for one’s bitter disappointments
A private school girl’s family is sueing her elite, extremely expensive private school for not… Read more
Most commented