Tamsyn - her drug of choice? The media.

Tamsyn Lewis has made comments over the last few days regarding the number of drug cheats she is up against during the coming Olympics. But surely Tamsyn knows the score here, how can you not? Is she really this gullible?



I mean who actually wants more stringent drug testing? Which group out there is actually going to benefit from the removal of drugs from sport?


Lets face it, the reason that sporting events are so popular is because records are being broken, athletes are consistently pushing the limits of the human body. It is exciting stuff watching these people beat that yellow line which shows us what is important now to viewers. The racers are not racing against the handful of athletes in that particular race, who cares! We want to see them racing the entire history of athletes and we want them to win. Break that damn record, beat the yellow line or its just no fun.

Look at what is being said about the Australian swimming team. Apparently they will be winning 11 gold this year. Nobody cares for what, as long as the numbers are up from last year. As long as we show these damn Americans who the sporting gods really are.

Tamsyn is an ok runner, she will never be the best even if these other athletes stop using performance enhancing drugs. And lets be honest here, she is there partly because she has a pretty face and makes the sport look glamorous (and diverts the attention away from a culture of drug use). She is sort of like Kournakova in this respect. You didn’t think she was in these Tennis tournaments because she was that good did you?

If they cant break a record they damn well better be able to give the viewer a stiffy. Your honour, at this time I would like to offer Beach Volleyball as exhibit A.

I ask this again, who actually is going to gain from more stringent drug testing? We all know the answer to this and it is why the current setup is designed to ensure the athletes can work around tests easily enough as long as they play the political game as well as they play their sport. But if you get too cocky or start becoming too obvious, then you are the next scapegoat to be used to fool the public that something is being done to stop this from getting worse. Sorry to burst peoples bubble but unless you are using these drugs you are not likely to be standing on any pontoon in your life time.

Drugs are rampant throughout sport, not just at the top either. It is part of the sporting culture. Just go on any athletes forum and you will begin to see how entrenched it is in the industry. Tamsyn was never going to win a medal. She knows it and we know it. Making some song and dance about it now is just face saving to the sponsors who she relies on to keep handing over the money so she doesnt have to get an actual job. Lets face it, from her perspective she has to do this. She doesnt win the damn races and without her face in the paper their sponsorship will be handed over to the next pretty young thang that can make a final.



Taking performance enhancing drugs is far from cheating. It’s a must if you care about winning. The truth is harsh and all I can say is don’t go complaining about these people as being cheats if you intend on watching the Olympics this year. You don’t want to be a hypocrite do you? That’s for world class athletes who speak up against drugs in sport.

Bill Henson and Art Monthly Australia - bully for them

SPECIAL NOTE. This post contains an exclusive interview with Blogging Royalty 'The Eye'.

It is not often that a piece of art has the kind of impact that sees it transcend the subject matter itself, and become so much more. Art can in these cases lead to some pretty big questions being asked and some very heated debates. It can make us question how far freedom of expression is allowed and whether an artist needs to enforce some kind of self regulation. It also makes us as a society ask ourselves what kind of responsibility we have when art has crossed some kind of perceived moral line in the sand. It is a rare thing indeed when one of the so called respectable arts can make this kind of front page impact. That sort of attention is usually left to the more mainstream artists. "Which pop singer has had another drug induced meltdown?" "Which socialite has released a follow-up homemade porn video? More at 6."

In the case of Bill Henson’s latest exhibition, it is the repercussions for the subject matter herself that leave us at SOI to wonder who was there to consider her safety?

About a month ago a series of artist Bill Henson photographs depicting a nude underage girl sparked an emotional national debate about censorship and the sexualisation of children. In fact when news of the exhibition broke, the gallery displaying the work was inundated with angry calls, some threatening to burn down the building. Child exploitation is a highly emotional subject and one that has recently been on the radar for a number of reasons. The timing could not have been worse for Henson given the recent outrage over a Myley Cyruss topless shots (the 15-year-old star of Disney hit TV show Hannah Montana ) and more recently the mass arrests over child pornography. And now we have a brand new controversy just making news over the retaliatory shots of a six year old girl on the cover of a petulant Art Monthly Australia in what is essentially the printed version of poking your tongue out. What makes it even worse is that these shots are just plain crap.

Recently we have seen the NSW police abandon their questionable case against the artist, I doubt many people truly believed that Henson’s intention was to create child pornography. Nor do many view the work as pornography, but is this really the point?

To our way of thinking the bigger issue comes down to the manipulation of the child involved rather than the fear of less savoury individuals viewing these images for purposes far from innocent. The fact is these people will pick up a Target catalogue and see something vastly different than what was intended. Our issue with all this comes down to something far more practical.

It turns out that the girl in the photos parents are friends of Henson. It was while at a dinner party together that he brought up the possibility of using their daughter as a model. Now you can see just how enticing this would be to the parents involved. It is likely that they are not artists themselves so the idea of having their daughter immortalised by one of Australia’s leading photographers would be absolutely thrilling. I can see the excitement in their faces as they clink champagne glasses to seal the deal.

I would suggest at this point that many of us are now wondering how much time was actually spent discussing the possible down side of this venture. The biggest question that comes to mind is what happens when the other kids from her school discover (which indeed they now have) that they are now the proud owners of nude pictures of their school chum. It doesn’t take a vast stretch of the imagination to work out what the other kids at school will do to her. One word springs to mind – bullying.

Art is at its heart subjective and the intent of an artist can get lost or even ignored. Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov experienced a shocking lesson in this very thing when he opened the front door at Halloween to find two girls dressed as his nymphet creation asking for candy. So you can just imagine what sort of things these kids, who lets face it, can be horribly cruel will say about these images. All discussion of artistic merit and the beauty of innocence is completely and utterly mute here.

Forget pornography, forget the perverts, forget artistic merit, forget censorship. If the parents of this girl can tell me that the children she goes to school with have not teased, taunted and bullied her in any way; if this does not taint her reputation in that school for years to come. Then I will apologise.

I ask again, is ANYONE let alone the parents considering this outcome? I just wonder how smug they are going to feel when she comes home from school one day and runs crying into their arms.


Mark's $0.02

Hi, Mark here.

Look, for me this issue is really simple. It's not about the definition of pornography, it's not about censorship, it's just about consent. Consent, consent, consent. Kids can't make this kind of decision for themselves, and given that it's conceivable that a child may regret it in the future, why should a parent consent on behalf of their child? And for that matter why should an artist accept that consent?

It wouldn't pass the ethics committee at my university.

I think a big problem with this debate is that people confuse morals with ethics, a topic which i will post on in the future. - Mark

And now our exclusive interview with The Eye.

We chat with the creator of 'Eye On Big Brother' fame. This year his informative posts on Australian Big Brother '08 have really struck a chord with people. Listen to this interview and you will understand why. This is one smart fella. Dont forget to go check out his site here.

Here is the interview -henson.mp3

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