There is much outrage at the present about the plan to project horse race advertising on the sails of the Opera House in Sydney. I agree that such proposals are crass and play into the narrative that everything has its price, no matter what the cultural significance of the artifact might be. Horse racing is very much a sport for gamblers so this only reinforces the suspicion that many have - name your price and it's yours.

How I wish such outrage was channelled at things that really matter! What about nuclear weapons and the threat of extinction? How about the generally anodyne responses to global warming or the plight of millions of war-displaced people around the globe? There are many big issues to get genuinely worked up about that exceed by factors of hundreds the matter of whether something gets projected on the Opera House. I don't like the fact that commodification is embedded in modern life, you know that I have bemoaned it in posts here and elsewhere, but getting a true perspective of what really counts is muddied by taking a sledgehammer to kill a mosquito. By all means protest, write letters and wade into forums, but bear in mind the relative importance of the offence in the grand scheme of things.

Surely, not over the top in contemporary Australia?