Does it Matter if Sebastian Horsley is an anti-Semite?

Victoria Coren in The Observer on 2 Sept 2007:

"A few weeks ago, I was due to have dinner with writer and roue Sebastian Horsley. Are you familiar with Horsley? He briefly wrote a sex column for The Observer, but the readers didn't like it and (this being a democratic newspaper) he was asked to take his pen elsewhere. When the day came, I rang him to suggest meeting in Belsize Park, a leafy area of north London.

"'I can't bear Belsize Park,' yawned Horsley. 'It's full of Jews.'"

Ms. Coren was so offended that she decided not to interview Mr. Horsley. When I interviewed him myself, I asked him to respond to her article.

"Sebastian, you're not an anti-Semite, are you?" I wondered.

Sebastian Horsley leant in the direction of my tape recorder and exclaimed,"Death to Jews! ...now you have it on tape."

For those not in the know, Sebastian Horsley is a British artist more notorious for various excesses and provocative statements of bigotry than he is for his artwork. He's built an entire career on people's strong reactions to him.

Mr. Horsley went on to say, "If I'd known she was Jewish, I'd have been even ruder!"

For someone who doesn't like Jews, he certainly has a hard time spotting us, I thought.

I continued conducting the interview. I was curious to see whether he'd elaborate. But when the tape recorder was turned off, I tried to broach the subject with him again. At this point, if he'd said these things in order to stay in character, I wanted to give him the opportunity to tell me so.

"Sebastian, you know, about Victoria Coren's column -" I began.

"DEATH TO JEWS!" spat Mr. Horsley a second time. Then he turned away, indicating that the subject was closed.

Needless to say, I never did publish the interview. I had wanted to know if Mr. Horsley meant what he said, but I soon realized that it didn't matter.

I began to think a lot about how and why bigotry works.

In this case, Sebastian Horsley gets away with all kinds of cringe-worthy rhetoric by using what I call the 'lady, you knew I was a snake' disclaimer. By building a character based entirely on who he can shock, Mr. Horsley lets you know up front that he's not responsible if he happens to offend you. He can't help it, that's just who he is.

Sebastian Horsley hopes to sell himself to the public as a zany but loveable 'dandy,' a clown who doesn't really mean the things he says.

And certainly Mr. Horsley has the right to push freedom of speech as far as he can take it.

But since his autobiography, Dandy in the Underworld, is now being sold by a top ranking American publishing company, assuming his publishers have done their job, this puts him directly in the public eye. His provocative statements raise some serious questions.

Questions about the the socio-political impact of a random satirist who comes into the country during an election year and turns a profit for himself by pushing the nation's hot buttons.

Nothing is guaranteed to set American passions on edge the way bias speech does.

It's a country that has become polarized by its politics and by issues that are volatile enough on their own - but can also act as red herrings. An example is the way the Federal Marriage Amendment, proposed in 2004, helped distract the populace from the larger issues in that year's election: war; loss of civil liberties; the economy; and the environment.

The lines Mr. Horsely will toss out in America will upset many people. The rest will shrug it off and say that anyone who got upset can't take a joke. And this is how the division occurs. The Jena 6 controversy also started as a joke.

Therefore, whether Mr. Horsley means the things he says is not the point. His throwaway comments have the potential to keep the public divided and distracted while so much more is at stake.