The New Radical Chic: Fairey’s Establishment Defenders

Shepard “Fairey’s arrest has spawned a debate on the concept of public art, at least art that is imposed on the public by self-important phonies who regard property rights the way some pols and rich folks do taxes: rules that should apply to everybody but them. … [T]he people who defend taggers as ‘artists’ have the same mindset as the Manhattan socialites who defended self-described revolutionaries in the 1960s. Tom Wolfe coined a term for these fools: Radical Chic.”