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From: Michael Smith
Date received: April 11
Subject: Response to Rat Western
Dear Rat Western,
Thanks for your well-argued letter. Again, you raise some valid points with regard to my response. In fact, the persuasiveness of your letter has caused me to reevaluate the tone of my former posting. I realize now that I opened the door for you to deliver what amounts to a fairly personal attack.
It's actually quite embarrassing for me to have you correct my spelling when I picked on yours; old sayings about tastes of one's own medicine come swiftly to mind. I also concede my few careless factual errors, such as they are; poor checking undermines good journalism. As to the more fundamental points of my position, I feel these were adequately articulated in the original opinion piece and my rebuttal of your response. I do not wish to rehash these as this would make for dry copy. I would, however, be very interested to hear comments from the broader Gauteng art world on any of the issues debated here. I'm sure if there's one thing we can agree on it's that this forum will benefit far more from encouraging debate than attempting to silence silencing it.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I must be off for treatment for a verbal disemboweling at the hands of the Bag Factory massive.
Michael Smith
