CULTURAL AWARENESS HEIGHTENED

Imagine my surprise on discovering during my morning visit to Tim Blair's, that a famous journalist-author – no, not Antony Loewenstein, Maureen Dowd – will visit Perth in 2006. Hell, I'm an uncultured RWDB and don't pay much attention to events like the Perth International Arts Festival. To broaden my horizons I checked it out.

First held in 1953, the festival is the oldest Australian international arts festival. The theme for 2006 is "Garden of Earthly Delights", which could make for some interesting events – there seems to be a bit of confusion about the theme, which is sometimes shown as "Earthly Pleasure". The festival runs from 10 February – 5 March. Events will be staged around the state, not just in Perth.

Dowd will appear at the Curtin University hosted Words & Ideas workshop series which has a decided lefty slant, featuring Frank Moorehouse, Mark Kingwell, Ian Lowe and Robert Manne. Dowd gets by far the biggest blurb:

Join best-selling author of Bushworld and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd for an evening exploring the mysteries and muddles of sexual combat as she discusses her new book Are Men Necessary?

It's four decades after the sexual revolution and nothing has quite worked out the way it was supposed to. After winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for saucy and incisive commentary about the dangerous liaisons of Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, Hillary Clinton and Ken Starr, Maureen Dowd has turned her lapidary prose and wise wit to a topic even more incendiary that [sic] presidential politics: sexual politics.

Tickets are AU$15.

The festival receives funding from a number of sources, both public and private. But, if you look closely, you'll find that a number of sponsors not listed as Public Funding Partners are actually public. Healthway, for example, is shown as a Principal Sponsor, not as a Public Funding Partner, despite the fact that it is an organ of the West Australian government. Tricky.

For anyone wanting to refresh his memory, Dowd's Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times series of articles is here.

One more thing, like Dowd, Lindy Hume, the festival's director, is a red-nut (red-head for you foreigners) – in my experience, the operative part of that description is "nut".

Update: Perth doesn't need to import powerful but loony women, not when we already have multiple man-bagger Rose Hancock Porteous. While she's in town Dowd should drop in on Rose for a few man-catching tips.