Debunking the Banksy Cult

Theodore Dalrymple says that NYC's over-the-top enthusiasm for this jejune "artiste" (which may have been shut down by the cops) says a lot about his admirers:

The enormous interest his work arouses, disproportionate to its artistic merit, shows not that there is fashion in art, but that an adolescent sensibility is firmly entrenched in our culture. The New York Times reports that a lawyer, Ilyssa Fuchs, rushed from her desk the moment she heard about Banksy’s latest work and ran more than half a mile to see it. Would she have done so if a delicate fresco by Piero della Francesca had been discovered in Grand Central Terminal? In the modern world, art and celebrity are one. And we are all Peter Pan now: we don’t want to grow up.