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It's a frightening picture: thousands of innocent Cornetto gobbling middle Australians, unaware that behind the popular spectacle of Azaria's torn nightie lurks the evil menace of postmodern deconstructionism. Instead of a National Museum of which we can all be proud - we are one, and that's it, thank you very much - we have an ideological travesty, designed to seduce middle Australia with a view of history concocted according to the formula of the evil French mastermind Jacques Derrida.

There are two difficulties I have with Milne's account of the struggle over the ideological bias of the National Museum. The first is with his characterisation of middle Australia, the second with his representation of Derrida's philosophy.

It would be easy to be misled by the sneering tone of Milne's description of some museum visitors as "The Australians who wander into the museum to gawk at Azaria Chamberlain's torn nightie and share a Christmas Cornetto with the children" and conclude that Milne is something of an intellectual snob, who believes that the sort of people who want go into a museum to see Azaria Chamberlain's torn nightie with an ice-cream grubbied kid or two in tow simply have no business being there. But clearly this is not the case: Milne's remark is aimed at the debased spectacle of Azaria's nightie, which is not befitting a proper museum.

Nor should we be misled by Milne's assertion that the intellectual battle over postmodernism is a battle for the hearts and minds of middle Australia, which will be won by the side which gets to shape their view of history. As a TV journalist and newspaper columnist it is inconceivable that Milne would believe that middle Australians will be largely passive specators in this dispute, content to let the big intellects slug it out, then passively accept the view of history that is presented to them by the winners, whether it is in the history books or in the galleries of the NMA. Milne is not stupid so there is no reason to conclude that he believes the people are stupid, whatever the textual evidence may suggest.

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