Healthy open-minded liberals, university-educated with the diploma to prove it, are among the first to leap to the front line in the defense of artistic expression in its myriad forms, including a certain tree-hugging Akadot editor whose Utopia blooms with dynamic performance artists and edgy Japanese animation.

Recently though, sipping java at a sheik, moody coffee-serving gathering stable for like-minded liberal youths, laptop set before me like an immaculate pad of self-expression, I was struck with hypocrisy. And, what's worse, that I am probably one of its worst offenders.

I realized that the post-progressive liberal sophisticates, my brethren, are all just a bunch of talking heads, using healthy liberal ethics as analytical tools to judge expression just as rigidly as those pig-headed conservative moralists trying to take away my "Legend of the Overfiend."

To illustrate this, I shall commit further offense. There are two types of people who defend anime: 1) those who reject the stereotype that all anime boasts graphic scenes of sex and violence and assert that most of the oft-cursed Japanese art form features real human emotional dynamics or small, innocuous cute creatures. And, 2) those for whom their right to watch sex and violence is sacrosanct and the idea that these images promote undesirable social behavior is a scapegoat to the waning responsibility of the parent.

But now that anime is a certifiable part of the mainstream culture, though still growing steadily within it, it falls prey to the hypocrisy for which I found myself at fault mid-sip into a caffeine cocktail. Those open-minded liberal values that I hold so dear are responsible for statements such as: "I don't think it should be censored, however those images are highly offensive."

Now, offensive material can be split into one of two categories: 1) an intensity that reflects a primal quality of the human spirit to which children should not be witness. And 2) ideological taboos which slip comfortably into the accepted definition of exploitation. These two categories can be more simply labeled "not for kids" and "not art."

It's the second one that stirs the blood of the liberal free thinker, for whom every form of expression is art. It's also the second one that casts the liberal free thinker in the role of "hypocrite" when he starts rating the value of art by what he learned in college.

As was the case on one weekday morning work-bound drive when a public radio talk show dissected Eminem's success and the cultural value of his lyrics. Public Radio, packed with my kind of liberals, is a pundit haven, a watering hole for well-informed, ideologically fair people with a lot to say. Not one of the expert commentators advocated censoring Eminem, pulling his album from the shelves, or taking his Grammy away. But they almost all dismissed his work on the grounds that it falls into all of the 'isms' and 'ologies' that classify it as 'not art.'

I felt betrayed. And, worse, I felt guilty.