Why Do Repubicans Hate Artists And Writers So Much?
A few days ago, at a huge writers conference in Chicago, I met a charming and articulate man -- dressed in lizard cowboy boots and a very interesting sort of felt cowboy hat -- who happens to be a lobbyist for the arts. He was very excited to have just been a part of the effort to ensure the 50 million dollar funding of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the hope of continued funding for the organization for years to come. He was also happy to report funding for the organization whose conference I was attending. And he was full of anecdotes, one of which I found particularly compelling.
The great poet Philip Levine saw this particular lobbyist on his way into a meeting in Washington one day several years ago, and said to a fellow poet, "This is the man who lets us know how we are doing." The lobbyist told this story with pride in his work but also with some sense of responsibility.
Now I don't much care for the business of lobbying myself, and I told this charming man so, even when the lobbyist is asking for money for causes I very much support. Mostly I wish that there didn't have to be such a thing. But when our government has had such an egregious record in funding the arts as it has for the past eight years and when, clearly, the Republicans will do all and everything they can to take out any monies in any bills proposed that have anything to do with the arts, then I guess we are going to need all the smart and charming and hardworking and dedicated lobbyists for the arts we can get.
But why is that?
What on earth do Republicans in Congress have against painting and writing and dancing and teaching art in the schools? What it is about us artists that gets their panties all in a twist? What would Philip Levine himself say to Mitch McConnell or John Boehner or any of our other Public Servants, for that matter any of the men and women who nurse at the public tit but don't want a penny of public money going to anyone else?
There's a visible sneer in their faces and an audible sneer in their voices whenever the word "art" is mentioned. As though it were dirty or nasty or somehow something we should talk about only behind closed doors and only with intimate family members but not, somehow, in public, for God's sake. Reading? Fuggedaboudit. Museums? Oh, yeah, those are places where kids go on field trips that are no longer in the budget. Dancing? That's for sissies. Classical music? Isn't that something The Wife makes you go to once a year?
I don't expect Republicans to own up to having read anything more challenging than a Tom Clancy novel but would they really deny the rest of us the opportunity to do so? Is it really so hard to imagine that some people in the rest of the world really likes to hunker down with a beautifully written novel or a slim volume of poetry? Is it so difficult to get their narrow minds around the concept that some people actually enjoy going to museums and actually find looking at art compelling and interesting? That the preservation of paintings hundreds of years old makes us more civilized and compassionate somehow? And that that preservation is important historically? And that teaching the appreciation of the arts to our children is part of being civilized and educated?
And are they so completely out of the loop that the cannot even see the economic benefits of the arts to both our country and the world at large? A recent article in The New York Times http://http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/arts/16mone.html?scp=2&sq=NEA%20%20February%2013&st=cse made that very clear to anyone who bothers to listen. But clearly they aren't reading anything and they certainly aren't listening to anyone but themselves.
We got into this economic crisis in good part because our government has for the very longest time been incredibly short-sighted. It may be that we now have a president who is willing and able to take a longer view. If the Republicans will just sit down and shut up for a few moments. That, as far as I can figure out, is the least they can do. And as we know, Republicans always do the very least they can do.
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OK. This got my attention.
http://open.salon.com/blog/bryan/2009/03/09/life_art_hate_death_and_the_gop
It's really more simple than all of the previous arguments. GOP/neo-cons simply have no soul, so they denounce and disavow anything that might reflect expression of the soul. I find it humorous, almost to the point of hilarity that a party that denounces Progressiveness and "Socialism", and care so much about the souls of unborn children more than they care about the soles of law abiding consenting adults embraces someone in Jesus who, by my reading of The Bible is a raging flaming Liberal Socialist Progressive Democrat who knew the value of the expression of the soul on this earth to be just as important as the expression of the soul in the Netherworld aka "Heaven"
Yes, the Republicans in my city are much happier at building stadiums (selling the naming rights of course) and inreasing hotel taxes than in building museums and parks that benefit the average citizen.
BRAVO! Great article. No music taught in schools anymore.
Not true but it is close.
Government funded art is not art. The government can pay the best engineer to build a bridge, but how can they pay the best artist?
A check from the government is the difference between an artist and a propagandist.
Orchestras throughout the world are underwritten by government funds. What part of Mahler's 7th is propaganda?
Simple answer. Artists and writers recognize BS when we see it: after all, we've been trained to read, analyze, and critique. We can slice and dice a faulty argument with the snap of our fingers. Nor are we afraid to speak up. Conservatives are just smart enough to know that we are too perceptive to swallow the rubbish that is spewed out by their propaganda machine.
The artists hate the conservatives. THEY started it.
Many conservatives, Republicans, fascists, all authoritarians can't handle dissension or truth, so they after truth tellers. Intellectuals, and artists, are always their biggest threat.
"I don't expect Republicans to own up to having read anything more challenging than a Tom Clancy novel.......Is it so difficult to get their narrow minds around the concept........If the Republicans will just sit down and shut up for a few moments."
Gee, I wonder why Repubs don't like "artists". The tone of your presentation is so reasoned and objective.
At heart everything in the life is sensitivity question. By definition the sensitivity of a liberal one is very different from the one from a republican, being to a side or another one of the political phantom implicaa his you see be with or against the art, not against all type of art, but of the art it jeopardize, intellectual and advanced. The money or estro subject, the rich ones estan in both parts are, them liberal and there is neocon, it depends on the culture and the cosmopolitismo in which they have lived, in having class or not having it.
Lisa, I'll take a stab at this question. As the party of business and the party that business supports, Republicans detest that which they can't measure. Art is something they can't measure and therefore have little interest in supporting, especially since artists themselves tend to trend towards progressive politics.
Art is also the purest form of free expression. While they may deny it, the goal of the Republican party is to turn America into a Theocracy. So, then the question becomes: Why spend money on people who don't support God's message?
Yet Hollywood has proven that Art and Commerce can coexist, especially in a recession.
Probably because artists and writers have better luck with girls than gops do.
I'm against the entire stimulus bill not just the part about the arts.
What part of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to spend our money on the arts? Why is the govt a better judge of what art the poeple like than the people themselves? If an artists paints something or sculpts something or writes something that the people like it will be bought and preserved. If the artist can't sell his art to the public why would we want the govt to use our money to buy it?
With programs such as the NEA the money doesn't go to the best artists it goes to the person that is best at filling our requests for govt money.
Does the phrase, " . . . promote the progress of science and useful arts", ring a bell? Do the members of the Party of Corporate Welfare (prior to September 19, 2008, when Paulson demanded entitlement for Bush's going away present to his cronies) really want to disavow the constitutional right to copyright, patent, and trademark in order to deny the rights of Arts as spelled out in our Constitution? The answer, as we know, is a resounding YES. But then, that's why the Party of Corporate Welfare is little more than a radical fringe group. By the way, RightWingMarine, if you are a member of the Party of Corporate Welfare, you might want to find another party to join. As an aside, real marines know what our Constitution says.
What part of the constitution gives the Government the authority to invade another country to "spread freedom and democracy"? Why is the government a better judge of what form of government is best for other cultures? If another culture can't form a liberal democracy themselves, why should we spend a TRILLION dollars trying to bomb them into adopting ours?
There has been a history of over 200 years of the US govt using it's military to spread our views around the globe. At least for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan our Congress agreed to the conflict.
But even if there wasn't this precedence, because a Constitutional power was misused in one way means it should be misused in another?
They hate democrats and Obama. They are threatening assasination. This is serious.
http://catherinemacivor.com/2009/02/23/right-wingnuts-threaten-assassination-and-civil-war/
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