{"id":1056,"date":"2009-09-21T12:30:34","date_gmt":"2009-09-21T16:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=1056"},"modified":"2009-09-21T12:30:34","modified_gmt":"2009-09-21T16:30:34","slug":"sir-humphrey-is-about-to-be-proven-correct-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2009\/09\/21\/sir-humphrey-is-about-to-be-proven-correct-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Sir Humphrey is about to be proven correct again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The American government is trying to exhort artists to support its goals . . . <a href=\"http:\/\/biggovernment.com\/2009\/09\/21\/how-to-corrupt-artists-in-one-quick-and-easy-telecon\/\" target=\"_blank\">and doing more than just exhorting<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>If you\u2019ve ever wondered\u2013and worried\u2013about where government support of the arts leads, look no further than the full transcript of an August 10 telecon  between an official at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and a group of \u201cindependent artists from around the country.\u201d The short version: It leads to the use of taxpayer-funded culture as a means of propagandizing for specific, partisan political aims. Which corrupts not just art but artists.<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>Given that the NEA prides itself on being the single largest funding source for the arts in the country, such arm-twisting by agency officials, however masked in fulsome compliments to creators\u2019 genius, is disturbing on its face. It clearly sets a political agenda for the very people who are likely to be applying for, well, NEA and other government grants. Does anyone think that the organizers were fishing around for projects that might complicate the public option for health care?<\/p>\n<p>Embedded in the discussion is at least one other disturbing point: a nearly lunatic delusion that artists are the vanguard of the proletariat. As Mike Skolnick, the political director for music impresario Russell Simmons, told the participants, the assembled crew \u201ctell our country and our young people sort of what to do and what to be in to; and what\u2019s cool and what\u2019s not cool.\u201d While that command-and-control notion is widely shared by liberals and conservatives alike, it is patently false. Artists and politicians hate to hear this, but the audience does have a mind of its own.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Sir Humphrey Appleby put it best: &#8220;Plays attacking the government make the second most boring theatrical evenings ever invented. The most boring are plays praising the government.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The American government is trying to exhort artists to support its goals . . . and doing more than just exhorting: If you\u2019ve ever wondered\u2013and worried\u2013about where government support of the arts leads, look no further than the full transcript of an August 10 telecon between an official at the National Endowment for the Arts [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,53,13],"tags":[102,269],"class_list":["post-1056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-politics","category-usa","tag-art","tag-propaganda"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-h2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1057,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056\/revisions\/1057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}