Reason.tv: 3 Reasons Not to Fund Art with Taxes (& Yes, There’s a Weiner Connection!)
by Reason TVA few weeks back, Hollywood movie stars and groups such as the Creative Coalition stormed Washington, D.C. to lobby for increased taxpayer funding of the arts. Most memorably, Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey told Hardball’s Chris Matthew that Abraham Lincoln was a huge theater fan who “understood that he needed the arts to replenish his soul.” (Not surprisingly, Spacey didn’t mention where Lincoln was assassinated or the profession of his killer).
But funding the arts with taxapayer dollars is a bad idea for at least three reasons.
1. Publicly financed art is easily censored art. Last December, the National Portrait Gallery almost immediately pulled a four-minute video called “A Fire in My Belly” after complaints from the Catholic League and politicians such as Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who objected to images of ants crawling over a crucifix. It’s hard to imagine a private museum so quickly and cravenly pulling an offending piece. But when the taxpayer is footing the bill, the most easily aggrieved among us yields a thug’s veto. Indeed, in February, scandalized Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) even called for getting rid of a 1922 statue in New York City due to what he says is its sexist portrayal of women.
2. We’re broke.
Advocates of public funding for the arts routinely argue that the budget of groups such as the National Endowment for the Arts comes to just pennies per citizen and the cost of just one Pentagon bomber is comparatively huge. But government at every level is flat broke, so it’s all money we don’t have. Defense spending, which has jacked up by over 70 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars since 2001, should be cut drastically. But that doesn’t mean smaller items should get a pass or that taxpayers should pony up for another season of Dr. Who reruns on PBS.
3. It’s unnecessary. NEA head Rocco Landesman has defended grants to groups such as the San Francisco Mime Troupe on the grounds that it is a world-famous outfit that has contributed mightily to the stage. Which is another way of saying it should have little to no trouble finding private patrons to help it out. Americans give around $13 billion a year in private donations to the arts. That’s a lot of money and if it’s not enough to fund every request, groups such as the San Francisco Mime Troupe will just have to figure out how to better work the crowd.
About 2.45 minutes.
Produced by Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie, who also hosts.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
| 
Follow Us on Twitter
Subscribe via RSS
Got a Tip?
47 Comments
As an art professional for over 20 plus years I couldn't agree more.
No 1 should be we are broke. If you want to fund the arts then donate your own money.
Do these MORONS really think that the House is going to fund MORE crap like this?
I do original crayon drawings of hamsters playing poker …… where's MY check ?!?!?
Remember on October 2009…the Obumble failure #471
The National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities are expected to receive their highest levels of funding in 16 years from a bill President Barack Obama is expected to sign into law by this weekend.
Under the Interior Appropriations Bill passed Thursday by the House and Senate, both cultural agencies were slated to receive $167.5 million for the 2010 fiscal year. Last year's budget allocated $155 million.
….From Pelosi with love
Should a veteran be homeless so we can fund a crucifix in a jar of urine while accruing trillions of debt and nation destroying debts?
Yeah, OK, but just make sure you don't touch the Cowboy Poetry Festival funding.
The last thing I want to see is a bunch of Cowboy Poets protesting in D.C. That would just destroy the image of the American Cowboy.
It actually depends on who you ask. Hint: Don't ask a "progressive."
By profession, I am an operatic tenor, and sing with a world-renowned opera company, here in the midwestern US. Many people believe that opera is a dead art-form, but our theater is sold out for every performance. Unfortunately, the company almost has to take federal funds … read that: YOUR MONEY … to stay in business.
But that's not the worst of it. There are people still composing opera, today. Most of them are in bed … yecchh! … with the radical homosexual agenda, and write this agenda into their operas (which never come up to the quality of past greats like "Rigoletto", "La Boheme", Wagner's "Ring des Niebelungen", and so on). But if you wish to write an opera, and have it performed, the Feds are the place to go to get it funded.
Naturally, since I have to earn a living in this field, my username is not my real name, nor even my performance name. I have to belong to a union in order to have a job, and I won't jeopardize that.
You, too? Geez, us illiterate conservatives are all over this site, aren't we?
In the mail! However, your check could get to you faster if you made your hamsters homosexuals!
me three! i've been making a living as an artist off & on for 30 yrs (currently on). if you need a taxpayer subsidy to do your 'art', you're not an artist, you're a parasite.
NOTE: this is NOT the same as being against legitimate forms of public art- sculpture in parks, etc.- but even those need to be heavily scrutinized and both the art itself & the expenditure weighed against the overall public interest.
"NEA head Rocco Landesman has defended grants to groups such as the San Francisco Mime Troupe on the grounds that it is a world-famous outfit that has contributed mightily to the stage."
As Oz from Buffy the Vampire Slayer once said, "Nobody deserves mime, Buffy." I would add that nobody deserves to be forced to pay for mime.
done largely as a demonstration of raw political power. "Hey you pu$$y Republicans- here's what we think of your weak-a$$ attempts to cut spending!"
yet another glaring example of how we got in this mess….
"Hey you pu$$y Republicans- here's what we think of your weak-a$$ attempts to cut spending!"
–I thought that was their argument for the $2 BILLION PIGFORD scam.
Once, I went to the General Manager of my company. I told him that my reading of our company was that we coud make money without taking federal money. He burst out laughing, and said almost what you said.
He said, "As long as the gravy train is rolling, we're gonna take a seat in the dining car. Champagne, anyone?!"
Inspiration and creativity are free.
How about buying some homeless people some blankets with that money instead…?
I'm a recent fan of opera, thanks to Fanthom.com. Hopefully the live performances in the movie theaters will boast attendence, appreciation and revenue for opera companies.
If this waste of resourses can't be defunded, how can we possibly have faith that ObamaCare will be only a bad memory?
If you "Actors and Others for Socialism", love the "arts" so much, support it with your own money.
That would show all, just how important you think this issue really is.
I live in San Diego. I heard a radio interview of a mayoral candidate, CA state Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher discuss what his plan would be if he was successful. One of the items he wanted to do was to successfully lobby the state of Kalifornia and the Federal government for more grant money…… SAY WHAT—?
This guy is supposed to be more on the conservative side and this is evidence that THEY STILL DON'T GET IT!
Spot on Joe!
I am detecting a pattern, the broker America is, the more money people think we should spend
A position supported in EVERY Ubama speech ever given.
Now if we could just eliminate all the unnecessary welfare like this, we'd be in much better shape
It's part of that whole Up is Down, Black is White, Wrong is Right mentality from the regressives. Imagine if we all tried that with our bank account…"Gee honey, looks like you spent a little too much on lunch today, better go buy a car so that lunch doesn't appear so expensive".
One of the truly great operas,"La Boheme", centers on poverty-stricken artists making their way in life, in the "bohemian" quarter of Paris. I don't think that there were any grants from the French government!
Since the days of the Medici, that is EXACTLY how art has been patronized, by public works.
Heaven forbid that we should force "artists" to actually, you know, work for a living.
Artists should find a job where they create something that people will buy without being subsidized.
Yes. Without the permission of the people, I might add …
They're here. One of my posts in this thread has already received a couple "thumbs down". Artistic conservatives don't fit the leftist worldview.
This is no different from a family rationalizing the cost of a monthly trip to a five-star restaurant and an annual vacation at Disney World while the bank is busy foreclosing on their home. Here's a hint, leeches: We're all "starving artists" now, from the federal government all the way down to the humblest citizen.
The NEA should receive ZERO funding.
Well, techically, there have been many periods where the tax money was donated, sometimes specifically for that purpose, and Lorenzo Medici himself, who, along with his father, pretty much started all this, used their own money. But you are still correct, since those days, much of public art has been financed by the government's tax collectors—
As long as there is mental anguish, misery, unrequited love and emotional pain along with a ready supply of alcohol and drugs, mankind will produce a steady stream of art.
As a conservative Democrat (yes, we do exist!) I have to agree. Yes, I appreciate art. Yes, I spend my money to see it, hear it and experience it. The liberal side of me isn't offended by an artist's personal views. Sometimes I don't agree with those views but thank God we still live in America. The conservative side of me IS offended that government is involved in funding art. Government shouldn't be dictating what art Americans can or cannot experience any more than it should dictate what religion we should adhere to. Governments from local municipalities all the way to the federal level are broke. Some of my fellow Dems – and some Republicans – haven't figured out that when you're broke there are no sacred cows.
As a musician, I think the government funding art is an outrage. It just another example of idiots forcing people against their will to pay hard earned money for things many don't want and some may even find offensive. It's an absurd concept. Typical of left wing morons.
Reason #1 is that it's not in the Constitution. Art can be supported through private funding and at the local level. The federal government has no business in earmarking money for liberal art, i.e., sex and socialism.
Also, the government diverts funds from the military, which is constitutional, to art and whatever else that aren't constitutional. E.g., SF used funds that were supposed to supply some ammunition for the military to build an art center.
You sir are between a rock and a hard place but,……
just from your post, one can not help but get the impression that,…
you are impassioned about what it is you do.
However, I truly believe that if the art world in this country is going to some day,……
start producing Rigolettos,,…The Thinkers,….or,…. Mona Lisas,…
we are going to have to wing our gifted ones away from,…..
the Federal Government teet.
Anyway,…good luck to ya Stephen.
This country is so regulated that feeding the homeless can get you arrested in some places. Please pass this on…it gives people something to think about…it is soooo crazy.
Three arrested, accused of illegally feeding homeless
Orlando police say they violated a city ordinance restricting the feedings.
June 02, 2011|By Susan Jacobson, Orlando Sentinel http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2011-06-02/ne...
Art is up on the top of lifes realms and it is beautiful, but food, clothing, shelter, comfort, necessities, transportation and education all come before the arts, which I love.
So if you want to support the arts, donate your own money. From what I see, those who patronize the arts have most of the money anyway. Leave our tax money & the Government out of it. Let that be one of the first Govt Agencies to be cut by obama the snake oil saleman.
On a personal level, and as a lover of all fine arts I've seen how funds are requested and obtained when there was no need for that. There was plenty of revenue coming in from everyday citizens.
Excellent article. Scr3w Hollywood! Those multimillionaires have been ripping US off forever. I love the way they live in their mansion up in the hills over Rodeo Drive. They have fund raisers, for what? If each of them donated a fraction of 1% of their income (which comes from US) they could carry the Country.
They're phoneys. Everyone has their hand out except for the straight forward hard working Americans who don't write applications for Govt Grants for a living. People like the 68 yr old Rancher yesterday, in N.M., who was gunned down in cold blood while working his Ranch. Thanks Obama and Hollywood Democrat Socialists for NOT keeping US safe while YOU party. –
Get your priorities straight Dem Socialists. People in this Country are living in terror every day, fearing for their lives, which are taken from them in silence every day. You "Bleeding Heart Liberal socialists" are always telling sob stories in Congress and throughout the Country, 'for the underprivileged.' That would also be we tax payers! many of whom are in bankruptcy because of Obama's toxic Socialist Democrat Policies. You are hypocrites.
Our Founders wrote that most democracies only last a couple of hundred years, and are followed by Dictatorship…and they said thre REASON was that "When the people reailze they can vote themselves MONEY from the TREASURY" that is the beginning of the END of a Democracy. And so it is today…Fund the ARTS, Fund the POOR, Fund public Radio, Fund your own state, Fund the Farmers, Fund the UNIONS, and FUND the Congress with Golden Retirement plans and Free Healthcare, Free haircuts, etc. etc. to infinity.
USA Today wrote a couple of days ago…We OWE $61.5 TRILLION for UN-Funded Mandates such as SS, Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans benefits, Public Employees Union Retirement, etc. etc. That's $550,000 per household.
Nancy said they should be able to quit their jobs and the rest of them support them with Obamacare. Remember that crud?
My sympathies pal! I am an opera lover and understand (sigh!) that a great deal of the classical canon wouldn't be performed if it wasn't for the presence of government funding. A world without Verdi or Brahms or Mozart is not one I would care to live in. Still it makes you wonder how fellows like Verdi and Puccini and even Berg got the job done without government financing. (Wagner at least had daffy old King Ludwig footing the bill and Mozart received some support from Joseph II.) You are right that just about every new piece of "serious" music has to have some radical political or homosexual theme to get produced – Usually with grant funds.
Best of luck to you and I hope that someday I will be able to see you perform.
If we simply eliminated all unconstitutional spending, we could easily balance the federal budget, pay down the debt, and be a free and prosperous country once again. Too bad that other than a handful like Ron and Rand Paul, the bozos on both sides of the aisle will not support such a "radical" idea.
Love it. Hollywood is able to fund plenty of village idiots like Spacey, let them fund their own stuff.
You must be logged in to post a comment.