Mr. judd;

penny-wise and pound-foolish. Not only is it wrong for government to be in the art business (for the same reason it's wrong for it to be in the religion business), but soon enough the NEA will be recaptured by the parasites as it was before. Normal people have better things to do with their lives, it is the parasites that have the time to spend rising to the top of fuzzy organizations like this. It's why originally conservative charities (like the Ford Foundation) are always, in the long term, captured by allies of the Left.

AOG's objection is a valid one, but who can deny the wisdom in Orrin's last sentence: "Since you can't get rid of the thing, it may as well at least do worthwhile work"?

AOG:

The Republican class of '94 fell on its NEA sword so often it looked like Rasputin.

Mr. Judd;

Then they should be using a strangling cord instead of a sword. The death of a hundred cuts works just as well as an outright cancellation.

I think that what is starting to frustrate pragmatist conservatives is that they feel that Bush is allowing the Democrats to have their cake and eat it too: they dodge the bullet on numerous issues where the President compromises with them, AND they get to label him an extremist, right-wing idealogue. I believe that Bush will have to cross the line his opponents have frequently cross, and use every compromise bill not only to praise the bipartisanship of the four or five Dems that supported it, BUT highlight the extremism of those who did not. (Incidentally, all of his potential presidential opponents would be in the latter category.)

It's interesting that the details about proposed cutbacks in AIDS treatment funding for Africa came out the same day as the spending increase for the NEA. While many conservatives would support reductions in both, if the Democrats do start complaining about Bush going back on his promise to Africa (or at least Paul O'Neill's promise to Bono), he can always shift some arts funding to AIDS funding and let the Democrats decide which one they want to argue for more in the press.

I have little patience with government-sponsored art but would prefer Shakespeare to Piss Christ.

However, I quarrel with the view that what is on offer from the "edgy" sector is "social pathology dressed up as art."

There's always some of that in a real art community, but there's more to it. On my recent trip to New York we went to a purely private performance of a new translation of Geothe's Faust. Sold out, too.

For some reason, the actors wore blue balloons on their index fingers, but otherwise the performance was a good as one could wish from a group with no budget. (Plug here for producers HERE Arts Center in SoHo, where my actress daughter interned a few years ago.)

> but who can deny the wisdom in Orrin's last
> sentence: "Since you can't get rid of the thing,
> it may as well at least do worthwhile work"?

I can--what is wise about such defeatism? The left sure didn't gain its long prominence in the arts and academia by looking at popularity of folks like Teddy Roosevelt and saying, "It's hopeless in America--look at the kind of people they admire!" They just went in for the long haul and look how much they got.

The American art scene has long been hijacked by the Left, to the detriment of American art and to the detriment of much more. Don't forget the influence that so-called artists and their followers wield on American campuses.

Harry, if they limited their edginess to blue ballons on the fingertips, but otherwise preserved the integrity of traditional artworks like Faust or Shakespeare's plays, it wouldn't be a problem. You are right, some good art is getting a bad rap because of the "social pathology dressed up as art" viewpoint, but I think that it is a valid viewpoint for most of the art that is promoted by the arts establishment and covered by the press.

Today art is largely a vanity project. The artist feels that he is like Midas, any ordinary object he touches becomes artistic gold. Claes Olenburg makes a model of a giant bag of french fries, and museums charge people to see it. Years ago I read a review of an art exhibit in the Star Tribune which consisted of sugar packets from various Minneapolis coffee houses that the artist had visited. Somehow his touch gave them artistic value that they did not posess before.

It is the vanity of the art collectors and curators that allows this scam to continue.

"Art" covers a lot of ground.

So does "fashion." We all wear clothes, but how many pictures of the clothes you and I wear appear on the back page of the front section of the the Times?

I don't much like the NEA, but a lot of what it does is more or less harmless, and some might even be valuable.

I think that, in a rich society like ours, those valuable services might well be left to private initiative.