IT'S ALREADY BEEN CO-OPTED:

Are Democrats Painted Into a Corner? Not Yet: The National Endowment for the Arts is a perfect target in the culture wars. (Jonathan Chait, November 19, 2004, LA Times)

After discovering that 59 million Americans voted to reelect a demonstrably failed president largely because he related to their culture and values, Democrats spent about a week desperately casting about for some social issue to chuck overboard so they could get right with middle America. Alas, after running through the usual list, they decided that they weren't prepared to abandon abortion or gay rights and had all but given up on gun control anyway, so there wasn't much they could do.

Well, even though the search was called off early, I have a late entry: Abolish the National Endowment for the Arts.

The NEA is a major stick in the eye to the, um, culturally traditional. (I was going to write "guys named Jethro who own pickup trucks" but I'm trying not to inflame cultural sensitivities here.) In the past, the NEA has provoked enormous controversy by funding artists such as Andres Serrano, whose artworks include a photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine. Two years ago, the NEA helped support a group that put on "Broadway Bares XII," an AIDS fundraiser featuring nude performers. And even though the overwhelming majority of its projects aren't controversial, let's face it, the NEA is in large part a way of forcing the NASCAR set to subsidize the art house set.

None of that would matter if there was a strong, principled argument for the NEA. In fact, there isn't.

The basic rationale for the NEA is that art is good — advocates tend to use loftier terms, but they're all synonymous with "good" — and the NEA provides for more of it. But there are lots of good things that don't deserve government support. [...]

It's amazing, in a way, that the NEA has survived as long as it has. It was created in 1965, probably the single year in American history when we paid the least attention to the dangers of government overreach. It faced budget cuts in the 1990s, but Republicans never killed it, and George W. Bush actually gave the NEA a healthy boost.

President Bush, to the consternation of the reactionary Right, saved the NEA by appointing a chairman who, unlike his predecessors, does not believe that art is good but that great art is good. Mr. Chait is, as is the Left's wont these days, trying to fight a battle the President already won.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 19, 2004 10:37 AM