December 17, 2004
EVERY STROKE LIKE A COFFIN TAP:
Here's One Use Of U.S. Power Jacques Can't Stop: "American influence" is the great white whale of the 21st century. (DANIEL HENNINGER, December 17, 2004, Wall Street Journal)
We see where a curator at France's Pompidou Center says his museum is opening a branch in Hong Kong, because "U.S. culture is too strong" there, and "we need to have a presence in Asia to counterbalance the American influence." With the Pompidou Center?"American influence" is the great white whale of the 21st century, and Jacques Chirac is the Ahab chasing her with a three-masted schooner. Along for the ride is a crew that includes Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Vladimir Putin, North Korea's Kim Jong-Il, Kofi Annan, the Saudi royal family, Robert Mugabe, the state committee of Communist China and various others who have ordained themselves leaders for life. At night, seated around the rum keg, they talk about how they have to stop American political power, the Marines or Hollywood.
The world is lucky these despots and demagogues are breaking their harpoons on this hopeless quest. Because all around them their own populations are grabbing the one American export no one can stop: raw technology. Communications technologies, most of them developed in American laboratories (often by engineers who voted for John Kerry), have finally begun to effect an historic shift in the relationship between governments and the governed. The governed are starting to win.
Rounding out the analogy, only Ishmael's get are likely to survive the wreckage of the French ship of state. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 17, 2004 1:45 PM
Ever been to the Centre Pompidou? One word: fugly. The sets for Robocop were more attractive architecture. Yep, I just looked it up to refresh my memory and it's as fugly as I remember. What did the Asians do to deserve the French?
Posted by: Governor Breck at December 17, 2004 2:09 PMWe are a virus for which there is no cure.
Posted by: Rick T. at December 17, 2004 3:09 PMLook, a 'cultural center' is such a weak yet quintessentially French response (er, is that redundant?) to their problem that it makes me laugh out loud. The American cultural center is everywhere you look, from ball caps with American sports teams to movies and TV shows to fast food.
The French ability to project culture exactly parallels their ability to project military force.
Posted by: Bruce Cleaver at December 17, 2004 3:49 PMMost engineers voted for Kerry? Not the engineers I know.
Posted by: Peter V at December 17, 2004 4:04 PMhigh-tech CA engineers?
Posted by: Sandy P at December 17, 2004 5:45 PMThe use of government to encourage the spread of your culture is the clearest indication that the market has rejected it.
Posted by: Bart at December 17, 2004 5:54 PMNonsense. Where would traditional Western culture be if it hadn't been for royal patronage? I guess we should let Bach wither because he can't compete in the market with Eminem.
You libertarians should bone up on your Adam Smith, who wrote very clearly of the limits of the commercial mind and saw that there were many necessary virtues in a healthy society that were outside the market ethos, if not downright antithetical to it. He was fighting public corruption and promoting wealth creation and civil liberty, not designing a self-contained ethical or aesthetic system.
Posted by: Peter B at December 18, 2004 5:37 AMAll that is needed for the fine arts to flourish is a leisure class. In the Middle Ages, it was the landed aristocracy who butchered their way into power. In modern times, it is the entrepreneurial class which actually created something to get their piles of cash with which to shower painters, composers and playwrights.
Neither Rembrandt nor Shakespeare needed government subsidies.
Bart:
Their works were, of course, commissioned by governments and government figures.
Posted by: oj at December 18, 2004 9:28 AMThe bulk of their funding as was the case with most writers, artists and others we celebrate was the leisure class. Just look at whom Rembrandt painted.
When kings and dukes sponsored art, they did so not out of some nebulous interest in public education, but instead because they wanted to be entertained, treating the public treasury they way you or I treat our checkbooks. In fact, they preferred the masses to stick with lepetomaines, jugglers, fire-eaters, and public executions.
Posted by: Bart at December 18, 2004 10:00 AMThe NYC City Council funds arts. Newark, NJ and Jersey City, NJ fund arts. I'm sure the same is true in any large city, after all, it's just as easy to phony up an arts grant as it is any other government program.
Posted by: Bart at December 19, 2004 8:32 AM