The NEA, Cont'd
Exasperated as I am by his latest effort, I’m always happy to engage Freddie in debate. He is upset by my recent post on a conference call coordinated by the National Endowment for the Arts. I won’t characterize its content until later in this post since that is a matter in dispute.
This controversy caught my attention via Andrew Breitbart’s sites Big Government and Big Hollywood, where a full transcript is posted. After reading it, I made two rather narrow points. “It is plainly a story that the mainstream media would do well to cover,” I wrote.
And I approvingly quoted Andrew Klavan making this point:
The NEA, according to its own website, is “the nation’s largest annual funder of the arts.” It gives tens of millions of dollars a year in grants to artists and art organizations. It does this, according to the legislation that established it, to “help create and sustain not only a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry but also the material conditions facilitating the release of this creative talent.” It is there, in other words, to protect artists’ freedom from the corrupting influence of financial deprivation.
The transcript of this phone call proves that the NEA has deeply betrayed that mission.
Those are carefully worded assertions, and I stand behind them. If only Freddie would engage my arguments, rather than the straw man he’s cobbled together by selectively blending various right wing commentary on this issue. That these stories are being discussed on Andrew Breitbart sponsored sites means that the facts in question are being spun in all sorts of hyperbolic ways — a habit I’ve criticized at great length. Nevertheless, Freddie implies that I consider the phone call to be a “horrible piece of unAmerican propaganda currently poisoning our government and causing Lady Liberty to weep bitter tears,” that I “didn’t bother to actually fact check the post” that I linked, that I implied “something really evil was happening” and that I am “opposing service to one’s country and community as tantamount to socialism.”
For the record, all that is utter nonsense that is completely unjustified by the post that I actually wrote. Also wrongheaded is this quintessential example of Freddie’s worst habit:
…the conservatives screaming and carrying on like they’ve found a dead body in Joe Biden’s trunk are actually completely wrong about what they think the call is about. But, yes, the hypocrisy rankles. It does indeed bother me that the ideology responsible for having people sign written pledges declaring their support for President Bush before they see our elected officials speak now complains about this. It does indeed piss me off that a few short years ago, Republicans were routinely doing things like calling for Howard Dean’s hanging for criticizing the war in Iraq, and yet now they stand enraged over this meaningless conference call. It does indeed make me angry that the president himself declared that anti-Iraq war argument “gives comfort to our enemies,” and yet now I read Conor Friedersdorf calling for national prominence on this nothing of a story.
I’m not screaming like I found a dead body in Joe Biden’s trunk, nor did I advocate loyalty pledges to George W. Bush, nor did I call for Howard Dean’s hanging, nor did I declare that anti-war arguments gave comfort to our enemies. But I think that the political philosophy of conservatism offers valuable insights about government and public policy. And some other people who call themselves conservatives did those bad things. So never mind that I disagree with all of those things — somehow Freddie’s view is that I am a hypocrite for objecting to the NEA call. I trust I need not elaborate on why this is illogical.
So why do I think the story deserves national media attention, and that it constitutes a misdeed on the part of the NEA? The biggest reason isn’t that the Obama Administration is trying to use artists to advance a particularly partisan agenda — it is that the White House is co-opting artists to advance any agenda, and the NEA is cooperating. Rather than focusing on its mission to advance good art to the best of its ability, it is engaged in an effort to advance the president and parts of his agenda. I titled my post “The NEA Flirts with Propaganda,” and I stand by that assessment. I don’t mean to suggest that all propaganda advances nefarious ends. “Go vote!” “Read to Your Kids!” “Eat Your Spinach!” I agree with all those messages. But I object to a White House that regards artists as useful tools in advancing whatever anodyne message it wants to get out — and I object to an NEA that exists to produce crappy public service announcements.
Sanjay does a great job fleshing this out:
The NEA is not a tool of (administration) policy, and that’s the scandal here. I realize that this issue isn’t as crucial to some of you young’uns; I remember when the NEA was criticized heavily for funding to Mapplethorpe and “Piss Christ” and the like. Well, for one thing I think most Americans thought that that was “good” censorship. But for another liberals at that time stood for the idea that the NEA is not a policy tool. We fought the idea that conservatives should be interested in gutting it because of the messages of the art it funded, with the belief that the NEA didn’t exist to “message.” The NEA director isn’t supposed to be interested in the messaging of the art: he’s supposed to want to know to whom it’s accessible, if it’s introducing more and more diverse art into a community, if it’s something that can promote arts education, if it’s keeping a classic American form vibrant…
You would tear that up. Conservatives would then be well advised to kill the NEA and NEH and Smithsonian and intellectuals would be deprived of a good argument as to why that’s a bad idea. Now, some of us don’t share the TAS enthusiasm for crapola hipster bands, and the jazz I live on is pretty dependent on organiztions like the NEA, and not really very good for messaging. So I want this bullshit killed, and somebody from the Obama administration fired.
You want to keep kids in school and encourage service and so on with clever art? Use the fucking Ad council. Immediate thought: Jesus, you really do need to read Europe Central or some of Belinsky’s misguided takedowns of non-programmatic art from the late Romantics/early Realists. Those guys thought like you are. Thinking this isn’t a pretty serious deal is failing to realize how much art actually means — which is why we have an NEA.
Beyond that major objection, there are other moments on the call that reflect poorly on the NEA — the call “to push the president and his administration;” the idea that a collective of artists focused on themes determined by the president is compatible with a vibrant art scene; the unquestioned assumption on the call that everyone supported President Obama’s election and shares his broad vision for the direction the country should take.
And yes, Freddie is correct that there wasn’t any quid pro quo being offered, or any threats, but it remains the case that two messages were sent: 1) This is the kind of art the White House would like to see; 2) The White House is in contact with the NEA, and the two entities do work together to advance the president’s agenda. If Freddie doesn’t think those facts will have any impact on the kind of art done by folks who want to get or maintain NEA grants, I think he is naive.
Quote: “Now, that’s what matters– the fact that what was said was absurdly trivial, and that the conservatives screaming and carrying on like they’ve found a dead body in Joe Biden’s trunk are actually completely wrong about what they think the call is about. But, yes, the hypocrisy rankles.”
Close quote.
Don’t talk to me about integrity.
— Freddie · Sep 22, 08:11 PM · #
Okay. I spoke too soon. Conor is more gracious, or tempted to indulge philistinism, than I asserted.
But now he knows first hand:
It is futile to talk to Freddie about integrity of the arts, or the NEA.
— Dictated by J Kim · Sep 22, 08:36 PM · #
Conor:
I suppose I’m just repeating myself needlessly, but I’m pretty sure some of the confusion (and obviously there is real disagreement hanging around here, too) descends from the difference between the argument Klavan makes (my short version: “the NEA is pushing a partisan political agenda”) and the argument Sanjay makes (my short version: “the NEA should encourage no presidential policy whatsoever”). Had it been more clear in your previous post that you associate yourself with the latter (and apparently not the entirety of Klavan’s post, but only the part you quoted? I’m not sure about that from what you’ve written…), I doubt you would have provoked such a reaction.
— rob · Sep 22, 08:41 PM · #
Freddie also expressed deep awesome sadness.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Sep 22, 08:50 PM · #
Tempest, meet teapot.
— Steven Donegal · Sep 22, 08:55 PM · #
Conor, you might have to disclose your educational bona fides to the little sniveler.
— Sanjay · Sep 22, 08:57 PM · #
NB, as I’ve said about four times now (and you quoted above), there is an organization that exists “to produce crappy public service announcements.” You can get funded by them, too!
— Sanjay · Sep 22, 09:07 PM · #
What the hell is Freddie’s point in his first comment above? If it’s about accuracy of quotation, he’s the one who, in his cited post, pretended that the best anyone could come up with from the NEA call was the line about being cool. Wrong: The offending sentence was the next one, the one that said that the goal was “to support some of the president’s initiatives, but also to do things that we are passionate about and to push the president and push his administration.”
— JD · Sep 22, 09:32 PM · #
the difference between the argument Klavan makes (my short version: “the NEA is pushing a partisan political agenda”) and the argument Sanjay makes (my short version: “the NEA should encourage no presidential policy whatsoever”).
Umm….I will agree with rob….nicely said.
I have to admit I find Sanjay’s argument shockingly persuasive, particularily the Maplethorpe reference.
But I object to the endless witchhunt for Obama’s Dark Socialist Agenda, and the slimy demogoguing of the low information base by Breitbart, Beck and company.
The truth is the base wouldn’t understand Sanjay’s logical argument if you ground him up and fed him to them, like a planarian training experiment.
Breibart’s piece just reinforces the base’s mad paranoia and the feelings of cultural disenfranchisement and social alienation that conservatives are experiencing….well…..I guess it isn’t paranoia, but the truth actually.
Conservatives ARE culturally disenfranchised and socially alienated.
But please, Sanjay, I beg you to continue to find me repugnant……
I don’t want to be in the same tribe as you and jd and KHatemarie.
A fate far worse than death.
— matoko_chan · Sep 22, 10:29 PM · #
and Klavan and Conor are participating in the demogoguery, from my read, even if they are more polite and use a thesaurus.
;)
— matoko_chan · Sep 22, 10:32 PM · #
As far as I can tell, the only truly objectional point on the call is the one guy who goes so far as to say “support the President, push the President and his Administration”. If the call had been jointly hosted by the White House, United We Serve, and HHS, and said that the NEA is going to enlist artists to “support and educate Americans about new Childhood Nutrition Initiatives”, would anyone be giving this the time of day? Would conservatives have had a leg to stand on? If you’re a conservative artists and you don’t support the initiative, don’t make art about it? I’m sure plenty of liberal artists would decline nea grants made in support of, you know, war.
— Nicholas Beaudrot · Sep 22, 10:37 PM · #
Nicolas:
Um, no. That scenario you sketch would be worse. A lot worse, and I’d want a lot of people fired. For the same reasons I gave above.
See, there aren’t NEA grants made to support war. Which would also be bad.
Again, what I’m finding weird is Freddie etc. — even Rob an apparently Nicolas — seem to think the content of the art to be made — that it is doing super wonderful shit for the government and right-thinking people will agree it’s super wonderful shit — renders it unobjectionable. As I pointed out, this is the fascist position. (Freddie says, no it’s not, but he says nothing else, because, well, it is, so he claims I’m showing off by knowing it, or something). This is a view of the state, art, and art’s function that preceded much of 20th century totalitarianism and was embraced by Hitler and Stalin alike: which is not to join the brigades of loons calling Obama a Nazi, I kind of suspect Obama himself was shocked and pissed about this phone call too. But let’s recognize this idea about art for what it is. The government ought not fund the arts because they push “right thinking.”
— Sanjay · Sep 22, 11:16 PM · #
Again, what I’m finding weird is Freddie etc. — even Rob an apparently Nicolas — seem to think the content of the art to be made — that it is doing super wonderful shit for the government and right-thinking people will agree it’s super wonderful shit — renders it unobjectionable. As I pointed out, this is the fascist position.
No, that’s not what I think, as thought I’d said before, but either you’re misreading me or I’m explaining myself poorly (probably the latter).
What I’ve said is that:
(a) The position staked out by Big Gov’t and Klavan is inaccurate with regards to the content and purpose of the call (that position being that the call is inarguably objectionable because of the content of the “message”).
(b) The position you’ve articulated (that the call is objectionable because the NEA should not be in the business of promoting any “message”, regardless of its content) is much more reasonable, but that I had a hard time sussing out that that was Conor’s position from his first post, which is why I objected to his first post as though his position was full-blown (a).
© That, because people tend to formulate reactions to events and then construct arguments to support those reactions, the contradiction between the stated mission of the NEA and (b) is not nearly as threatening to the continued well-being of the NEA as the propogation of (a).
Here’s what I haven’t said:
(a) That, as I’ve read various comments on the issue today, I’ve been convinced that (b) is correct. (I was careful, when I first explained that I saw a distinction between (a) and (b), to not say what I thought of (b), because I wasn’t sure.)
— rob · Sep 22, 11:53 PM · #
“The government ought not fund the arts because they push “right thinking.” “
But, this happens all the time. Forget the nea; the DoD pays Hollywood to put pro-military themes in movies. Sesame Street was developed to provide educational TV content to pre-elementary school children. I’m sure a bunch of the New Deal artwork and architecture was implicitly if not explicitly pro-New Deal.
Find me an era where the government didn’t enlists artists to get its message across and I’ll find you a unicorn.
Also, why doesn’t anyone believe there’s an ‘H’ in my name? The last name is French but the first is not!
— Nicholas Beaudrot · Sep 23, 12:01 AM · #
Had the president instructed the NEA to disseminate artwork in support of the War in Afghanistan or the death penalty, I HOPE that everyone would find this act abhorrent, and not only because she disagrees about the artworks’ content. It is troubling that some people don’t fully understand why, out of principle, an administration’s use of funds to advance its own controversial political positions is so objectionable. Mentioning a bunch of others’ objectionable behaviors is ineffective as an argument.
Additionally, I would like to suggest that people take a moment to cool down before making certain statements. Yes we all get angry about politics, and we do often insult people’s ideas or arguments too harshly. But I think that we should avoid framing things as an issue of “integrity” or moral character, rather than a mistaken, if sincerely held, belief.
— adina · Sep 23, 12:22 AM · #
If that’s what they were doing, I think people would probably be right to be suspicious.
But the point here wasn’t to promote any controversial Presidential political positions. Unless public service has suddenly become a partisan issue? I would have thought both liberals and conservatives could agree with a message of public service, but apparently being a conservative means that if Obama comes out against cancer, conservatives have to love cancer.
— Chet · Sep 23, 12:27 AM · #
Public service? Great. Promoting promoting public service? That’s a job for the Ad Council, not the NEA, as Sanjay has repeatedly pointed out.
— Kate Marie · Sep 23, 12:49 AM · #
But as has been repeatedly pointed out, Sanjay is wrong. The purpose of the NEA is to advocate for the arts and support the arts on behalf of the American people. Promoting art (and that’s not even what we’re talking about!) that reflects American culture is a part of that mission. Public service is an American value and a feature of our culture.
— Chet · Sep 23, 12:56 AM · #
Chet, old sport, here’s what I get from their website:
The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, both new and established; bringing the arts to all Americans; and providing leadership in arts education.
Nothing there either about “promoting art that reflects American culture” or about promoting values that are a “feature of our culture.” As Sanjay has repeatedly pointed out, once you travel down the thorny path of using the NEA to “promote art that reflects American culture,” you are going to have a helluva time defending “Piss Christ.”
But if anyone can do it, you can, old sport.
— Kate Marie · Sep 23, 01:07 AM · #
Well, look, Kate. The NEA supports the arts. As their budget is not infinite, they cannot support all artists; ergo, they support some and don’t support others.
How do you think they resolve that? Did you think they selected artists at random? I don’t understand how you and Sanjay think the NEA actually works. Can you elaborate?
— Chet · Sep 23, 01:09 AM · #
They discriminate, old sport — in the old-fashioned sense of the word. They fund artists. They don’t use artists as ad men, no matter how uncontroversial and “American” the message they want to promote. What’s so hard to understand about that?
— Kate Marie · Sep 23, 01:15 AM · #
On the basis of what, old bean? Keep working on it, you’ll get it, I think.
— Chet · Sep 23, 01:27 AM · #
On the basis of art they consider to be particularly excellent, as per their stated purpose.
— Kate Marie · Sep 23, 01:35 AM · #
Hey Chet I wanna put up some signs lecturing people about littering and putting out campfires.
I might add a picture of a rabbit relieving himself in a trash can (don’t ask why – it’s guerrilla style, about raising consciousness).
Think I can get a grant if I call it art? I mean that’s art right? public service, volunteering at the local BINGO parlor, registering to vote, mooning old folks, telling the homeless to get jobs while in a clown suit and nun habit – I mean as long as I also tell them to get off their lazy asses and be more productive for the sake of their great country.
What’s the difference, right? art, advertising, propaganda. It’s all the same as long as we make it help society.
Let’s make art work for us for once right? Since when was service or hygeine, safe sex, traffic safety, godliness, decency so bad? I think following rules, supporting the state, and doing as told is beautiful. At least that’s art I can get, yeah?
I’m so sick of artists always questioning serving my country and authority figures. I don’t get all that weird Maplethorpe stuff anyhow. What good does that do. It’s not excellent til it does the people some real tangible good. Obama’s just trying to make these artist types useful. Why shouldn’t they pull their own weight? We business men and bureaucrats do. Screw them. Thanks Obama. You so cultured.
— Michaelangelo Nader · Sep 23, 01:47 AM · #
Mussolini’s propaganda was worse than anything the administration has done, but Mussolini did some good things. Hitler was even worse than Mussolini, so, there’s no way you can compare Hitler with Obama. And although the Bush administration’s propaganda was not as bad as Mussolini or Hitler, Lenin was the worst. So, unless you don’t care about kids learning to read, there’s no way you can say this administration and the NEA are evil. But, if you think Bush’s administration was just hunky-dory and that fundamentalism is God’s defense against socialism, then, sure, you’ll have a problem with healthcare for poor, sick people, but it won’t make compassion propaganda, or the body in the trunk of Biden’s car some kind of sick conservative set-up. The point is national service — duh!
— mike farmer · Sep 23, 01:52 AM · #
Excellent at what, compared to what, and so on? Keep going.
I dunno. The NEA isn’t giving out grants to artists to promote National Service Day. Where did you get the impression that they were?
— Chet · Sep 23, 02:03 AM · #
No, they’re asking artists to whom they have already given grants (to the tune of almost 2 million dollars) to promote their message of National Service. What does promoting any particular message have to do with the NEA?
Spell it out, Chet. I know you can do it.
— Kate Marie · Sep 23, 02:08 AM · #
As repeatedly pointed out, NB, by Chet. This is like Chet’s assertion that everyone could see through my poor authority on physics. In fact people, left and right, seem generally to be agreeing with my position.
Nic*h*olas (sorry) that’s not applicable. As I’d pointed out originally, DoD, DoE, etc. are policy organizations: yeah, DoD funds propaganda! Not exactly, domestically — I don’t think DoD has paid Hollywood for pro-military themes in a long time, but they do refuse use of DoD equipment and so forth to some films; it’s a fine point. But NEA is supposed to do something else, and at a different level: note NEA really isn’t in existence to fund Hollywood blockbusters. NEA exists because those other agencies propagandize. Plus since NEA funds arts which might otherwise have no funding, NEA operates in a kind of messaging void: that is, Hollywood is quite happy to make movies DoD probably hates, too (“Stop-Loss”), and some of them make good money. But NEA and NEH are really in a position to dictate because they fund arts in areas and genres which might otherwise fail entirely.
The other examples don’t hold. The Education Department does fund, for example, some organizations (like CTW) which have an educational mission (including schools). But the terms of those grants are laid out by Congress (e.g. Sesame Street is funded by No Child Left Behind money). When the organization funds something suspected of taking a political position, watch the fuck out! The Smithsonian got pretty burned this way a couple of times as has PBS. You can push it philosophically like Freddie tries to do when he’s out of ammo: yes, at some theoretical level everything, even education, is politics. But the American people by and large understand, OK, we are funding Grover because Congress has decided to spend money pushing education.
So note we aren’t quite spending money there “pushing the arts.” I mean, OK, Sesame Street is in some sense art (and actually I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately for other reasons. My son has become some kind of Elmo cultist.) But I don’t think any ten people would immediately think of it as an “arts program.” I don’t think you do. It’s funded because it’s education.
NEA on the other hand funds your local performance of Antigone (to pick an anti-government story!) or your town’s photo gallery or PBS’s production of Oklahoma set in 1980’s Paris or Wayne Shorter’s residency at the Met. It exists to fund arts organizations which would otherwise have a hard time bringing artistic expression to the American people — and such organizations are struggling because they aren’t real good for pushing products.
Because we generally feel like much art is subversive (and the master of this subversion is Shostakovich, whom the state tried to use one way but who seems to’ve worked damn hard to do something else), and because we feel like great art in fact often is political and we don’t want local (in time) political ideas to filter it, the NEA tries very, very hard to fund work apolitically. There may not be need for such an organization. But there is one, and it is not a policy tool: other government organizations are. Pointing out that they are is sort of irrelevant. That’s also why Freddie is dumb when he starts with the assumption that NEA positions are there to support policy.
I value the NEA because by existing the way it does, it does, I think, do a lot of good for art. I think it at least nods to the idea that government ultimately serves art, not the (fascist) reverse. Make it explicitly a tool of policy and it will be killed: it has no nonredundant function (DoD and other organizations can fund propaganda) and administrations will want to use it maximally “well,” killing off those small-town performances of Tosca: why blow money you could spend promoting the President’s priorities, on a grant for Cecil Taylor?
Allowing this kind of thing, you will maim art in America. No more Mapplethorpes: not even under liberal administrations, because they will be accused, rightly, of responsibility for the messages NEA grantees choose. Is a threat to that kind of thing — an NEA administrator, who should know the fuck better, setting in motion that threat — big news? Yes, yes, yes, yes. You will take my Brad Mehldau from my cold, dead hands.
For this reason I think Rob is fundamentally wrong: if you explicitly allow (b) it becomes very very hard for you not to have (a). If policy can shape NEA funding, nothing controversial (read, arguably, no good art) will be funded, and NEA will be concerned that anything it underwrites doesn’t meet administration approval: you’ll subvert the whole thing.
It’s not clever to say, well, all governments try to promote favorable art. Sure. Again: this organization is exactly not for that.
— Sanjay · Sep 23, 02:11 AM · #
And, again, Nicholas: that the NEA be so free of political meddling, is an understanding we fought for. We did that because there was a very, very real threat that it wasn’t going to be allowed to continue to do what it did, with the concomitant loss (as explained above) to art. I’m not pushing fairy dust. So I want the door you’re prying open, slammed shut.
— Sanjay · Sep 23, 02:14 AM · #
Well, no, they’re not. The conference call wasn’t with any artists. It was among NEA administrators wondering how the NEA could participate in the National Service Day.
And you haven’t answered the question. Excellent in what regard?
— Chet · Sep 23, 02:22 AM · #
Sigh.
The conference call wasn’t with any artists.
I’m not going to do your homework for you, old sport. Check again. Read the transcript. Read the story. Good grief.
— Kate Marie · Sep 23, 02:35 AM · #
Really, Chet, old sport, you’ve been flapping your gums about this all this time and you haven’t understood that there was a group of artists on the phone call?
— Kate Marie · Sep 23, 02:48 AM · #
Artists qua artists, as Freddie says. The conference call was about administration, not art, not grants. How the NEA is going to participate in the President’s stated civil goals.
Which Sanjay finds scary, but does anybody really believe they didn’t ask themselves the same thing under Bush? C’mon. IOKIYAR, once again.
— Chat · Sep 23, 02:52 AM · #
Chet, not “Chat”. LOL!
— Chet · Sep 23, 02:54 AM · #
So there were artists on the phone call?
They were on the call precisely as artists. They were called together because they were the trendsetters, because if they tell kids something is cool, then it’s cool, etc. I’m paraphrasing, but really … did you read the transcript? This wasn’t about the artists advising the NEA how to participate; it was a “bull session” or “brainstorming” session about how the artists themselves could participate in the call to service in their local communities, etc.
No, they weren’t discussing funding, but, as I have already said, 16 of the groups represented on the call had already been funded by the NEA.
— Kate Marie · Sep 23, 03:07 AM · #
Which Sanjay finds scary, but does anybody really believe they didn’t ask themselves the same thing under Bush? C’mon.
The tu quoque is a logical fallacy, old sport.
— Kate Marie · Sep 23, 03:08 AM · #
I don’t really see that, I guess. The people who are talking are involved in the National Service Day stuff, primarily, and they’re talking about ways for the NEA to be involved in that.
Or any other administration. Why is it suddenly under Obama that the NEA has to completely divorce itself from civil culture? Can’t have any eye towards civil improvement? Isn’t that the whole point? Otherwise, why throw all that money to the arts, if not to improve civil America? The NEA is a public works project. Suddenly it’s “inappropriate” for the NEA to work for the public?
— Chet · Sep 23, 03:42 AM · #
They’re talking about ways for the artists to be involved in it, to promote it, to use their “powerful voices” to help promote it. See the bottom of p. 17, for just one example. The artists aren’t advising the NEA; they’re being exhorted by the NEA to use their powerful voices.
The tu quoque is still a logical fallacy.
Otherwise, why throw all that money to the arts, if not to improve civil America?
Then goodbye, Robert Mapplethorpe. I don’t know what else to say about this that Sanjay hasn’t already said above. Other departments exist to help “improve civil America” (though I’m not quite sure what it means to improve civil America). It’s not what the NEA is for. If you want the NEA to “work for the public,” or for what the current administrations thinks is good for the public, you have provided the groups you like to sneer at with ammunition to destroy the NEA altogether.
— Kate Marie · Sep 23, 03:54 AM · #
“No, they weren’t discussing funding, but, as I have already said, 16 of the groups represented on the call had already been funded by the NEA.”
So any artist who accepts NEA funding can no longer involve themselves in politics?
Interesting position.
— Erik Siegrist · Sep 23, 05:28 AM · #
So any artist who accepts NEA funding can no longer involve themselves in politics?
Interesting straw man.
— Kate Marie · Sep 23, 05:36 AM · #
“So any artist who accepts NEA funding can no longer involve themselves in politics?”
Great simplification Erik. That’s exactly the point. Twist it. Muddle it. Maybe you can hide the ugliness this exposes even from yourself.
Commenters react as if this is just another political scandal about some trivial bailout, stimulus, or public health issue. This is about making the beauty and culture a subservient part of those trivial, fleeting issues.
I don’t mind partisanship or bias, in general, but when you feel the need to apologize or justify this sort of thuggish behavior and outlook that sees even the arts as the rightful tool of power to shape public opinion on hot-button issues that flatter the vanity of politicians (not for the sake of public taste or the general refinement of our ability to appreciate beauty – but for the sake of the president’s preferred outcome and support), then you have not just lost the ability to think, but to care about what’s really important.
When this sort of ugly behavior just elicits blinks and shrugs, on a site devoted to the intersecting issues of arts, culture, and politics, then we can only conclude that the American scene may be more hopeless than anyone realized. I guess you get the “art” you deserve.
Americans’ inability to be offended at just this sort of thing is precisely why the NEA was created in the first place. A liberal democracy can’t last, and doesn’t really deserve to last, if it has become so ugly and coarse that it can no longer tell the difference between propaganda and art.
Honestly, I thought this site was sort of a cultural oasis. This issue is a real litmus test of that.
This transparently cynical and disgusting behavior should disturb anyone who cares about American culture; or anyone who just has an ounce of cultivation, refinement, or decency.
And yet some are so partisan and kneejerk they can’t even acknowledge how disgraceful and abominable this is. We’ve never had an administration that would stoop to turning the NEA into a recruitment tool for any euphemistic cause. Even Nixon wouldn’t have considered it.
If your first, or second impulse is to defend Obama because his goal of compassion or service is unqualifiedly noble, I’d say it is time to stop following politics for awhile.
Politics really does tend to flatten the soul and warp the mind. Seriously, go get help. If not a professional, then get thee to the theatre, or a gallery. Stay there for awhile. You have let your righteous bile infect even your sense of taste or culture.
The same sickness of soul even seems to render people like Erik from being able to distinguish the state supporting artists from pushing art to support the state.
— Dictated by J Kim · Sep 23, 05:48 AM · #
/shrug
Sanjay is right….the dude got fired, which is imho an admission of malfeasance, and why isn’t this over?
Oh…because Conor propped up Klavan and Brietbart demogoging the base?
Perhaps….Conor could fix that that.
— matoko_chan · Sep 23, 12:08 PM · #
For this reason I think Rob is fundamentally wrong: if you explicitly allow (b) it becomes very very hard for you not to have (a). If policy can shape NEA funding, nothing controversial (read, arguably, no good art) will be funded, and NEA will be concerned that anything it underwrites doesn’t meet administration approval: you’ll subvert the whole thing.
Two things:
(1) Essentially, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree, because you see a slippery slope here and I don’t. I think the difference in immediate, unreflective reaction that (a) and (b) will produce is sufficient to guard against falling down the slope; you don’t. I’m fine with that, and don’t expect you to find the next thing I’ll say persuasive, not that that’ll stop me from saying it.
(2) I’m not sure that “explicitly allowing (b)” is on the table. We can all agree, I hope, that no funding was explicitly on the table in the call. The objection that Conor (and Mark Thompson, in the comments of Freddie’s piece) have raised is that there was an implicit instance of (b). And even that, the administration has backed away from (though whether that is because they think the actions were genuinely inappropriate or because they think its the easiest way out, we’ll never know). Which makes me think that, whether there’s a slippery slope out there or not, we’re certainly not on our way down it.
— rob · Sep 23, 01:33 PM · #
No, Kate, it’s not a straw man. You’re ignoring that fact that most of the people on that call were using their art to support Obama before that call was made. There is nothing in that transcript to indicate that the NEA was bribing, coercing, threatening, or otherwise trying to force artists to do anything they didn’t want to do, or in many cases hadn’t been doing already.
If the NEA seemed in any way to be trying to shape or guide the politics of the artists, you’d have a point. But they weren’t. They were helping to organize artists who were already on the Obama bandwagon.
Perhaps you don’t think supporting politically active artists and hooking them up with people who can help them do what they’re already doing more effectively should be the NEA’s job. But that’s not necessarily out of line with the NEA’s mandate:
“The purpose of the Foundation shall be to develop and promote a broadly
conceived national policy of support for the humanities and the arts in the United States, and for institutions which preserve the cultural heritage of the United States pursuant to this Act.”
If you interpret “support” to mean only financial support — grants and such — then yes, Yosi Sargent and by extension the NEA overstepped their bounds.
If on the other hand you interpret “support” a little more broadly, then Sargent’s presence on that call was in keeping with the NEA’s mandate.
— Erik Siegrist · Sep 23, 01:47 PM · #
And for the record, yes I too find Klavan’s (and by extension Conor’s, since he supports it) attack on the NEA more or less indistinguishable from all the previous right wing attacks on the NEA.
The attacks are always some variation on “the NEA is promoting a liberal agenda!” This is no exception.
— Erik Siegrist · Sep 23, 02:00 PM · #
Well Erik, ALL of American contemporary culture is promoting a liberal agenda.
Look at Murray’s graph.
Murray meant that to poke fun at “pointy headed” intellectuals and “artsy fartsy types”, but look what the slope of the curve relly says….
Extreme liberal—> “Intellectual Upper: Also at the 95th percentile of income and with a graduate degree, but a lawyer, academic, scientist (hard or soft) outside academia, writer, in the news media, or a creator of entertainment programming (film and television).”
Who are the extreme liberals in contemporary America?
Culture producers.
Who are the rest of Murrays’ chart?
Culture consumers.
And the slope is steeply positive.
— matoko_chan · Sep 23, 02:16 PM · #
For the record, I stand by everything I wrote in that post, and I am proud of it, and I don’t need the blessing of commenters to feel so. Sanjay, you can insult me, you can constantly misrepresent my position, and you can snark and gibber, and really, I don’t care. I am happy about who I am.
— Freddie · Sep 23, 02:17 PM · #
Erik,
Your characterization of my position was a straw man because I never claimed that any artist who accepts NEA funding can no longer involve themselves in politics.
My point is that the NEA shouldn’t, and is not meant to, involve itself in politics. Artists, funded or unfunded, may involve themselves in politics all they want.
Sargent was fired. He also lied about the source of the original emails calling for the conference call. That’s an admission at least of the appearance of impropriety. It appears the Obama administration doesn’t take as broad a view of the NEA’s purpose as you do.
[I might point out that at least one of the artists on the call wasn’t as full-throated a supporter of the agenda as you suppose; otherwise, we wouldn’t have the transcripts.]
— Kate Marie · Sep 23, 02:42 PM · #
Of course that’s what the NEA is for. Why else would they exist to promote the arts in America? Why would anybody care about promoting the arts in America if it wasn’t good for America to do so? Why not promote pancakes, instead? Much cheaper.
— Chet · Sep 23, 02:43 PM · #
“Sanjay, you can insult me, you can constantly misrepresent my position, and you can snark and gibber, and really, I don’t care. I am happy about who I am.”
I think this calls for a group hug.
— mike farmer · Sep 23, 02:56 PM · #
Who says pancakes aren’t good for “civil America”? LOL.
— Kate Marie · Sep 23, 02:57 PM · #
I think this calls for a group hug.
Mike, you are correct.
{{{{Freddie}}}}
Freddie, don’t ever forget that you’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and goshdarnit, people like you!
— Kate Marie · Sep 23, 03:01 PM · #
I’m convinced: It’s time to eliminate the NEA already. A ~$100 million US agency that turns everyone who tries to discuss it into bickering drama queens would have to crap diamonds to be a net plus for our society. Briefly: No, this conference call doesn’t put it on the path to destruction; no, this has nothing to do with fascism; no, this is not at all how the NEA should be run; but no, this is exactly how it’s always been run. I’m sorry; was there still someone thinking Obama was a transformative politician rather than Bill Clinton 2? That person can sit down now.
OTOH, if any of you are actually proposing eliminating the funding of propagandistic art from the Federal government, then I’m all ears. I’d even specifically support transferring every dollar saved on that over to the NEA*. But bleating about art being corrupted by serving the nation, when you already live in a nation where the Pentagon advertising budget** alone dwarfs the entire NEA, just makes you sound clueless, blinkered and hysterical. Although to be fair, you may really only be clueless, blinkered or hysterical.
* Which I would then eliminate. j/k LOL.
** What is up with those crappy CGI Marines commercials where the eagle morphs into the flag into the Marine or something? Jeebus Kristos, those suck. Even the communists could figure out how to make propaganda visually arresting, and here our armed forces make propaganda that looks like some kid in a basement who just got his first copy of Premiere.
— Bo · Sep 23, 03:02 PM · #
What is up with those crappy CGI Marines commercials where the eagle morphs into the flag into the Marine or something?
I don’t think they’re trying to appeal to you…
— rob · Sep 23, 03:12 PM · #
Kate Marie, this reply party is finally winding down. Friedersdorf has since added like seven new postings, elsewhere, so I think everyone else is either gone or passed out. It’s just you and me. The time has come for me to express my real position: I like to be spanked.
— chet · Sep 23, 03:22 PM · #
I thought you’d never ask. Tediously parsing language and misrepresenting your views all day gets a girl hot. Name a time and place. I can’t wait to make you suffer.
— kate marie · Sep 23, 03:23 PM · #
Why are Freddie, Nicholas and others unable to grasp why this is so disgracefully oafish and disgusting?
If this really is indistinguishable from funding real art and real artists to you, Erik, it says more about you that you can’t conceive of a criticism against truly flatheaded hamfisted power wonkery that isn’t categorized as some form of “another attack on the liberal agenda.” Is this really what you think the liberal agenda is? When did liberalism become the refuge of undiscerning philistines and their apologists? Let me off here.
Really, it’s not “scary,” Chet. Not everything is a political charge of evil conspiracy. This isn’t some political attack that is defensible on any political grounds. It is the symbolic and effectual debasement of all that politics itself is supposed to serve and be about.
It is the symbolic and effectual utilitarianization of everything. And only the most myopic of partisans would apologize for that without wincing.
Don’t just instantly start lathering up in partisan grease. No one is accusing anyone of high crimes or impeachable offenses. You don’t have to just play the same old Bush canards.
And saying things like “this is just a harmless discussion about service and compassion, and Mussolini did it too, and you are a Christianist” does not come close to excusing this.
It’s not about a slippery slope to me, rob. I don’t think this is the end of the NEA. I don’t think republicans or anyone will really make a winning campaign issue out of this.
Of course, I might expect this sort of behavior from a Prez Huckabee anyway (that’s a scurrilous slander, but I can’t think of anyone else who has a shot and would be so base as to encourage such behavior), and I suppose some might fear that the Dems will just be hypocrites to protest the funding of pro-life anti-gay poster artists in the future.
Conor has a point that there are no valid grounds to defend the NEA’s mission or to criticize a future Bush who will use the NEA to churn out propaganda to support a war or sterilization of atheists. But that’s not my fear at all.
I am not even fearful – something like this would have been my fear all along (if I thought it ever could happen). I am not afraid of some slippery slope: I am sickened by the knowledge that the Dems will indeed protest such future actions, but it will just be words. They will only see it in terms of agenda and policy. Just another spin game about advancing their message, gaining the power to do nothing more but advance the message further, for more power, ad infinitum. The problem isn’t that this gives the right ammunition, but that it exposes the left to have lost the ability to see anything higher than politics and power. There is no “liberal agenda” anymore, except to promote “liberal” candidates and win in order to prevent the right from winning power.
They can no longer think in terms of purpose. It is all just rhetoric, aimed only at gaining ground on the horizontal, because many of them seem to have lost all sense of the vertical, because, it seems that way too many of them right now are incapable of even seeing the obscenity of this action. Not because it promotes any agenda in particular, but because it represents the political strangulation and rape of art and culture by sheer tackiness itself.
Culture no longer has a safe harbor. Its only patron is the crude, lowbrow marketplace now. The administration has blithely declared culture itself its own servant. This is way beyond everything is political. This isn’t about promoting “values” or “ideals” – it is about promoting specific day-to-day policies. That’s way beyond politics or the culture war – th culture war was about how we make laws and policy serve and elevate culture – make it better. Obama’s people apparently see it the other way around, and think of the NEA as another recruitment tool and message vehicle.
I don’t even care about ACORN. Incorporate banks and GM into the govt, that’s fine. But when you make the NEA itself into just another ACORN office (or defend it) in order to continue and expand the election campaign, you have lost all my respect. It’s not about an agenda at all. It’s about someone who seems incapable of getting out of promotion/ advertising/branding mode to actually do something for the country besides getting everyone “on board” and serving, not the nation, or an agenda, but the message itself.
But that’s just because American don’t know or care about art or the noble mission of public funding of culture.
It’s not demagoguing chan. Demagoguery (‘leading the people’ to better appreciate their world and humanity as beautiful through the beauty of the world and humanity, rather than leading them through beauty to do and opine specific things we would like to accomplish as policy wonks) is the distinct mission of the NEA – it’s about how we demagogue: Are we going to lead the people to appreciate the finer things in life, or are we just going to look at art as another means, rather than an end – as another tool we can use to cynically manipulate them and brand our preferred policies.
There is not going to be any effective demagoguing on this issue. It is exclusively an elite issue, about what is elite and how it can remain elite in a materialistic mass democracy. The masses are going to shake their heads, but not really see the real outrage here (Where’s the scandalous immorality, where is the lie, the higher taxes? ) – but the fact that you all and the administration don’t seem to get it is what is so appalling and sad.
That’s the whole crux – the administration and many of its apologists seem incapable of distinguishing art from message, culture from campaigning. That’s all. And that is much worse than some stupid political debate about liberal artists or the liberal agenda. All that is now over. It was all just slogans to too many. There’s no “hope” or slope. We have now reached the bottom. Our great elite leader has openly embraced the lowest form of vulgarity itself. Liberal art and Liberal culture themselves have been undermined.
— Dictated by J Kim · Sep 23, 03:35 PM · #
I was going to ignore you, J Kim, but that last post is just too funny. “Real art” and “real artists”? Really? That’s where you want to go? OK, fine. Please indicate which of the following is “real” art and which is mere propaganda, and why:
1) Fairey’s Hope poster
2) Capra’s Why We Fight
3) Riefenstahl’s Olympia
4) Picasso’s Guernica
Thanks bunches.
— Erik Siegrist · Sep 23, 04:26 PM · #
Not me. Did you have a reply to my point, though?
— Chet · Sep 23, 04:33 PM · #
For the record – I LOL’d.
— Chet · Sep 23, 04:35 PM · #
Wow, who knew artists with telephones could be so powerful!
— Chet · Sep 23, 04:37 PM · #
Dear “chet” and “kate marie,”
Ah, of course — because anytime a woman expresses her views anywhere, it’s all about teh sex, right? Any exchange or dialogue in which a woman participates — especially if she’s annoying to some sanctimonious fool — is begging to be sexualized. Typical.
— Kate Marie · Sep 23, 05:06 PM · #
Another great point Erik. you got me there. Ha ha. Art isn’t real. There is no such thing as beauty. Just a bunch of “opinions” and relative “values”. you’re right.
How dare anyone say something is true or real or better. I say that realty sign is art, and dammit it is, if I can sell it in a frame.
It’s no more real than any propaganda. Art is just a made up category.
May as well just promote and encourage a bunch of lithographers to pump out the only things that are real and matter – you know advertising for corporate sponsored bills, public service, patriotic responsibility, and the ongoing war against drugs.
You’ve really opened my eyes to the lie that there is anything more or more real than propaganda. What a deep thinker you are.
Who needs taste. Everything is equal. Everyone is right. Now I can be happy too.
Thanks for revealing that sham “aestheitics” with your stunning perspicacity to question “reality.” And thanks for showing yourself as what you are.
Is this what it feels like to become conservative? Because I don’t feel conservative. I feel like a lot of liberals have just taken off their masks. They were the troglodyte philistines all along.
— Dictated by J Kim · Sep 23, 05:28 PM · #
J Kim, I ‘splained this already.
liberal elites are the culture producers. Liberals OWN teh culture. We own hollywood, art, music, academe, literature and science.
EXTREME liberal elites, if you believe Murray.
The base wouldn’t understand this issue if you ground Sanjay up and fed him to them like a trained planarian.
So they get demagogued by Klavan and Breitbart as this being “liberal indoctrination” via the arts.
Conor says “propaganda” so he supports the troglodyte postion.
The hard data is conservatives have been wholly disenfranchised from culture.
What do you suggest to change the dynamic?
Affirmative action university positions for conservative scientists and republican professors?
NEA grants to xian rock bands and religious statuary makers?
It is what it is.
bi la kayfah
— matoko_chan · Sep 23, 05:32 PM · #
Dear real Kate Marie,
If you want to join in, by all means we’d love to include someone with your moxie. Who says three’s a crowd? Together, we’ll punish chet’s poor, neglected hindquarters in full Bettie Page style. Can’t wait.
Affectionately,
— kate marie · Sep 23, 06:00 PM · #
Yes, Chan. I agree – artists are mostly left-wing, if anything. I think you’ve misunderstood what I wrote. I don’t think anyone is saying that money should be given out equally on the basis of party affiliation.
But it sounds like you are deliberately missing the point in order to make this an elite/ mass issue – but like I said, it really isn’t – it’s about what’s elite in the first place – not left-right, but high-low.
Do you really think that’s why anyone is genuinely upset (I’m not talking about those who might try to get political miles out of this through demagoguery – like I said, the people will mostly shrug over this – no obscenity was funded, no blasphemy) just because the artists on the conference call were (probably) liberal? That’s incidental.
Who besides Hannity would even say they want conservative artists to be included in a conference call that requests promotional policy cool-placement marketing?
You want to accuse Conor of demagoguery, but that’s not just a convenient slur – it was the NEA’s original mission.
There is a big difference between the demagoguery that says “they support degenerates who paint nekkid ladies, not in my amerka!” and the noble demagoguery that is (was) the NEA: pumping money into culture and arts that otherwise would not receive those funds, for the purpose of leading the masses, ever so slightly toward some appreciation, enjoyment, or at least tolerance, of creativity and beauty.
The administration showed a complete blindness to this distinction. Funding gay artists or chrstian artists or promoting a certain style of art (good, bad, inspiring, offensive, nonsensical) happens all the time. That’s not what happened.
They went out of their way to request and make clear they were looking, not for excellence, beauty, virtuosity, edginess – they wanted useful art – useful for promoting specific priorities of the president by making these things “cool” and marketable.
Look, if you don’t think that’s unprecedented and beyond the pale, I can’t make you. Either you care about art and beauty or you think it’s fine to reverse the hierarchy and flow of services between culture and state.
I mean you can at least take comfort that you’re in the majority, if this really doesn’t bother you. I guess.
— Dictated by J Kim · Sep 23, 06:08 PM · #
“That’s way beyond politics or the culture war – th culture war was about how we make laws and policy serve and elevate culture – make it better.”
This sentence kind of baffles me. You make it sound like “the culture war” was a war against the lack of culture, when it actually refers to a war between different cultures, which is a very different thing. The culture war has nothing to do with elevating culture, it has to do with determining which culture’s values we would use to decide which laws to make or policies to support. Which is neither here nor there with regards to the issue at hand, which has to do with the specific separation (or lack thereof) between a political entity and a cultural one.
And I think everyone pretty much agrees that the call was a stupid move, and they shouldn’t have done it. But no one agrees on whether it signifies the creeping expansion of a totalitarian state or a relatively harmless overreach by a fledgling NEA employee, or something in between.
As Erik points out, you really can’t separate art from politics. But in a more practical (and specific) sense, we can, and should, try to insulate political considerations from the running of the NEA. But I (painfully) read the whole transcript and the only problem seems to be that the NEA person shouldn’t have been on the call. Though the NEA guy seems to think of himself more as part of the artistic community than as a government representative, which to me signifies that he really just hadn’t considered the implications of his involvement. Stupid, yes, totalitarian, no.
Instead of trying to respond to people throwing around the f-word (fascism) it seems like it would be more effective for Democrats to say, “mmm…. we’re not even going to go there. Let’s respond to the more reality-based accusations, which we actually agree with, and talk about how we’re glad that they pointed out this misstep, and what steps we have taken to address their concerns.”
— Sunny · Sep 23, 06:09 PM · #
I just can’t stop imagining being the guy in the next cubicle while J Kim dictates all this. Awkward.
— Bo · Sep 23, 06:33 PM · #
_And I think everyone pretty much agrees that the call was a stupid move, and they shouldn’t have done it. But no one agrees on whether it signifies the creeping expansion of a totalitarian state or a relatively harmless overreach by a fledgling NEA employee, or something in between.
As Erik points out, you really can’t separate art from politics. But in a more practical (and specific) sense, we can, and should, try to insulate political considerations from the running of the NEA. But I (painfully) read the whole transcript and the only problem seems to be that the NEA person shouldn’t have been on the call. Though the NEA guy seems to think of himself more as part of the artistic community than as a government representative, which to me signifies that he really just hadn’t considered the implications of his involvement. Stupid, yes, totalitarian, no._
Before I duck out, I’d like to associate myself with Sunny’s comment and endorse the “relatively harmless overreach” option.
— rob · Sep 23, 06:48 PM · #
But you can do your damnedest to separate funding for art from political agenda.
Remember, without fig leaves we would see Adam’s cock.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Sep 23, 07:21 PM · #
Sunny,
you say “You make it sound like “the culture war” was a war against the lack of culture, when it actually refers to a war between different cultures, which is a very different thing. The culture war has nothing to do with elevating culture, it has to do with determining which culture’s values we would use to decide which laws to make or policies to support. Which is neither here nor there with regards to the issue at hand, which has to do with the specific separation (or lack thereof) between a political entity and a cultural one.”
I didn’t mean it that way. The culture war infected the cultural mission of the NEA (to make it better, i.e. more elevated, more supportive of that which served no other purpose than to promote what is beautiful for the sake of beauty and culture (as in high culture) itself, which really finds no substantial support in the capitalistic market system outside the New York Art Industry scene of the few wealthy elites with some taste).
The NEA represents a way for elites to publicly promote refinement and good taste among the masses, in the form of high culture, by publicly funding creators and creations.
Of course, as you say, and I tried to (originally, last thread), what is high, better, and an improvement is a matter of taste and already thoroughly politicized because elite’s understanding of these things will differ according to their political outlook.
So of course it’s natural that the culture war infected the opinions about what was worth funding or was ennobling or improving the general culture, according to the two (or more) cultures that saw these things differently.
But I meant to say this is not an example of the same old debate about the president funding the wrong low-brow or elitist artists who ruin culture rather than improve it.
This was a disturbing deliberate refusal even to care about the issue both sides shared. The call was not about a new aesthetic or funding a particular type of art – it was the promotion of those who would be the willing instruments of communication for the administration.
It was a call for artists to serve by producing clear, resonating messages through their powers of “cool”, to give an image and brand to particular issues dear to the president’s heart.
I did not use the f-word (fascism). Nor did I say this was totalitarian. I said it was ugly – not unamerican, but anti-art.
(Hell, technically the NEA already is a modestly fascist institution in the sense that it is meant to empower the state to direct culture toward the general improvement of the folk. But call it what you will, I agree that such an illiberal institution, can actually do some good in a liberal capitalist society by helping correct some of its crass tendencies and excesses (at least that was the noble intention, despite the NEA’s small budget and minor impact).
Hell, even most fascists and totalitarians could distinguish between art/culture and propaganda/marketing.
What is appalling is that the administration (and many commenters) don’t seem to be able or willing to do the same.
— Dictated by J Kim · Sep 23, 07:41 PM · #
Kate, I owe you an apology. Obviously I was not the author of the remarks that you object to, but I stated that I found them amusing. But I was wrong to and I should have realized that. You have ample reason to be insulted by such sexualized taunts.
Regardless of what you think of me, I don’t want you to think of me as someone who participates in or condones sexism just for laughs.
— Chet · Sep 23, 08:49 PM · #
OK, well, it has to be said that I don’t, today, give a fuck about liberty or freedom, partly ‘cuz I’m busy, but mostly ‘cuz there’s a woot-off.
Freddie, wow. I mean, wow. No way I could make more fun of that; that’s the most pathetic thing I’ve seen. In fact, it’s caused me to change my mind. I used to think you were a total pussy. But I can’t imagine having the guts to post something that pussified. It’s so sniveling it couldn’t have come from a sniveler.
It’s like a paradox. Dude…I just blew my mind. Well, can’t be Freddie, cause I’m sure he’d admit he hasn’t yet found me flaunting a Hahvuhd necktie anywhere, so it’s just his insecurities.
Quick notes: Siegrist’s idea isn’t a straw man. It’s just a misunderstanding. Of course art is political as are artists; that’s what we’re trying to protect.
I’d be more sympathetic to views that this is theoretical or not a big deal if it hadn’t already happened. I think we’re having a problem here because of a young audience. Find yourselves a graph of NEA funding over time. Watch it stall with the 1989 controversy and then plummet (under Clinton, yet). When I say you’re flirting with killing the NEA it’s because you’re flirting with killing the NEA.
And the NEA matters. I keep seeing these goofy ideas about how much Army spends on commercials or what have you. (1) those aren’t really art (yeah, I know, spare me, Warhols) and (2) they aren’t doing something in the area the NEA operates: if you’re seeing a recruiting commercial you’re seeing lots and lots of other, similar and similarly designed, commercials. The NEA funds little theater productions in towns that wouldn’t otherwise have any, or arts openings in poor communities that wouldn’t get them. It is justly proud of how surprisingly much art is dependednt on it. That small budget buys a lot (in part because it tends to partner with other local organizations).
Nobody’s misrepresenting anything. Chet: “Why would anybody care about promoting the arts in America if it wasn’t good for America to do so?” That is the fascist position on why we have art, yes. I suppose not everything fascist is bad — but that position is very definitely fascist, and totalitarians all embrace it.
Which is my biggest issue here. There is a clear liberal perspective on this and I took it. For this I have been grouped as a right-winger repeatedly on this thread, and others where I took what was really not a conservative position. That’s surprising because I have been active in liberal causes for some very long time, I’ve stood on corners in rain holding “Kennedy” signs, I’ve done public service, and work now in public service where I get to help a lot of underprivileged people and occasionally get to kill dangerous, stupid and grossly illiberal policy. I pointed out this irony in the last thread: Freddie and Chet did their dumb little tag-team on “what’s wrong with people taking that position,” and by wondrous coincidence every single specific example Freddie gave of conservative stupidity, happened to fall into an area where I have vastly better liberal bona fides than does he. But this has no bearing because somewhere after ’92 “liberal” apparently no longer meant you do shit, it meant you bitch and bitch and bitch. On blogs!
A consequence of this is that the faux liberals here came in saying, nobody did anything wrong, because that’s the team line: not the liberal position. You’ve got Nicholas up there saying, hell, government always propagandizes so why can’t the NEA? and you have to sneer: all governments wage war, why cant the Bureau of Indian Affairs? All administrations are partisan, why not direct the DoJ to selectively prosecute by party? It’s not even smart. And again, we have real history about how this kind of thing has fucked up the NEA or the Smithsonian. But you can certainly wave argumentative fairy dust that says it won’t.
The other, lowest debating point among the faux liberals right now is what Freddie did in his post: damn, those Bushies were so bad, there was torture and DoJ firing and coverups, and that they’d be pissed about all this is just so damn phony, because it’s nothing. Well, for one thing, neither Conor nor I endorsed any of that Bush crap. I hated it so much I gave up a decent academic science career and lots of money to try to help stop it. But more importantly, it is the stupidest argument ever made because: what, one administration that’s mind-bogglingly terrible means I can’t be pissed at malfeasance of a lesser scale ever?
I have seen people deploy this, hey, the outrage is totally bogus, crap too much now. Obama’s decided prisoners at Bagram don’t have habeas rights. He’s protected odd state secrets privileges and tried to muscle the Brits on them. He’s snubbed the Dalai Lama for realpolitik. He’s ventured into unwarranted protectionism, dropped the ball on financial reform, and biffed a lot of legislation. And: I like the guy, and God knows he’s not on his worst day in Bush’s league of crappitude. So what? Much of that stuff is still outrageous, as is this NEA call. If you think “things were worse” is a justification for things being bad, you’re a fool.
In which case, you should be spending your money at the woot-off too.
— Sanjay · Sep 23, 09:22 PM · #
I’m not saying that’s why we have art. I’m saying that’s why the NEA funds art. Isn’t it a colossal waste of money if there is, in fact, absolutely no social good that comes from support of the arts and artists?
This is such an obvious point that I can’t comprehend how it could be contentious. Isn’t art good for us? Doesn’t the NEA fund art because it’s good for us that it does so? How is that the “facist” position?
Oh, right. Totalitarians do it, so we have to hate it. Hitler hated cancer, so Sanjay loves cancer.
— Chet · Sep 23, 10:24 PM · #
Chet,
Thank you very much for your gracious apology. I know (and knew) that you weren’t the author of the comments that annoyed me, but I appreciate your acknowledgment that they were insulting.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think of you as the kind of person who would condone sexism just for laughs, and I’m impressed by the integrity you’ve shown in your comment.
Henceforth, I will try to remember this little moment of grace in my dealings with you. Heck, I might even be willing to admit I’m wrong once in a while. :)
— Kate Marie · Sep 23, 11:03 PM · #
J Kim, I don’t know if you are making my point or just completely missing it: I don’t think there is any particularly compelling reason to be appalled, as I don’t believe there was any “disturbing deliberate refusal.” Rather, the problem was the complete failure to deliberate on the consequences. It honestly appears that they didn’t even think of the implications of what they did. Because of that, I think it is right to call attention to their failure, to make sure they don’t do it again in the future. But I don’t think it holds huge implications for the future of American art.
And this: “It was a call for artists to serve by producing clear, resonating messages through their powers of “cool”, to give an image and brand to particular issues dear to the president’s heart” is not, to me, “anti-art”. For thousands of years, art has been a tool for disseminating political ideas – from the Medicis to George Orwell. Do you not think Picasso’s Guernica a legitimate work of art, because it was commissioned by the Spanish Republican government to garner attention for their cause? Again, the issue is not that someone in power was endorsing art, it was that this specific non-partisan government agency was involved in a meeting about furthering a political agenda.
And Sanjay, your post has so much drama it makes my teeth hurt, but behind the testosterone and italics and bolding and exclamation points and name-calling I actually agree with some of what you say. (But I have to say the sheer level of drama makes me want to disagree with you, and certainly detracts from your actual substantive comments). Yes, previous malfeasance is absolutely no excuse for current mistakes. I just can’t sustain that level of outrage for this issue as for others. But I guess you can gin up the passion when it isn’t really just about this, but about everything that “faux liberals” stand for…. which is about where I lost interest.
— Sunny · Sep 23, 11:15 PM · #
I think I’m going to try to preserve this high note, then, and not look at any of those other threads again. :D
— Chet · Sep 23, 11:42 PM · #
Well, well, just listen to you two. . .it appears my sexist remarks have paved the way for an unlikely truce, including a warm exchange of emoticons. My insulting behavior redeemed itself, after all, yielding a rare flower. I don’t want to jump the gun, but these could be mere baby steps to an enduring and civil friendship— spankings optional.
Don’t mention it, real Kate Marie, you’re welcome.
— kate marie · Sep 24, 04:38 AM · #
Fair enough Sunny. I can understand your forgiveness
But I think you go way too far in excusing this as a mere mistake that represents nothing very new in the history of man or art.
And, to clarify, I’m not worried about the future of American art. (The NEA isn’t meant to actually give rise to or regulate and direct the art scene. Artists and art will carry on with or without them.)
Its mission was to carry out the bipartisan intention of taking away some of art and artist’s dependence on the market in order to fill a vacuum that exists in any egalitarian capitalist society: to supply the patronage that makes art for art’s sake more possible, larger and freer – independent from dealers, rent, daily concerns of capitalistic life that tend to make art into a business.
What was violated was not the sanctity of Art itself, but the very fragile status of a government agency that could still balance some support from both left and right on the basis of the general recognition and agreement that public funding for that which our society neglects is a public good that only the government can provide.
What was violated was a uniquely sacred, apolitical, and liberal example of necessary government action that wasn’t just another bureaucracy catering to the material and security needs and fears of constituents.
The NEA was never meant to defer to the whims and fleeting tastes of the people or its constituents, but to seek out art and artists that might improve and expand these tastes, on the pretext that taste in art and culture were important for a society, especially a modern secular one where nothing is holy or lasting, and every other interest seems to boil down to profits or comfort.
The NEA’s story is the story of America’s hope to be something more than a utilitarian industrial power always courting the lowest common needs and wants, but leaving nothing truly beautiful behind, except by accident (by a few lucky private citizens) – the hope that liberal democracy could coexist with centralized power and the correcting guidance of refined elites.
So, of course, “art has been a tool for disseminating political ideas – from the Medicis to George Orwell” – but for 44 years both democrats and republicans have tread lightly and respectfully enough to fund the ideas and art that have come from artists themselves rather than making specific requests for specific, unambiguous, topical messages.
Every past administration have made every effort to keep artists independent from the NEA and the NEA independent of the White House and its day to day needs and concerns.
Every past administration’s NEA appointees have made every effort to justify endowments on the basis of artistic theory and cultural considerations, and kept the actual grant process as separate from specific political considerations as possible.
If the artists themselves saw their work as political or social or whatever, fine – as long as it met other non-political qualifications and the intended meaning or effect originated from the creator herself, it was seen as legitimate funding, no matter how controversial or upsetting or uncool the actual constituents paying for it found it.
The NEA was always about providing freedom to artists, not pleasing some audience, especially the masses or the officials they elected – even their man in the White House.
I suppose you could say the NEA was always requesting great masterpieces, like Guernica.
But that is not what was requested here.
This wasn’t even a request for the dissemination of “ideas.”
It was an expression of interest in, and a request for artists telling people, through their potentially funded media, to support this president’s policies, issues, and actions.
Is public service and health care a crisis like that faced by Spain? OK fine.
Don’t really have time to find a Picasso and wait for him to get inspired and paint layers and layers, though, so can’t commission the way the NEA does and give a lot of leeway or time for visions to come to fruition – this is an emergency!
So why use the NEA this way – if it is so understandable and urgent, why not just do what politicians have always done and get the ad-men and propaganda people they already know through some back-channels to hurry up some commercials and hip logos to plaster everywhere.
Still not enough? Is this a really serious issue? Get the adcouncil involved. Pass a bill to start an Awareness department.
At no point does it make sense to use the NEA in order to use art and artists in this way, unless you have absolutely no respect for art itself or the NEA’s unique mission.
How myopic, self-absorbed, and uncouth does someone have to be to reach out to the art world through the agency meant to subsidize high art and say you are interested in some works that will promote and immortalize the talking points of your campaign?
It would be one thing to say the president wants to commission something groundbreaking and powerful – he really wants to discover the next Picasso and make sure he can paint in comfort.
But what if they said “We are in a very important war in Afganistan against islamofascists who hate our freedom like Franco did before them. It is time for every one to pull their weight and fight this threat with the brave American soldier. The white house is taking a special interest in finding a painter to support his cause of victory like Picasso supported the cause of the Spanish government. Now is the time for artists to paint a great works celebrating our glorious victory over these barbarians and the liberation of an oppressed people. We will pay for anyone who can stir the people’s soul and garner support for this effort.”
Are you saying that be more acceptable? Not to me. This is the USA. We are different and the NEA is one of the reasons we are different than Europe. We don’t really act like we are used to the long legacy of the church’s entanglement with the state and artistic expression. Such commissions rub Americans the wrong way, which is why the NEA is so special, and has to be so different – it necessarily treads a narrower course than Spanish governments because this is America, with its own, shorter history.
However, that approach, of the Spanish, would still be better and less offensive than what the administration did: They were not interested in great art, or culture. They were interested in getting their message out in cool and effective ways.
They came in as if this was a branch of their campaign office or a group of needy ad-men to whom they were describing a new product and its features.
I guess post-Warhol everyone thinks this is no big deal because, hey, that’s the sort of stuff they hang in galleries anyway – art is just the approved expression of the existing power structure.
But that was just the sort of nihilistic bourgeois attitude the NEA was set up to combat and help prove was not inevitable in a modern secular liberal democracy.
Perhaps it was just misguided cold war insecurity and deluded self-reassurance though.
So, yeah, art is not dead (not because of this anyway).
And the NEA hopefully is not dead.
But an administration that should have known better than any other before it set a very ugly precedent that could easily transform the agency into just another adcouncil or Creative Info Service in the future. And that’s a real shame.
Look, I realize that from the perspective of those who see the economy, defense, health care, and deficits as more important because they are more necessary and popular issues I am blowing this way out of proportion, but someone has to.
You say it isn’t outrageous because it was a mistake.
That’s generous. And I don’t deny it was one, but it was a mistake that seems to have been made out of callous hubris and a lack of respect for one of the few agencies that all good liberals should know how to respect.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
— Dictated by J Kim · Sep 24, 06:38 AM · #
Wow, a woot killa.
Chet, you write:
I’m not saying that’s why we have art. I’m saying that’s why the NEA funds art. Isn’t it a colossal waste of money if there is, in fact, absolutely no social good that comes from support of the arts and artists?
This is such an obvious point that I can’t comprehend how it could be contentious. Isn’t art good for us? Doesn’t the NEA fund art because it’s good for us that it does so? How is that the “facist” position?
I don’t actually expect you’ll see why it isn’t contentious: again, there’s two worldviews here, and one is the fascist one. But I’ll try non-nastily to explain what the “other” view is.
First, let’s be clear on some things. I don’t think the phone call was fascist. I think the defense that’s been made of it clearly is. You have Freddie is his big writeup of which he’s “proud:”
…[D]o you think that it would be workable for the members of government bureaucracies to not work to meet the goals of their department’s leadership, so long as those goals aren’t illegal or unconstitutional? I’m not talking about elected officials; I’m not talking about members of the legislature; I’m not even talking about the cabinet level officials that should counsel the president away from actions they find detrimental to the country. I’m talking about low level bureaucrats who were hired to actually, you know, do what the government tells them to do– and which the sitting government is empowered to do by the fact that they won the election.
or in comments:
your talking about non-elected officials who are installed to implement the policy apparatus of the elected government and thus couldn’t be expected to not do so
and as I started in, this is an obviously wrong view. It’s actually a totalitarian view, and I’m not misrepresenting it. Most of the civil service — the vast majority of the “low-level bureaucrats” — is not made up of policy positions: they don’t have to be, as it were, in the Party. Those are positions created by Congress and they just keep services running. The President really is, for a hell of a lot of his functions, “just” the Executive: Congress has created some systems and he puts people in place to keep the lights running. The idea that all those people — all the infrastructure of government — are there “to implement the policy apparatus of the elected government” and that it’s not “workable” for them to do otherwise, is totalitarianism. It’s fascinating, and in my reading characteristic, that Freddie falls on it as an argument.
OK. You write Doesn’t the NEA fund art because it’s good for us that it does so? Well, there’s another perspective: the NEA funds art because we want art, and art isn’t “good” for us, really. It’s only what they say in their NPR taglines: “because a great people deserve great art.”
But art isn’t “good” for us. I dropped out of high school (Freddie thinks there’s something profoundly wrong with saying this, so, whatever) to become a jazz musician (it didn’t work out). I met lots of other people who did that. Art in that case works against policies of the left and right. Politically art is dangerous, ripping down existing orders: that was the driving understanding of Ryleev and the Decembrists, it’s what Shelley meant about poets as the true legislators, it’s why Konrad Wallenrod thinks in embracing poetry makes his a kind of God.
Which is not surprising. Art is very often subversive. [Again, showing my artistic biases, there’s “good” art of the type NEA funds — jazz, for example, which pushes up against convention and tries to rip it down, or Webern’s ripping into tonality, making music which is falsely characterized as “atonal,” when in fact it is differently tonal, whereas, yeah, I think a lot of pop is kind of sleeper music that sedates the brain: but that stuff isn’t dependent on the NEA.] Art very, very often is about questioning received wisdom, questioning authority. It is often anarchic and destructive. We respect artists who tear down pre-existing conventions — even ones we like — and build new ones: that’s why many of us who adore Duke Ellington, loathe Wynton Marsalis for trying to, well, rigidify form around Duke Ellington, and love, say, Dave Douglas for always finding new forms even as he pays tribute to old ones.
So art isn’t “good” for us in that view. It makes us, probably, less governable, less predictable, more chaotic and probably more unhappy. But we crave it, and we need it: it plays an essential role in our humanity and that’s why we want to put in place collective mechanisms for proliferating it: we don’t want art to make us good, we just want art. I’d also argue that there are spiritual reasons for that and art plays a devotional role but I’m philosophically of a tradition which sees the divine not necessarily as imperial and ordered but often as chaotic, destructive, fertile.
That I think was the prevailing view of art for a long time: magical, numinous, and vital. Art criticism as we think of it is actually sort of a new thing: let’s say about two hundred years (as opposed to simple explication which you can see even in say glosses on Sanskrit texts). A countervailing set of ideas also grew up in the 1800’s and was originally associated with the critic V.G. Belinsky. That view, from which you’re drinking up there, says, well, we want art that makes us good. That making people good is a measure of a thing’s merit, and that societies have an interest in promoting “good art” (as measured by that metric). That aesthetic is seen as putting into place some of the philosophical architecture of 20th century totalitarianism, and you can see why: the quest for beauty, for art, is a quest for what’s good for us and we promote that everywhere, and condemn as ugly that which isn’t good for us. That’s why I’m identifying you with the fasicst view: historically, it is, and the liberal sense of why we want art, what it does, and why we promote it, is actually something different.
Mickey Kaus has a clever comment on The Lives of Others….
— Sanjay · Sep 24, 02:21 PM · #
Are you feeling ok, Freddie? I was having fun taunting you on the last thread, but now it’s not even fun anymore. You used to be one of the guys who tried to understand and respond to the arguments on the other side, but if you’re doing it now, I can’t tell.
My guess is that you have always been outraged that people who countenanced Bush dare criticize Obama, and that that outrage has now gotten to such a level that you are no longer interested in a give and take of ideas. If so, it’s a shame.
I honestly thing you are mistaken in some key premises, but without a real dialogue, there is no way to convince you. As a result, you now show up announcing your outrage from time to time, but it’s not interesting to anyone anymore. Soon the goodwill you accumulated from more thoughtful posts will be gone and people will class you with some of the other reflexive posters, as “posts to skip unless you feel like going to the argument clinic for a day.”
Which is a shame, because you made an effort to cross ideological lines and to engage people who don’t agree with you, and I always admired that. I guess I still have Rortybomb.
— J Mann · Sep 24, 02:24 PM · #
Well, right. The fascist view is yours, the one that says that art is nothing but pretty pictures, imbued with no social meaning or significance. The one that says it is without purpose or use. Or worse the one that says that art is not good for us. That it is destructive. Nothing could be more fascist. How can you not see that? What’s the difference between you telling me that art makes us all unhappy (which is the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever seen you write) and a good ol’ fashioned book burning, aside from the fact that at least the book burners have the courage of their convictions and you’re just an internet troll?
The idea that art should be cultivated, because it is a social positive and an expression of our shared values? There’s nothing “fascist” about it. That’s the essence of democracy, in many ways; that for the good of all, we all participate in the civil commons. Art is part of that participation.
Oh, I’m sorry. I thought “elections had consequences.” This must be the theoretical underpinning for the conservative view that there can never be an election that signifies an American public rejecting conservative governance. It’s funny how even the idea that the government should probably do what it was elected to do is something conservatives abandon when a Democrat is in charge. Nothing more than concern trolling, frankly.
WTF? This is supposed to be your argument against the good of art? Truly, you have no capacity to think beyond yourself at all, do you? Truly amazing, Sanjay – truly blinkered, parochial, narrow and – yes – fascist.
— Chet · Sep 24, 02:54 PM · #
Late to this, but does anyone, left or right, really think it’s a good idea for the gubberment to be commissioning new art? Education and maintaining and curating our artisistic heritage? Yeah, sure, maybe. But the government paying artist to make new art? Com’on people, pull your heads out. It’s a terrible idea.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 01:40 AM · #
If Sanjay and I were actually to meet face to face, I imagine he wouldn’t call me a pussy to my face. I imagine that a lot of his brave, brave comments on a blog would suddenly go unsaid.
— Freddie · Sep 25, 02:01 PM · #
Freddie, c’mon, Tony is right….if the gov commissions it, it is not art…it is advertising.
You are right about Conor propping demogoguery though.
That is the only they can reach what is left of the base.
It is my hypothesis that the republican base is approx 80% white evangelical christians now.
The GOP is becoming not just a regional party, but a religious party.
— matoko_chan · Sep 25, 03:00 PM · #
Me, Freddie, and Sanjay in a no-holds-barred submission cage match. I am totally in! You don’t even have to call me a pussy — I’ll fight the both of you for the sheer joie de vivre of it! Let’s get ready to rumbbbllllllleeee!!!!!!
Guberment subsidized art makes about as much sense as guberment subsidized tobacco.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 03:06 PM · #
Sanjay,
There’s got to be a way to split the difference between you and Freddie on the civil service and administration policy. I’m close to some people who work for the Federal government, and the way it works in practice, as I guess you know, is that their boss gets switched out for a new appointee whenever a different party takes the White House, which affects some of their broad goals even though most of their day-to-day work remains the same. Some priorities shift, others don’t.
But the view of the NEA being a special case is one that I’m coming around to. Because if you’re right about the NEA’s mission (funding art when the market won’t) then administration policy goals aren’t going to be relevant to that goal. For the record, having mulled things over I’m now more or less persuaded that the NEA should try to be message-blind in its dealings with artists.
Also, this fascist v. liberal stuff seems to me to be terribly reductive and bad for the discussion. There’s so many views of art — Platonic, Nietzschean, Victorian, Emersonian, etc., and that’s just Western — and some bind the Beautiful and the Good together, and some don’t, and some find the Beautiful to be close to social harmony, and some don’t. Tracking on several relationships like this is bound to give you more than two final positions. As a sort of Christian Platonist in these matters, I’d hold that a soul’s encounter with beauty is an encounter with the good, even though beauty doesn’t track with what is socially optimal — fallen world, and all that. So I’ve got a position where art is a real good, but not necessarily a utilitarian one.
— william randolph · Sep 25, 03:29 PM · #
“Because if you’re right about the NEA’s mission (funding art when the market won’t) then administration policy goals aren’t going to be relevant to that goal.”
Typo? Is this what you meant?
Because if you’re right about the NEA’s mission (funding Art when the market won’t) then administration policy goals aren’t going to be relevant to that goal.
(I knew reading JP’s posts was going to come in handy!)
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 03:38 PM · #
Is it worth saying that, in fact, the whole point of my post was that the government was not commissioning politicized art in this instance? And that, in fact, I’m expressly against such a thing? Does that matter?
I might be wrong about the specific claim of whether or not there was coercion here. I’ve been wrong before! But it’s very weird to read so. much. verbiage. about how I want politicized art when my whole point was that this was not an example of such a thing. I don’t want politicized art, and don’t condone the use of art to support political goals. That was, in fact, my entire point.
It is the case, though, that any art commissioned by anyone, or paid for by anyone, besides the artist himself, is going to have some degree of corruption in it. That’s just life. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.
— Freddie · Sep 25, 03:53 PM · #
“It is the case, though, that any art commissioned by anyone, or paid for by anyone, besides the artist himself, is going to have some degree of corruption in it. That’s just life. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
You’re not really this naive, are you?
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 03:54 PM · #
You’re not really this naive, are you?
I’m not sure what you mean— my point is the opposite of naive. Anything that is paid for by someone else is to some degree influenced by the fact that it is so paid for. I find that hard to dispute.
— Freddie · Sep 25, 03:58 PM · #
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 04:16 PM · #
So you were or weren’t criticizing me for something I didn’t say?
— Freddie · Sep 25, 04:23 PM · #
I was expressing incredulity and then a moment later realizing that rying to explain it to you would be waste of both my time and yours.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 04:28 PM · #
Why such unfriendliness? I don’t get it.
— Freddie · Sep 25, 04:32 PM · #
Because Tony is clinically batshit fucking insane.
— Chet · Sep 25, 04:39 PM · #
WR,
No, that’s wrong. I work for the Federal government. On any given day i talk to lots and lots of people who work for the federal government.
For example, today I talked to a whole lot of people who are involved in disaster planning for some infectious agents. Much of the law and structure for that was set up by the CDC as the LRN, back in the Clinton administration. The LRN continued under Bush and those people did the same thing (at some point there were some structural changes in LRN, largely initiated by non-Presidential appointees and at the instigation of the (private organization) ASM, but those weren’t policy). They continue under Obama. No change.
The FEMA director’s mission isn’t a policy one. He has a task and his job oughtn’t really to be affected whether he’s a Republican or a Democrat: just if he’s capable. We panned Bush for this, remember?
Your post office doesn’t operate differently under different administrations. Nor do your park rangers.
“Low level bureaucrats” in the Federal Government are not policy positions. Those jobs might change because high-level bureaucrats make changes in their guidance or because high-level bureaucrats lobby Congress to create new National Parks or Public Health agencies or what have you. But the idea Freddie voices that low-level bureaucrats are there to implement administration policy is fascistic. The government is huge. It’s involved in a lot. So the vast majority of its people aren’t getting up in the morning and saying, am I helping to implement President Obama’s policies? If you went to the CDC, or the clinic staff at an Indian reservation, or the guys scheduling Amtrak and asked that, they’d think you were nuts: they’re doing just what they did four years ago. At some high level there may be mission change. But, I reiterate: most government bureaucrats don’t have a policy misssion, except in a fascist worldview where the whole of government tools are supposed to be deployed for policy.
— Sanjay · Sep 25, 04:58 PM · #
Sanjay: “At some high level there may be mission change.”
That’s all I wanted to say. Resources get shifted, people get hired to do new things, word comes down the wire that some issue is now a priority. Most people keep doing what they’ve been doing.
— william randolph · Sep 25, 05:16 PM · #
Followed the post from TLOOG here, first time visitor.
I have a question… do the comment threads here usually go Godwin by post #12?
Even if the NEA was doing exactly what some people are accusing it of doing (that is, expressly encouraging and subsidizing a particular political agenda) that is not fascism; propaganda, yes absolutely. Fascism, no.
Fascists actively oppress opposition to the government, not just promote support of the government, which is what every type of government other than anarchism does, and it’s debatable whether anarchism even qualifies as a type of government anyway.
That is clearly not the case here, and you can’t even slippery slope your way into claiming that it might, at some point in the future, lead to it… the NEA was not organizing liberal artists to go out and beat the snot out of people who produce art with a conservative or libertarian bent (at least, by any reading of the transcript I can possibly wrap my head around).
— Pat Cahalan · Sep 25, 05:27 PM · #
You bet, WR. But Freddie said the opposite, specifically and directly extending to low level functionaries. And that’s where I bit him, and where he showed his nature (which, remember, Freddie, is “pussy.”)
Add to the list of medium-level non-policy jobs anything at FDA, which apparently just let two Democratic senators pressure it into approving a crapola knee scaffold.
— Sanjay · Sep 25, 05:28 PM · #
pussy = craven?
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 05:31 PM · #
No,Tony, I’ve never met craven.
Jesus, I’m still waiting for the bag of crap….it’s been three days.
— Sanjay · Sep 25, 05:35 PM · #
And seriously Sanjay, if you have the regard for Art that you claim to have and in light of this unsavory knee scaffold business (or a zillion other examples) why would you want the government within spitting distance of the creation of new work?
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 05:35 PM · #
Well, Tony, what I said in the original thread. Self-service I suppose: a lot of the art — maybe most of the art — I value a lot happens to depend heavly on NEA and NEH.
It’s possible that there are other good models for private funding. I’ve heard such models. Maybe. But all things being equal let’s not risk it.
Again, I think there’s a very very great market for art of the Chet sort, only “good” there isn’t some governmental concept of “good” — a “good citizen” — but a corporate one: a “good consumer.” I think the same subversive, destructive, unsettling nature of a lot of important art that makes it not great for governments, makes it not great for commercial interests. So I think you’ll have a bad signal-to-noise issue.
But if it ever works out that everything’s privately funded but Laurie Anderson still gets awesome residencies, fine, I’m happy.
— Sanjay · Sep 25, 05:41 PM · #
“ I think the same subversive, destructive, unsettling nature of a lot of important art that makes it not great for governments, makes it not great for commercial interests.”
You do see that using this as an argument for government-funded Important Art makes you look stupid, right?
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 05:51 PM · #
Only when you accept that the whole government needs to be policy-based. One says, we have a government to help provide us with things we need collectively. And we need, and want, “art.” Not because art’s good for us — not in a way that makes it easy for us to be goverened — but we want it.
So I agree there’s a tension. Ideally you mitigate it by having other outlets for government messaging (AD council). But there’s also a need, so, that’s how we try to address it.
Again, figure out how I can get Chris Speed and private funding all over, and I’m all over it. But I’m never quite sure you can do that and I’d rather not lose the Speed.
— Sanjay · Sep 25, 06:00 PM · #
Sanj, you’re still lost in the left/right of it. Right now there is a Satchmo that is being crushed by the fact that he can’t compete with gubment subsidized Speeds and Andersons. And pretending that the gubberment can pick Important Artists is like pretending that we know what Fitness is. We don’t, and guessing is practicing cultural eugenics.
Important Art will be. We don’t have to help it along. In fact, trying to help it along is at best a waste of money, or actually creates aberrant fitness criteria.
Case In Fucking Point
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 06:12 PM · #
@ Tony
> Right now there is a Satchmo that is being crushed by
> the fact that he can’t compete with gubment
> subsidized Speeds and Andersons.
You will need to provide some sort of substantive evidence to back this claim for me to regard it as credible. On the face of it, I see this as highly unlikely.
> And pretending that the gubberment can pick Important
> Artists is like pretending that we know what Fitness
> is. We don’t, and guessing is practicing cultural
> eugenics.
Er, who says “the gubberment” picks the Important Artists? “The gubberment” certainly funds basic scientific research through the NSF, but to suggest that there is a significant skewing of the NSF grant process by the bureaucracy (politicized or no) seems to be a very, very far reaching claim. Most of the NSF grant award process is facilitated by people who are largely apolitical, and qualified scientists and engineers in their own right. Certainly politics may play a minor part, but you’d have to produce some pretty hard core evidence to convince me that there was any sort of systemic abuse. I don’t know anything about the NEA grants process, but I imagine bureaucrats and politicos have as little input into the process (in comparison to artists) as they do in the NSF grants award process.
Now you may say that a collection of artists isn’t a reasonable gatekeeper for selecting Important Artists, but you’d have to convince me that another more reasonable gatekeeper could be put into place.
— Pat Cahalan · Sep 25, 06:39 PM · #
“Certainly politics may play a minor part, but you’d have to produce some pretty hard core evidence to convince me that there was any sort of systemic abuse. I don’t know anything about the NEA grants process, but I imagine bureaucrats and politicos have as little input into the process (in comparison to artists) as they do in the NSF grants award process.”
You also are caught in the left/right of it. It’s not a left/right, demo/repub, lib/con question. It is the powerful vs. the powerless. The NEA is an organ of the State, the State advocates for the Status Quo, and the Status Quo always favors the powerful. Important Art is (sometimes) Important because it upsets the Status Quo. Black composers and performers become as revered or even more revered than White composers and performers, the Outsiders become the insiders, etc. (Of course sometimes art is Important just because it’s so fucking beautiful.)
The reason we get treacle _ Piss Christ_ is because the NEA is purpose-built to preserve the Status Quo. This sort of art as PR stunt is hyper-normative in the extreme.
Some additional perspective on my perspective:Jim Thorpe, Amateurism, and the Poisonous Elitism of Alison Croggon
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 07:09 PM · #
I basically agree, Tony, but again, I’m worried about losing the art I have.
In addition, I kind of think — well, it’s like a lot of things about people that are innate to them and predate our governments. Underage unattached girls get knocked up. Guys like to drink a bit too much and brawl. People fuck people they shouldn’t. People like to eat Ho-Hos. All bad, bad stuff for any kind of society you want to actually govern: ways we just aren’t good citizens. But it’s old and it’s who we are and government have to deal with it.
Art is still more primal, basic: even animals seem to have some forms. We need it and we will have it. If you suppress it it bursts out Ryleev-style: it’s mighty and destructive and can collapse governing structures, left or right. So you have to deal with it.
One way to deal with this basic human stuff is to try to dam and control it: promote art as Chet or Jesse Helms think you promote it: art which you decide reflects our shared calues, makes us good, happy people. I don’t think that kind of control lasts real long but you can try it.
Another way is to say, look, people want this, we’ll try to provide it, and maybe that subverts art a little by giving it some vested interest in preserving structures as they are. I dunno. I don’t think it’s a simple thing but I think it’s not obvious that the government should be entirely hands off, because I think it will suffer damage if it is, actually. And I’ll lose my jazz.
— Sanjay · Sep 25, 07:34 PM · #
“I basically agree, Tony, but again, I’m worried about losing the art I have.”
As I said, the NEA exists to preserve the Status Quo. And as my uncle says, you don’t become conservative until you have something to conserve.
In other words, welcome to the dark side, Sanjay. We’ve been expecting you.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 07:52 PM · #
I’ll never rule the Universe with you!
— Sanjay · Sep 25, 08:08 PM · #
> It is the powerful vs. the powerless.
I think this is a false comparison. How are artists who don’t get NEA grants “powerless”? How are the artists who get NEA grants “powerful”? Are you suggesting that NEA-funded artists can trade in on their granted status somehow to affect the overall course of artistic endeavor in a significant way? How? Again, you need to post something more substantive than a link to an artist you don’t like as evidence to show this is actually a problem in the real world. I think Marilyn Manson sucks, and homeslice doesn’t get any NEA grants.. but yet he certainly had a major impact on popular music culture.
> The NEA is an organ of the State, the State
> advocates for the Status Quo, and the Status
> Quo always favors the powerful.
This is again a perfectly reasonable theoretical construct, but you have presented no evidence to support that this is actually an accurate characterization of the real world. How is the NEA an “organ of the State”? What is “the State”? How tightly coupled to “the State” does an organization have to be before it is considered an “organ of the State”? I’ve also heard the NEA characterized as a “parasite of the State”; how is that a more or less accurate description?
I can’t think of any meaningful expansion on “the State advocates for the Status Quo”. What is “the Status Quo”? How is the State advocating it in this case? You’ve brought up “Piss Christ” as an example of the NEA preserving the Status Quo, but one could just as easily argue that it’s the converse, since more people were mortally offended by “Piss Christ” than those that thought it was substantive art; your claim that it’s hypernormative in and of itself leads me to believe that you have no falsification standard here.
“If the NEA does it, it must be enforcing the Status Quo. If it seems to be attacking the Status Quo, that is because an occasional appearance of attacking the Status Quo is part of the Status Quo.” By this proposition, anything the NEA does can automatically be regarded as evidence that it enforces the Status Quo. There is nothing that can alter your underlying belief that the NEA enforces the Status Quo, you’ve got yourself a tautology.
— Pat Cahalan · Sep 25, 09:43 PM · #
Okay Pat. I beat Conor and Peter with cuddle about a year ago. Your turn now.
I’ve been an artist for 20+ years, working in the mediums of photography and film. In that time I’ve made both entertainment (ranging from gallery wall Art to stuff that played on TV) and propaganda (advertising, marketing materials, etc.) I have produced work under every funding model; from grants to commissions from NPFs to commission from business to self-funded.
There is a fantasy that funding that is divorced from the chance for profit is the least risk averse, but in fact the truth is just the opposite. Here’s why:
Once organizations pass a certain point in their development, there first and foremost mission is their own continued existence. Churches (at the denominational level) fall under this category. So do governments. So do schools (I’m sure from your own experience at Cal Tech you know exactly what I’m talking about.)
Every decision made by these organization will, at it’s heart, be a decision that ensures the organization’s continued survival. That is there mission. Any other “mission” that you might read about in their pamphlet or website is subordinate.
More over, no one at these organization is in a position to benefit from taking on risk. The risk posture of a church, school, government or other NFP is an expansive downside with no way to capture upside.
Andres Serrano is a safe choice because his choice can be defended on the basis of his prior reputation, and if he does something outrageous to “proves” the independence of his sponsor while providing a fund raising opportunity for all stake-holders. Piss Christ is a PR stunt, a scam, a manufactured outrage; and the only thing genuinely shocking about it is that people fall for this sort of thing.
I know, I know, you want a falsification standard. Of course you do. Your a sys-op. But making artwork is not technology R&D. You can’t set up a Bell Labs or PARC, because you can’t come up with selection criteria. Dublin just happens. Seattle just happens. Try to make it happen is cultural eugenics (talk about Fascism!)
The effect of this cultural eugenics is most produced in the mediums and genres that are already marginalized: dance, arcane music forms, poetry, documentary film. Government intervention shifts the game from making artwork that people want to see towards proposing artwork that risk averse entities that can’t capture any upside returns will fund. The inablity for these forms and genres to attract a self-sustaining audience becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, thus arguing for continued government subsidizes and perpetuating the cycle. (Not to mention a health dose of “the masses are too stupid to support Great Art, so the government has to do it.”) Of course this works out just fine for everyone drawing a pay check at these various not-for-profit. Their very existence contributes to “market failure” and “market failure” is why they need to exist.
But hey, if you want to continue to indulge in the fantasy that the NEA is actually a body that can separate Important Artist from Less Important Artist, that their judgements have a more pro-social outcome than the judgement of people who actually shell out their hard-earned dollars to buy a book, or a CD, or a theater ticket, be my guest. It’s not the biggest boondoggle in the government, not by far. It just happens to be one that pisses in my cornflakes.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 26, 12:57 PM · #
That’s a fairly well written response, Tony, but you’ve got a couple of humdingers in there that I have to take issue with:
> I’ve been an artist for 20+ years, [snip]
Assuming your description is true (and I have no reason to doubt that it is), I’ll gladly cede that you’re a better Artistic critic than I am, and you’re more familiar with the ins-and-outs of working and attempting to get funding as an artist. Note, however, that this puts a different slant on what you propose: all of your characterizations of art, artistic funding, etc., are going to be colored through your anecdotal filter. Your observations about the community in which you participate are likely to be biased towards your own experience. It’s certainly possible to correct for self bias, of course, and you may be doing that (It’s difficult to tell just based upon the thread here).
> There is a fantasy that funding that is divorced from
> the chance for profit is the least risk averse, but
> in fact the truth is just the opposite.
Wow, I certainly don’t believe that either is true.
> Once organizations pass a certain point in their
> development, there first and foremost mission is
> their own continued existence. [examples follow]
This is another perfectly reasonable theory, but the problem is “certain point”, “organizations”, and “existence” are all extremely fuzzy concepts. This has the same problem as your proposition that “everything the NEA does is in support of the Status Quo”, there’s no rigor here.
If I show you an organization that’s manifestly not following “its continued existence” as the primary function, you’ll claim that it simply hasn’t reached that point in development yet. If I show you a much younger organization that has, you’ll say that it just reached that point in its development earlier. If I show you an organization that demonstrably died and was reformed, I’m not really sure where that would fit in your model, but I’m sure you’d cram it in there somewhere.
In other words, it’s an empty model. I can’t do anything with it, except assume that it is completely true or false. Of course, even if I agree with you in principle, we can still go ‘round the maypole about which organizations have crossed that inflection point and are now headed downhill.
All of this sort of begs the question; even if you’re correct, and all organizations have a useful half-life, that doesn’t mean that it’s not useful, as a society, to form organizations for the overall benefit.
> I know, I know, you want a falsification standard. Of
> course you do. Your a sys-op. But making artwork is
> not technology R&D.
I’m not just a sys-op, for the record. I’m flattered that you figured my comment was interesting enough to do at least a cursory background check. My undergraduate work was in mathematics, and rather than go on to grad school I went out and worked for a living. I’ve worked for non-profits and for-profits of varying business models, in the last 15 years. I just wrapped up a Master’s on the way to a PhD in Information Systems, and I’m more than passing familiar with a large chunk of management theory, information theory, computer science, software engineering, the aforementioned mathematics, and philosophy.
I think you misunderstood me. I don’t need a falsification standard for what’s Art. Quite frankly, like most artistic laymen, I know what I like, and I call that interesting Art (to me). On the other hand, I’m not like most artistic laymen in that I realize that my standard is not of any particular value, and I really don’t have much call to label something “not Art”. I’m glad that I now can count at least one artist as a fellow disbeliever that “Piss Christ” is of any value, though (I’ll call this a constructive thread just for that, thanks).
What I need is a falsification standard for your constructs. If I’m going to argue with you, with any sort of chance of either of us convincing the other that they’re correct (as opposed to just waving our intellects around ineffectually), I need to know what it would take for you to change your mind. So far on this thread most of your major constructs don’t have any way for me to get a grip on them; anything I say you can take to support your construct, because it’s just ill-defined.
See, I agree that organizations do have a tendency to devolve. I don’t see it as an Iron Law of Organizations, because organizations do go through periods of both internal and external crisis, so the tendency of devolution can be reset. I agree that commercial organizations, through market forces, are less likely to survive devolution to self-perpetuation because other commercial organizations usually come along and beat them out in the market (note: this is also a tendency, not an Iron Law, because we don’t operate in a free market). I agree that government organizations, due to their funding models being decoupled from a direct market force, are much more likely to suffer devolution (The Department of Homeland Security jumped into it feet first within a couple of months of its creation, because it constantly had to defend its existence from the FBI, CIA, Treasury, and Congress, for that matter). I agree (in the particular case of the NEA) mediums and genres that are already marginalized now being dependent to some degree on the NEA can suffer greatly. But that doesn’t lead me to this:
> But hey, if you want to continue to indulge in the
> fantasy that the NEA is actually a body that can
> separate Important Artist from Less Important Artist,
> that their judgements have a more pro-social outcome
> than the judgement of people who actually shell
> out their hard-earned dollars to buy a book, or
> a CD, or a theater ticket, be my guest.
… because even the cursory reading of security literature, psychology and other social sciences that I’ve had (in the course of trying to figure out how to build systems that people will use) leads me to believe that individual humans, taken in aggregate, aren’t necessarily better than a subset of humans codified in an organization in making any sort of value judgment. They’re abysmally bad at managing their own risk, for just one example. Your characterization of any non-individual funded for profit model as “fantasy” clearly ignores all of the many, varied, and manifest problems with that setup.
For the most part, many of the things you say I agree with… to a point. My problem is that you have declared many of these things that are probabilistic statements as axiomatic truths.
Yeah, the NEA probably is more risk-averse than it ought to be. Yeah, the NEA is going to impact mediums and genres that are marginalized more than those that aren’t, and that’s bad for those mediums and genres… but without having an idea of how bad, and most importantly, how bad the alternatives are, we can’t actually say with certainty that the NEA, overall, is bad. If I’m a marginalized artist, I personally would want as many possible sources of revenue to choose from, and if it meant I produced 20% of my art substandard because I was getting grant funds from the NEA, that’s probably preferable to not being able to do art at all (remember, we’re marginalized). It’s also possibly preferable to producing 40% of my art as substandard because I’m working entirely in a market where I have to produce the art my patron wants, as opposed to the art that ought to be created.
Sure, that 20% still tastes like piss in my cornflakes. I dislike piss in my cornflakes enough that I’d probably want to get rid of it at all costs. It might make me overlook the fact that the alternatives are no cornflakes or cornflakes with crap in them instead until I’ve already thrown away the one bowl and see what the alternatives are.
I’m not opposed to an alternative to the NEA (for the record, I’m not opposed to an alternative to the NSF, either. See, I know how annoying it is to deal with the NSF). But “get rid of the NSF” would be utterly disastrous for basic science research in the United States (I say this as someone who works intimately with the process). For all of the weaknesses of government sponsored basic research, for-profit only sponsored basic research would be just as bad, if not worse, for all the opposite reasons. Some sort of hybridized model (which really is what we have right now) works better than a completely bottom-up or a completely top-down model. Again, some of the edge cases suffer. Some of the edge cases also get way more attention than they deserve. That’s a problem, but it’s not necessarily a reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
If you propose some sort of organizational structure that accounts for devolution tendencies better than either of those two, I’m open to suggestions. If you’re going to continue to propose that all organizational efforts are ultimately doomed to complete failure, you’re going to have to back way up and start explaining to me why a society built with organizations is inherently less better than a society built entirely upon individual relationships. Of course, you might convince me on that score, but the barrier’s pretty damn high (libertarians are strongly represented at Caltech, so I’ve heard lots of the arguments before, coming from really smart people, and they all in my estimation come up way short).
Even if you do convince me on that score, you’re also going to have to come up with some sort of transition plan that’s worth it (which is an entirely different and mostly intractable problem unless and until we get to space colonization and a bunch of rugged individuals can all agree to go to Alpha Centauri and found a truly libertarian New World Order).
— Pat Cahalan · Sep 26, 05:09 PM · #
If you’ve mistaken me for a libertarian I’ve done a very poor job of expressing myself.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 26, 06:27 PM · #
> I beat Conor and Peter with cuddle about a year ago.
> Your turn now.
I guess we’re done now?
> If you’ve mistaken me for a libertarian I’ve done a
> very poor job of expressing myself.
You haven’t really given me enough on this thread to know if you’re a libertarian or not, Tony (and as a first time visitor, I haven’t browsed around enough to pick up a feel for your overall political philosophy).
The whole “governments & status quo” bit is very classical libertarian thought structure, though.
— Pat Cahalan · Sep 28, 03:23 PM · #