Come for the Politics, Stay for the Pathologies



Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Pimp My Pride

When does the pimping stop and the governing begin?

First there’s ACORN,  willingly and literally accommodating pimps and prostitutes. Now comes the  National Endowment of the Arts scandal in which administration  functionaries pimp out the all too willing artists to prostitute themselves for the Obama-tization of America. All this after a long, long season of MSM pimping for the entire Democratic party.

Wow! I expect that type of behavior from community organizers and (sadly) the main stream media. But artists? Artists!? What happened to the artistic integrity that an artist would be willing to die for? Or at least willing to say, “Uh, no.  I don’t think I need the money that badly” ?  I’ve known artists who wouldn’t even take a commission if the client ( “patron,” if you want to be snooty) had the audacity to suggest a color palette, let alone a subject matter. Apparently “suffering for your art” is not such a big deal anymore. Or perhaps, from the looks of some contemporary art, imagination has simply died and taking marching orders from the government is an easy cure for artist’s block.

But what artists are willing to do for a federal handout is not of as much concern to me as is a bureaucracy that exists simply to direct and control the flow of said funds. This, undoubtedly, is one of the profoundly “critical” programs that Congress can never see fit to eliminate from the federal budget. Read the whole transcript of how your tax dollars are employed for the good of the country. Or just read the short version by Nick Gillespie at Biggovernment.com. His succinct conclusion on the wisdom of public funding of the arts:

It leads to the use of taxpayer-funded culture as a means of propagandizing for specific, partisan political aims. Which corrupts not just art but artists.

And just so we’re clear on all of this: I’m not whining about a gray area  of ethical  propriety. The behavior captured by the transcript is strictly against the law. That we have people in the White House flagrantly flaunting the laws designed to prevent just such dangerous manipulation is a demonstration of either their total arrogance or their total stupidity. I’m not ruling out a combination.

Either way, if this is what’s going on at the NEA, what are we to assume is happening at the important federal agencies – the CIA for instance?  Oh yeah, I guess we know the answer there too. The new administration is pimping for terrorists.

Washington has always been full of whores. But only Organized Crime would have thought to round them all up and unionize them.