Social Life a Little Slow? Award an NEA Grant!

December was a great month for entertainment, unless you’re an atheist. There’s an almost unlimited menu of plays, concerts, exhibits and lectures. Even jihadis look forward to Christmas because of the targeting opportunities. Yet the best part is all this activity takes place without being subsidized by a single dollar of taxpayer money. (Note: I’m not talking about Christmas counter–programming. For example, Santa as a cross–dressing lesbian who kills “Rudolph The Oppressor” and liberates the reindeer, thereby preventing the enslavement of millions of vulnerable children by a rapacious consumer society. Those are government grant productions, notable for their grim intensity, thin skin and lack of audience.)

You might find this shocking, but prior to 1965 EVERY “art” production managed to get by without a single federal taxpayer handout. Most of us don’t recall 1965 as being such a cultural wasteland that it required federal intervention for culture to continue. Movie audiences enjoyed Doctor Zhivago and The Sound of Music. Theatre attendees witnessed Man of La Mancha and The Lion in Winter. And readers plowed through Dune, In Cold Blood, Autobiography of Malcolm X and Midnight Cowboy. Local theatre groups continued to gratify relatives and stupefy audiences without any assistance from Uncle Sam. Museums opened, exhibits appeared in galleries and artists committed “art” without the assistance of Uncle Sam’s “arts” apparatchiks. So what happened? LBJ and “intellectuals” for one and the result has been expensive and insulting for taxpayers. I have a personal anecdote and a solution, but you’ll have to click the link below to visit my Insider column at Newsmax.

---