Have the NEA Save Dr. Laura
Jane Alexander's credentials as an actress are impeccable. She has been nominated for an academy award, won an Emmy for "Playing for Time," and has been awarded the Israel Cultural Award. She was well acquainted with the arts when nominated by President Clinton, and confirmed by the Senate, to chair the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEA) in 1993. After serving her four-year term that saw budget cuts to the NEA, Alexander stepped down in 1997 as chair when her term expired.
Alexander recently penned a piece for the Washington Post Magazine entitled "Art Lessons," adapted from a forthcoming book Command Performance. In it, she described her experiences as Chair of the NEA and dealing with both the White House and Congress. Despite her protestations that "overall I didn't believe in absolutes," Alexander is clearly convinced of two unchanging propositions: First, the federal government should fund the arts in ever increasing amounts. Second, that the First Amendment guarantees content (I suppose to the extent that artistic quality and content can really be separated) should not be a criterion for NEA funding.
If the NEA only funded mainstream projects to pay for orchestras to travel to isolated areas, instruction of poor children in musical instruments, or similar outreach programs, NEA funding would be larger and less controversial. However, every now an then, in order to confirm their credentials to the avante guarde and at the risk to the funding of other projects, the NEA apparently has the need to deliberately poke the rest of America in the eye.
Even Democratic allies of Alexander were upset that NEA funding found its way to Ron Athey. In the words of Alexander, "Athey, who is an HIV-positive man, drew designs with a scalpel on the back of a fellow performer (who was not HIV-positive), breaking the surface of the skin and causing superficial bleeding." Surely you are sophisticated enough to appreciate the artistic talent inherent in such an undertaking. If not, perhaps you are a Philistine.
This particular incident is interesting from two standpoints. On one hand, if the NEA is so flush with funds that performances like Athey's make it to the top of the funding queue, it suggests that most worthwhile projects have already been funded and that increases in funding are unnecessary. How lame must other proposals before this one is granted funding?
On the other hand, if the NEA's decisions were really content independent, one might expect on occasion that funding would find its way to people and groups who offend the Liberal sensibilities. Where are these projects?
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