This Is Why I Couldn’t Give A Crap Less About Eliminating Federal Funding For The National Endowment Of The Arts

President Trump’s budget outline for 2018 is out, and there’s a lot to chew on, but I want to focus on one small detail that’s drawing some of the biggest reactions: Defunding the National Endowment of the Arts.

You wouldn’t believe the pseudo-intellectual psychobabble I’ve had to sort through. I’ve heard it all. Progressives believe we will most certainly turn into uncultured swine (which is weird, since they’re already convinced that half of the country is comprised of toothless, illiterate rubes who marry their cousins and have never ventured out beyond their local Walmart) without the extra $148 million going to the NEA (that’s what we forked over to the NEA in 2016). Whatsoever shall we dooooo without the federal government funding the arts? How will we survive without renditions of Doggie Hamlet? (Yes. That’s A Thing, and yes. We paid for that.)

Today’s artists are convinced that they’re the lifeblood of society. They evoke feelings. They channel raw emotion. They stir our souls. That’s why they deserve money. That’s their argument.

If they’re so essential to society, surely, the withdrawal of federal funding won’t dry them up. If they’re so irreplaceable, they’ll never dry up. Right? No offense to those in the arts community, but most of them are kind of full of themselves. Keep in mind, I say this as a person who 1.) Went to a liberal arts college and 2.) Has a sister currently working through an arts program. She’s a photography and marketing major. Oh. And she’s a dancer. We joke about this stuff ALL THE TIME, so please. Save it.

That brings me to George Will’s beautiful piece in National Review. The entire thing almost brought a tear to my eye.

The “arts community” has its pitter-patter down pat. The rhetorical cotton candy — sugary, jargon-clotted arts gush — asserts that the arts nurture “civically valuable dispositions” and a sense of “community and connectedness.” And, of course, “diversity” and “self-esteem.” Americans supposedly suffer from a scarcity of both.

That’s the bulk of their argument. They can’t quite explain why they deserve a steady stream of federal cash. “Culture!” “Feelings!” “Connectedness!” “Humanity!”

If that’s so– if we were uncultured hayseeds before the National Endowment of the Arts– how did we even have art beforehand? What did we do before Johnson’s “Great Society” decided to thrust big government art’s way? Was it non-existent? What gives?

The NEA was created in 1965 as a filigree on the Great Society. In 1995, Republicans won control of the House of Representatives and said the NEA was a frill the federal government should be shorn of. Twenty-two years later, it survives, having mastered adaptive evolution, government-style: It defines art democratically and circularly. Art is anything done by anyone calling himself or herself an artist, and an artist is anyone who produces art. An NEA report issued under Bill Clinton said that “art includes the expressive behaviors of ordinary people,” including “dinner-table arrangements” and “piecrust designs.” As Walt Whitman neglected to say, “I hear America singing, and everyone’s singing is above average.” Populist pandering is nothing new in Washington. Neither is this utilitarian calculus: Policies are good that provide the greatest self-esteem for the greatest number.

Don’t take this the wrong way. I appreciate art as much as the next guy (if you haven’t checked out Jon McNaughton’s work, stop what you’re doing and check it out immediately. His stuff is AMAZING), but I hate what it’s become. Everything is “art” these days. Pushing paint-filled eggs out of your private areas? Art. Sitting naked on a toilet? Art. Riding in an elevator for 24 hours? Art. Carrying around a mattress? Art. Letting random strangers grope you? Art. Being entombed in a rock for a week? Art.

I think you get the point.

Will also cites a point from “The Federalist,” which argues that the NEA is actually hurting the arts by producing “perverse market incentives.”

David Marcus, artistic director of a Brooklyn-based theater project and senior contributor to The Federalist, says the NEA produces “perverse market incentives” that explain why many arts institutions “are failing badly at reaching new audiences, and losing ground”:

 

Many theater companies, even the country’s most “successful,” get barely 50 percent of their revenue from ticket sales. Much of the rest comes from tax-deductible donations and direct government grants. This means that the real way to succeed as an arts organization is not to create a product that attracts new audiences, but to create a product that pleases those who dole out the free cash. The industry received more free money than it did a decade ago, and has fewer attendees.

Will also notes that the NEA’s effects are “regressive,” only benefiting the rich.

Furthermore, the NEA’s effects are regressive, funding programs that are, as Paul Ryan’s House Budget Committee said, “generally enjoyed by people of higher income levels, making them a wealth transfer from poorer to wealthier.” A frequently cited study purporting to prove otherwise was meretricious: It stressed income levels of ZIP codes where NEA-funded institutions are, inferring that institutions located in low-income areas are serving low-income people.

The truth of the matter is, if Americans really love and support the arts, they’ll offer up contributions on a voluntary basis. There’s no real reason the government needs to continue to fund this, even if the annual “contribution” is as “small” as $148 million.

Americans’ voluntary contributions to arts organizations (“arts/culture/humanities” institutions reaped $17 billion in 2015) dwarf the NEA’s subventions, which would be replaced if those who actually use the organizations — many of them supported by state- and local-government arts councils — are as enthusiastic about them as they claim to be. The idea that the arts will wither away if the NEA goes away is risible. Distilled to its essence, the argument for the NEA is: Art is a Good Thing, therefore a government subsidy for it is a Good Deed. To appreciate the non sequitur, substitute “macaroni and cheese” for “art.”

I don’t know about you, but I can do without another taxpayer-funded book about human relationships with old trees.