At least they turned down the grant application from the guy who walked around New York with a 14-foot sex organ.
That’s supposed to be the good news from the National Endowment for the Arts, but there’s also bad news from the federal government’s creativity commissars. While the phallus flaunter never got the $42,000 he requested, a Marxist/gay militant/millionaire playwright did get $60,000 of taxpayer money to stage his latest masterpiece in Berkeley. The simultaneous decisions highlight the inscrutable logic behind a federal boondoggle, which even at this time of renewed deficits continues its unconscionable waste of public money.
Considering the record of the NEA – funding giant toilet seats assembled of torn-up bibles, or stage appearances by nude, chocolate-smeared feminists – William Pope.L, noted performance artist, probably expected support for his latest production, “William Pope.L: eRacism.” Mr. Pope.L is best known for a previous triumph in which he strolled the streets of Manhattan sporting a 14-foot white cardboard penis to make a profound point about “the supremacy of white phalluses.” After months of sober consideration of his latest proposal, the NEA finally decided that Mr. Pope.L could continue his performance career without federal funding.
At the same time, the agency granted the full request for a new production of the latest play by Tony Kushner. “Homebody/Kabul” already aroused controversy during its run in New York because of its suggestion that the U.S. deserves primary blame for the ongoing horror in Afghanistan. Kushner makes no attempt to hide his radical perspective; in fact, his official biography proudly declares that “his plays reflect an interest in political activism and the writings of German political philosopher Karl Marx. …” His first major work, “A Bright Room Called Day” (1985), emphasized purported parallels between Reagan’s America and Hitler’s Germany, while his wildly successful two-part epic “Angels in America” glorified AIDS patients and Gorbachev, while skewering conservatives and Mormons.
Of course, Tony Kushner enjoys an undeniable right to advance his own agenda in his plays, but his critics also deserve the right to question any taxpayer endorsement of that agenda. NEA support for Kushner’s latest venture seems particularly dubious not because of the artist’s leftist engagement, but because of his spectacular success.
“Angels in America” won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for best play, making Kushner one of the wealthiest, most celebrated dramatists in the world. Given the demonstrated willingness of New York cognoscenti to wait for hours in line and invest hundreds of dollars to buy tickets to his productions, why does he need to take money that’s been squeezed out of taxpayers in order to finance “Homebody/Kabul”?
The usual justification for the National Endowment involves a plea to support starving geniuses whose work would otherwise never come to light. In the case of Tony Kushner, he may be a genius but he’s definitely not starving – and his play has already been exposed in New York. If the Berkeley Rep (a popular, well-established theatre company) wants to mount its own production, shouldn’t they be able to find local funding among the many well-heeled “progressives” and gay activists in the San Francisco area?
This question raises one more objection to the federal arts endowment: its inevitable undermining of local taste and control. If the enlightened citizens of Berkeley want to support Tony Kushner, they should go ahead and do so – either through private contributions or their local government. Why does it make sense to take their tax money from California, send it all the way to Washington, D.C., pass it through an unwieldy, sticky-fingered bureaucracy, and then send some portion of the funds back to Berkeley to fund a local theatrical production?
Apologists for the arts establishment explain that this procedure is necessary to fund worthy cultural endeavors in out of the way places – like Rapid City, S.D. But why is it fair or sensible to take money from the Bronx, say, and send it to Rapid City? As a matter of fact, considering the concentration of prestige arts institutions in a few big cities, it’s much more likely that funds will flow from Rapid City to the Bronx – leaving small towns and Middle America even more bereft of cultural resources.
In Tony Kushner’s case, his play wouldn’t deserve federal backing – even if he were a card-carrying Republican forging a work of impassioned patriotism. Like so many other artistic entrepreneurs inserting their hungry snouts into the public trough (especially the demanding executives at PBS), Kushner could continue to flourish without the few dollars of taxpayer funds that float out of Washington in his general direction.
As co-host of “Sneak Previews,” I worked for PBS for many years; in fact, I often comment that my 12 years in public television represent three of the happiest weeks of my life. Government money represents around 10 percent of the funds that pay for public broadcasting (the rest comes from corporate and viewer donations), but everyone in the system fights ferociously against any threat to this tiny portion of our finances. Why? Because government grants validate what we do, giving our often boring programming (emphasizing animals who mate and Englishmen who don’t) more prestige than it deserves.
NEA grant applicants (and PBS professionals) demand government support as a means of achieving greater respectability and semi-official approval – and that’s precisely why the government should get out of the arts business altogether. Our federal power structure faces more pressing challenges than judging what art, and which broadcasters, deserve governmental endorsement. Stalin and Hitler of course devoted great energy and intensity to selecting “official” standards of artistic expression, but such federal decision-making remains altogether foreign to American ideals.
It’s entirely possible that under its brilliant, new, Bush-appointed chairman (a universally respected scientist and musician named Michael Hammond) the National Endowment for the Arts will make better decisions about the projects it supports and will continue to disappoint the William Pope.L’s of this world. But even without 14-foot phalluses, the NEA sticks out like a $100 million embarrassment and remains a prime target for budget cutting.
Let’s curb the kangaroo court of anonymous sources
Tim Graham