Free Republic

Believe it or not, this isn’t the most foolish comment from Kareem Dale at the Atlantic Council awards last week. Dale takes his job as Minister of Culture in the Obama administration a little too seriously. He rails against the supposed “second class” status given the arts in America:

"If you telephone me on the mobile, I would be able to speak to you through my 'ear.'"

54 groups share nearly $1 million in cigarette-tax money for arts projects by Karen Sandstrom / Plain Dealer Reporter Tuesday June 10, 2008, 3:49 PM Over the next year, cigarette-buyers in Cuyahoga County will help pay for a summer arts program for 1,000 young people in neighborhood parks as well as outdoor concerts in University Circle. Those programs are among 54 that will receive a total of $980,000 from Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, the agency that administers the Issue 18 tax for the arts, levied at 1.5 cents per cigarette. On Tuesday, trustees approved the grants to, among others, University...

Bush's budget boondoggle Posted: February 10, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com You've heard all the debate about President Bush's budget over the last few days. Some say the $2.6 trillion spending plan is too big. Some say it is too small. Some quibble with certain programs getting cut. Others say they are not getting cut enough. The American people sit by and their eyes glaze over. What they never hear in the course of this debate is something I'm going to tell you: Almost every spending program you've heard about in this plan and others like it is...

BUSH TO SEEK BIG BUDGET INCREASE FOR NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS... Laura Bush plans to announce the request -- for the largest increase in two decades -- on Thursday... Developing...

PHILADELPHIA, Sep 12, 2003 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- The whole idea of "Mexico Illuminated" was to bring together artists of Mexican descent to tout the Hispanic heritage of the city of Reading, Pennsylvania, and show how the United States is perceived by its neighbor to the south. Artist Marcos Ramirez says people should have known better than to expect simple paintings of deserts and smiling field hands sporting sombreros. Ramirez caused a stir when he chose to express his views on America with a billboard-sized piece depicting a green road sign with the distances from Reading to foreign cities...

It is claimed by many on the right that good art will flourish in the free market. Most good products do, art being a product it makes sense that the right's presumption is cogent. In fact one would have a hard time convincing any conservative otherwise. The free market is the final arbiter of usefulness if not quality. However, it appears to me that conservatives applying free market principles to art are disingenuous. I doubt that conservatives are ignorant of the artistic plight. They are poor, often under-nourished and for an honest artist, they are working not only general adversity,...

If conservatives and libertarians hope to make advances in the culture war, they need to devote more private resources to arts funding; to establish a grant-making infrastructure to fund and connect like-minded writers, actors, musicians, and filmmakers. Conservatives ignore the arts at their peril. No matter who is elected to steer the ship of state, a captain can only push so far against the cultural currents, which flow in the direction of whoever writes our shared stories. Popular prejudices, shaped by culture, circumscribe an elected official's policies. A politician can only cut taxes so much if the beneficiaries are perceived...