Posted on 11/24/2013 2:30:43 PM PST by ReformationFan
I went to a lecture recently presented by the Smithsonian. The subject of the talk was Jack Kerouacs Francophone roots, and I was expecting lots of intellectual wanna-be Beatniks. Instead I was surrounded by a roomful of typical old lib academics.
It felt as though I were living inside of NPR. You know the type: the women are skeletal from not eating meat and from biking too much and have salt and pepper hair which they cut when they decided they hated men and also decided to look like one. They prefer the unkempt, natural look to actually bothering to maintain the frizz. The men are not noticeably thin, but are noticeably lacking in bulk. Both sexes (its difficult sometimes to distinguish them) dress in neutral earth tones, the organic fiber of their clothes having been manufactured ethically. They dress for comfort and for hiking simultaneously, even in the city, and sip water constantly, as if they dont know where their next sustainable bottle of H2O is coming from. Many of them wear glasses (it adds to the intellectual mystique), little artsy specs with thick frames that sit on the end of the nose. This positioning accentuates the elitist, I know better than you look.
I had a beer and observed. I was the only one under 50, I think, and definitely the only one who read On the Road without trying to dissect it for profound insight. I found it mostly a practical guide to how to be wild and still survive, with the occasional thoughtful reflection thrown in between breaths. The people attending this lecture seemed as opposite Jack Kerouac, a noted conservative, as they could get.
This type of liberal shows up everywhere: at book stores, coffee shops, farmers markets, lectures, concerts, museums. And why, thought I, is it that liberals seem to own the arts and everything aesthetic?
Two thoughts:
Libs dont actually own the arts, they just make it look that way.
Liberals are great showmen and women I dont want to discriminate here. (Ever wonder, by the way, why liberals are so gung-ho about gender neutrality but then have a conniption when you dont write he/she his/her? Anywaaay
Everything liberals do is about appearance and how their behavior is perceived. This is why their lifestyles are so contradictory. And since they generally reject God and the eternal, the glories of this world are all that matter. They want to feel good without having to do good. They want to look good in the eyes of others without having to sacrifice. And when they do something, they dont do it quietly simply for the enjoyment of themselves or of others. They make a spectacle of it so you cant help but notice.
This is why it seems that liberals own the arts. They want to appear to everyone else in the world to be cultured, non-discriminatory, interested, and intellectual. Im sure there were other non-liberals at the lecture I attended (actually, being D.C., there is no guarantee of this), but I didnt notice them in the sea of exaggerated progressives aggressively flaunting their open minds. Conservatives tend to enjoy things passively, absorbing art and culture for their own sakes, because they enjoy them. This contrast may also be why the liberal media is liberal. Leftists are much more about showing and telling. (Its why they also rule the bumper sticker world.)
The arts are another way they can force ideologies on you and control you.
The arts, when acknowledged at all, are associated with poverty. Especially in these terrible democratic I mean economic times, the arts take a hit. They are a low priority, and rather than let the market do its thing, the liberals do theirs: they force the arts to stay afloat by taking money people could better spend on subsisting and spend it on artists salaries, supplies, and marketing for asinine projects. If theres one thing liberals love more than spending money on fluff no one cares about, its spending other peoples money on fluff no one cares about. And where government money goes, a government message goes with it. (Hello, Sesame Street)
In my opinion, I think it’s because libs like to live in fantasyland a/k/a the only place where their ideas actually work.
They can have most of it, i sure would not want it.
Because that is an area taken over by the marxists in the 1920's/1930's and perpetuated to this day by academic tenure which is nothing more than an ideological vetting process.
ping
Because working for a living sucks.
commies took refuge there.
unionistas took refuge there (with their commie buddies).
naive idealists took refuge there, to ‘change the world’ and ‘influence society’.
people with grudges and radical agendas took refuge there, to ‘change the world’ and ‘influence society’.
There are different arts - visual, literary, performing. Which do you not like?
“WHY DO LIBS OWN THE ARTS?”
i’m trying to think of anything in the public square that they don’t own.
anyone? anyone?
The inverse of why conservatives own work.
She’s onto something. They desperately need to appear avant-garde.
That’s why there’s a program in every university called ‘LIBERAL ARTS”. That’s how I got into my uni in Communications then jumped to my Business major. The worst part is attending non-relevant and idiotic mandatory subjects in Literature. The good part is that the quality of girls looks-wise went up but the thinking power was at the level of rocks.
I guess that depends on what you call “art”
There are a lot of artists at FR but according to some we’re just a bunch of bums looking for a handout despite never applying for a grant or any other form of taxpayer money.
“An artist is a businessperson - they hate it, but it’s true -’
Oh you hit one out of the park. I have a disabled (truly not a fake disability) liberal friend that is an artist. He paints some hideous portraits that supposedly show the human condition. He shows that work in galleries and such in Western Pennsylvania. He gets raves from the critics but seldom sells any of those works. He supports himself by painting generic landscapes that he sells for $100.00 each at flea markets and that he signs with a different name. He can sell 5 of those a week and they take him about 1 to 1.5 hours to paint.
He complains that nobody buys his real art and how he feels like a prostitute selling “over the sofa pictures”
He got sort of miffed when I suggested that art is what the patron buying it says it is rather than what the artist says it is.
So they get all feely and they do some arts thingies. Then they go out and vote for Obama because Obama makes them feeeel so good.
Because no conservative is stupid enough to call Jesus in a jar of urine art.
Among actors, for example, strong male leads tend to be more conservative than their professional colleagues. Their acting style if often criticized as wooden or understated, unlike emotion driven method actors.
Life experience matters though, such as with Robert Downey, Jr., who went from liberal to conservative due to his experiences as a drug addict. This supports the observation that conservatism is grounded in the sometimes harsh realities of life.
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