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 Kerouac’s 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 (it’s 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 don’t 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 don’t actually own the arts, they just make it look that way.
Liberals are great showmen and women – I don’t 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 don’t 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 don’t do it quietly simply for the enjoyment of themselves or of others. They make a spectacle of it so you can’t 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. I’m sure there were other non-liberals at the lecture I attended (actually, being D.C., there is no guarantee of this), but I didn’t 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. (It’s 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 there’s one thing liberals love more than spending money on fluff no one cares about, it’s spending other people’s money on fluff no one cares about. And where government money goes, a government message goes with it. (Hello, Sesame Street)
>> That is true, the real artist makes things they can sell because people can use them.
Good point.
There is very little produced today in the field of “art” that deserves the classification we normally attribute to the great works of the ages. Instead, the vast majority of today’s true art is rendered through engineering and ironically goes unnoticed despite the creative skill and imagination required for its realization.
The pragmatic complaints expressed within this thread concerning the vapid nature of modern Liberal Arts are legitimate.
The mockery of conservatives that enjoy the simple pleasures in life is juvenile. To hold up liberals as an advanced intellectual form of the species for the affinity to the “Liberal Arts” is asinine.
Yes, the responsibility of paying the tax bills does in fact steal away time from being creative.
Yes, the responsibility of paying the tax bills does in fact steal away time from being creative.
I'm going to give you the same answer I gave to another person who made a similar comment:
Clichéd response.
Why is it that many people here think "The Arts" consist only of visual arts like painting and sculpture? Are you not aware that "The Arts" also consists of literary arts, and performing arts (music, theater, movies/TV)?
And make independent films about gay cowboys eating pudding.
Sorry, it just came to me.
Call my comment “Artistic License”.
Many of us little people see today’s “art” as nothing more than a venue for Liberal Propaganda. It works splendidly.
Music is propaganda?
Some is, some isn’t.
Which is? I’m talking about music not lyrics or text. I’ve hear the assertion that atonal music is inherently liberal which is asinine.
Lyrics.
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