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)
They placed themselves in the arts and education because it gave them the best platform for manipulation.
Stupid Republicans should have done something about this starting 50 years ago and urges conservatives into education and the arts as well.
When my son was very little, and decorated himself, his high chair, and his immediate surroundings with chocolate frosting, that was the best art I’ve ever seen. It was a combination of performance art and ‘painting’ at their best, and I miss that kind of art.
Hillsdale college is a liberal arts school and is anything but liberal.
We much prefer going to the galleries that actually have things people want to buy.
I think that’s what I just said. The liberal arts have nothing at all to do with progressive liberal politics.
Yes, that is exactly how they dress, how their hair is cut, how they are built - androgynous, scrawny men, comfort clothes (etc) over attractiveness (as a moral statement!).
And then - I speak as a musician — there are no BETTER composers or symphonies, or worse - because you cannot say what is good and what is bad. If you don’t like something, it is your problem as a lower form of life. It IS good, because it is ALL good. Phillip Glass IS good - you are the problem if you don’t think so. Beethoven is NOT better than Nobody/ Anybody.
Up is down.
They placed themselves in the arts and education because it gave them the best platform for manipulation.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Regarding: education
Nearly every teacher in this nation ( both private and government) was trained by godless Marxists in godless Marxist run colleges and universities. Even if they are “conservative” that Marxist training is bound to leak through into the classroom.
Scary! But....Conservatives seem oblivious to the threat to the nation.
Don’t knock Liberal Arts. The purpose of the School of Liberal Arts is to expose one to a wide range of disciplines, many of which set the foundation for true scholastic growth. True. the School of Liberal Arts has some inane disciplines (such as Sociology and the wholly ridiculous gender studies), but it also has Philosophy, History, Anthropology, Languages, and, yes, the arts, just to name a few. To obtain a degree in the School of Liberal Arts one must also take mathematics and science courses. Most lawyers have their undergraduate degrees from the School of Liberal Arts (I know, the jokes just write themselves).
Right, the education stripped them of their logic the way science classes stripped many science oriented people from faith.
Ditto!
The first movie I saw in a movie theater was MASH, at the age of 16 or so, in 1971 or 1972 in Vermont.
The second was Star Wars in 1977 or 1978 in Massachusetts.
The third was the Rocky Horror Picture Show, in Denver in 1978.
Since then, perhaps more than 5, less than 10.
I wait until after a movie I want to see comes out in DVD, and then wait more, until it's cheap.
The thought of giving the leftists one more dime than I have to is repugnant.
Another liberal conceit -- books have to mean something. Sometimes, usually, the author is just telling a story.
Because the rest of us are working?
The “arts” today is just CRAP....PORNOGRAPHIC CRAP!!!! Does ANYONE...and I mean ANYONE know HOW to paint a Mona Lisa or SCULPT something of BEAUTY????? NO!!!
The “arts” today is just CRAP....PORNOGRAPHIC CRAP!!!! Does ANYONE...and I mean ANYONE know HOW to paint a Mona Lisa or SCULPT something of BEAUTY????? NO!!!
Ithaca - 24 square miles surrounded by reality.
While I was a graduate student at Cornell, I couldn’t afford to live in Ithaca. I lived 20 miles away in Cortland at half the price, and “slummed it” with all the state schoolers
The truth is that 98% of art is crapola. And that’s the part that the liberals own. The 2% of talented, good artists are too busy making art to fuss with liberals, cocktail parties, public relations and other such wastes.
For the most part, they only cultivate two or three major collectors, who end up with most of their works, mostly unknown in the art world until one of these collectors holds an exhibition of his holdings. Then everyone else suddenly realizes that artists’ brilliance and desperately want a piece of it for their own.
Because success is judged subjectively and collectively, both things that leftists revel in. In a real field, success can be judged by objective criteria, and as such, the judgment easily be made by a single reviewer.
Excellent, well-written article. And so true.
Exactly.
Get it from RedBox or Netflix for essentially free, or borrow it from the library for actually free. They do have DVDs.
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