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WHY DO LIBS OWN THE ARTS?
Human Events ^ | 11-19-13 | Teresa Mull

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)


TOPICS: Arts/Photography; Books/Literature; Music/Entertainment; Society; TV/Movies
KEYWORDS: academicbias; arts; blacklist; brainwash; culturewars; hollywood; identitypolitics; ideology; liberals; libs; thearts
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1 posted on 11/24/2013 2:30:44 PM PST by ReformationFan
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To: ReformationFan

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.


2 posted on 11/24/2013 2:32:18 PM PST by ReformationFan
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To: ReformationFan

They can have most of it, i sure would not want it.


3 posted on 11/24/2013 2:34:59 PM PST by ravenwolf
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To: ReformationFan
WHY DO LIBS OWN THE ARTS?

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.

4 posted on 11/24/2013 2:36:20 PM PST by fso301
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To: Borges

ping


5 posted on 11/24/2013 2:36:31 PM PST by EveningStar
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To: ReformationFan
WHY DO LIBS OWN THE ARTS?

Because working for a living sucks.

6 posted on 11/24/2013 2:37:17 PM PST by Repeat Offender (What good are conservative principles if we don't stand by them?)
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To: ReformationFan
An artist is a businessperson - they hate it, but it's true - with a product to sell. Sometimes it's on the basis of merit, sometimes not, just like everything else that gets sold. Imagine the temptation of a system where you can force people to buy!
7 posted on 11/24/2013 2:39:29 PM PST by Billthedrill
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To: ReformationFan

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’.


8 posted on 11/24/2013 2:40:18 PM PST by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; Not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: ravenwolf

There are different arts - visual, literary, performing. Which do you not like?


9 posted on 11/24/2013 2:41:18 PM PST by EveningStar
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To: All

“WHY DO LIBS OWN THE ARTS?”

i’m trying to think of anything in the public square that they don’t own.
anyone? anyone?


10 posted on 11/24/2013 2:41:57 PM PST by willywill
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To: ReformationFan
sounds like ithaca... you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
11 posted on 11/24/2013 2:43:13 PM PST by Chode (Stand UP and Be Counted, or line up and be numbered - *DTOM* -vvv- NO Pity for the LAZY - 86-44)
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To: ReformationFan

The inverse of why conservatives own work.


12 posted on 11/24/2013 2:44:24 PM PST by DungeonMaster
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To: ReformationFan

She’s onto something. They desperately need to appear avant-garde.


13 posted on 11/24/2013 2:46:33 PM PST by Yaelle
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To: Repeat Offender

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.


14 posted on 11/24/2013 2:48:14 PM PST by max americana (fired liberals in our company last election, and I laughed while they cried (true story))
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To: ReformationFan

I guess that depends on what you call “art”


15 posted on 11/24/2013 2:48:59 PM PST by GeronL (Extra Large Cheesy Over-Stuffed Hobbit)
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To: EveningStar

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.


16 posted on 11/24/2013 2:51:05 PM PST by cripplecreek (REMEMBER THE RIVER RAISIN!)
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To: Billthedrill

“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.


17 posted on 11/24/2013 2:52:32 PM PST by Fai Mao (Genius at Large)
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To: ReformationFan
Because they only think with one side of their brain, and it isn't the logical side.

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.

18 posted on 11/24/2013 2:56:22 PM PST by FreeReign
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To: Fai Mao

Because no conservative is stupid enough to call Jesus in a jar of urine art.


19 posted on 11/24/2013 2:57:20 PM PST by Do the math (Doug)
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To: ReformationFan
I think that the best explanation as to why the arts crowd is liberal is that the modern arts are almost entirely driven by feelings, and feelings -- not facts and thinking -- are similarly the driving force of modern liberalism. Notably, restrained, classical artistic modes seem the most likely to generate the occasional conservative artist.

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.

20 posted on 11/24/2013 3:01:10 PM PST by Rockingham
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