Pitching Arts to Conservatives II

A while back, I wrote a missive (aimed particularly at Scott Walters) about how to win public support for government arts funding again:

Kingston's stance right now is, the NEA is useless to my district, so it is way easy for me to rag on it. After all, how many people in my district have any connection to or value of the NEA? Why not kick it around? What would I lose?

And if you look at the political math, if the NEA's money is going mostly to large metropolises, then it will be undersupported in the House. And probably the Senate too.

As if on cue, there's been a fight a-brewin' amongst the mainstream blogosphere about New York's status as a cultural capital -- are we snobs and cultural imperialists, or victims of our own success? It started here; if you want to follow the conversation, go read Andrew Sullivan's blog (you have to be already -- how are you not?). Here's the post that stuck out to me, though:

The question to me is not whether centers of power or culture or economy are good or bad, but whether there are appropriate checks and balances on their influence, and whether that influence then results in (cultural/political/economic) growth across the country or whether it simply saps the rest of the country of its resources. Is New York robbing the rest of the country of its art and culture? Probably not. Likely quite the contrary occurs. Wall Street, on the other hand, is a lot more culpable when it comes to our financial situation and the drain bad finance has placed on people on Main Street as it were – and there is certainly a problem with letting one industry, largely centered in one city, become so dominant.

I don't know if New York can be said to rob the rest of the country of its art and culture, but I do think New York can be said to be robbing the rest of the country of its cultural support. Here's a breakdown of the NEA's music grants from the stimulus bill by state:

(Adaptistration)

Almost 25% went to NY and CA. 18% of the population (according to Wikipedia) gets about 31% of the arts funding, and Texas (more populous than NY and with its own strong arts tradition, especially in cities like Austin) is getting about 3% of the funding compared with being 7% of the population. (Interesting to note, by the way, that Illinois is equally out of favor, despite being home to Chicago, part of the"NYLACHI" that Scott's sworn his life to balance against.

Scott Walters: Here's Your Challenge

Hey Scott Walters, did you see this quote about the NEA that Playgoer brought to our attention?

“If it created jobs, you’d have 435 members of Congress saying, ‘Let’s put in more money to the N.E.A.’...The only shovel-ready aspect of it is that they need a shovel to clean up some of the bull they believe in over there.”

-Jack Kingston, Republican Congressman from Georgia and Tea Party-panderer.

Rep Kingston (R-GA) appears to be in the knee-jerk art-is-worthless crowd (remember Cash for Clowns?). Maybe he's the enemy, and we arts advocates need to make sure we pressure him to change his mind, or ignore him and fight to support people who don't think like him.

Or you, Scott, can take this as an opportunity.

See, from Kingston's perspective, the NEA doesn't create jobs. On a national level, that argument isn't worth all that much. And to the extent that it is true, the reason it doesn't create many jobs is because we don't fund it much.

But you see, Kingston is from Georgia 1st District. I wish I could find the NEA breakdown on money by district, but I haves me a feeling that it doesn't have much for Georgia's 1st District. And Rocco doesn't seem inclined to take rural theater very seriously, after the whole Peoria shennanigans. Georgia's 1st is home to Okefenokee Swamp. (Oh, and his website also says "The First District is a literary haven." Is he anti National Endowment of the Humanities?)

Kingston's stance right now is, the NEA is useless to my district, so it is way easy for me to rag on it. After all, how many people in my district have any connection to or value of the NEA? Why not kick it around? What would I lose?

And if you look at the political math, if the NEA's money is going mostly to large metropolises, then it will be undersupported in the House. And probably the Senate too.

So my challenge to you, Scott, is can you use CRADLEArts model to the political advantages of the arts? Can you go to Kingston and say, "If the NEA uses the current model, most of its money is going to go to big historic theaters in big cities. If you help reform the NEA's approach, you can bring some of that support to locals in your district. Don't scrap us, fix us."

And maybe Republicans aren't ready for this message. Maybe it's the 54 Congressmen of the Blue Dog Democrats. After all, maybe this is a winning moderate issue for them -- they get to go toe-to-toe with the "urban liberals" of the party (Take that, Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich) and brandish some populist, pro-local tendencies while still investing in a Democratic principle of supporting the arts.

Basically, can we end this manichean game of either pro-the-current-model or anti-the-arts?