I took a poll of Dartmouth students on Wednesday in order to discover what was on their mind. "Write about something interesting," they said.
Suggestions on what I should write about ranged from an attack on Dick's House to a questioning of Rukmini Sichitiu's '95 ability to write an objective review of the Greek system to a refutation of anything written by Sarah Johnston '97.
Okay, so that was a lie. I only polled one table in Food Court and another at the Hop. Needless to say, while all of the above are worth exploring, none of them grabbed me. So I opened my new Time magazine, hoping it would provide me with a topic, an issue, something to believe in.What I found was a host of issues I didn't quite feel capable of commenting on, much less offering a solution to.
The carnage continues in the Balkans. Scientists think they have discovered a "substance" that makes fat mice thin. Susan Smith didn't get the death penalty and the O.J. Simpson trial drags on.
And in yet another Republican stroke of genius, Congress would like to solve the budget crisis by cutting funding to the National Endowments for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
I did pause over that last item. It was hard to miss since it was Time's cover story this week. According to their story, the United States spends $620 million a year on "culture." This is less than five-hundredths of one percent of the national budget.
Considering a B-2 Bomber is more than two billion dollars, one would think the United States could afford a measly $620 million for the NEA, the NEH and the CPB.
Now, I'm in no way an expert on culture, nor am I an expert on economic issues. But it seems fairly obvious that killing cultural funding is not going to balance the budget. What it will do is make it even tougher for the arts and humanities to thrive in this country.
However, Republicans are not quite clueless enough to base their reasoning for not supporting culture solely on the current fiscal crisis. According to them, these three organizations are too liberal, too elitist and too politically correct.
Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., stated in February that: "As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing public about [PBS]. It's an elitist enterprise. Rush Limbaugh is public broadcasting."
If I understand the Speaker correctly, he is stating that PBS, which receives most of its funding from the CPB, caters to a select group in society, and thus does not deserve the support of the nation as a whole. Gingrich believes Limbaugh does a better job of representing the public.I must be missing something, because as far as I can tell, Rush Limbaugh caters to the fringes of the conservative and the religious right.
I should qualify that statement by saying I've never actually managed to watch an entire Limbaugh broadcast, because I was too disgusted with the ways in which Limbaugh blatantly promoted his books and his radio show on his broadcast. I personally find Cher infomercials less commercial.
It is difficult to understand how the Republicans can feel PBS caters to the elite. PBS is, after all, the network that brings us such programs as Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers. There are few college students out there that do not owe the knowledge of at least a few letters of the alphabet to the efforts of Big Bird and friends.
PBS is the only network to provide educational programming for children without commercials. Because they don't have to sell a product, they manage to provide what Time called "the only regular source of decent programs for kids."
It is just as difficult to justify cutting funding for the NEA and the NEH based on the few grants with which the conservatives have problems.
Money that goes to these organizations funds museums and theaters, libraries and evencolleges such as Dartmouth.
Some argue federal funding is only a small portion of total funding for the arts, and that the burden should be on private foundations to support them.
Forcing artists to cater to the needs of private businesses, however, would also force them to compromise their artistic freedom.
There are many things wrong with our government. Its support for the arts is not one of them.
Congress must continue to fund the NEA, the NEH and the CPB. They owe it to the nation.
