In an article in our local newspaper which I expect to see soon on the blog Waddyisright.com, Dr. N.L. Waddy of SUNY Alfred proposes a very sensible realignment of some national broadcast priorities to extend Internet access (Dr. Waddy, please correct me if I am wrong about its prospective appearance on your blog). Please read his post because I doubt my ability to paraphrase it correctly. I thought it very plausible.
It was printed close to an article describing concerns potential grant recipients have about the Trump administration's plans to discontinue Federal funding of the National Endowment for the Humanities; similar lamentation has been emoted over intended Federal defunding of the National Endowment for the Arts and the "Public Broadcasting System" (I can't help but put the latter in quotes, its so presumptuous). Supporters of these agencies (prominently among them their employees), disingenuously wail that defunding them will kill "the arts" in the U.S., especially in the nether regions of our vast land. They purposefully ignore the infinite variety of culture already available on the Internet, a medium visually and audibly comparable to the broadcast media. Want a full opera or ballet or a gallery of paintings by any artist, or a lecture by any accomplished intellectual or a Shakespeare or Moliere play in full professional performance or an opus by any serious musician, now or back then? Its there. What the Internet is free of, at least for now, is control by the unelected bigoted American leftist bureaucrats who so obviously and blithely dominate the aforementioned Federal agencies and who direct thereby the devotion of hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars to their political causes - taxpayers of different persuasions be damned. Advocacy is their game, not cultural enrichment (though they do fancy themselves bringing enlightenment to the benighted).
They have enthusiastically funded and defended abominations like "Piss Christ", a vicious and scornful depiction of a crucifix dipped in urine. Would they have funded "Piss Martin Luther King" or "Piss on global warming fanatics"? Well, we (including them) know they would have been dipped in urine rather than have done so.
Lets redirect their funding and their broadcast space to the extension of the Internet to all reaches of our land. That would give all Americans complete access to high culture at any time, free of the snooty biases of those who think British high society soap operas so very much better than the Young and the Restless. Those who maintain that that will eradicate the arts in America choose not to consider the universality of the Internet and dread their own disempowerment. They also ignore history; did Herman Melville or Emily Dickinson or Theodore Dreiser need federal support to perpetuate their works? They let their works speak for themselves in the free market of public opinion; to which the American left, totalitarian as it is, is unalterably opposed. Jack
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2 comments:
Well said, Jack! As usual, you've found a new argument that I hadn't considered. You're right -- the internet is a wonderful tool for those who wish to short-circuit leftist cultural domination. I wish I had made that point in my article. It's a powerful one. I daresay Trump never would have won the election if the internet hadn't been invented... Granted, rural America is already in the conservative camp, but expanding access to sources of information other than the mainstream media is ALWAYS a good thing!
Dr. Waddy: The Internet is democratic and that is anathema to the left. Leftist elites are contemptuous of rural America and are seeing us react to their disdain, e.g. by electing President Trump. That certainly was helped by the Internet. Sidelining the now mainstream but in the foreseeable future perhaps to be laughably marginalized MSM would be an extremely favorable development. Thanks for introducing the idea of extending the Internet. It is a nightmare for those who for far too long have arrogated Federal and state funding and authority to the bigoted advancement of what they "know" to be just. Jack
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