Just a week before Tom Coburn’s ill-fated remarks on ABC’s unedited screening of Schindler’s List (my and many other’s vote for best movie of the ‘90s), a local Congressman declared all out war on the National Endowment of the Arts as the next important step in Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America. As politically unwise as Dole’s blind embrace of True Lies as a "family values" film, Coburn’s bravado indicates yet again his idealized, detached perception of today’s American society, which is larger than the Angle-Protestant midwest. Coburn’s comments, prefaced by his inaugural manifesto in which he called the nation "back to God," have backfired to brand him a bigoted, Puritanical closed mind - which he is not. Oklahomans, myself included, know him to be a man of God and family, who is sorely lacking in political savvy.

Whereas Tom Coburn’s outbursts have simply been bullets in his foot, the campaign against the NEA has in sight a much more important target: the government funding of thousands of local theaters, symphonies, literary magazines and talented independent artists all over America. Locally, that includes the Tulsa Philharmonic, National Public Radio, OETA and the Tulsa Arts and Humanities Council. This argument is part self-righteousness, part Darwinian capitalism, and part political grandstanding. The logic goes something like this: the NEA is well known for subsidizing the vulgar, obscene and profane; if people really wanted the art, they would pay for it; and finally, the arts are a sitting duck: who’s afraid of the Cello Players of America lobby!

The two Congressmen’s outbursts together represent the Religious Right’s total resentment of art, private and public. It would not flinch if the destruction of the NEA resulted in the destruction of small market symphonies, opera houses and public art, while Coburn and company long for the day Hollywood begins producing "family" movies "again." The irony is that artistic capitalism in America has resulted in the excesses of Hollywood, and while Boston, Cleveland, New York and other major markets can support their superb symphonies, theaters and operas, smaller markets like Tulsa struggle even with their national endowment. Does America’s philistine taste mean that the Tulsa Performing Arts Center should become a new multiplex) The NEA has subsidized obscene projects; this cannot be denied. Everyone has their favorite NEA gaffe, so I wilt not cite my own. But even during the Renaissance, which was funded by church and state, when the church was the state, the emphasis was on the avant garde - it must be for the advance of art. An anonymous, second-rate artist added loincloths to Michelangelo’s nudes in the Sistene Chapel because the nudes were thought obscene.

Finally, the NEA is a privately run organization for the same reason that Supreme Court justices are appointed for life: to be immune from political pressure. The arts in America do not have the funds to survive, let alone fight for their existence On Capitol Hill. America, the richest country in the history of the world, simply cannot afford to lose its most beautiful, most inspiring, most valuable treasures - her ballerinas, her cellists, her artists, her composers, her writers.

Fortunately, America can afford to endow them, to support them and to trust them, even when we, the people, take them for granted.

See opposing article by Philip Pfanstiel

by John Affleck
Freelance Author
published March 31, 1997