I wonder what he is up to…ah. He’s defending Trump’s savage budget cuts for the arts, because art isn’t reverent enough.
Justice demands that these agencies should be eliminated: Taxpayers should not be forced to pay for assaults on their religion. Christians constitute roughly 75 percent of the population; Catholics are approximately 25 percent of the total. In the name of “art,” these Americans are expected to pay for irreverent exhibits, but depictions that are reverential—such as a nativity scene outside City Hall—are denied a dime. It’s time we stopped giving the arts a privileged position and cut their funding. The same is true for publicly funded radio and TV programming that has a history of insulting the majority of Americans.
I don’t think he understands art. Bye, Bill, sink back into obscurity, ‘k?
Oh fuck off, Bill. Art keeps our sense of wonder alive, and nourishes the playful in all of us.
I guess he never heard of that obscure technical clause in the Constitution, sometimes known as The First Amendment, where Free Speech is recommended and Religion should be kept very separated from government. So funding arts is encouraged and Nativity scenes is not.
Maybe Donahue [hmmm Don A Hue, meaning a hue of DJT hmmm]
I know he’s read it and conveniently disregards it whenever he wants to promote his own beliefs as “gods will”.
you know, even I would allow cutting National Endowment for the Arts, IFF the money was redirected into the ACA (ie healthcare). This admin is cutting both (to zero, and not just trimming them, so no deal.
That…seems ironic, given the papacy being like the largest historical political patron of the arts for a lot of western history.
Art has many different reasons for existing. Some art glorifies (I’m thinking of the Renaissance Condotierri who commissioned some of the most beautiful frescoes placing themselves in with the magi venerating Jesus and Mary). Some art is meant to be eye candy (my parents have a wonderful oil painting of a packer leading a team up a snowy canyon with the Maroon Bells in the background — beautiful but it really doesn’t say much). Some art is vanity (Elizabethan artists managed to make Elizabeth look good despite the weird hair and the skin problems from the lead). Some art seeks to tell a story (and often inserted current politics (or banking families) into the story of, say, Jesus and the moneychangers). Some art is meant to challenge our world view, to challenge how we look at life (Picasso’s Guernica is a great example, as is Mapplethorpe’s works). People like Donahue want calendar art — cute puppies, kittens, inspirational couplets dropped onto generic landscapes (which is art, even if it is also kitsch) — art that doesn’t challenge, that doesn’t require thought, that doesn’t say anything. Which is sad.
And I am tired of listening to conservatives whine about their tax monies supporting things with which they disagree. I disagree with my tax monies subsidizing churches (no property taxes IS a subsidy). I disagree with my tax monies being spent on weapons that exist merely to enrich contractors and not fill an actual military need. I disagree with my tax monies filling the pockets of Exxon Mobile, or BP, or the Koch family, or the mine owners of Perry County. I disagree with my tax monies being used to extra-judiciously kill people.
Guess what, assholes? No one is going to agree about how any penny is spent by the government. We will never have 100% buy-in on any federal subsidy, federal project, federal support. If you insist that an agency can only support a project that is supported by all, you are insisting on a government that ceases to exist.
Which, now that I think on it, is where these asshats want to go. Well, except for the subsidies for the things they like — churches, lots of children, big guns, . . . .
Of course Donohue never applies the same logic to churches.
This morning I saw in the cesspool of FaceBotch a cool peese of satire art Don-a-Huge would simply love.
Its a reverential piece showing ‘Holy God’ bestowing a sacred blessing on DJT with the overlaid text of “Trump is choosen [sic] by God as a Blessing for America”, the added text includes as menny spellling heirs as poscible, to make satire obvious.
The image, though, is at first jarringly reminiscent of reverential depictions of that immigrant hippie communist vagrant revolutionary, Jesus guy. Exactly what Billy is asking us to spend our tax dollars on instead of health (both physical, and psyche, health are unimportant to Billy)
I’ve always wondered why Donohue’s first name wasn’t capitalized. Now I realize “blowhard” isn’t his first name after all.
The screed is pretty much straight out of the wingnut and loonyertarian playbook, which has been advocating elimination of NPR, PBS, and NEH (at least) for multiple decades. It’s always been stooopid, and has only acquired more o‘s.
Donohue is lying here. No surprise. He always lies.
The error here is that xians and Catholics are a unified block. And that he speaks for them.
Neither is true.
Even in political terms, xians are sharply split. Hillary was a xian as was most of her voters. And many xians don’t have a problem with PBS and art.
And BTW, PBS and the arts aren’t assaulting xianity. They have far better things to do.
I think taxpayers should not be forced to pay for the bloated military budget. I do, however, consider art that is an “assault” on religion to be perfectly fine.
Thanks, Bill. Now I’m going to have to make a “piss christ” of my very own.
PZ is right.
Donohue has no idea what art is.
Nativity scenes aren’t art. They are at best, xian schlock and propaganda.
But they can be.
And all Zombie, all dinosaur, or all Lovecraft Nativity scene, now that is…art.
PS All Zombie Nativity scenes are commercially available.
You can also easily make your own and you don’t need a government grant. Just buy a lot of stuff at or after Halloween and repurpose it for Xmas.
I wonder: has Donohue been loudly protesting Trump’s assaults on the poor and the sick, groups which Christians traditionally claim to stand up for? Or is Piss Christ a higher priority for Donohue than the starving and the dying?
He’d probably love the old socialist-realism art of the Soviet Union with the commie bits painted over. Images of workers, soldiers, women in peasant garb holding bread etc.
They should really do something about that graffiti in the Vatican.
Apparently Bill doesn’t understand the difference between an “exhibit,” a type of event, and “City Hall” which is a place and an official government building (and doesn’t require capitalization). Lots of things can happen in exhibits that can’t happen at City Hall, and vice versa.
Another thing that Bill doesn’t seem to understand is that the NEA funds lots of kinds of projects, not just art that hangs on walls or sits on plinths. Their application includes categories for arts education, dance, design, literature, accessibility, and many others, as well as “visual arts.”
And finally, how does he know that the NEA isn’t funding “reverential” projects? Here are a few of those horribly irreverent projects the NEA helped fund in the past year: Jazz for the Masses in Boston, Composing new music in Chicago for GRAMMY winners, Bringing music to at-risk students in Houston, Gathering the World to Sing in Montana (International Choral Festival), and Experiencing the indie musician lifestyle in Oregon. I’m willing to bet you can hear some reverential works at that choral festival in Missoula, Montana, and perhaps in some of these other venues.
Moggie wrote:
Of course not! To try and lift the poor and sick out of poverty and disease would run counter to God’s will. The Bible clearly says that the poor will always be with you, so attempting to make them non-poor only makes God angry. Besides, if God wanted them to be not poor, He would provide for them. Since He has not, He clearly wants them to be poor as punishment for something or other. Besides, if we have the government take money from people to help the poor, it’s not genuine charity. The poor must only be helped by true charity, otherwise it is corrupt.
… and that’s not much of an exaggeration of actual rationales I’ve been given for why funding war is more important than helping the poor.
johnson catman wrote:
I guarantee that if you proposed that religious pacifists (Quakers, Mennonites, etc) should be allowed to veto the government’s spending on warfare, that Donohue (and similars) will swiftly make a U-turn and tell you that you don’t have a choice in the matter. They won’t change their position on the original objections to paying for non-religious art, poor people, or reproductive health care, mind you. These modern “Religious Liberty” defenders are never about actual freedom, but the right to dictate what others can do with their lives.
I’m actually surprised Bill managed to avoid using the word “degenerate” when decrying art.
He’s one of those chickenshit Nazis that have taught themselves to avoid using buzzwords, but otherwise express the exact same messages.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24819441
…you know, as far as comparing the modern right wing american conservative to a 1930s Nazi?
the Nazis wanted to get rid of LESS art than the modern conservative does.
yes, that’s right, the modern RWA is actually WORSE than a Nazi.
shocking.