A Censor for the Arts

Big Sister is Watching

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Federal agency that has made the lives of average Americans far richer because it places the opera, the symphony, and art galleries within the grasp of ordinary people, now has a censor.

It was bad enough having Senator Jesse Helms—the North Carolina Senator who resorted to racism in his last campaign, and who took it upon himself to be the religious right consciousness of the nation in the Senate—try to enact censorship principles into law, but it is another thing to have a political appointee act as censor when amending the law fails.

This is but another example of the Reagan-Bush administrative policy to appoint ideologues to political office in order to let them accomplish by administrative action what could not be done by law. Enough is enough.

George Bush, using the criticism of the NEA by Pat Buchanan as the excuse, sacked John Frohmeyer, the embattled Chairman of the Endowment—another sacrifice to the conservatives and the religious right; an other action by a minority President following the wishes of a minority Senator to carry out the will of the minority.

Art does not exist for either political majorities or political minorities. One, however, has only to examine the pieces of the exhibit of "Degenerate Art," the art that Adolph Hitler and the Nazi's didn't like, to see what happens when censors are interposed between artists and the public for political purposes. Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin used art for political purposes, and both stifled and truncated the development of art in their nations until art became a propaganda device.

Anne Imelda-Radice is the new Acting Chairman of the Endowment. For what purpose was she named to this position? Already she has interposed herself between the expert panels and the public to deny funding for art which she finds in bad taste to her, and she says she will do more of it. As a consequence, a number of expert panels have refused to make recommendations to her claiming that the review process has been poisoned by the possibility that she may override the panels' judgment at any time in an arbitrary and capricious manner.

What is the relationship between art experts, the art community, and our Federal Government? Is there a basis for a relationship where artists act as experts on behalf of the American public? Is it valid to think that artists as experts can responsibly exercise their judgment concerning art on behalf of the public, the citizens sovereign, while the administrators of this Federal agency manage the fiscal relations and other administrative functions necessary to involve the art community in the decisions? If Anne Imelda-Radice cannot accept the responsible actions of leading members of the art community as valid and responsible, then the course is clear: She must do it alone.

Do we want a czar of art at the Federal level? One that would be acceptable to Jesse Helms and the religious right? Would that czar simply become the censor of art for the U.S.? I am afraid that the experience of both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany provide all too ready examples of what happens when government bureaucrats run art for their own purposes.

Our Federal Government is rife with sectarianism, where the President appoints ideologues to institute and carry out programs he cannot get the Congress to approve. These actions, such as the gag rule in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), have no basis in law, which is where regulations are supposed to be based. They are the personal wishes of the appointees (who are where they are because they hold the same wishes as their President). Anne Imelda-Radice is one such appointee who now wants to use her personal judgment to set the art standard for the nation. She would like the panels to do their work, but she also would like to overrule them when she wishes to do so. A censor by any other name.

It is not merely a matter of how tax dollars are spent. Taxes are never spent in a way that pleases every taxpayer. Everyone's taxes do not go only for those things in the Federal Government of which they approve. Representative government doesn't work that way. The way it is set up to work is that, after Congress passes a law, the Executive Branch is supposed to carry it out. Ed Meese, Ronald Reagan's Attorney General, once told Congress that President Reagan didn't have to carry out any law of Congress he thought unconstitutional! Such audacity. The U.S. President, in Ed Meese's world, was to tell the Congress what was and was not constitutional. Even the Supreme Court didn't have that prerogative until it usurped it in Marbury vs Madison, a case which reeked with conflict of interest. The present Court hasn't taken to citing laws as unconstitutional, but rather is referring Federal law to the States for adjudication—a States' rights revolution from the Court.

The NEA is yet another example of a divided government, where a minority president is working his own will through ideological appointees, contrary to the wishes of Congress or of the majority of citizens-sovereign of the United States. If this government had a majority president, together with the present majority in Congress, Senator Helms would be just another voice in the elevator shaft. In a minority government he is a potent force. Anne Imelda-Radice should not be confirmed as the Chairman of the Endowment for the Arts. A willingness to be combative with the arts community and to treat its members as children is no way for the head of the Federal arts agency to act. We the People do not want a censor nor do we want a representative of the religious right. Rather, we want some one who understands art in all of its complexities, and someone who has the respect of the art community.

...Ted Sudia...

© Copyright 1992
Institute for domestic Tranquility