Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 26, 1992 TAG: 9202260341
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CAL THOMAS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
FROHNMAYER'S FINAL EXIT' ONE DISMISSAL WON'T CURE ARTS AGENCY
JOHN FROHNMAYER, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, has been fired. White House insiders say the director of presidential personnel, Constance Horner, was primarily responsible for the dismissal. Horner's ears were recently singed by callers to a satellite television program on which she appeared, hosted by conservative leader Paul Weyrich.Callers expressed outrage that the NEA, under Frohnmayer, spent tax dollars to support homoerotic and blasphemous art. But the real issue transcends Frohnmayer.
Even before his tenure, the NEA channeled money to groups that created works that had less to do with art than with attacking religious and moral beliefs. A White House official told me the president "needed to flex a muscle," and Frohnmayer was on the receiving end of that flex. But the official said it was impossible to predict whether the next NEA chairman would, or could, guarantee that no tax dollars would in the future go to anti-religious and sexually offensive works.
The NEA should never have been established. If artists have a work that interests the public, they should market it like any other product. If there are buyers, they prosper. If no one is interested, they find another line of work. That is what the rest of us must do, including columnists. What makes these so-called artists - who photograph such subjects as a crucifix submerged in urine - think they are deserving of public funds?
In the debate over school vouchers, opponents argue that no government money can be associated with anything that is "religious." So where is the justification for spending federal funds on things that clearly are anti-religious?
As the controversy increased, the "artists" began creating works that portrayed Jesus Christ as a homosexual and in other roles designed to offend their critics in the Christian community.
Some NEA grants go directly to the "artists," but others are filtered through several organizations, providing the NEA the opportunity to sometimes deny direct funding.
A recent film entitled "Jesus Christ Condom" is one example. The NEA, under John Frohnmayer, awarded $637,000 to the New York State Arts Council, which gave $167,000 to Women Make Movies, Inc., which gave $12,000 to the New Festival, Inc., which sponsored the Third Annual New York International Festival of Lesbian and Gay Films.
In "Jesus Christ Condom," an AIDS activist opens a 30-minute tirade against Christianity by dressing like Jesus, standing on the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York and announcing that John Cardinal O'Connor will be exposed for his "slanders and lies." At another point an ACT-UP member takes the Eucharist, which is revered by Catholics as the body of Christ, crumbles it, throws it on the floor and steps on it. The actor portraying Jesus says, "My Mom was a virgin and boy did she miss out."
Supporters of the NEA falsely charge censorship by critics. It is not censorship. Artists should be free to create anything they wish, including pornographic and blasphemous works. But they have no right to subsidies from the public purse to pursue their objectives.
The Bush administration is to be commended for dismissing John Frohnmayer, but unless it establishes guidelines that will keep federal dollars from going to people whose objective is to trash the moral and spiritual values of most of the country, the entire agency should be abolished and the money saved used to reduce the deficit.
William Faulkner, the Nobel Prize-winning author who had talent and didn't need a federal grant, observed, "The artist doesn't need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and paper. I've never known anything good in writing to come from having accepted any free gift of money. The good writer never applies to a foundation. He's too busy writing something."
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John Updike said it even better: "I would rather have as my patron a host of anonymous citizens dipping into their own pocket for the price of a book or a magazine than a small body of enlightened and responsible men administering public funds."
The government should follow the advice of Faulkner and Updike, two genuine artists whose works endure on their own with no help from taxpayers. Los Angeles Times Syndicate