Robert Redford invaded Capitol Hill on Tuesday to confront a House of Representatives subcommittee with impassioned demands for more money for the arts.
Accompanied by singer John Legend, actress Kerry Washington and other luminaries, the Sundance Kid attempted this daring hold-up in broad daylight –insisting that funding for the National Endowment for the Arts must be restored to its 1992 peak of $176 million, from the paltry 2009 figure of $128 million proposed by the Bush administration.
After all, Redford reasons, what’s a mere $48 million difference when it comes to the beautiful friendship between the Democrats who control Congress and their well-heeled friends in Hollyweird?
The demands associated with national “Arts Advocacy Day” (sorry if you missed it) display enough gall to be divided into three parts.
If Tinseltown titans want more funding for the arts, then why don’t they spend their own damn money? Considering the tens of millions of dollars raised in Hollywood for the Obama and Clinton campaigns, Redford and company easily could come up with double or triple the proposed federal expenditure to create their own “endowment for the arts.”
In addition to privatizing an utterly useless (and totally wasteful) government boondoggle, this new venture could also display more expertise in judging artistic projects (with funding and supervision by creative people themselves) than the silly federal bureaucrats who currently control the “official” arts programs.
Congress and the executive branch have enough time evaluating what military equipment deserves funding, or which environmental programs require more money. It’s insane to put these same federal office holders in charge of deciding what documentary films, and performance art, and poetry readings, and literary magazines, and public sculpture deserve taxpayer money.
The whole idea of “official” federally approved art goes against the notion of free expression that most pop culture potentates claim to promote. Opposition to government sponsorship hardly amounts to imposition of government censorship. Communist dictatorships granted great power to “arts commissars” to nourish useful creativity that served the regime; decadent monarchies have also stolen money from the oppressed populace to establish lavish court theatres and orchestras and art collections to glorify the name of the ruler.
We don’t need to operate in that style in the world’s greatest Republic. In his prepared testimony, Redford modestly cited his own Sundance Film Festival as an example of artistic endeavors promoting economic development. But wouldn’t it be absurd to suggest that this glittering, lavish, celebrity-saturated annual event requires taxpayer funding for its survival?
Then again, when it comes to Redford’s latest film project -- the talky, tendentious anti-war snooze fest “Lions for Lambs” (also starring Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise)-- the public rejected the film so decisively (making it one of the biggest turkeys of recent years) that some retroactive government grant might constitute its beleaguered director’s only hope of ever recouping some of his losses.