To: Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States
From: Chris Jones, Tribune critic
Re: The National Endowment for the Arts
A modest proposal, Mr. President: Don’t kill the National Endowment for the Arts.
Stay the murderous hand of Steve Bannon. Make Mike Pence ponder awhile. Tell the Heritage Foundation, thank you very much for all your advice, but you are your own man when it comes to this one. You are the president. You can do these things.
Remind all that you would not be the president without the realm of arts and entertainment. You wouldn’t be cracking anti-Arnold jokes at the National Prayer Breakfast and having the best time. You’d be an aging real estate licensee. And bored. Tell them you feel an obligation to encourage the next generation of creative storytellers.
Stop! Do not crumple up this memo without reading onward! I think you’re going to like what you read.
For this is not a reiteration of those tired, old arguments some of us have been making since the days of Jesse Helms and Robert Mapplethorpe a quarter of a century ago — you know, the idea that $150 million won’t put many bricks in your new wall, that it is a mere pittance to support the cultural heritage of a great nation and the fine artists therein, that NEA-founded arts education has proven benefits when it comes to the violence you want to curb, that great art can’t always be market-supported, that the shared conversation you are going to need to govern should be taking place in cultural venues, that most other advanced countries not only have much larger endowments but cabinet level ministers of culture to boot.
I know those arguments don’t do it for you. So stipulated. I’m bored with that same old back-and-forth too.
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And, yes, I too have rolled my eyes at those participation studies of arts audiences in Des Moines, those NEA-funded programs that preach to the liberal choir. All the federal red tape that comes with the grants, the cautious government regulation, the group-speak, the same-old, same-olds on the funding line, the avoidance of controversy. I know that many of those who voted for you despise the NEA, have never heard of the NEA, or are too busy with their actual lives to care either way. I understand there is not a well of affection from those who are not dependent on its funding. And thus I understand your temptation.
Keep reading! I’m getting to the point now!.
You’re a disrupter. Go ahead and disrupt. Move the NEA from Washington to Nashville. Give the NEA to Sly Stallone. (Was not he under serious consideration at one point?) He’d be fun. Offer it to Nicole Kidman (she caught some Hollywood heat for saying we all should support our president, which is you). Better yet, invite Dolly Parton — the queen of inclusivity, she really seems to speak for all Americans — to the White House and hand her a new portfolio. She’s famously generous. I bet she’d even match the funds. Wait. I have a better idea: Make Lorne Michaels the head of the NEA. That would blunt the satirical force of your chief nemesis, "Saturday Night Live." He’d have to leave the show. Win!
Wait! How about Lin-Manuel Miranda! Tell him that your condition is that he gets the NEA only if he closes every production of "Hamilton" everywhere. Tell him you couldn’t abide such a conflict of interest. Win!
Tell whomever you pick that they have the same amount of money — it’s not really changed in years, as you know, and it really is a drop in the ocean of federal spending — and a mandate to do nothing that has been done before. Tell them to use the NEA to bring art to the people — yes, your people, the struggling ones who voted for you and whose predicaments you don’t always remember, but also to those who march against you.
You’re secure enough for that. Aren’t you, Mr. President?
Aren’t you?
Do you have anyone around you who really dares to ask you that question? See, listen for a second. You need some writers, artists, humanists, historians, poets. Just a few people who don’t think the earth is scorched, who might help you understand why some talk of you the way they do. NO, NO, DON’T CRUMPLE THE MEMO. Think this over for a second.
For is this not what you believe about America?
Tell your pick that you’re in charge now and they should throw away the old rule book. Tell ’em they can stuff the surveys and park the peer reviews. Tell them they can start over. Let them define art anew. Permit them to consider from the ground up what an advanced society should be funding. Tell them to talk to no one who has done the job before. Tell them to trust their gut and take some risks.
You like risks, don’t you?
You should listen to me, not Steve. That $150 million won’t let you buy anything meaningful and all the headlines will just be "Trump Kills the Arts." That’s not a win, Mr. President, not when you could be offering someone you admire one of the very few federal jobs that really could be totally reinvented. (No entitlements! Win!)
Of course, you might not be independent enough to do this. It would take some courage. But you have courage. Don’t you?
Oh, sure, the liberal media might whine over your selection, huff and puff over their alleged populism or lack of qualifications or something. But I doubt there would be much; the liberal media has so much bigger things to worry about these days. You’d get this one in under the radar.
And among those who oppose so much of what you have done so far, Mr. President, a few of the smarter ones might realize that this way, and only this way, the NEA will still be here when you and yours are done.
I’ll send you another note in a few about the National Endowment for the Humanities. So don’t be rash there, either.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @ChrisJonesTrib
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