Controversy Over NEA Funds for Art

I was not a fervent supporter of the National Endowment for the Arts. Not until reading the column by Bruce Fein and Edwin Meese III (“High Clerics of Art Have Had Enough,” Commentary, May 21). Their writing deserves an award for lack of both logic and taste.

They complain that the NEA would have yielded a higher return, had it invested in “defaulted junk bonds.” That very comparison illustrates the reason for the NEA, which exists because art seldom is self-supporting. The writers complain that there have been no Van Goghs discovered. Poor Van Gogh; a pauperized genius whose paintings are now worth millions. “Living” proof of the value of the foundation.

Meese should be an expert in government subsidies. Remember his involvement in the Wedtech scandal? That company received favored treatment (i.e., subsidies), for which a few people received prison sentences. Meese is now being “subsidized” by the Heritage Foundation. But as a “noble fellow”?

WILFRED COUZIN

Laguna Niguel