National Endowment Fight: Days of Blank Checks Over

I have just read the letter from Clark Hepworth that decries the state of the nation and ominously foresees the imminent destruction of democracy itself.

Why? Why, due to the single-handed efforts of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher to implement some limitations in the National Endowment of the Arts grants, of course. (For which, in a segue of logic that reveals Hepworth’s own remarkable gift for creativity, he succeeds in equating Rohrabacher with Hitler and Stalin.)

Why, I wonder yet again, does Hepworth and others of his view have such difficulty in distinguishing the difference between censorship and sponsorship? (Could it be a case of the “simplistic mentality” he attributes to Rohrbacher?)

Here it is again in simple terms: Rohrabacher is not trying to “control creative thought.” Today’s artists are as free as they ever were to create, produce and “think” anything they want to. The only issue is whether they are “entitled” to be subsidized in their efforts by the federal government (read: my tax dollars).

How such an idea ever came into being in the first place is the really puzzling question, but the answer, anyway, is a resounding no. Look though you might, you will find no mention of it in the Bill of Rights--so we can all rest easy on that score.

The only remaining issue, then, is funding. If an artist finds it compromises his creative integrity to sign a waiver in which he must agree not to use the federal grant money to produce “works of art” that portray the sexual abuse of children, and other such unreasonable stipulations, then by all means let him exercise his right not to sign it. More power to him. He is then free to produce any and all manner of whatever “art” he desires with no restrictions whatsoever.

But, horror of horrors, he will simply have to pay for it himself.

JULIE GILBART

Irvine