Costa Mesa Must Unhand Arts : Content Curbs Are Outside City’s Purview

Although one citizen acknowledged that he had never even been to a South Coast Repertory performance, his letter critical of that organization’s support for the National Endowment for the Arts was enough to prompt the Costa Mesa City Council to suspend its arts funding. These are jittery times for the arts.

Cooler heads prevailed, and the grant was restored, but not without opening a new hornet’s nest. After saying arts groups receiving city grants must show that their grant money is not being used for political purposes, Costa Mesa began to ponder advancing a full step on the censorship ladder. It started looking at attaching broad content restrictions to city arts grants.

Such is the contagious national debate over artistic license and the NEA. It has preoccupied politicians in Washington and now has filtered down the slippery slope to the door of city hall. By the end of last week, the city Administration appeared to be retreating, but until new contract language is actually put before the city, not enough can be said to discourage the idea.

Costa Mesa has considered whether arts-grants recipients should promise not to “visually nor verbally, deliberately denigrate anyone’s race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical handicap, marital status, sex or age.” Denigration is a bad thing, but the problem is who decides whether something is offensive, and to whom?

The city’s Cultural Arts Committee, properly the repository of decisions on city arts grants, understood this and expressed concern that new limits would inhibit creativity. The Orange County Performing Arts Center, which does not even receive government money, had the good sense and courage to state its concerns publicly over what its host city was thinking of doing.

No wonder. With Big Brother watching from city hall, organizations that receive city funds might second-guess putting on any number of productions.

One indication of how strange this debate has become is that while Mayor Peter F. Buffa asked the city attorney to look at language for a limit on the use of city grants, he also was on record as saying the city’s arts budget ought to be increased dramatically over the next few years. So it would be entirely possible for Costa Mesa to increase its money for the arts at the same time it turned the screws of censorship on organizations receiving funding.

If that happened, local politicians would carve out a whole new territory of busywork for themselves. With such censorship duties to attend to, who would have time to manage city affairs?

Municipalities can avoid that question by forgetting about applying artistic restrictions and by sticking to business at hand in the council chambers, which can, after all, provide legitimate theater in its own right.