There must be some half-way coherent reason for why I am forced to repeat myself—in addition to explain the motivation of certain punks like Clancy and Lynch, who apparently missed the boat again. By a mile.

Will someone please tell me why majors in Finance or Economics or anything else that deals exclusively with the sterile aridity of numbers are totally unable to grasp what is a very human concept?

The notion that the NEA was established for the promotion of the arts in all its myriad diversity, and that the public was meant to be the sole benificiary of the fine largesse from the Feds.

Not to mention that I—as well as others who make up the American public—possess tastes that are a bit weird, if not downright twisted, right along with the fact that my future career intentions are not at all even remotely related to Dan Lynch’s blithe assumptions passed right under his nose without drawing as much as a token sniff….

And, think about this. In addition to the reinstatement that the public at large will be the losers if the NEA is trashed, private funding tends to be a for-profit gig-an-order that most little-known artists couldn’t hope to fill.

And don’t forget the genuinely treasonous War on Dangerous Drugs flushing more tax—and otherwise—dollars and human lives down the toilet in a week than anything the NEA ever did in its entire history and the fact that lobbying is a study in political activism.

As for Tim’s points, I did in fact understand them perfectly as nothing more than the dogmatic ravings of a stone capitalist.

There’s another side to it, a deeper and more meaningful and spiritually diverse dimension that generally ignores the question of financial gain.

After all, money is no respecter of that basic humanity that still lives deep within us all, and which will occasionally surface during the viewing of something like Mapplethorpe’s works…

This one will be the last letter I do on the subject, for good or ill. However, my record on keeping promises of this sort is frankly lousy, so I may yet break this one. We’ll see.

Greg Brown

Graduate

ReHab Counseling