Newspapers today are primarily useful as barometers of the ruling class. (Max Reger, famously, had another practical use for them, now largely impossible in the digital age.) Whatever nominal objective to report the truth to the public was abandoned long ago, regardless of what political faction any of these media organizations claim to represent. Which would be a moot point anyway — most of their readers are unable to parse text, and an increasing number are only semi-literate besides. (If there is anything edifying in the recently released tranche of documents relating to a certain disgraced and deceased “financier” it’s that, apparently, the very rich can barely spell.)
No wonder that the Wall Street Journal, whose slogan ought to be “every bad idea must be countered with an even worse one”, published an op-ed last Friday by a Tim Foley that advocated for the closure of the Kennedy Center. The capsule biography at the end of his column, incidentally, stated that he “is chairman of the NTC Group, a private-equity firm”.
Another fine idea from the despoilers of the nation.
Unsurprisingly, Foley’s argument is based on willful fatuity: the Kennedy Center is ugly and out-of-date, to start.
By that logic, the wrecking ball should also be taken to venues across the United States, from the Lincoln Center in New York City, to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. And talk about being architecturally passé — New York’s Carnegie Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Vienna’s Musikvereinsaal, and St. Petersburg’s Shostakovich Philharmonia, to cite a few examples, weren’t even built in the last century.
An additional reason cited by Foley was especially risible:
The way the [Kennedy Center]’s leadership is chosen is another problem. The board [...] is a mix of political donors, former politicians, high-level bureaucrats, and Washington social aspirants. Appointed board members are motivated not by an interest in the performing arts but by the honor and prestige of being on the board and, in a town where officeholders run the show, the value of it as a social calling card for non-officeholders.
With minor modifications, the aforementioned could just as well describe the boards of most performing arts organizations.
Money and power, or at least proximity to them, not artistic acumen, are usually the most attractive qualities in any prospective candidate to a performing arts board. That isn’t a slight against performing arts organizations. Access to the wealthy and connected is a matter of survival in an environment where the intrinsic worth of something or someone is defined only by dollar signs. If the Kennedy Center is “guilty” of recruiting board members based on these considerations, so are countless other arts organizations.
Following Foley’s beliefs to their ultimate conclusions, “recreational” dispensaries, 5-over-1 mixed use development eyesores, bars featuring “exotic dancers” — anything that serves the basest and most easily profitable impulses would be “better” than public spaces that present the noblest expressions of the human spirit.
Foley’s op-ed reminded me of Jon Taffer’s signature “shut it doooooown!”, except that this utterance is salvational, not destructive in intent.
Glenn Gould was sort of right when he said that the future of music was in recordings. So they are — as the bricks for personal fortresses that buttress the life of the mind from cultural vandalism.
At least this Foley guy can spell.