Government arts spending on the rise? I don't THINK SO!
Aug, 2008
Hey, boys and girls, look what the National Post is reporting: MORE money spent on the arts than before!
True! Honest!
These figures are supplied that a survey done by a CanWest News Service "analysis of government documents."
I'm bowled over, I'm stunned.
After all, those right wing spivs from Winnipeg, the Asper family (who own CanWest - which is most of the big city daily newspapers in Canada) and that model of fair and accurate reporting, the National (Com)Post, are most certainly to be believed.
And then, wowee, lookee here, check THIS out: Michaeal Coren, another fair, accurate and totally objective commentator, who scribbles in the Toronto Sun, is also ranting about those spoiled artists and intellectuals. The Toronto Sun, of course, is a most accurate and reliable newspaper, especially when discussing the hobbies of the pin-up girls to whom it devotes half a page a day.
Coren NAILS it, people, he really does: "That so many of the recipients of this largesse were left wing, anti-American and so on was a pure coincidence," he types. "Just as is the fact that so many magazines, authors and performers who receive other tax-dollar funding are socialists, atheists and sandal-wearing bores."
And if one were to call Coren a virulent Catholic proselytizer, a short, bald and puffy-faced right-wing ideologue, a fatuous poser who, childlike, says stupid things to annoy (and get a pay packet for) - well, that would be taken as taken as serious commentary? Right?
Cheers, folk - let's keep up the pressure. Write your MP. Write to Harper (and get a nice bromide response from an under-assistant clerk in the typing pool). Hold our noses come election time, and vote for that nice waffling guy from Quebec, okay.
Richard
(socialist, atheist and cowboy boot-wearing bore)
A most restrained letter to the Prime Minister
Aug 2008
I don't often get angry enough to write to a politician, who will have some junior secretary read it and dispose of it in the waste basket, but today I wrote to our Prime Minister. As least some of you might read it!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper
Prime Minister
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6
Dear Prime Minister,
I am writing to express my dismay at your government’s decision to delete two important programmes which have provided support to Canadian artists in a variety of disciplines, and have worked to build bridges on cultural levels with our country and our neighbours around the world..
These programmes are defensible on two important grounds. One, they pay for themselves in promoting Canadian music and arts abroad; Canadian music alone has returned millions to the Treasury thanks to the success our artists have achieved around the world.. Secondly, they give the world a picture of this country as something more than hewers of wood and exporters of oil and harvesters of wheat.
The pittance spent on these programmes can well be compared to the massive amounts of money spent supporting athletes (so far, uncessuccefully) at the Olympic Games. Which has returned further glory, and greater income, to Canada?
To dismantle these programmes — especially when using specious and totally inaccurate reasons for doing so — does this country, and our arts communities, a terrible disservice. For what it’s worth, Prime Minister, I am happy to support an excellent group which calls itself after a cheerful expletive (and one, Sir, I suggest you might have used yourself from time to time) — the quality of its music is beyond reproach, and its name, at the very least, is an indicator that this country is not as bland and boring as many young people in the rest of the world feel that it is.
The question now is this: Will your government realize it has made a mistake? Will the programmes be reinstated?
Or is the Department of Heritage a sham, and that the official stance of your government is that the arts do not merit support and do not reflect the diversity of this country?
A response would be appreciated.
Yours sincerely,
Richard Flohil
Cc: The Hon. David Emerson
Minister for Foreign Affairs
Hon. Josée Verner
Minister, Canadian Heritage
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Righteously pissed off,
Aug. 12, 2008
There's a great Oscar Wilde line that I sometimes use as an e-mail signature: "Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing."
I'm about to get into a major firefight on MaplePost, an excellent list-serve that covers the "folk" music scene in Canada. It began when a one-time magazine publisher who goes under the name of Gary 17 commented on the Harper minority government's decision to kill two important programmes which supported the Canadian cultural scene. In something that simply infuriated me, he wrote the following:
Live by the grant, die by the grant. It's why for the last 30 years I've never accepted a penny from the government, not even GST rebates. Like drug pushers, once they have you hooked, you're theirs to do with as they will. Harsh lessons I know, but that's reality.
And I responded, in a righteous flush of indignation:
That is NOT reality. That is, pardon me, utter horseshit, and it makes me almost as angry as the Harper minority government's recent activities - stupid, foolish, duplicitous, ill-considered, thoughtless and self-destructive to this country as they are.
Good for Gary, smug and po-faced and idiotically proud that he has "never accepted a penny from the government." More fool h,e is what I say, especially since he's never even asked for, or apparently received, a GST rebate! Maybe Gary's not done anything that deserves government support - certainly his lame magazine ToNite deserved no support from anyone, and basically never got it..
Government support for Canadian artists - in all genres - goes a little way, just a little way, to even the playing field in a country where 80 per cent of us live within 100 miles of the border of a huge, wealthy, behemoth of a country, and are thus inundated by American music, American movies, American television, American magazines, American political attitudes (hi, Steven Harper, can you get your face out of George Bush's butt?) ...
Really, in this day and age, why on earth would people like me have to defend cultural support policies to government (or, for that matter, to Gary 17)? However, it is justifiable on two grounds: 1) It is an investment that returns massive dividends. 2) Our artists (authors, songwriters, actors, dancers spread Canada's good name around the world; they help portray what this country ought to be seen as: strong, vital, energetic, smart, hip. We become a real "nation" - not hewers of wood, diggers for oil, growers of wheat, or bland and faceless.
The lying duplicitous way the killing these arts supports programmes have been "justified" ranks pretty to close to George Bush's excuses for going to war in the middle east - based on half truths and downright lies.
And, while I'm here, I want to say I think supporting a band called Holy Fuck is a GRAND idea.
The band, led by Brian Borchardt, is a damn good group. It uses a name that is a colloquial expression we ALL use from time to time. And having government support a band like this - with a name like that - indicates to young people the world over that Canada is NOT as bland as boring as we like sometimes to think we are.
The point is, folk: Let Gary 17 cast his vote for that bland, subversive, right-wing, hair-styled oaf who leads our minority government, The rest of us, though, have to hold our noses and vote for the stumble-butt who's currently leading the opposition. Meanwhile, a stinging note to those people in Ottawa, whom we pay, is long overdue. Get on the case. Now.
And don't throw even a nickel into Gary 17's open guitar case, or support his singer-songwriter nights in Toronto.
Righteously pissed off,
Richard
PS: I'll let you know what people think of my little incendiary bomb!
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