With an empowered anti-arts, anti-education, and anti-culture base running the country, this is the time to commit to your community, not fall into the trap of cancelling them.
It’s all gone topsy-turvy.
We live in New America now. Ironically, the group that wanted to “Make America Great Again” has moved the country in a completely different direction than ever. We have to live with that.
We have to live with that. At least for the moment.
Attitudes swing like a pendulum do, but this isn’t going to swing any time soon. The racist third of the country has become the aggrieved half of the country. Honestly aggrieved. If you listen to the people who “won” the election, you’ll find a huge cadre of folks who were losing their unwon, melanin-deprived superiority. And they got scared.
Interestingly, at least to them, adultery, crime, lying, cheating, stealing, sexual assault, rape, double-dealing, and probably even murder mean nothing to them, at least among their leading candidates. They do not cancel their candidates as long as their candidates promise them what they want. They may be poor or rich, educated or not, White or not — that’s immaterial to the conversation. What they are is angry. The fact is that they’re as angry as they’ve always been (Remember the “angry White man” trope of the 1990s, when Newt Gingrich took control of the House? Or “Joe the Plumber?”). There are just more of them now because they have the opportunity to consume media from one “safe” source and keep to that.
On the other side, there’s a lot of cancellation going on. Not only does the left have a propensity to cancel people who do not pass a purity test, there is no end to that prison sentence. They’re angry, too, but often they’re angry at their own candidates. One false step? Support ends. For instance, if your candidate supports Israel over Palestine but agrees with you on every other topic? Cancelled. If they’re speaking out for men’s rights, but agree that women are treated inequitably? Cancelled. If they believe, generally, in affirmative action but hire a monumentally gifted White man as their chief of staff over any non-White candidate for the job? Cancelled. Support on the left is an all-or-nothing proposition. The result of cancellation? Not voting at all. It’s as though the left believed the good-guy/bad-guy Marvel universe existed.
If aliens studied the people in this pig-shaped section of the planet (What, you never noticed that the United States lower 48 states resembles a pig?) on November 5, 2024, were they confused about which side embraced Puritan restrictiveness and which side stood for their own freedom? Not being or knowing an alien, it’s hard to tell.
And now, the aftermath (or precursor, depending on what side of the timeline you inhabit). If you never believed that your community’s most disadvantaged people could be helped by your largest nonprofit arts organizations — that your charities were intended to entertain or engage their audiences, which are comprised of donors, art lovers, and generally wealthy elitists — then you are double derelict in New America. And yet, many are choosing to eschew their responsibilities as charities and appeal only to those with means and breeding.
They’re willing to rename the colors of the rainbow if it makes New Americans happy.
That’s not your job.
Yet, there’s a nonprofit theater company (denoted by X) whose mission is the following:
“X is passionately committed to enriching the cultural landscape of our region by producing professional theatre to the highest artistic standards and providing unique educational opportunities to diverse groups of people in a spirit of service, adventure, and excitement. Our work is inspired by a belief in the magic of theatre to expand the imagination, challenge the senses, provoke discussion, and revitalize in our audience an understanding of our common humanity. This belief drives the care with which we treat our artists, audiences, students, staff, and members of the greater community.”
Wait. What?
How does that line up with IRS Section 501(C)(3)? In fact, how is that charitable at all?
Tickets for their mainstage show have a list price of $114.00. Why so expensive? Because that’s what the wealthy White people in their city can easily afford. After all, the city’s reputation is one of filthy-rich old White pseudo-aristocrats in multi-million-dollar retirement castles. And there are 12,000 of those. Still…
- 6% of the population of that city lives below the poverty line.
- About 3% of the population is unhoused, an under-reported number that does not include police sweeps to put these people in jail. Or to relocate them to another city.
But rather than doing anything to help the underserved, neediest folks, this theater company is depending on revenue from the elitists in order to entertain themselves and other elitists. They believe in the mantra that “donors donate so that donors may attend.” They’re currently producing an American musical from the 1930s, after which they’ll dive into the “deep” waters of a familiar British drama from the 1950s. And why wouldn’t they? After all, when you boil down that ridiculous mission statement, what you end up with is this:
“X believes in magic.”
I worked with Penn & Teller for almost 2 years in New York back in the 1980s. Even they don’t believe in magic. They believe in skill.
- Do artistic leaders (who are, generally speaking, more aligned with the political left) cede their charitable activities to donors (who are, generally speaking, more aligned with the political right) in order to survive? Even if the donors have only themselves in mind as beneficiaries to their gifts?
- Are they swinging even more to the right because they believe they’ll be cancelled if they don’t?
- Are they aware that the left is more likely to cancel them when they do?
- Do they really care about being a charity in the first place? Or are they just in it for the donations and tax breaks?
I am continually amazed at the great, toxic lengths that nonprofit arts organizations, especially the largest ones, will go to further their argument that their charitable activities are meant to make life unmeasurably prettier, not measurably better. But then again, these are the same people who want to take a poll on what the crop of New Americans believe are the colors of the rainbow before acting. And only agree that green is green.
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