[REBORN FROM THE ASHES][comment][01.19]

plukaUID: 2721764

不好意思，这篇稍微长了一点，字数一千三左右，内容是关于NEA，美国的艺术赞助项目。可以作为背景知识了解一点。

I'm So Bored With the NEA

Artists demand "stimulus" subsidies.

Greg Beato from the May 2009 issue FROM REASOM

In this long season of bailouts and federally administered stimuli, with seemingly every starving investment banker pleading to Congress that capitalism is just too hard, America’s artists had a golden opportunity to pull off the greatest piece of conceptual art since Marcel Duchamp realized that urinal-factory craftsmen in Trenton, New Jersey, were turning out far more graceful sculpture than he ever could. Instead, they sold themselves out at the ridiculously low price of $50 million. Andy Warhol must be spinning in his grave.


That comparatively paltry sum was all the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was able to wangle from the massive $787 billion stimulus package President Obama signed into law in February. Since there are roughly 2 million dancers, sculptors, painters, and other professional aesthetes in the U.S. (according to the 2008 NEA report Artists in the Workplace), that means they are in line for an extra $25 each. Or about enough to buy a new black beret.

Wouldn’t it have been more provocative, inspiring, and educational if they’d simply said, “No, thanks”? If, say, they’d commissioned Karen Finley to storm the Capitol, her naked body decorated with a portrait of Milton Friedman fashioned from smeared Godiva chocolate? “We don’t want your money!” she could have exclaimed. “Not the $50 million mandated by the stimulus act, nor the $145 million in annual funding the NEA was already scheduled to get this year! Keep your soft-core socialism for Citigroup and the manufacturers of wooden arrows! We’re artists! Fiercely autonomous! Proudly independent! Unlike our cowardly, un-American counterparts in the world of big business, we’re committed to free enterprise and self-determination!”

Instead, arts advocates responded like every other underachieving opportunist peddling its troubled assets to federal sugar daddies: They argued that our chamber music societies and tap dancing foundations are too economically significant to fail. The arts’ “role in generating billions of dollars in ancillary economic activity for stores, restaurants and the travel business has been proven in bucketloads of surveys and analyses,” exclaimed Chicago Tribune theater critic Chris Jones. “Even the smallest [arts] organization can record the fact that the parking lot down the street and the dry cleaner around the corner and the restaurant nearby all do better when the organization is functioning,” Kate D. Levin, New York City’s cultural affairs commissioner, told The New York Times. An NEA press release announced, “Nonprofit arts organizations and their audiences generate $166.2 billion in economic activity every year, support 5.7 million jobs, and return nearly $30 billion in government revenue every year,” with “every $1 billion in spending by nonprofit arts and culture organizations and their audiences result[ing] in almost 70,000 full time jobs.”

Do the math on that one and the results are undeniably impressive: If we applied all $787 billion of Bailout: The Sequel to the arts, we’d create approximately 55 million new jobs! But are we really willing to watch several million performances of Viva Zarzuela by the Anchorage Opera Company as the price for retaining our status as the world’s greatest economic power? If the virtue of the arts is their capacity to inspire economic activity, it’s not clear why they deserve special consideration over, say, restaurants or fashion designers. Isn’t it possible, after all, that we’re going to the symphony mostly as an excuse to wear that new Oscar de la Renta silk faille kimono gown, or as an afterword to a meal at Jardiniere? Even if we don’t axe the NEA in favor of the National Endowment for Snooty Designer Labels and Fancy San Francisco Restaurants, shouldn’t we at least be urging it to expand its support of the kinds of live theater—comedy clubs, strip clubs, WWE wrestling—that are likely to draw bigger, more economically exploitable crowds than a bilingual puppetry adaptation of Don Quixote?

In the early 1960s, when our highest elected officials began evangelizing for the creation of state-sponsored arts programs, there was little talk of ancillary economic activity or job creation. At the dedication of a new library at Amherst College in 1963, President Kennedy said he looked forward to an America “which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all our citizens.” At a groundbreaking ceremony for the Kennedy Center in 1964, President Johnson expressed his desire to “enlarge the access of all our people to artistic creation.” A year later, he approved the legislation that created the National Endowment for the Arts. Its first grant, for $100,000, went to the American Ballet Theater, a bequest which, according to the New York Herald Tribune, saved that institution from extinction.

Today, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson would no doubt be pleased to see how enlarged—swollen, in fact—our access to artistic creation has become. We produce more novels, more slasher flicks, and more neo-classical lawn sculpture than any other civilization in the history of the world. According to the League of American Orchestras, there are 1,800 symphony, chamber, collegiate, and youth orchestras in the United States. Theater Facts, an annual overview of the not-for-profit theater world, reports that the 1,910 nonprofit theaters it received data from in 2007 gave 197,000 performances of 17,000 productions that year. The American Ballet Theater is still going strong, and tickets can be had for as little as $26 a piece if you’re willing to go to Wednesday matinees, sit in the cheap seats, and commit to at least three performances. Also, there’s this thing called the Internet.

In such a competitive, oversupplied environment, is a lack of funding really the primary reason that not every Midwestern dance troupe is thriving? Will throwing money at highbrow entities suddenly make people less interested in American Idol and YouTube and more interested in Alvin Ailey? At this point, it might be more beneficial for the kinds of arts the NEA has traditionally funded to create a federal agency that spends $150 million a year snipping cable hook-ups, sabotaging iPods, and paying modestly talented environmental sculptors not to create. That way, we might actually have some spare attention to give new orchestral works and accordion festivals.

In the early 1990s, when the NEA was helping underwrite artists who baptized Jesus Christ in urine or gave live tours of their cervixes, its value to our culture was clear: For less than a dollar a year per taxpayer, the organization served as a vivid symbol of our commitment to free expression. In other countries, the government might behead you for blaspheming sacred figures; in America, it was paying you to do so! Granted, the NEA did a far better job offending conservative sensibilities than liberal ones, but anyone with a taste for unfettered discourse could appreciate it on an abstract level at least. The arts bureaucracy was itself a work of conceptual art.

Today the agency is careful to fund nothing more controversial than bilingual puppetry epics. And given the glut of cultural opportunities that now bedevil us, its status as a nurturer of the arts is less pronounced than its status as an agent of state-sponsored moral engineering. Now, it exists largely to reinforce the notion that musicals are somehow more inherently suited to nourishing the roots of our culture than sitcom pilots. That ballet is a greater part of our national heritage than burlesque. That mediocre opera singers deserve more support than our best gangsta rappers.

If you’d be disturbed by an institution called the National Endowment for Faith that not only funded explicit religious expression but also favored a few specific creeds and religions while ignoring all others, you should be equally wary of the NEA. It’s a superfluous organization with a message that belies America’s foundational themes of pluralism and democracy. The wrangling over bailout scraps offered artists an opportunity to exit a bad alliance with an elegant, ironic flourish. Instead, they acted like investment bankers—really meek investment bankers—and simply asked for more money. No wonder so few people go to performance art happenings these days.

原文：http://reason.com/archives/2009/04/14/im-so-bored-with-the-nea

emteddybearUID: 2699606

O(∩_∩)O哈哈~，居然是沙发

首先question：
That way, we might actually have some spare attention to give new orchestral works and accordion festivals.
这句话到底指的什么意思啊，有点费解

WORDS：
Endowment ：天才，天赋
subsidy：津贴
bailout：a rescue from financial distress
plead：恳求
paltry：微不足道的
wangle：得到，取得
wrangle:争吵

portrait：肖像
Capitol：美国国会大厦
tap dancing：踢踏舞
Sequel ：续集
axe：斧子，突然去除
puppetry：木偶
evangelize：传教
bequest：遗产
symphony：交响乐, chamber, collegiate, orchestras：管弦乐 sitcom：情景喜剧
underwrite：同意承担费用
baptized：命名，洗礼
behead：砍。。的头
superfluous：多余的
pluralism：多余的
meek：顺从的


GOOD SENTENCE：
1.Fiercely autonomous! Proudly independent! Unlike our cowardly, un-American counterparts in the world of big business, we’re committed to free enterprise and self-determination!”
2.
For less than a dollar a year per taxpayer, the organization served as a vivid symbol of our commitment to free expression.
3. The arts bureaucracy was itself a work of conceptual art.





MY COMMETS：
Obviously, this report makes a great complaint about the NEA. In the past, NEA really did a lot of contribution to American artists, and it did the thing that people wanted them to do. Following America's foundational themes of pluralism and democracy, NEA made America's artists more and more thriving and flourish. But now, just as the writer said, "they act just like investment bankers". Yes, in our modern society, money is more and more showy, it is not strange that NEA will act like that. It is a something contradictory element. I think no one can deal with this situation except for the Congress.

What's more, I admire the artists of America a lot. They are quite self-determination and fiercely autonomous to refuse the poor grants given by NEA.

KiKi~淇水滺滺UID: 2679824

2# emteddybear

At this point, it might be more beneficial for the kinds of arts the NEA has traditionally funded to create a federal agency that spends $150 million a year snipping cable hook-ups, sabotaging iPods, and paying modestly talented environmental sculptors not to create. That way, we might actually have some spare attention to give new orchestral works and accordion festivals.

我想作者还是有讽刺的意味在 他的意思就是在这种情况下 NEA就像是一个阻止新事物发展的组织来使更多人把注意力放到传统艺术方式，如管弦乐队 苏格兰风琴提琴节之类的上面。

附：
苏格兰风琴提琴节

Accordion & Fiddle Festival

a hectic four-day period in mid-October(Scotland)

The annual Accordion & Fiddle Festival mainly concentrates on music provided by Shetland's two most popular instruments - the accordion and the fiddle. The festival, currently in its 12th year, takes place over a hectic four-day period in mid-October. As with Shetland Folk Festival, musicians from all over the world perform at the event, although emphasis is largely focused on Scottish Dance music. Local musicians feature prominently in the event line-up. Sessions are an integral part and important factor of the festival, an element which allows for much musical interchange and therefore musician development, especially among the younger generations. Adopting the tried and trusted format of widespread community involvement, the event incorporates most areas of Shetland. It culminates in one of the biggest traditional dances to take place anywhere in the UK. Around a dozen different dance bands take it in turn to perform to 1,500 enthusiasts in the local sports centre in what amounts to a highly enjoyable "traditional rave". The festival is a must for anyone who enjoys the sound of traditional music and has the stamina to absorb it for four hectic days. Fae Shetland Tae Shetland Fae Shetland Tae Shetland translates as From Shetland To hetland and the name really says it all. An annual one-night event, the concert hosts top local musicians who perform free of charge to raise money. During the 10 years or so of its existence, the concert has successfully raised thousands of pounds for local charities, organizations and needy individuals.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/language_tips/easyEnglish/2002-09/24/content_535409.htm

KiKi~淇水滺滺UID: 2679824

好词好句

In this long season of bailouts and federally administered stimuli, with seemingly every starving investment banker pleading to Congress that capitalism is just too hard, America’s artists had a golden opportunity to pull off the greatest piece of conceptual art since Marcel Duchamp realized that urinal-factory craftsmen in Trenton, New Jersey, were turning out far more graceful sculpture than he ever could.

are in line for 即将获得 有可能得到

Keep your soft-core socialism for Citigroup and the manufacturers of wooden arrows!



Comment
Last time, we learnt something about the painting market, now we have a broader view of the art market in American in this article—something about the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

It seems to me that NEA really did something in the early period. In the early 1990s, when the NEA was helping underwrite artists who baptized Jesus Christ in urine or gave live tours of their cervixes, its value to our culture was clear: For less than a dollar a year per taxpayer, the organization served as a vivid symbol of our commitment to free expression. In other countries, the government might behead you for blaspheming sacred figures; in America, it was paying you to do so! Granted, the NEA did a far better job offending conservative sensibilities than liberal ones, but anyone with a taste for unfettered discourse could appreciate it on an abstract level at least. The arts bureaucracy was itself a work of conceptual art.

However, with time flies and technology development, it also has a complicated prevention system, such as institutional self-ossification, institutional shortage, traditional ideal and people's directional thinking. The NEA doesn’t care about the new things around it and just focus on the old things like new orchestral works and accordion festivals. Then the NEA becomes something which prevents the development of art markets.

plukaUID: 2721764

In this long season of bailouts and federally administered stimuli, with seemingly every starving investment banker pleading to Congress that capitalism is just too hard, America’s artists had a golden opportunity to pull off the greatest piece of conceptual art since Marcel Duchamp realized that urinal-factory craftsmen in Trenton, New Jersey, were turning out far more graceful sculpture than he ever could. Instead, they sold themselves out at the ridiculously low price of $50 million. Andy Warhol must be spinning in his grave.

That comparatively paltry sum was all the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was able to wangle（骗取） from the massive $787 billion stimulus package President Obama signed into law in February. Since there are roughly 2 million dancers, sculptors, painters, and other professional aesthetes in the U.S. (according to the 2008 NEA report Artists in the Workplace), that means they are in line for an extra $25 each. Or about enough to buy a new black beret.

Wouldn’t it have been more provocative, inspiring, and educational if they’d simply said, “No, thanks”? If, say, they’d commissioned Karen Finley to storm the Capitol, her naked body decorated with a portrait of Milton Friedman fashioned from smeared Godiva chocolate? “We don’t want your money!” she could have exclaimed. “Not the $50 million mandated by the stimulus act, nor the $145 million in annual funding the NEA was already scheduled to get this year! Keep your soft-core socialism for Citigroup and the manufacturers of wooden arrows! We’re artists! Fiercely autonomous! Proudly independent! Unlike our cowardly, un-American counterparts in the world of big business, we’re committed to free enterprise and self-determination!”

Instead, arts advocates responded like every other underachieving（成绩不佳的，发挥不良的） opportunist peddling（叫卖、散播） its troubled assets to federal sugar daddies（讽刺的描绘啊）: They argued that our chamber music societies and tap dancing foundations are too economically significant to fail（too...to结构，不要忘记了~）. The arts’ “role in generating billions of dollars in ancillary economic activity for stores, restaurants and the travel business has been proven in bucketloads of surveys and analyses,” exclaimed Chicago Tribune theater critic Chris Jones. “Even the smallest [arts] organization can record the fact that the parking lot down the street and the dry cleaner around the corner and the restaurant nearby all do better when the organization is functioning,” Kate D. Levin, New York City’s cultural affairs commissioner, told The New York Times. An NEA press release announced, “Nonprofit arts organizations and their audiences generate $166.2 billion in economic activity every year, support 5.7 million jobs, and return nearly $30 billion in government revenue every year,” with “every $1 billion in spending by nonprofit arts and culture organizations and their audiences result[ing] in almost 70,000 full time jobs.”（艺术拉动经济和就业，这个说法不常见呢）

Do the math on that one and the results are undeniably impressive: If we applied all $787 billion of Bailout: The Sequel（结局） to the arts, we’d create approximately 55 million new jobs! But are we really willing to watch several million performances of Viva Zarzuela by the Anchorage Opera Company as the price for retaining our status as the world’s greatest economic power? If the virtue of the arts is their capacity to inspire economic activity, it’s not clear why they deserve special consideration over, say, restaurants or fashion designers. Isn’t it possible, after all, that we’re going to the symphony mostly as an excuse to wear that new Oscar de la Renta silk faille kimono gown, or as an afterword to a meal at Jardiniere? Even if we don’t axe（削减经费） the NEA in favor of the National Endowment for Snooty Designer Labels and Fancy San Francisco Restaurants, shouldn’t we at least be urging it to expand its support of the kinds of live theater—comedy clubs, strip clubs, WWE wrestling—that are likely to draw bigger, more economically exploitable crowds than a bilingual puppetry adaptation of Don Quixote?（反驳经济是评价艺术赞助的指标）

In the early 1960s, when our highest elected officials began evangelizing（传福音） for the creation of state-sponsored arts programs, there was little talk（这个词可以用在这里啊） of ancillary economic activity or job creation. At the dedication of a new library at Amherst College in 1963, President Kennedy said he looked forward to an America “which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all our citizens.” At a groundbreaking ceremony for the Kennedy Center in 1964, President Johnson expressed his desire to “enlarge the access of all our people to artistic creation.” A year later, he approved the legislation that created the National Endowment for the Arts. Its first grant, for $100,000, went to the American Ballet Theater, a bequest which, according to the New York Herald Tribune, saved that institution from extinction.（艺术赞助的好处，例子）

Today, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson would no doubt be pleased to see how enlarged—swollen（肿胀的）, in fact（添一个形容，感觉立刻就变成反面和讽刺）—our access to artistic creation has become. We produce more novels, more slasher flicks, and more neo-classical lawn sculpture than any other civilization in the history of the world. According to the League of American Orchestras, there are 1,800 symphony, chamber, collegiate, and youth orchestras in the United States. Theater Facts, an annual overview of the not-for-profit theater world, reports that the 1,910 nonprofit theaters it received data from in 2007 gave 197,000 performances of 17,000 productions that year. The American Ballet Theater is still going strong, and tickets can be had for as little as $26 a piece if you’re willing to go to Wednesday matinees（白天举行的音乐会）, sit in the cheap seats, and commit to at least three performances. Also, there’s this thing called the Internet.（描述美国艺术业的发达）

In such a competitive, oversupplied environment, is a lack of funding really the primary reason that not every Midwestern dance troupe is thriving?（过渡得好！观点转换得很自然） Will throwing money at highbrow（不切实际的自以为是的） entities suddenly make people less interested in American Idol and YouTube and more interested in Alvin Ailey? At this point, it might be more beneficial for the kinds of arts the NEA has traditionally funded to create a federal agency that spends $150 million a year snipping（剪断） cable hook-ups, sabotaging iPods, and paying modestly（谨慎地，适当地） talented environmental sculptors not to create. That way, we might actually have some spare attention to give new orchestral works and accordion festivals.（完全是讽刺、归谬的手法，但很有说服力！）

In the early 1990s, when the NEA was helping underwrite（承诺支付） artists who baptized Jesus Christ in urine or gave live tours of their cervixes, its value to our culture was clear: For less than a dollar a year per taxpayer, the organization served as a vivid symbol of our commitment to free expression. In other countries, the government might behead（砍头） you for blaspheming sacred figures; in America, it was paying you to do so! Granted, the NEA did a far better job offending conservative sensibilities than liberal ones, but anyone with a taste for unfettered（无拘无束的） discourse could appreciate it on an abstract level at least. The arts bureaucracy was itself a work of conceptual art.（重提NEA的好处：让艺术家畅所欲言）

Today the agency is careful to fund nothing more controversial than bilingual puppetry epics（木偶戏）. And given the glut of cultural opportunities that now bedevil（虐待，使苦恼）us, its status as a nurturer of the arts is less pronounced than its status as an agent of state-sponsored moral engineering. Now, it exists largely to reinforce the notion that musicals are somehow more inherently suited to nourishing the roots of our culture than sitcom pilots. That ballet is a greater part of our national heritage than burlesque. That mediocre opera singers deserve more support than our best gangsta rappers.（指出NEA现状：僵化的教化）

If you’d be disturbed by an institution called the National Endowment for Faith that not only funded explicit religious expression but also favored a few specific creeds and religions while ignoring all others, you should be equally wary of the NEA. It’s a superfluous（冗余的） organization with a message that belies（掩饰） America’s foundational themes of pluralism（多元化社会形态） and democracy. The wrangling（争论口角） over bailout scraps offered artists an opportunity to exit a bad alliance with an elegant, ironic flourish. Instead, they acted like investment bankers—really meek（谦恭的驯服的） investment bankers—and simply asked for more money. No wonder so few people go to performance art happenings these days.（讽刺艺术家们软塌塌地去要钱）

COMMENT

This article showed me a new perspective to the state-sponsered art programs: from the angle of economic. 

In my opinion, this essay articulated three point. Firstly, should the financial merit of art be the reason that artists receive bailout? Secondly, will the bailout help restoring the status of arts that are fading out of people's sight? Thirdly, what are the current NEA doing and do artists need them? Those contentions are so closely connected and logically organized that it can literally be a model template issue writing! 

Another thing learned from this essay is the use of irony and reduction to absurdity. To clarify the futile result of bailout on promoting arts, the author juxtaposed the popular devices such as iPods and American Idol with live symphony performances, exhibiting convincingly that more subsidy to orchestra band is unlikely to draw back people's attention from other diversions or free online shows. 

all together, I really got sth from this essay, humm, feel good.

错别字：contention（老是写出contension，不止一次了泪）

qisaimanUID: 2703629

autonomous 自治的
mandate 命令
axe 削减经费

funding art
the article holds an ironical tone to those arts organization receiving fund. and the artist who seek for more investment have become a state-sponsored actors, preaching the explicit religious creeds.
the organization argues that their functioning well demonstrates a well operating of the economic. but I wonder how the benefit or profit claimed by the organization come ?  
the article 's reason includes: in the past the organization served as a vivid symbol of our commitment to free expression. and now it is an agent of  state-sponsored moral engineering.

jinziqiUID: 2387034

plead 诚恳地请求
paltry 无价值的，琐碎的
smear 弄脏，玷污
mandate
counterpart 相对应的、具有相同功能和特点的人或物
sabotage  destroy property or hinder normal operations
baptize  administer baptism to
burlesque  讽刺或滑稽的戏剧
mediocre  moderate to inferior in quality
wary  谨慎的
flourish  繁荣昌盛

Good sentences
Andy Warhol must be spinning in his grave.

If the virtue of the arts is their capacity to inspire economic activity, it’s not clear why they deserve special consideration over, say, restaurants or fashion designers.

Its first grant, for $100,000, went to the American Ballet Theater, a bequest which, according to the New York Herald Tribune, saved that institution from extinction.

In such a competitive, oversupplied environment, is a lack of funding really the primary reason that not every Midwestern dance troupe is thriving?

Now, it exists largely to reinforce the notion that musicals are somehow more inherently suited to nourishing the roots of our culture than sitcom pilots.

My comment
Nowadays, artists are hard to make money for the reason that if you want to hold a performance, you should spend a large amount of money at first. The passage is an introduction of the National Endowment for the Arts in America. As we can see, it helped a lot people in the past for supporting a large number of jobs and creating a great deal of economic activity. However, in such a competitive, oversupplied environment, a lack of funding is indeed a disadvantage, but it should not be the reason that not every Midwestern dance troupe is thriving.

敛寒影UID: 2613052

Subsidy 补助金
Paltry 不足取的，天价值的，琐碎的
Wangle 骗取
Provocative 煽动的
Inspiring 鼓舞的
Decorate with 以。。来装饰
Portrait 肖像，人像
Cowardly 胆怯地
Ancillary 补助的，副的
Modestly 谨慎地
Be wary of 提防


Comment:


This is article is a little hard for me,but I caught some useful knowledge from it.Firstly, the art can promote the development of economy and supply job opportunities for society.The NEA has done significative thing for steadly enlarge cultural opportunities for all our citizens,and enlarge the access of all our people to artistic creation,those saved that institution from extinction.But in the morden times,the NEA seems to circumscribe publics’ attention focusing from national heritage such as ballet to sitcom pilot,which unlike the American art committing to free enterprise and self-determination.As a result of the author proposed that you should be equally wary of the NEA acting like investment bankers.
I support the artists persisting in their free style and self-determination,and that is what I persue in my life.

123runfordreamUID: 2697608

In this long season of bailouts and federally administered stimuli, with seemingly every starving investment banker pleading to Congress that capitalism is just too hard, America’s artists had a golden opportunity to pull off the greatest piece of conceptual art since Marcel Duchamp realized that urinal-factory craftsmen in Trenton, New Jersey, were turning out far more graceful sculpture than he ever could. (这句子够长)


Today, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson would no doubt be pleased to see how enlarged—swollen, in fact—our access to artistic creation has become. We produce more novels, more slasher flicks, and more neo-classical lawn sculpture than any other civilization in the history of the world. According to the League of American Orchestras, there are 1,800 symphony, chamber, collegiate(adj. 学院的), and youth orchestras in the United States.




Comment：
Interesting issue here actually. When arts meet financial crisis, they became weaker for showing their charming performance. We can conclunde that it seems like all about money. Yes, running a organization with little money is not a easy stuff. But the necessity of providing bailouts is concerned. It also mention that the status of NEA, and the influence.

According to the author, he thinks that the NEA is superfluous that does need to exist any more. In my eyes, it is like a connection, which can make work better, that is needed.


其实我有点花眼~~

splendidsunUID: 2723757

1-19
Comment：
Although NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) made a great contribution to the promotion of arts to American citizens in early times, now its distribution of funding has less positive effect on the plural development of arts. In the article, the author said that the government sponsors arts because it could create lots of work positions but not for the art value they bring to society. Economic promotion replacing aesthetic value is over-focused by the NEA/the government. Thus, many artists would rather give up the funding in order to have the right of self determination.
Actually, any governments would like to sponsor the fields that could great benefit to the economy. However, there is no doubt that this action would limit the pluralism and diversity of this area. To balance this situation, I think the government should focus on both economic and aesthetic value, especially the latter one. The origin of arts is to bring happiness and pleasure to people.
错字：
Plurism—pluralism
Orgin- origin

bailout紧急求助
plead辩护
seemingly表面上看来
pull off努力实现
paltry无价值的
wangle设法脱身，骗取
beret贝雷帽
be in line for即将获得，有可能获得
provocative挑动性的，煽动性的刺激的
fashion from由……做成
mandate强制执行
evangelize传福音
bequest遗产
matinees白天举办的音乐会
thrive繁荣，蒸蒸日上
highbrow知识分子
entity实体
sabotage妨害，破坏……行动
accordion手风琴的
baptize受……的洗礼
puppetry木偶
epics史诗

Keep your soft-core socialism for Citigroup and the manufacturers of wooden arrows!不太明白~~

tequilawineUID: 2702008

pleading
['plead·ing || 'plɪːdɪŋ]

n.
辩论, 诉讼手续, 辩解

ridiculously
[rɪ'dɪkjələslɪ /-kjʊl-]

adv.
可笑地; 荒谬地

paltry
[pal·try || 'pɔːltrɪ]

adj.
不足取的, 琐碎的

wangle
[wan·gle || 'wæŋgl]

n.
哄骗, 假造

v.
挤出, 虚饰, 哄骗; 设法脱身, 使诡计

beret
[be·ret || 'bereɪ]

n.
贝雷帽

mandate
[man·date || 'mændeɪt]

n.
命令, 要求, 指令

v.
委任统治

autonomous
[au·ton·o·mous || ɔː'tɒnəməs]

adj.
自治的; 自主的; 自治权的; 独立存在的

opportunist
[op·por'tun·ist || ‚ɑpər'tjuːnɪst /‚ɒpə't-]

n.
机会主义者, 投机取巧者

peddle
[ped·dle || 'pedl]

v.
叫卖, 挨户兜售; 宣扬, 散播; 挑卖, 沿街叫卖

sugar daddy
n.
〈美俚〉甜爹(施恩或送贵重礼品以博取年轻女人欢心的老色迷)

puppetry
['pʌpɪtrɪ]

n.
木偶戏; 木偶; 木偶制作; 傀儡

evangelize (Amer.)
[e'van·ge·lize || -laɪz]

v.
传福音; 使信基督教; 传福音, 传道

groundbreaking
D.J.['ɡraund,breikiŋ]
K.K.['ɡraʊnd,brekɪŋ]
adj. 开创性的，突破性的

swollen
[swol·len || 'swəʊlən]

adj.
膨胀的; 涨起的; 浮肿的; 浮夸的

troupe
[truːp]

n.
一团, 剧团, 一班

accordion
[ac·cor·di·on || ə'kɔːdjən]

n.
手风琴

urine
[u·rine || 'jʊrɪn /'jʊər-]

n.
小便, 尿

behead
[be·head || bɪ'hed]

v.
斩首, 砍头

blaspheme
[blas·pheme || blæs'fiːm]

v.
亵渎; 辱骂; 咒骂; 说亵渎的话; 口出恶言

bedevil
[be·dev·il || bɪ'devl]

v.
虐待; 使痛苦; 使苦恼

be wary of
v.
提防

wrangle
[wran·gle || 'ræŋgl]

n.
口角, 吵嘴

v.
争论, 口角, 争吵; 辩驳, 放牧

pluralism
['plu·ral·ism || 'plʊrəlɪzm /-'plʊər-]

n.
兼职, 兼任; 多元论; 多重性

1 That comparatively paltry sum was all the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was able to wangle from the massive $787 billion stimulus package President Obama signed into law in February. 这句话结构有点晕。
2 Wouldn’t it have been more provocative, inspiring, and educational if they’d simply said, “No, thanks”?
3 Instead, arts advocates responded like every other underachieving opportunist peddling its troubled assets to federal sugar daddies
4 If the virtue of the arts is their capacity to inspire economic activity, it’s not clear why they deserve special consideration over, say, restaurants or fashion designers.
5 We produce more novels, more slasher flicks, and more neo-classical lawn sculpture than any other civilization in the history of the world.
6 In such a competitive, oversupplied environment, is a lack of funding really the primary reason that not every Midwestern dance troupe is thriving?为什么用到装呢？
7 And given the glut of cultural opportunities that now bedevil us, its status as a nurturer of the arts is less pronounced than its status as an agent of state-sponsored moral engineering.


Comment
I am vague about what's the viewpoint of the author. I mean he doesn't agree with the transformation in NEA during these years and also disdained the meek artists who simply go to ask for more money. However the stance author stands on is fairly object and guided us into a self-support artist inner world.

Almost everyone at present who were in art domain said that the biggest problem at the moment is not a lack of money but a lack of good support from the country. And art relating world just disappearing in our sight because of our ignorance and highbrow.

With the start-off of the NEA, we can know that more people have the wish to give themselves more free access to all kinds of arts and we can inspire our talent people and give us more opportunities to create more splendid work. Ironically, situation changed and the original creed on it have vanished, disappearing and desperate truth.

doodaUID: 2712643

pluka发的，顶一个！

AdelineShenUID: 2630498

Comment:

In this article the author expresses his/her disappointment about the NEA. Although NEA did do something helpful in the past, say helping the artistests create freely and independently. However, something has changed since the development of economy. Nowadays NEA is focusing too much on traditional arts and the freedom of creation of artists is fading away. ASrtisits have to twist their true thought in order to cater to NEA. What a pity! So much inspiration of the artists are lost in this way.

Art is the soecial spiritual resource which can bring about economic growth. However, economic growth should not be the result that the works of art truly seek for. The aim of art is to arouse the inner compassion of people, using all kinds of forms like panting, photographing and music. Through the works of art, people might think deeply about their heart and the life of others, which will cast light and peace on the world.

Art is a pure form of expression, not a way of get higher economic growth. NEA should think more about the true meaning of art and let the artists fly their thoughts and inspiration freely!~

adammaksimUID: 2675466

National Endowment for the Arts an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence

soft-core 晦涩的

underachieveing adj. 不得志的

matinees 日场

baptize vt.为。。。施洗礼


If the virtue of the arts is their capacity to inspire economic activity, it’s not clear why they deserve special consideration over, say, restaurants or fashion designers. Isn’t it possible, after all, that we’re going to the symphony mostly as an excuse to wear that new Oscar de la Renta silk faille kimono gown, or as an afterword to a meal at Jardiniere? Even if we don’t axe the NEA in favor of the National Endowment for Snooty Designer Labels and Fancy San Francisco Restaurants, shouldn’t we at least be urging it to expand its support of the kinds of live theater—comedy clubs, strip clubs, WWE wrestling—that are likely to draw bigger, more economically exploitable crowds than a bilingual puppetry adaptation of Don Quixote?整段论述都相当精彩~

comments:
I should say this is such a eloquent essay with strong logic and full of pungent ironies. If this is a ISSUE response, with no doubt, it totally reaches the 6 level.
Whether it is reasonable for artists beg for subsidies from the government like, say, those banks and manufacture companys in a time of bailout? To this question, the author gives out a certainly "no". In his opinion, artists, as a group, should be special in our society who will bent themselves to the so-called sugar daddy. And this remind me of a famous saying " Don't bent yourself for bread." form a great Chinese poet. However, in a more pratical thinking, I have to say even artists will need money to maintain thier fundamental necessities as common people. As I know, many talented artiest live a poor life with bad health condition. Sometimes subsidies is necessary for a better development of art.

fancywwUID: 2583671

words and expressions:
Conceptual art: an art form in which the artist's intent is to convey a concept rather than to create an art object
Paltry: 1 : INFERIOR, TRASHY;2 : MEAN, DESPICABLE  *a paltry trick*;3 : TRIVIAL  *a paltry excuse*;4 : MEAGER, MEASLY  *made a paltry donation*
to wangle from the massive $787 billion stimulus package (wangle: to make or get by devious means  : FINAGLE  *wangle an invitation*)(非常形象幽默的表达)
Commission:to appoint or assign to a task or function

Sequel：CONSEQUENCE, RESULT
Axe：1 a : to shape, dress, or trim with an ax  b : to chop, split, or sever with an ax；2 : to remove abruptly (as from employment or from a budget)
Snooty:1 : looking down the nose  : showing disdain  *snooty people who won't speak to their neighbors* 2 : characterized by snobbery  *a snooty store*
Evangelize:1 : to preach the gospel to; 2 : to convert to Christianity
highbrow entities
Cervix:1 : NECK;  especially   : the back part of the neck; 2 : a constricted portion of an organ or part;  especially : the narrow outer end of the uterus
Behead:to cut off the head of  : DECAPITATE
Puppetry:1 : the production or creation of puppets or puppet shows; 2 : the art of manipulating puppets (人偶)
Glut:1 : an excessive quantity  : OVERSUPPLY
Pluralism:a state of society in which members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious, or social groups maintain an autonomous participation in and development of their traditional culture or special interest within the confines of a common civilization
Meek:deficient in spirit and courage  : SUBMISSIVE


Comment：
Originally, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was created out of pure intention to make possible individual artist's creativity as well as exhibitions that would bring art to large numbers of viewers across the country. The US Congress chartered the National Endowments in 1965 for the conviction that the arts were crucial to the preservation of a lively, thoughtful society. At that time, there was little talk of ancillary economic activity or job creation as the author mentions. It simply aimed at enlarge cultural and artistic opportunities for all citizens. And the current facts say the organization did a fantastic job.

The author points out that the lack of funding is not really the reason why nowadays some "highbrow entities" are not thriving. Since the technology has changed tremendously last decades, so has the American society and Americans' tastes about arts. A large number of people choose cables and the Internet over the theatres and the galleries. There is no right or wrong of the form of arts. People's various choice just shows the pluralism and democracy of the American society. It is universally known that the American artistic value cherish for individualism, independence, and freedom. It will not be restricted by political ideology. So the bailout the NEA "wangle from" the government undoubtedly would have an impact and certain guidance on the development of arts by deciding which forms to aid and which do not. It just remind me of a traditional proverb that"Gifts blind the eyes".

So the author's point is to let the different artistic forms develop as themselves and according to their own rules. NEA wrongly connect the development of arts with the economy and job creation. I agree with the article on this point that arts' primary role is not to generate financial income. However, personally speaking the author a little overreacted. Sometimes the unpopular does not means the unimportant. Although nowadays fewer people go to theatres, ballet, as a distinguished form of art, still needs to be preserved. I think the heart of Endowments and bailout was the conviction that the market forces in our society would not by themselves sustain a challenging artistic culture. On the one hand, the establishment of the NEA attempts to guarantee American audiences that viewing or consuming would not be controlled by the marketplace. One the other hand, it also protects some presently underachieving, unpopular but important art forms such as ballet and opera.