Indiana

The Art of Noise

By Abdul Hakim-Shabazz

When I was in college my art friends had a saying, “we came to study the Renaissance while our parents go baroque.”  That was the only thing I could think of when I saw the City-County Council chambers packed with people from the arts community.

They were mad that $500,000 was being cut from the arts budget, because the city of Indianapolis is in this situation which is known as broke. 

I guess what galls me the most about the arts community is they keep throwing out the line that the arts brings in more than $468,000,000 dollars to the city in economic activity.   If the arts bring in that much money, why are these people whining about a paltry half a million?   Can’t they use their own creativity to find what basically amounts to .001 of the money they generate.  Which by the way is also an intellectually dishonest argument.

Most of the money the city gives to arts programs are usually for educational purposes, not commercial endeavors.  It’s also funny the arts community didn’t mention the money they get from the Capitol Improvement Board or the hundereds of millions they manage to raise on their own at events and fundraisers.  For some reason they think the taxpayers’ pockets are the only source of revenue. 

This city is broke and the budget needs to be balanced.  But that brings in another saying, the balancing budgets is a lot like going to heavan; everybody wants to go, but no one wants to die to get there.  By showing their complete disregard for the taxpayers the arts community obviously isn’t trying to get to heavan, so I will be more than happy to show them how to get to the other place.

Full post as published by Indiana Barrister on August 22, 2008 (boomark / email).