The other day I linked to an E.D. Kain comment about conservatives and the arts- why the former do the latter so badly. Here's another angle, reaching much the same conclusion (worth a link for its consideration of what kind of art conservatives hang on their walls, too).
In an attempt to build common-man credibility after years of being perceived as the Rich White Guy Party, GOP leaders have spent years stoking the fires of cultural populism. Turn on talk radio or the primetime “info-tainment” portions of FOX News that drive today’s conservative base, and you’ll get a taste. Art museums are totally gay (which is a bad thing to conservative populists); classical music is for NPR-listening communists; buying books that aren’t ghost-written screeds hawked on FOX are a sign of being a sissy. In short, any kind of art form that you might study at a college or university (cooties!) is suspect.
In other words, even though Wolf Hall isn’t a book that is liberal or conservative, you’ll probably only hear it being talked about on one side of the aisle. Liberal politicians in America tend to champion both higher education and the study of the humanities – while conservative politicians treat both with derision. Because of this, liberalism – as a movement – gives itself permission to deconstruct a book, move, song or painting with the eye of a critic or scholar. This allows liberals to highlight and take away the messages they might wish, and still embrace those other parts that fall out of line with party dogma. Movement conservatives, on the other hand, have painted themselves into a corner by trumpeting that art criticism or scholarship themselves are inherently suspect; therefore the only metric they are left to gauge the humanities is political purity. This leads to a lot of Lee Greenwood over Bruce Springsteen, An American Carol over Juno, and any book by Anne Coulter over any play by Shakespeare.
In an attempt to build common-man credibility after years of being perceived as the Rich White Guy Party, GOP leaders have spent years stoking the fires of cultural populism. Turn on talk radio or the primetime “info-tainment” portions of FOX News that drive today’s conservative base, and you’ll get a taste. Art museums are totally gay (which is a bad thing to conservative populists); classical music is for NPR-listening communists; buying books that aren’t ghost-written screeds hawked on FOX are a sign of being a sissy. In short, any kind of art form that you might study at a college or university (cooties!) is suspect.
In other words, even though Wolf Hall isn’t a book that is liberal or conservative, you’ll probably only hear it being talked about on one side of the aisle. Liberal politicians in America tend to champion both higher education and the study of the humanities – while conservative politicians treat both with derision. Because of this, liberalism – as a movement – gives itself permission to deconstruct a book, move, song or painting with the eye of a critic or scholar. This allows liberals to highlight and take away the messages they might wish, and still embrace those other parts that fall out of line with party dogma. Movement conservatives, on the other hand, have painted themselves into a corner by trumpeting that art criticism or scholarship themselves are inherently suspect; therefore the only metric they are left to gauge the humanities is political purity. This leads to a lot of Lee Greenwood over Bruce Springsteen, An American Carol over Juno, and any book by Anne Coulter over any play by Shakespeare.
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