Thank God for small favors: Dana Gioia, the George W. Bush appointee
who has run the National Endowment for the Arts since February 2003,
will step down in January. In the words of the Washington Post,
Gioia is widely credited with “revitalizing” the NEA—which he
achieved by letting it become the most toothless, deferential source
of government arts funding this side of Syria.
That was, arguably, his job. Once Bush was elected, everybody in the
arts world should’ve known that the already marginalized NEA was in
serious fucking trouble. An evangelical businessman who needs to cut
federal programs to make good on his small-government campaign
promises? The NEA redoubled its body armor.
It also cowered in a corner. Its major initiatives were adult
literacy, education, opera tours to military bases, writing programs
for troops, and Gioia’s legacy: Shakespeare in the
heartland.
Those are all virtuous campaigns, but not the NEA’s job. The first
two should have come from education budgets, the third from the USO,
the fourth from the VA, and the fifth is just frivolous. If
there is a single goddamned playwright in the goddamned world who
doesn’t need the NEA’s help, it’s Shakespeare.
The NEA doesn’t have to hang Tim Miller from his testicles with a
rope made of $20 bills to prove its art street-cred, but it should at
least spend American arts money promoting the American canon. The
heartland needs Tennessee Williams and August Wilson more than
it needs another dose of Romeo and Juliet.
But that was typical of Gioia—and his predecessors—who
deferred to social conservatives, muzzled the NEA, and watched its
budget edge up from $99 million in 1996 to $144.7 million in 2007. The
agency, in other words, was paid to stand down. It was blackmailed
to abandon its cause. We shouldn’t be sorry to see Gioia go, along
with the era he represents. (Check out the audacity of my hope.)
I sat in on a group interview with Gioia in Los Angeles last
February. Another journalist asked if he would resign at the end of
Bush’s second term. He gave a nonanswer that seemed like a yes. He is,
at least, a man of his nonword.
* * *
Two weeks ago, a new theater company called Dirty Girl Productions
raised money the libertarian, small-government way: with cold beer,
hot grits, and rock ‘n’ roll in a concrete clubhouse in Georgetown,
home of the Magic Wheels, an African-American motorcycle club founded
in Los Angeles in 1974. Hot Grits—a musical about four
young black women who form a punk-rock band—will premiere at
Re-bar on October 24. Nancy Frieko, a songwriter who resembled one of
the 4 Non Blondes, announced from the stage: “This next song is
about my vagina!” The Magic Wheels looked amused. 
