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Friday, May 13, 2011

- Speechless Over Proposed Funding Cuts

Public support for tax payor funding of mimes vanishes.
In a subcommittee hearing Republican congressman Jeff Flake closely questioned National Endowment for the Arts chairman Rocco Landesman over Federal grants for such items as a San Francisco mime troupe, stating that making grants like these “feeds the cynicism out there about everything we do."
"Landesman responded that many of the programs that win NEA support could not exist without the help.

“The marketplace shouldn’t be the sole determinant of what is allowed to flourish,” Landesman said, adding that the renowned San Francisco Mime Troupe would likely not be able to survive solely on ticket sales.

Tax grubbing low life.
That's a real tear jerker.
Landesman said that NEA needs more staff in order to conduct field visits to ensure quality arts programs.
Yes, by all means, hire more staff. By the looks of it, you may very soon find a whole new pool of available talent to draw from. They could evaluate the merits of international accordion festivals and the like... though they generally don't say much.



With a hat tip to Jill over at Pundit and Pundette

5 comments:

  1. As someone said, first they came for Harry Reid's cowboy poets. Now they come for the mimes.
    Won't Republicans ever stop?

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  2. I thought *everyone* agreed that mimes ought to be guillotined.

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  3. Not a big lover of the theater, Ilion?

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  4. What do mimes have to do with The Theatre ... or with much of anything else, for that matter.

    What I'm *really* not a bog lover of is so-called citizens who organize to get government to subsidize their lives and choices out of the compulsorily-confiscated tax monies of other citizens.

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  5. Mime, from the Greek word mimos, meaning "imitator or actor", is a theatrical medium involving the acting out of a story through body motions, without use of speech. In earlier times, in English, such a performer was referred to as a mummer, not to be confused with "mudder", a common euphemism for 'mother'.

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