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Conservative Tastes
Preening to the Converted
Why would a lovely, revelatory talent like Joyce DiDonato bad-mouth Fox News?
Not long ago I went to a recital at the Kennedy Center in Washington by the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, a lovely woman with a lovely voice whose renderings of little-known pieces by Rossini and the French composers Cécile Chaminade and Reynaldo Hahn were revelatory. The near-capacity crowd in the KenCen’s 2,454-seat concert hall were wild about her and called her back at the end of the performance for several encores. As artists sometimes do, she took the occasion to chat with the audience, wondering if perchance President Obama might be present (he wasn’t) and inviting the audience to share her joy in the recent triumph of Egyptian idealism in Tahrir Square, Cairo. She mentioned that she had kept up with events on her musical tour of American cities by watching TV news on CNN and MSNBC — but “not much on Fox.” This got a roar of approval from the audience as did one or two other things she said indicating her liberal sympathies and disobliging opinions of conservatives and conservatism.
About this, the reviewer for the Washington Post had this to say: “In a field that so often seems to exist in a rarefied atmosphere away from the world, she has the directness of a pop musician — not to try to impose any kind of political message on a program, but just to remind everyone of the world of which classical music is a part.” And, annoying though I had found Miss DiDonato’s remarks to be, I could see the reviewer’s point. For there’s no denying that “the world of which classical music is a part” — not to mention the larger world of artists and intellectuals of which it is itself a part — is in its sympathies and presuppositions overwhelmingly liberal. Or perhaps more precisely, anti-conservative. That is why this adorable songbird, born in Prairie Village, Kansas, and an alumna of Wichita State University, was able to assume that political views which might have come from the New York Times would be gratifying even to (especially to!) an audience in Washington where, as the whole world knows, a horde of new Republican officeholders had recently arrived.
It’s no news that nearly all artists, like much of their art, are now overwhelmingly of a leftish persuasion. That is why classical music and “progressive” news organizations like National Public Radio go so naturally together — and why, also, the newly arrived Republicans in Washington have put Public Broadcasting on the chopping block. The broadcasters are worried, too, and have deployed, as they always do, “the Muppet lobby” to try to hang on to their taxpayer bucks. My local PBS and NPR outlets have been running frequent announcements setting out the damage the GOP proposals to defund them would do — not to them but to me. “These cuts will have a devastating effect on WETA and the television and radio programs that you and your family rely on,” the announcement goes, detailing programs “like Masterpiece, Mystery, Nova, and the PBS NewsHour. Do your elected officials know how you feel about funding for Public Broadcasting? Call your representatives in Congress today and let them know where you stand.”
This statement must have been cleared by the station’s undoubtedly very competent legal counsel, for at no point does it express a political point of view or advocate a particular political action, which would not be allowed. It merely urges viewers to make their views known. But of course the folks at WETA can be pretty confident about what those views are likely to be, and that they coincide with their own on this as on other matters. Like Miss DiDonato, public broadcasters know their audience and can assume a community of interest encompassing political as well as social, artistic, and intellectual matters.
They know, as Sam Guzman of the Christian Science Monitor recently wrote, that “conservatives have abandoned the arts.” It may be, he admits, that “conservatives are better arguers, but liberals are better artists. I am not specifically referring to either fine art (if there remains such a thing) or popular art. It doesn’t matter: Liberals control both. They have MTV, but they also have the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. They have Rolling Stone, but they also have the New Yorker. They have Hollywood, but they also have Cannes.” So far, I’m afraid he’s right, but I think his explanation for this sad state of affairs is mistaken. “Liberals,” he claims, “understand that rooted deep in the human soul is a love of beauty, a fascination with story, and an intangible sensitivity to the singing of songs. That’s why liberals have sought to control not only the Senate, but the symphony, the storybook, and the silver screen. Reason is a blunt instrument. It can smash with all the force of a hammer, but it is art that subtly serenades and seduces.”
Fair enough, you may think, but what has the love of beauty or a fascination with story got to do with most of the art, fine or popular, now being produced? His example of the art that subtly serenades and seduces is James Cameron’s dreadful blue 3-D nightmare, Avatar, which, though he correctly identifies it as left-wing environmentalist propaganda, he finds “persuasive,” at least to the illiterates — his word, though he doesn’t mean it in a bad way — who flocked to the movie in their millions. I doubt how persuasive this movie really was, even to the relatively limited and mostly pre-voting-age audience to which it primarily appealed. The point is not that the other side is winning through the power of its art. Actually, in the postmodern era art has become more political while becoming less persuasive — partly for the same reason that Miss DiDonato knew she could bad-mouth Fox and be applauded for it: because the artists know their audience already shares their opinions. Art has pretty much renounced any pretension to power along with its pretension to verisimilitude, and its new fantasy-land is cut off not only from reality but from those of us, including most conservatives, who have refused to join them in flight from it.
No, the real point is that we have no contemporary art of our own but have to share that of the other side for the sake of what poor nourishment we can derive from it. At any rate, that’s what generally strikes me about post-1960s movies that are said to be “conservative,” like the Mel Gibson vehicles Braveheart (another movie with blue people in it), The Patriot, or The Passion of the Christ, which are in my view hardly to be distinguished from the brain-dead claptrap of Avatar — as I like to think conservatives would know if they hadn’t given up on the movies years ago and so got out of the habit of critical thinking about them. What pathetic crumbs from Hollywood’s table now satisfy us! If we conservatives can’t do any better than that, maybe we’re better off without any art of our own.
BUT WE CAN DO BETTER — with the stipulation that, where we do, it will be not as conservatives but as those in touch (as liberals so seldom are anymore) with a world outside and above politics. The best conservative movie I’ve seen for a long time was made by a young Frenchman, Xavier Beauvois, who identifies himself as a socialist and doubtless would repudiate with vigor any imputation to him of political conservatism. The movie is Of Gods and Men (Des hommes et des dieux), and it tells the story of the Cistercian monks of Tibhirine in Algeria who were kidnapped and murdered by Islamicist guerrillas in 1996. Such a story obviously has an enormous potentiality for political interpretation, but apart from a mention by an Algerian official — a self-discrediting source, as the movie itself shows — that he blames French colonialism (which ended in 1962) for the insurgency M. Beauvois (Le Petit Lieutenant) is not interested in things political. Instead, he gives us a portrait of piety and martyrdom the likes of which has not been seen in an English-speaking movie, so far as I know, for a generation.
Interestingly, the reviewer for the New York Times, though he liked the movie as much as I did, felt the need to reassure his own liberal audience that the movie was not really about Christianity but “rather an almost fanatical humanism” — which is a contradiction in terms if I ever saw one. He tries to find in it some kind of statement about “the sins of colonialism,” presumably to justify his own approval of what he has seen. But don’t be fooled. There is no such thing, nor is it true to say that “the theme may be piety, but Mr. Beauvois and his cast do not address it piously.” The community of interest of those who read the arts pages of the New York Times, which must overlap to a large extent with that of the audience in the Kennedy Center the other night, may be reliably anti-conservative, but the art that, for want of anything better, they worship, can never be so if it is to remain art at all.
About the Author
James Bowman, our movie and culture critic, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, both published by Encounter Books.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (47) | Leave a comment
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Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 4.25.11 @ 6:31AM
Urging your viewers to contact members of Congress is a political act no matter how you slice it.
As far as a performer's political views, it's a matter of presumptuousness to assume the audience will enjoy that.
Alan Brooks| 4.25.11 @ 7:52PM
Fox News pretends to be pious, when it is nothing more than a business.
Stammon| 4.25.11 @ 8:35PM
And what do you pretend to be?
Alan Brooks| 4.25.11 @ 8:54PM
I pretend to be a good person, but how does a guy survive in a time of such political and social corruption without being bad in some way? virtue is its own reward-- nothing more. People were wicked long before Ted Kennedy was born.
But here is a question for you: do you think your grandchildren will grow up to live in a moral world? don't bet the farm on it.
ray bob| 4.25.11 @ 7:26AM
nothing to see here, move along ... just another pretty face with no brains behind the mask
Appleby| 4.25.11 @ 7:27AM
I do not attend concerts and plays to hear the actors and performers pontificate on political themes. I do not care what they watch on TeeVee (odds are pretty good that they know a lot more about Dancing with the Stars than any news station anywhere). Shut Up And Sing.
D| 4.25.11 @ 7:28AM
Performing artists talking politics from the stage is both tactless and tasteless. So, while I agree that Joyce DiDonato is a fantastic singer, we now also know that she has no class, or respect for her audience, which has paid money to hear her sing.
Also, I'm sure that there are conservatives in the art world. They just keep their mouths shut, for the most part.
D| 4.25.11 @ 7:35AM
I would add that, in my opinion, Ms. DiDonato is something of a "follower" artistically. In recent years, it has been Susan Graham who has brought the song of Reynaldo Hahn back to the fore, and Anne Sofie von Otter who the Cecile Chaminade. Joyce DiDonato, for all her vocal talent, has not really carved out her own path, IMHO.
Herb| 4.25.11 @ 7:41AM
The KennCen arts crowd is lefty and hates FoxNews? Stop the presses!
Hearing this as a conservative, I don't know whether to clean my guns or go buy another one. Seriously, folks, art should and must be about art for its own sake. Inject politics and you have Red Chinese proletarian opera. And your typical KennCen patron epitomizes liberal hypocrisy defined as "vote on the left, live on the right".
Live performance? Not when there's youtube. Watch them perform, clean guns at the same time. Now that's freedom of choice!
alice moore| 4.25.11 @ 7:46AM
I have heard apocryphal stories of actors, directors, and musicians taking a famous conservative to an aside. Then saying something on the order of, "I agree with you say, but I can't say my real opinions at work or I won't work." This is only a paraphrase. It seems the entertainment world enforces a conformity that is the envy of Saudi Arabia an North Korea.
That the artist comes from a non coastal city, seems to make no difference. It seems that many artists, since they probably didn't fit into middle America, grow to hate the ideal instead of moving to a more mature view that the white picket fence, 9-5 job, marriage, and 2.1 kids is not for them and at the same time knowing it is not a bad choice simply different than for what they're suited. This singer may have those issues.
BTW, the entertainers that do come out as conservatives seem to have their bankrolls safely in hand.
Bob K.| 4.25.11 @ 7:51AM
I notice that Mr. Bowman is a scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, whatever on earth that is?
What audience is he addressing here? His peers or his readers at The American Spectator?
He should go back and re-read this convoluted mish-mash and then re-write it.
Finbarr Moran| 4.25.11 @ 3:12PM
Many thanks to Bob K. for providing what passes for argumentation among modern day Leftists.
Pauline Kael is (in)famous among conservatives for her remark that she could not imagine how Nixon got elected since no one that she knew had voted for him. In a similar vein, Bob K. has never heard of Ethic and Public policy center so they certainly must not count.
Secondly, since the article appears in the AmSpec site, it would stand to reason that AmSpec readers are the target market. As any AmSpec writer can also tell you, we are a pretty intelligent user community. So we are close to being his peers as well.
Perhaps you should re-write this convoluted mish mash of a second question?
Bob K.| 4.25.11 @ 6:37PM
I'm no liberal by any means and I'm bored by this kind of stuffy prose. This is a political site. Get out Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" and review it. He was a socialist but he could write and keep you interested.
TaxedTexan| 4.25.11 @ 8:03AM
Over the years, we conservatives have struggled to be polite, and not drop to the level of snide socialists.
Perhaps it is now time to cast this civility aside, and simply "boo" when this junk oooozes out of a liberal.
richard ryan| 4.25.11 @ 8:16AM
The only thing worse than a liberal is a cultured, intellectual liberal. Yes, liberals have the arts, but more importantly education and the media. So the question for me has always been, how can this be so? How can an informed, educated person listen to Waxman, Boxer, Obama, etc and conclude that their policies are good for this country? I think the answer is this: they don't really love their country and it's capitalist way of doing things. They don't TRULY "support our troops" or take pride in our military. They abhor it. Their objection to traditional, conservative values and everything conservatism stands for is an emotional reaction, not a reasoned, well thought-out approach to life. Cite some evidence that tax cuts have a positive effect on the economy or revenue, and they come back with "Bush lied", or "corporate greed" or some other bull----. This people make me sick. Literally, actually sick to my stomach.
da monk| 4.25.11 @ 7:51PM
Rich: I take umbrage at your comment that because in most cases I side with the liberal agenda I "do not love my country and it's capitalist way of doing things" I also was a business owner who employed 100's of people, thus a capitalist. I do support my troops, was in the service and have two nephews who graduated the service academys. One of those nephews tank was the first tank to enter Iraq in the 1st Iraqi war. I am a student of the Constitution and the law. How dare you challenge my patriotism! I love my country just as strongly as you do. Keep in mind, what makes this country great is that we all have the right and priviledge to our views without fear of retribution. Give some thought to Samuel Johnson when he said
"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" and then think about your words about Liberals.
JimH| 4.25.11 @ 8:23AM
As has been said before to many before her.. Just shut up and sing.
Kitty| 4.25.11 @ 8:28AM
I read a couple of the literary blogs. They're written by agents and editors -- it's safe to assume they're liberal and/or progressive -- who give advice to writers and wannabe writers.
Most of the time, they avoid politics completely. But when the subject does come up, their sycophant readers chime in, sometimes with the most vile comments.
That's when I ask them if they consider it smart to p-off half of their potential market.
gearjammer| 4.25.11 @ 8:37AM
Take a lesson from the fans of country music. The Dixie Chicks trashed Bush and the USA and they said " get lost commie bitches". You big bad " CONSERVATIVES" won't give up your gratification and devine pleasures. A
rhino like me would tell this Ho to take a hike, not a penny of my money for you. But, hot shot CONSERVATIVES will not deny themselves the sound of the pretty songbird's voice. You guys woulda lasted 2 seconds at Valley Forge.
Occam's Tool| 4.25.11 @ 1:23PM
Hey, I don't buy or listen to the Burqa Geese myself.
Melvin| 4.25.11 @ 8:51AM
Even to this day Liberals honest feel that Conservatives are completely incapable of enjoying any artistic thought.
Conservatives are not considered to have enough intellectual capacity to understand the difference between Michelangelo's, "Pietà," and Andres Serrano's, "Piss Christ."
It is not that we are ignorant of the arts, it just that Conservatives know the difference between art and garbage.
Kitty| 4.25.11 @ 9:06AM
Dittos.
canuckistani| 4.25.11 @ 11:18AM
....or is it that conservatives refuse to be open to artistic expression, even if it's bad art?
Critical reasoning is also within the liberals' purview, apparently.
With choices like Ted Nugent, Toby Keith and a now-angry and somnolent Dennis Miller to choose from, I'll take the other list for my arts sources and stick to fact-mongers and letter-writers for my political indulgences.
I do agree artists on stage should stick to their material, but with the clown Trump also breaking the fourth wall down, do you not agree ANYONE now has license to have an opinion?
cuban pete| 4.25.11 @ 2:01PM
Everyone always had "a license to have an opinion." As an aside, it is probably a liberal fantasy that a person should need to get a license to have an opinion but I digress.
Father McCarthy taught me about the "halo effect" in freshman logic. Paul Newman could act and make great salad dressing but who cares about his political insights?
s bennett| 4.25.11 @ 9:49AM
AMEN!!!!
Anthony| 4.25.11 @ 10:12AM
Who cares what this prima donna thinks about anything other than Puccini and Verde?
It was one of our steller ladies on the right, Laura Ingraham, who penned the book " Shut Up and Sing", which applied to lefties in the arts who can't keep their mouths shut when opining on things beyond their " intellectual" pay grade, to paraphrase another empty suit on the left, the soon to be replaced, Joe Biteme.
james wilson| 4.25.11 @ 11:08AM
When Socrates set out to discover the sources from which the poets drew he only discovered that they were more likely than others to be imbeciles. When a parrot sings, we do not ask for his opinion. And when Socrates attacked the character of the democratic mob for following the opinion of poets, they demanded he drink hemlock.
Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian Assembly would have still been a mob--
Madison
Vern Crisler | 4.25.11 @ 11:12AM
Hey, I'm glad someone out there thinks Mel Gibson's movies aren't worth the celluloid they're filmed on.
canuckistani| 4.25.11 @ 11:25AM
Except Payback or Gallipoli....
Seek| 4.25.11 @ 12:18PM
Mel Gibson's 2006 movie, "Apocalypto," which he directed, was a magnificently brutal look at the savagery of Mayan "culture." It even won a few Academy Awards, though not in the major categories. Then there were Richard Donner's "Lethal Weapon" flicks he did with Danny Glover, proof that a conservative and a Commie can get along on the set. His movie of a year ago, "Edge of Darkness," was an entertaining, middlebrow thriller.
Mel Gibson -- keep the fire going.
Occam's Tool| 4.25.11 @ 1:28PM
Sorry, Seek. First, that sumbitch Gibson annoys me with Passion, which every idiot was telling me was not based on antisemitism, even though Gibson was later shown to be as antisemitic as Clint is, here. (For those who do not know, Clint referred to Jews as "Sandmonkeys." Look it up here, under search "sandmonkeys.")
Then the sumbitch kicks out at one of the only peoples to indepndently discover the zero, the Mayans. My two kids are both Mayans.
Needless to say, I'm not too fond of Mel, although I do enjoy his movies where he gets the crap kicked out of him. I can watch Mel being beat up all day long. South Park had it right on Mel.
Paul from SA| 4.25.11 @ 11:17AM
The distinction is honesty.
loulou| 4.25.11 @ 11:53AM
She's no Alma Gluck.
PolishKnight| 4.25.11 @ 1:08PM
It's ironic that a classical music perfomer would badmouth conservativism. If she looked at her audience, she would see that it's mostly made up of aging leftists. Same thing with newspapers: They appealed to the lowest common denominator, preached elitism, and suddenly found the masses weren't interested in their smug diatribes anymore.
I remember when I was younger that the cool, leftist elites mocked the fine arts and largely still do. They prefer shows such as "Stomp" or The Vagina Monologues. In addition, the population of classical elitist leftists are shrinking due to their own success at "inclusivity" with non-whites who are simply not interested in dying, European culture. Most of those operas and ballets were written by white guys, doncha know.
Then again... that leads us to the fundamental paradox of leftist idealism: To have a world that looks just like Sweden, but is multicultural and multiethnic. THAT would make a pretty good Opera, don't you think?
Dennis| 4.25.11 @ 1:17PM
"Conservatives have abandoned the arts"? I think not (NPR isn't art), we just believe that "artists" and the like should stand on their own merit, not be at the government's door for a hand-out. It certainly was that was for over 200 years...
Jennifer| 4.25.11 @ 4:13PM
Thanks! As a conservative classical musician, I completely agree with you. It's true that many of my colleagues are liberal, but I disagree with the assumption that "Art" and "Beauty" are exclusive to liberals.
Finbarr Moran| 4.25.11 @ 3:22PM
I have always wished that someone in the finance department at some of these entertainment enterprises could explain to liberal performers that the proceeds of tickets purchased by conservatives do not get funneled to Halliburton. Like liberal revenue receipts, they help top pay that entertainer’s performance fee.
Does someone really need a Stanford MBA to see that it does not make sense to alienate such a large market segment? Rather, they should take heed of long-time performers like James Caan who eschews political commentary in front of a microphone.
Dave | 4.25.11 @ 3:47PM
So? Another show biz ditz opening her illiterate pie hole and providing more proof positive that if you pulled down on her left ear, the next sound you'd hear would be the release of ... escaping air.
Psschhhssss .... (blip!)
Einstein she's not. H-ll, she's not even Edith Bunker.
Now if you'll excuse me ...
Cpm| 4.25.11 @ 5:48PM
I don't think conservatives have abandoned the arts so much as the arts have chosen to abandon conservatives. You see these little potshots daily and you are expected to take it and like it. There's plenty out there to enjoy without subsidizing jerks like DiDonato.
tallMel| 4.25.11 @ 8:54PM
Progressivism fosters dependence. Many artists are poor and starving, and more than happy to be on the public dole seeking public money to make their art. Dependent on the big government for every part of their lives. could they make it in the world without the assistance? maybe not. I am an artist, an artist who is very conservative. It is a good thing I dropped out of art school when I did, a few more years and I would have taken classes in being a government dependent
gearjammer| 4.26.11 @ 10:02AM
have not many artist worked a real job till they made it big?
BayouKiki| 4.25.11 @ 9:21PM
+1
Dee See| 4.25.11 @ 11:11PM
FOX is totally 'on board' with the Globalist
agenda. Make no mistake about it.
Murdoch's people are even working within
RED China's propaganda machine 'managing
the perceptions' of such trifling issues
as their record shattering, still unfolding,
'EUGENICS friendly' Halocaust.
Stick to Drudge, Alex Jones, Alan Watt,
some British papers, and the Epoch Times.
And we hope you too have thrown out your
TV by now.
WE HAVE
chuck jim fox| 4.26.11 @ 12:47AM
Moving beyond the political views of opera singers, I keep hoping that the AmSpec some time will look into what has become of that "unbiased" icon--CSpan, which seems to have turned its weekend book and cultural venue into a left wing miasma of left professors lecturing and left authors Bushbashing and trashing the American masses. I know not whether Brian Lamb finally went Looney Left, but CSpan is getting beyond NPR and MSNBC in its Leftness
shipley130| 4.27.11 @ 3:57PM
After the recent NPR revelation, there will be no money for PBS in my will.
shipley130| 4.27.11 @ 4:00PM
Last time I checked, all the major cable news networks talk about the same things, so I don't think her bias is about "the news". When I confront people about what they think is so wrong about Fox News, they can never give me a straight, honest opinion or answer, it's always an attack, instead.
Creative Recreation | 8.10.11 @ 9:53PM
is good