I don’t like mimes. I never have and I probably never will. I think they’re creepy and quite possibly the laziest of what might loosely be called the talent pool of entertainers. I mean, how stupid or lazy do you have to be to not be able to remember any lines whatsoever? These filthy street clowns really are nothing but beggars in white face and for some reason, there is a controversy over the NEA defunding them at the behest of some of the more fiscally conservative members of Congress.
“Those just kind of grants lend themselves to ridicule,” said Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) at a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing. “These are a bit tough to justify … how can we justify these types of grants?”
Flake questioned NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman over a number of grants, including those to an international accordion festival and to the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Making grants like these “feeds the cynicism out there about everything we do,” Flake said.
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.
Um, what? Actually, yes, the marketplace should be the sole determinant of what is allowed to flourish. If you look back at history you will note that those artists that produced great art (Michelangelo, Botticelli, Mozart, Beethoven, Rembrandt, Shakespeare, etc) survived because they were good and because people liked them. They survived because of ticket sales, the sale of art, or the patronage of wealthy benefactors that knew a good thing when they saw it. Their work survived because they were masterpieces that transcended time. Now we’re footing the bill for mimes and accordion festivals because those things couldn’t survive without pilfering the public coffers because they suck so incredibly badly.
Nobody wants to pay good money to see mimes and that’s why they perform on the streets. Could you ever possibly imagine the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic trying to make a go of it performing on the street? How about his first chair flutist or cellist? No? Of course you can’t and that is because they don’t suck like a black hole as mimes do. I mean, the only differences between a mime and bukakke target is that the bukakke target actually generates revenue and actually articulates a sound from time to time.
As for the accordion festival: dude, it’s an accordion festival. Should we really be funding shitty music on top of shitty acting? Who are we afraid of offending by not funding an international accordion festival? The Polish? God forbid we rile up some Oom-pah bands and risk their wrath. I mean, don’t they know that by not funding accordions, we risk a huge gap in our strategic Polka capabilities? Wisconsin might have to change its official state song.
Personally, I think the NEA needs to go or at least get its budget axed in half. I am sick and tired of involuntarily funding mimes and accordion festivals and jars of piss with crucifixes in them and pictures of guys with horse whips shoved up their asses. I am tired of schools not getting the funding they need to teach little Johnny how to read or little Suzy how to add 2 + 2 because some lazy hipster in San Fran wants to get paid to put on slightly less makeup than a Russian mail order bride, hang around on street corners doing pretty much nothing all day, and then spend his “off time” whining about how middle America doesn’t “get” his “art” or how he is underpaid or how more money should be poured into the NEA instead of, say, paying soldiers a decent wage while they’re working ridiculous hours in shit-filled hell holes such as Iraq or Afghanistan or New Jersey.
If I am going to be forced to fund mimes, they better look like the one in the video below:
Tags: Accordion festival, Arizona, budget cuts, funding cuts, Jeff Flake, Mimes, National Endowment for the Arts, NEA, Rocco Landesman, San Francisco, waste of money
I see a motifake in your future:
Bukkake, better than miming.