There Goes the NEA Again
Elizabeth Harrington at the Washington Free Beacon offers a familiar old slice of sleaze funded by the federal government. An “investigative theatre” company in New York called “The Civilians” has been granted almost $950,000 by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and believe it or not, the National Science Foundation.
Why should the American taxpayer -- you -- be forced to pay for the garbage that follows? Because you, and everyone else, would never pay for it if it weren't mandated by this radical administration which will be gone in 22 months, thank God.
Their most recent work of “art” was a musical called Pretty Filthy, exploring the “human side of the porn industry.” While the porno piece wasn’t directly funded by the NEA, federal funds keep this propaganda wagon on the road.
In Pretty Filthy, the troupe based their songs and scripts on interviews with “adult entertainers.” They promoted themselves as “armed with notepads and recorders,” providing an insider’s glimpse into the “other Hollywood” – the porn industry in the San Fernando Valley.
Naturally The New York Times loved it. Critic Charles Isherwood oozed that the “thoroughly winning cast” showed an “admirable sympathy” for porn stars. He liked the lyrics (“Two things you need to shoot porn? A camera and a thumb”) and the snark (“It was like being with a corpse....a corpse who [sic] giggled”).
But usually The Civilians are funded to churn out radical-left claptrap. Last year, they were awarded $20,000 for a podcast series called Let Me Ascertain You. In a series titled “LGBTQ All Out!,” they explored topics such as “a teenage lesbian shunned by her Jehovah’s Witness community, a master domination top who locks people up in his basement, a gay military soldier who attempted suicide, and the life of homeless gay youth on the streets of New York City.”
The company received a $12,000 NEA grant in January 2013 for new plays from their “Research and Development Group.” Winter Miller, a playwright, is working on a project about the “stigma” of abortion. Asking when life begins is hurtful, Miller believes, and has “led to the murder of doctors and the growth of extremist movements in the United States, of which the Tea Party is the least overtly violent.”
The NEA also provided the Civilians a $25,000 grant to produce a musical on the “Paris Commune” that briefly ruled the city in 1871, which, according to Marxist.com, was “where the working class for the first time in history, took power into its own hands.” Leon Trotsky preached about its lessons and how the "masses" had failed to embrace the revolution. Playwright Michael Friedman insisted the commune resembled the hope springing out of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Overall, the Civilians has received $247,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) since 2007, including $65,000 for The Great Immensity, a musical about the doom rapidly approaching through “climate change.” The majority of the project was funded by a National Science Foundation grant of $697,177. Characters proclaimed panicky things like “We are actually breaking the world. We break the world and it’s done. Game over.” Why hasn’t everyone grasped the allegedly imminent demise of our planet? “People are stupid,” they proclaimed.
Unsurprisingly, this amply subsidized global-warming propaganda musical was cancelled after only a three-week run last spring at Manhattan’s Public Theatre. Even the reviewers couldn't make themselves love it.
Thanks, Barack Obama, for your artistic leadership. Thanks, John Boehner, for writing the checks to pay for all this.
