MediaWatch: June 1990
Table of Contents:
Janet Cooke Award: TIME'S Artful Dodger
If Charles Dickens were alive today, he certainly would have found his modern day Artful Dodger in Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes. In his June 4 article on National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) funding, Hughes crafted a relentless attack on conservatives while gingerly dodging the compelling issue in the debate: the indecency and obscenity in previous NEA-funded projects. For that, he receives the June Janet Cooke Award.
Last Fall, conservatives led by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) attempted to establish standards for NEA grantees. According to Rohrabacher, the amendment, before liberals watered it down, would have barred "tax dollars from continuing to be spent for obscene, indecent, or anti-religious 'art.'" It would also have prevented funding of art "used to denigrate, debase, or revile a person, group, or class of citizens."
Outright Opinion. Time has received this coveted award three times before. Each time we singled out the magazine's blatant editorialization in its "news" sections. It was no different with Hughes' "Nation" section article titled "Whose Art Is It Anyway?" You only had to look at the Table of Contents teaser to see there would be no pretense of balance: "Jesse Helms is leading a right- wing assault on the NEA. But his anti-obscenity campaign threatens to stifle free expression and many worthwhile projects." The subtitle of the article itself resounded: "Desperate for an enemy, the radical right accuses Washington of subsidizing obscene, elitist art. The facts paint a different picture."
Hughes argued the U.S. is spending too little: "Last year the U.S. Government gave the NEA $171.3 million...Compared with the arts expenditures of other countries and with the general scale of federal outlays, this is a paltry sum." And what would happen without the NEA? Hughes gave the "vaporings of antifunders," such as Rohrabacher and the Cato Institute's Douglas Bandow, a few sentences. They pointed out that the private sector could adequately fund the arts and that it is inherently unfair to ask lower income Americans to pay for productions or exhibits "frequented primarily by the wealthy." But he dismissed those points out of hand, claiming "small, marginal, obscure" projects would not attract corporate dollars. He even invoked the class consciousness sloganeering of Karl Marx: "The idea of an American public culture wholly dependent on the corporate promotion budgets of white CEOs, reflecting the concerted interests of one class, one race, one mentality, is unthinkable."
How would Hughes solve the crisis? "Plenty of folk on Capitol Hill have been sandbagged into acting as though a vote for the NEA is a vote for blasphemy, pederasty, and buggery. They should think again....The real 'silent majority' on this issue is the millions of Americans who believe in the value of the arts -- and it is time they spoke out."
Attacks On Conservatives. Hughes began the article: "Helms knows as well as anyone in Washington how strong the know-nothing streak in America is and how to focus its rancor....Only this can explain why thousands of people who don't utter a peep when the President pulls billions from their wallets to bail out crooks and incompetents in the savings and loan industry start baying for the abolition of an agency that indirectly gave $30,000 to a now dead photographer."
Outrage was not based on morality, but on politics: "There has been plenty of method in the anti-NEA demagoguery. At its root lies a sense of lost momentum, a leakage of power, in the far American right. The cold war thawed out after 40 years and left its paladins standing with wet socks in the puddle....Casting the NEA as the patron, if not of Commies, then of blasphemers, elitists, and sickos. The arts grant becomes today's version of the Welfare Queen's Cadillac."
Neglecting The Issue of Obscenity. Hughes praised the NEA for supporting the Harlem School for the Arts, the Center for Puppetry Arts, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, but he refused to describe or let readerssee the works of art he so viciously attacked conservatives for criticizing. He simply claimed: "The grant to Mapplethorpe and artist Andres Serrano, creator of the notorious Piss Christ, were two controversies in 25 years that caused a big public outcry. Two out of 85,000 is statistically insignificant."
But the June 5 Village Voice described the NEA portfolio and included pictures: "...the coolly unregenerate S&M images in Robert Mapplethorpe's 'XYZ Portfolios"; urine, semen, and menstrual blood in Serrano's photographs; the demystified female body in Annie Sprinkle's performances; the frankly homosexual body in David Wojnarowicz's paintings/writings..." (In a side bar, Time's Richard Lacayo did describe the NEA-funded art of Karen Finley: "She fills the stage with shrieks and spit, sometimes stripping off her clothes and smearing food across her body. In a now legendary piece that she introduced several years ago, she slathered yams around her buttocks.")
Reached by MediaWatch, Hughes denied that the art was obscene, but perhaps Serrano's work was "blasphemous." So why not run the photos? He skirted the issue: "The situations of pictures in a gallery and in an open circulation magazine are not analogous." As for ignoring conservative views, Hughes dismissed Rohrabacher as "a little opportunist" and said of Helms: "I do have respect for Helms, although I do think he's a political ass." So how could Time expect a person with such strong opinions to provide a balanced picture? Simple. Hughes told us he never tried: "It was a highly opinionated article. I make no bones about that. My whole purpose for being employed at Time is to offer my opinion." Terry Zintl, "Nation" editor, declined to be interviewed on why Time presents opinion as news.
