This is a good time to ponder the fates of younger Americans in every American city and town who hope to find a lifeline to the arts.
In a poignant moment in Damien Chazelle’s hit film La La Land (2016) a young actress tries to fathom why she goes on after endless rounds of demeaning auditions. Ready to give up, she reluctantly agrees to go to a hopeful callback, where the casting director asks her to tell a story rather than read a set script. And so Mia recounts the experiences of her Aunt in Paris, chasing her dream to be an artist and make some questionable choices “all over again.” Mia is talking about herself as much as her relative when she offers a quiet toast to those who can go on, singing “Here’s to the fools who dream.” She’s in the same uncertain state of suspension as her jazz pianist lover, and thousands of other young Americans seeking a foothold in the arts.
We get it because most of us can remember what it was like to seek perfect opportunities against very long odds. It’s even more touching in the arts, since the dreamers who succeed still face uncertainties and crazy hours that would defeat most of us. Those who have chosen these kinds of lives have exchanged security for the uncertain rewards of following their passions.
The stage struck performer running out of hope and money is an old story that Hollywood and Broadway love to retell. Think of the three versions of A Star is Born, (1934, 1954, 1976) or Singing in the Rain (1952), or the darker All About Eve (1950). Perhaps these are so durable because the experience is so universal, not to mention the awe we have for the kinds of pleasures that artists of all types can create. We are refreshed and renewed by what people among us can do on canvass, on stage, on the screen and the transformation of musical notation into sonic magic. Who could but want them to succeed? And so we take the ride with them again and again. Their dreams and talent seed our optimism about the future.
This is a good time to ponder the fates of younger Americans in every American town who hope to find a pathway to a lifetime in the arts. It has never been harder to make a living as an artist, musician or actor. Dance companies and orchestras around the country struggle to close budget deficits. Problems of long-term financing have even hit stalwarts like the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Even so, the dreamers need our support. I’ve heard parents express pride over the decision of one of their maturing children to follow a path into music, art, art history, philosophy or theater. And I’ve heard the disheartening responses of others who profess sympathy to those parents because of the supposed challenges that await. Such bogus displays of compassion actually demonstrate how we can too easily give up on the ideals and optimism of the young. When those kids successfully find their ways–and many do–the rewards are all the sweeter.
To be sure, audiences are more distracted and less inclined to pause long enough to sit in a theater seat or pay the price of a Broadway show. But the larger problem looms in the deepening cesspool of American politics, with discussion in Congress of gutting modest levels of federal arts funding. The small but important budgets of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are all at risk. They represent less than one half of one percent of the federal budget, but they are always targets for cuts from fiscal conservatives.
The perfect responses to many states of mind often come into focus through narratives we witness in performance.
Of course the real fool’s errand is to cut the nation’s youth off from the arts. The perfect responses to many states of mind often come into focus through narratives we witness in performance. Most American Presidents have known this, showcasing American talent in many ways, including wonderful nights of East Room performances from that have ranged from Esperanza Spalding’s jazz to bluegrass music. Almost all have been broadcast on PBS.
It’s perhaps understandable that well-paid and self-satisfied policy-makers will decide what they can live without. But it’s inexcusable to thoughtlessly take away the birthright of students who yearn to contribute to arts that are so eagerly consumed and cherished by the rest of us.
An ever-growing list of ad-hominem attacks from Donald Trump is one of the more discouraging features of our current public life.
Before Donald Trump became president he got into a public fight with comedian Rosie O’Donnell. The result was a series of ad hominem attacks noting that Rosie was “not smart,” “crude,” “disgusting,” “a slob,” and “an animal.”[i] We could not have known then what we know now. It wasn’t long before we would hear Trump go after all of his political opponents and many of his own party members using the same crude language. Just one of his political opponents, Marco Rubio, was described by Trump to national television audiences as a “loser,” “a lightweight,” “a puppet,””a choker,” “a little boy,” and so on. [ii] Add about 350 others who got the same treatment, and you begin to understand the tsunami of invective that has swamped our public rhetoric.
Ad hominem occurs when statements worded as halfway arguments are actually directed against persons rather than their ideas. The language is personal and negative, often in an attempt to deflect attention from the merits of an idea and toward supposed defects of an individual or a group. This formal reasoning fallacy is a clear ethical breach, which is why it is taught in virtually every argumentation course from middle school to university level in the United States. To the credit of our students, it almost never shows up in their work. If only we could say the same for this President.
In private, former President Richard Nixon uttered what a former aide called an “undeniably ugly” range of attacks on his opponents. Nixon was, notes Leonard Garment, “a champion hater,”[iii] a fact that has been revealed in releases of conversations Nixon taped in the Oval Office. Crude epithets were uttered about Supreme Court members, publishers, and his famous lists of White House enemies[iv] Of course Trump has taken the process further by publicly calling out critics and members of the press with epitaphs most Americans thought they would never hear from a chief executive. An ever-growing list of these attacks from Trump is one of the more discouraging features of our current public life, and testimony to the poverty of his rhetoric.Since the President is traditionally the first contact most children have with American politics, the fact of his endless verbal abuse must give parents pause.
The language-challenged New Yorker has seeded a wholesale decline in the quality of our public discourse.
Thanks in part to Trump, we are now awash in reactive and mean-spirited “commentary” from the web to newspapers to prime-time cable talk shows. The language-challenged New Yorker has seeded a wholesale decline in the quality of our public discourse. The rest of us are beginning to talk in screeds about the “pinhead,” “narcissist” or “jerk.” We naturally want to counterpunch to the blows inflicted on others by his words.
In many ways this kind of language is as old as politics, but there is now a crucial difference. Because web “comments” are frequently posted by Americans anonymously, respondents to articles and other content can now say anything they want in the vast spaces of the internet. There is no personal cost for being a rhetorical bully.
Ad hominem has thus been given an unfortunate new life as a refuge for individuals unwilling to expend the effort to argue the merits of ideas. A reliance on personal invective is sign of intellectual laziness and an indication of a person’s inability to find the higher ground of a common cause: a lethal defect in a President. Of Course we can’t blame all of this collapse of civil discourse on Trump. But he surely is “Exhibit A.”
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[i] Jacques Steinberg, “Back to ‘Talking Smack’ with Rosie, Donald and Barbara,” New York Times, January 11, 2007.
