Donald Satz wrote:

>This brings me to one of my pet peeves - public involvement in the arts.
>You always know what a private business wants - money and profit.  What
>do these public and subsidized entities want: money? control? influence?
>reputation? high quality? exposure with celebrities?.  It could be just
>about anything, and it changes quickly as well.  There is also the "mind"
>and "behavior" control element that public bodies place high priority on
>because the power structure wants to retain its position.

The problem with this argument against public support for the arts is
that, if government aid is ruled out, no one else has enough wherewithall
to inject major doses of cash into expensive arts such as CM except big
business, and they are just as interested in maintaining their position
as politicians.  They may be willing to throw a few dimes and nickels into
the CM pot now (in return for getting their corporate names plastered all
over the concert programs and anywhere else they can stick up a billboard),
but tomorrow they could decide that they could promote themselves more
effectively by sponsoring a tennis tournament, or something, and good-bye
to your orchestra or opera company.  These guys are under even less control
by the public, and less concerned about the public good, than government
bodies.

Ultimately, it has to be the rank-and-file CM fans--that is, us--who will
keep it going, because we can't trust anyone else to look out for our
interests.  This is why we have to expand our numbers as much as we can,
which is a hard row to hoe.  The future may not bring us very good news.

Jon Johanning // [log in to unmask]