Yep Ken, and the kind of pop that everyone here knows is crap is just the sound of cash registers.
I really, really hope that the internet dilutes big biz's power as people often suggest, but I don't think it's as profound as they make out. On the other hand, imagine how closed western popular culture would be without it!
I have mixed feelings about government funding for the arts. Seems to me that only those who play the game are deemed worthy because governments are so risk averse. Maybe independent collectives are a better answer?
Public funding for the arts is a no brainer. All those opera houses, symphonies orchestras and art museums create revenue for the city by bringing in tourism. When I was young, they used to have jazz concerts for free in the museums and I saw legends like the Heath Brothers, Joe Henderson and Billy Higgins there. The whole NY avant-garde that gave birth to Cage, LaMonte Young, Steve Reich The Velvets, minimalism, Punk, was due to the public funding of artists. You see, it's not only giving money to Symphonies, it's also supporting public festivals, community concerts, experimental music and theater, education of the arts for the young, and for the old timers. It's about the development of culture. And yes we can say that the arts are not profitable. But if anything the huge subsidies of wheat, corn and soybeans in America along with the huge bailouts and subsidies would seem to prove that the arts are not the only business that is not profitable.
I did like that line, "I don't think too many would have predicted that the function of Orwell's thought police would have been privatized!" This is the thing that many here in America don't get. Governmental tyranny is bad; but it is not any better if it is Big Business that rules with an iron fist. Now they are talking about off shore drilling, as if BP's fiasco never happened, new-cular (in Bush's vernacular) still nowhere to put the waste, and drilling for oil in the forests or Canada and the national parks of America. They want to privatize the parks and privatize the oceans by quarantining off fish farms and selling off the grids. This is why those in power have tried to bankrupt the federal government. The internet is supposed to be a place where there is free reign of thought. But now search engines direct you to sponsored websites, and they are controlling the type of information that people access. Today I got this in my youtube recommended listening list.
How Justin Gets a Girl's Attention!
Popstar! asks Justin Bieber to reveal the silliest thing he's ever done to get a g...
SUGGESTED Because you watched Rush - RED BARCHETTA...
Somebody better start writing some resistance music.