it is diffuclt not to read all this as symptoms of the decay of the american empire: unable to face reality, either in particular or in general, there is a segment odf hte population that retreats into religion, and from there tries to work out external symptoms to blame for their malaise--if only the culture could be purified of retrograde elements, and one of consistent protestant-fundamentalist-style mediocrity set up in its place, then obviously the world would be different.
in this way, the fcc anal probe could be seen as an index of a collective retreat into fantasies of purity and will (so could this last election...)
as for the tangental matter of funding for the arts, the reactionary position on which sob so eloquently summarized with this:
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Yeah, I really miss paying for pictures of a crucifix in a bottle of piss, and a bullwhip up someone's ass.
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i assume that no actual experience of the images are required for you to be quite opposed to the fact of them, and to use this as a shallow pretext for attacking the idea of state funding for the arts in general.
because of course serrano and mapplethorpe are the only folk to have ever been granted money from the state, and their particular (technically extraordinary--but no matter for conservatives, really--it is all just what they are told it is from the various networks of sanctimoniousness we are plagued with in the states at present....) works are obviously the space to which any such funding leads.
most of the folk i talk to who are not based in the states and who produce artworks understand the states to be a complete nightmare for artists in general. i think they are right in that.
but what i really think drives the conservative opposition to state funding for the arts is their fear of criticism, particularly of criticism that works in registers they cannot collapse back into their fatuous, moralizing understanding of the world.