I don’t think one company going bust is evidence of anything. Otherwise we’d say the video game industry couldn’t survive without a subsidy because Atari.
The claim was that big city operas have nothing to worry about and need no public support because they are big city opera companies. One enormous counterexample is sufficient to prove that this proposition is false.
No, it isn’t. Companies go belly-up every day in every industry, with or without public support.
Wasn’t a liberal. Just another grasping, greedy rich guy who has to give money to the opera so his wife has a place to dress up for, preen and be seen. Maybe, just maybe, he might overhear a conversation that is useful, maybe about the Amalgamated Crap IPO, but mostly he just fidgets and glances at this watch.
He wants more government support so he doesn’t have to write any more checks.
I grant the possibility; I deny the likelihood. He was talking like a True Believer about the evil GOP being responsible for funding cuts for the opera.
If your wife is “looking daggers” at you, keep her away from Tosca. Don’t press your luck. Anybody who is willing to put up with you, you should count your blessings.
Here are The Words. There are only two, memorize them, use them.
“Yes, Dear”.
Seriously, what the hell is your point?
Damuri Ajashi said that big city opera companies self-evidently don’t need any help because they can support themselves. I pointed out that this is not the case. City Opera just went bust this season. The obvious conclusion is that being located in NYC is not enough to keep even a long-lived and much-beloved opera company alive. This is an important example because all of the big cities in the US have, together, maybe 15 big opera companies. One disappearing is a pretty big fraction of the total.
So nobody cares about Atari or any other companies that go bust every day. Nobody cares whether or not public support would have saved City Opera, either. What is of interest here is the idea that being in the big city insulates opera companies from the kinds of pressures that public support is supposed to alleviate. That claim is false.
Serves the City Opera right for staging “Anna Nicole”. They *deserved *to die for that one.
Sorry, Bubbles, your legacy was ruined.
It shows you how bad things are that they were hoping that it would help revive their fortunes.
Since you apparently don’t want to be pinned down about anything, nearly as I can tell, you were frustrated because you felt unable to express your opinion when someone other than yourself solicited liberals (also not you) to contact their congressperson in support of a political view contrary to yours.
Was it because you felt constrained by propriety? Or that you just weren’t able to come up with a suitably snarky riposte in a timely fashion? What would have relieved your frustration, and how was it the liberals fault that relief eluded you?
Or was it just righteous indignation that someone was WRONG?
The point is that one opera company going bust may say nothing except that the opera company was badly run. It may only say that New York cannot support two opera companies; your own quote mentions New York’s older, more popular and better funded Metropolitan Opera - which is not bankrupt.
Well anyway, we now know he’s pretty much the same in real life.
It’s n’est-ce pas, no?
I get wrongly pegged as a conservative all the fucking time. The first few times it really pissed me off, but I’ve learned to just start ignoring it.
The bankruptcy doesn’t have to say anything at all to disprove the proposition. New York was able to support two opera companies for over 70 years. People were still attending performances up until the end. There is still demand for a City Opera-like institution, but that demand in and of itself does not mean that such an opera company will magically come into existence. City Opera made some terrible mistakes, but it also did not exactly pull defeat out of the jaws of victory. It just made its own death spiral worse. Being in a city that traditionally loves opera and provides ready audiences is not enough anymore.
You don’t have to be a True Believer to think that the GOP is responsible for cutting funding for the arts. They’re proud of that.
You yourself, a fine upstanding GOP drone if there ever was one support it.
Yes. Why couldn’t we say it? I don’t consider Louis XIV to be a founder or paragon of conservative thought as it pertains to the 21st century.
Not if you are a conservative with a commitment to limited government. The feds ought to be doing only what the Constitution says they can. Unless and until someone can make a case that funding opera is as important as funding the military, I would prefer to decide how to spend my entertainment budget.
I can pick up my own check, thanks.
Regards,
Sho-damned
Broadways has plenty of small, government-funded and government-granted theater going on, usually Off-Broadway or occasionally Off-Off-Broadway. Several non-profits run theaters.
New York City is very involved in theater and money goes to public works–renovating Times Square, offering film subsidies, regulating taxis and levying hotel taxes, and policing the streets. Yes, Broadway is a multi-billion dollar industry, but it’s wrong to imply the government doesn’t have its hands all over it.
Many Broadway shows are funded as tax-write-offs. Again, there is government incentive to participate in the arts. Same goes for the local opera.
As to your persecution complex, you aren’t a victim of all this because you’re a conservative. Asshole blowhards at public events are asshole blowhards. I’m deeply opposed to the military masturbation that goes on at the sporting events I love, but that’s just the way life is. Maybe sports are “conservative” and arts are “liberal,” but they truly attract people of all walks of life.
And they are all blowhards. They crumple candy at the theater, they bring their kids to hockey…singling out libtards is confirmation bias.
When someone pisses us off, we have to get over ourselves, not “win” against them. I know you were driven to it by those morons, but wouldn’t you have had a better evening if you’d just let it go?
To reiterate good advice from Measure for Measure:
I just went to the opera (Aida, in Charlotte), and it sucked, so I’m getting a kick out of these replies…
I’ve heard of Iphegenia in Brooklyn, but not Aida in Charlotte.
This is one way that today’s “conservatives” are anything but. Government funding of the arts is a practice that goes back not just decades, but centuries. What could be more conservative than that?
Bricker, it’s a shame you had your evening spoiled by some douchebags with no sense of decorum. I think your evening may have been less spoiled if you’d refrained from responding to them, but in the same situation I may well have done the same.
There are worthy arguments to be made both for and against government funding of the arts, and there are appropriate forums and means through which to do so.
But confronting theater-goers during intermission to peddle politics is just tacky.
So, yeah, those folks were bungholes.
However, you shouldn’t expect to get too many people on your side when you voice your gripe like this:
It sounds like your saying “I ran into a bunch of shitheads the other night, but I didn’t get to tell them all that I wanted to say, so I thought I’d tell you shitheads instead.”
But anyway, yes, they were jerks, and no, you are not a hypocrite for attending government funded opera.