tRump golfing at Mar-a-Lago costs $10 million/mo. The National Endowment for the Arts costs $12 million/mo. #FundArtNotGolf #SavetheNEA pic.twitter.com/dltygwAMlZ
— UNPRESIDENTED (@kierondwyer) March 17, 2017
Yesterday morning, the Trump administration released its proposed federal budget for financial year 2018, making good on the US president’s threats to cut all funding to the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities (NEA and NEH). Unsurprisingly, the outpouring of support for the two federal agencies, which have supported the work of countless artists, scholars, and writers since their creation in 1965, has been enormous.
The group Creative Majority PAC, working with TaskForce and Revolution Messaging, launched the cheekily named advocacy campaign Wait Wait … Don’t Cut Me, a pun on the popular quiz show “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me” on NPR — which stands to lose a major source of funding if the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s budget is zeroed, as Trump’s budget proposes.
Never one to pass up an opportunity to flaunt its fluency in contemporary art, the satirical news site The Onion reported on the proposed cuts with the article, “Trump Says Wasteful NEA Hasn’t Produced Single Valuable Work Since Claes Oldenburg’s ‘Giant Three-Way Plug’.” In it, Trump bemoans in a trumped-up quote: “We have not seen one single NEA-backed project come close to justifying its cost since the Swedish-American sculptor debuted his Pop Art masterpiece in 1970, challenging the way we grapple with questions of industrialization and decay.”
Couching outrage and frustration over the Trump budget in humor proved to be a popular coping strategy.
NEA budget $148mill. # of Mar-a-lago vacations #Trump is on pace for in 2017-30 @ $100mill in taxpayer expense. #Trump priorities are clear. pic.twitter.com/1KNp5GHa6u
— Rep. Frank Pallone (@FrankPallone) March 17, 2017
The National Endowment for the Arts is set to be abolished by a man who reportedly endowed a 6-ft. portrait of himself from his own charity.
— Tom Junod (@TomJunod) March 16, 2017
When I cut the NEH and NEA, this twitter account will be your only source of art. #ByeByeBigBird
— Theatre Critic Trump (@TrumpMusicals) March 16, 2017
Oct 2016: Mexico’s gonna pay for the wall!
Mar 2017: Actually the NEA and Meals on Wheels are gonna pay for the wall— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) March 16, 2017
Conservatives, 2007: why aren’t republicans welcome in Hollywood?
Conservatives, 2017: let’s destroy the national endowment for the arts
— Elon Green (@elongreen) March 16, 2017
Trump’s cutting the NEA, PBS, & Meals on Wheels? You know someone pays for sex if they don’t see the value in art, intelligence, & kindness.
— Seanbaby (@Seanbabydotcom) March 17, 2017
Trump’s social skills are a mess
He can’t read and he hates the free press
So the dimwitted con
Wants the NEA gone
’cause he can’t spell PBS— Gordon Lustig (@lustigmusic) March 17, 2017
Killing NEA would kill agency that helped birth Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, https://t.co/KgeDecv4pF
— Blair Kamin (@BlairKamin) March 16, 2017
friendly reminder – this is what life looks like without Art & Culture#SavetheNEA pic.twitter.com/MQzhaZIRJH
— Jay Duplass (@jayduplass) March 16, 2017
And, appropriately, many are re-sharing this classic 1969 clip of Fred “Mr.” Rogers appearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications to defend PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting against budget cuts proposed by President Richard Nixon:
