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PARTISAN REVIEW
ploy to promote supremacy, by hoisting popular culture into the lofty
niche formerly reserved for more complicated, profound, and discrimi–
nating work.
This is being done in a variety of ways, but primarily by trying to
demolish our traditional standards and values. Just as all objective aca–
demic research is now labeled as "political," as being a secret means of
exalting Western civilization over that of the third world, so the very
idea of "quality" is assumed to be racist, a conspiratorial method of ex–
cluding popular and folk artists from serious consideration. In the multi–
cultural aesthetic, aU values are relative - only high art is subject to abso–
lute judgment, as a pernicious form of "Eurocentrism."
The Clinton administration revealed " the true face of America" by
orchestrating a Hollywood-inspired inaugural entertainment (even
Kathleen Battle was obliged to sing a popular song), commissioning an
inaugural poem by a writer of modest talents, obviously chosen because
she was an African-American woman, and otherwise behaving less like an
appointments agency examining qualifications than a casting agency
looking for types ("Get me a black female lawyer for the part of
Assistant Attorney General!"). The "true face of Ameri ca," apparently,
has features primarily determined by color and gender, and those who
fail to observe these new requirements are stigmatized for racism and sex–
ism, even when their works have popular appeal. In July of this year, an
assistant dean at Harvard 's School of Public Health wrote an op-ed piece
in
The Bostoll Globe
attacking
Jllrassic Park
because the survivors were
blonde and the victims were dark. She had no comment about the color
(or sex) of the all-female dinosaurs.
Many of the same quota systems and populist demands are being im–
posed on the serious arts by the cultural bureaucrats who control their
fate . Whether in arts councils or private foundations, in the editorial of–
fices of newspapers or from critics' desks, audiences are being scanned to
determine the proportion of non-Caucasian faces, while art exhibitions,
repertory theaters, opera and dance companies, symphony orchestras, and
smaller musical groups (not to mention their boards) are continually
evaluated according to racial, sexual, and other background considera–
tions. In the past, such inquiries into the origins of any employee were
usually considered evidence of discrimination, if not invasion of privacy.
Today, through the reverse discrimination called "cultural diversity ," this
procedure is being used as a basis for evaluating most grant applications.
Funding blackmail is , in fact, the means by which political correct–
ness, masquerading as multiculturalism, has proceeded to harass the world
of serious art. In the past, public and private foundations, as well as indi–
viduals, usually gave their money to not-for-profit artistic institutions for
