American Digest picked up on a quote I said in response to a commenter:
Conservatives tend to treat as hobbies what liberals treat as occupations.
They seemed to take this as a warning, as if conservatives don’t take politics seriously enough, but that wasn’t my point.
When society is just starting out, you don’t usually have career musicians or artists or actors. These are things people may do in their spare time after their actual work but aren’t careers. As society develops, people can actually do these things as full time jobs, but the people who tend to do that seem to be liberals.
The thing is, people need jobs. We just can’t be mentally well without something useful to do. Now, it’s possible to treat art type stuff as a job, but many see it more as a calling than an occupation. And thus a lot of the activism to feel useful and the odd sights like Sean Penn, who is basically a dancing monkey, getting some big ego and thinking he’s better than the useful people he pretends to be in his movies.
Also, the idea of art is to express some truth, but what truths do career artists know other than things to do with being an artist? I wonder if art suffers in a way by not being something people with regular lives do.
This is a rather silly thing to say, I think. Republicans try to state clearly their ideas, while Democrats scream “RACIST!” at the top of their lungs? I find it funny when a Republican actually runs* on conservative principles and the oppposing Democrat runs on “progressive” principles. The Republican often wins. Sometimes even in Massachusetts.
I suppose if they want to attack our “calm and logical” positions by shaking their cage, we should let them.
* remember that liberals often like to say that “conservatives” lost in 2006 and 2008.
“I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematicks and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, musick, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelaine.” John Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams, May 12, 1780.
Or the way I see it,
First, you must have a place to build a nation.
Second, you must build the nation.
Then and only then, you can decorate it.
People today are too busy decorating to notice when steps one and two are in danger.
Some supporting evidence from my state’s version of Sean Penn:
Kilmer was talking about how, as an actor, he understands the people he plays even better than they understand themselves.
Good post.
Jobs are how we support ourselves. We produce, in one way or another, a product or sevice that is exchanged through another product or service. Money is usually the means of that exchange. A job may not be labor one wishes to perform, but meets a need someone will pay for. A hobby is a fun thing but may not be something someone wishes to pay for. Liberals believe those who work a real job should pay for a liberal approved hobbie if not enough people wish to pay for whatever that hobby produces. Therefore we get B.S. grants for B.S. art in all ot it’s glorious forms, women’s centers, and college student newspapers. It’s just another form of welfare for the lazy and ill-disciplined.
Some smart person on the Internet, whose name I can’t recall, used the term “society’s trophy wives.” Spot on, I think. Our current society can afford artists, actors, and academia nuts only due to the labor of the rest of us – they produce nothing themselves, can do nothing themselves, and apparently can think no original or constructive thoughts.
No wonder their self-esteem is so low!! and so they bolster it by confusing fascists nosy-parkeritis with saving the world.
Very well said, Silhouette.
Eric Hoffer used to point out that artistic types only get into mass movements (like environmentalism, socialism, etc.) when they start to feel a drying up of their creative powers. I don’t think that’s necessarily always true, but I think its interesting that the general outspokenness of some of these people (Sean Penn, Bruce Springsteen, and so on) has gone up as the quality of their output has gone down.
Obviously, the only practical solution is to create dinosaurs with shoulder mounted rocket launchers (and laser cannons) to hunt them all down and destroy them.
Was a trumpet major in college. I couldn’t stand the people I was around every day. I hardly play my horn and make an honest living.
Everyone needs to go back and read the ’45 Goals Of Communism’, in Cleon Skousen’s ‘The Naked Communist’. Frank J., Sean Penn has been following the Communist Playbook that was handed down to him from his Commie father. The Bad Apple didn’t fall far from the Bad Tree.
What have Hobbits got against jobs? Lazy little buggers make 3 movies and now they think the world owes them a living?
Huh? Hobbies? Oh… never mind!
But but but Nancy says I don’t have to worry about keeping my day job of being an artist in order to have health insurance! If I have to work in order to survive, how will I ever create things you don’t care about? You must be against art people! Artist! wait….
This conservative jazz musician (yes, we exist!) feels the need to chime in here with a possibly unexpected angle: Many career artists know an awful lot about things other than being an artist, because we’ve all had to work a number of jobs outside our discipline to support ourselves.
I tell students all the time that unless your last name is Marsalis, you’re not very likely to make a living by exclusively playing jazz, so you’d better have a day job that you love. Mine is teaching, but I also have colleagues who have done everything from loading UPS trucks to being a repo man, and my current protege plays “Brick House” four times a week in cover bands to help pay the bills. Contrary to Pelosi’s ridiculous wish from the other day, I have no desire to relinquish my membership in the productive class just so that I can “create”; society doesn’t owe me, or anyone else, a living. And yes, I have health insurance; it’s out there if you look for it, even for the self-employed.
Not that the idea of being paid to write music and practice all day isn’t enticing, mind you, but if I wanted to do that, I’d apply for some sort of private grant that would be awarded on merit; expecting people’s unwillingly-surrendered tax dollars to support me would be outrageous.
A few more thoughts along these lines here.
Not true, Sean Penn can’t dance. Other than that, good post.
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#13 – Kev,
Sa-Lute!
Under the new rules I get paid so little for my “Job” that it might as well be a hobby… all that education going to waste, but I’m not one of the unemployed, just the uncounted underemployed…. wooo hoooo!