Museums — I Guess "Real" Americans Must Work in Them After All

That screw-the-arts amendment attached to the Senate version of the stimulus package last week by Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn, which would have barred museums and other arts institutions from getting stimulus money, has been revised in the House-Senate compromise version of the bill to remove any mention of museums, theaters or arts centers.

(UPDATE: An earlier headline that was attached to this post gave the mistaken impression that the compromise bill excluded the arts from fundng. Just so we're clear, the revisions to the Coburn amendment in the final version mean that museums, arts groups and theaters can get stimulus money now.)

For whatever reasons, in the compromise bill aquariums, zoos, golf courses and swimming pools are still forbidden to receive any stimulus dollars.

Reagardless of the happy outcome, the way that arts spending was treated in the debate on this bill was a disgrace. The low point was probably the remark by House Republican Jack Kingston of Georgia that it was wrong to spend money on the National Endowment for the Arts when in his state "we have real people out of work" — the implication being of course that people who build theater sets, or play in orchestras or work in museums aren't "real" workers. (This of course is just an outgrowth of the Republican habit of referring to some people as "real Americans", leaving the rest of us in rhetorical exile. Hard habit to break I guess.) But in the end it doesn't appear that Kingston got his way either. Funding for the NEA also remains in the final version of the bill.

What exactly aquariums did to offend the distinguished members of Congress I don't know. I'll leave it to you to decide on how you would feel if you knew any of your hard earned tax dollars were going to giant squids.