{"id":721,"date":"2010-12-02T16:18:01","date_gmt":"2010-12-02T21:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=721"},"modified":"2010-12-02T16:18:52","modified_gmt":"2010-12-02T21:18:52","slug":"museum-smackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2010\/12\/02\/museum-smackdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Museum Smackdown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #999999;\">From today&#8217;s <em>Listening Post<\/em> e-newsletter&#8211;<\/span>People like to say that America doesn&#8217;t make anything anymore. But a piece on <em>Morning Edition<\/em> today reminded me that we still stand out from the crowd in manufacturing outrage. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2010\/12\/02\/131748447\/gay-portraiture-exhibit-sparks-funding-debate\">The story<\/a> was about <em>Hide\/Seek<\/em>, a privately-funded exhibit hosted by the publicly-funded National Portrait Gallery, part of the Smithsonian in Washington DC. It featured artists and cultural figures who were gay (or believed to be gay) and included one video that used an image of a crucifix in a way that offended many.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of people complained&#8211;fair enough&#8211;and the video was removed from the exhibit. Case closed? No. Congressman Eric Cantor said the whole show should be shut down. Would that do the trick? No. Catholic League president Bill Donohue said he wants Congress to eliminate all federal funding for the Smithsonian&#8211;which includes not just the National Portrait Gallery, but 18 other museums, The National Zoo, and nine research institutions. Why?<\/p>\n<p>Donohue says, &#8220;Why should the working class pay for the leisure of the elite when in fact one of the things the working class likes to do for leisure is to go to professional wrestling? And if I suggested we should have federal funds for professional wrestling to lower the cost of the ticket, people would think I&#8217;m insane. I don&#8217;t go to museums any more than any Americans do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So, in addition to outrage, we also seem to be crackerjack at producing overreactions and offensive stereotypes. After all, plenty of elitists enjoy professional wrestling, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From today&#8217;s Listening Post e-newsletter&#8211;People like to say that America doesn&#8217;t make anything anymore. But [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}