This mural by James Rosenquist hangs in the west entrance to the Florida Capitol. (Photo by Michael Moline/Florida Phoenix)
Quality Journalism for Critical Times
Some people are ignorant and proud of it.
Ron DeSantis is one of those people.
The man just vetoed almost every pitiful penny of arts and culture funding in the state budget. Museums, music, youth programs, local treasures such as Tallahassee’s Young Actor’s Theater — which trained stars like Alison Miller of “King,” Cheryl Hines of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and Tony Hale of “Veep” — historic houses, Black heritage centers, performing arts spaces, dance companies, kids’ music programs, even renowned institutions such as the Ringling Museum of Art, one of the few places in Florida where visitors can see works by Old Masters such as Veronese, Rubens, and Poussin.
Gov. Ron DeSantis during a press conference in Jacksonville on Sept. 7, 2023. Source: Screenshot/DeSantis Facebook
With his characteristic eloquence, DeSantis snarled, “Some of the stuff I don’t think was appropriate for state tax dollars.”
He didn’t elaborate.
(The man has few friends, and words are not among them).
But this latest show of temper is probably because art and culture are “stuff” he thinks liberals like, “stuff” he’s incapable of comprehending.
Ergo, bad “stuff.”
The Legislature’s 2024 budget was worth $117.5 billion and included money for the arts. But DeSantis, determined to demonstrate what a fiscal badass he is, nixed a billion bucks that would have aided programs for the homeless, opioid use prevention, free sanitary products for Florida schools, and food banks, as well as runoff and sewage treatment.
You’d think after the pollution disasters of Piney Point, a shed-load of excrement discharged into Tampa Bay, and the recent fierce flooding in Broward County, he’d take our water issues seriously.
So-called Pregnancy Crisis Centers, pro-birth proselytizing outfits set up to bully young women into having babies they can’t take care of and don’t want, got $25 million in public cash.
What literate folks think of culture, however, got the veto machete: $32 million cut.
$1 : $9
That’s a lot of money to you or me but, spread around the third largest state in the union, it’s what professional economists call minuscule, desultory, sofa change.
A few things survived DeSantis’ attack on mind-enrichment: $5 million for a Holocaust museum in Orlando, $750,000 for preserving oral histories of Holocaust survivors, $250,000 for the Civil Rights Museum in St. Augustine.
Fine, but insultingly meager.
Economically stupid, too. The state’s own data show the arts bring in $5.8 billion a year.
Theaters, museums, orchestras, and the like provide jobs and pump money into the community: One dollar spent on the arts generates $9 for local businesses.
DeSantis doesn’t care. He’s driven by spite, pique, and a MAGA-ty determination to destroy. Have you ever heard the man talk about music he likes or books he enjoys or any kind of aesthetic experience at all?
Every summer former president Barack Obama puts out lists of books and songs he loves, evidence of an active, elastic intelligence taking in everything from serious sociology (Matthew Desmond’s “Poverty, by America”) to thrillers by Dennis Lehane to Bad Bunny’s baddest reggaeton.
It’s impossible to imagine Ron DeSantis doing anything like this. He seems to have no inner life, no curiosity, no desire to learn, no passion for anything other than power.
And maybe baseball.
Ronbo and Lady Macbeth flew to Omaha on a state-owned corporate jet to watch some of the College World Series. You, Florida taxpayer, footed that bill.
Hall of Fame
No governor in Florida history has chosen to wreck one of our most important industries. No other governor has been so aggressive in tearing down what’s taken generations to build up.
Florida used to be better.
This mural by James Rosenquist hangs in the west entrance to the Florida Capitol. (Photo by Michael Moline/Florida Phoenix)
In 1976, the Legislature commissioned James Rosenquist, one of the nation’s most important artists, to create witty murals for the new Capitol building. (Don’t tell DeSantis: He’ll probably want to whitewash them).
Ten years later, the Legislature established the Florida Artists Hall of Fame, honoring the likes of playwright Tennessee Williams, master funkster George Clinton, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and film maker Victor Nunez, among others. Gov. Bob Graham loved meeting novelists like Carl Hiaasen and Bob Shacochis and hanging out with Jimmy Buffet.
Even during the late, unlamented administration of Rick Scott, the Governor’s Mansion hosted the Florida Book Awards ceremony. Ann Scott, like many First Ladies before her, promoted reading as a positive good.
The current holder of that title shows no interest in culture.
Sinister project
DeSantis’s attack on arts funding is part of a larger, more sinister project to erase anything that might inspire us to question our assumptions, interrogate our history, critique our society, or imagine what it’s like to be someone whose race or ethnicity or religion or sexuality is different from ours.
Look at what he’s doing to our schools, unleashing on them the chowder-headed Moms for Liberty to push banning any book not in service of white supremacy.
Look what he’s doing to our universities: The once highly regarded New College is now a smoking ruin, transformed by DeSantis into a third-rate Bible college stocked with scholarship baseball players and losing faculty fast.
The University of Florida College of Medicine was not only forced to hire Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s vaccine-hating quack of a surgeon general, but give him tenure and pay him six figures, even though he never teaches any classes.
Now lawyers for the state (you’re paying for those, too) are trying to convince the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to lift the block on DeSantis’ “Stop Woke Act,” arguing (with a straight face, even) that it would be fine for DeSantis’ Education Enforcers to hand professors a script to read from in class on the ground they must teach only “viewpoints” approved by the state: “The professor’s speech is the government’s speech.”
Viktor Orbán couldn’t put it better himself.
Fear
The irredeemably petty DeSantis is scared — scared of scholars, artists, and educators.
When authoritarians get scared, they lash out — in this case, the effect is a bit like a cornered and angry chihuahua.
The situation should be merely comical, but the little bastard can bite the hell out of you and may have rabies.
You can’t keep your service industry serfs numb and inured to increasing insurance rates, rising waters, government secrecy, and diminished freedom (in the name of “freedom”) if they get exposed to plays or pictures that tell a different story than the one on the government’s script.
Actually thinking about the world you live in pretty much guarantees dissent.
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