If you were president, how would you enrich the cultural life of the US?

[Rabrrrrrr]

I know I'd start with inviting a lot of excellent musicians to perform, and excellent thinkers and artists and others to attend dinners and offer talks, and I'd make sure the media were notified of every event in the hopes that it might filter around the rest of the country that, wow, the president is doing these thinky/artsy things, maybe we should, too!

I'd invite people to perform at the White House like philip glass, Steve Recih, Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk, Kronos Quartet, Terry Riley, George Crumb, Pink Floyd, Rush (the band, not the idiot), Robert Fripp, Brian Eno, Bowie, and etc. etc. etc. And have performances by Pina Bausch and Mark Morris and Robert Wilson...

And I'd invite thinking people like Will Pitt, Girard, Focault, Brueggeman, Chomsky, Ram Dass, Saul Bellow, Stephen Hawking, John Allen Paulos, Hoefstaedter, Jeremy Rifkin, Larry Rasmussen (though he might end up on the cabinet), Nelson Mendela, Bishop Tutu, James Forbes, William Sloane Coffin, Calvin Butts, Walter Cronkite, and, ye gods, so many more.

I'd host a reception for Nobel and Pulitzer winnners every year.

I'd make it known that I listen to NPR and read the NY Times.

I'd make sure the media showed me reading books (though likely there'd be no way they could miss it, since I'd be reading a lot, like Clinton did).

I'd also use the radio broadcasts and other public speach times to push (or at leasst nudge) a cultural agenda and talk about things important that way.

And, of course, I'd want to fund arts education a lot more, but in terms of this exercise, I'm thinking more in terms of personal example to affect culture, as opposed to legislative ideas. Though I'd like to hear legislative ideas as well.

And of course there'd be the once monthly GOPisEvil/MATCOM/ZombyWoof/ZenLefty/Skittles and other DUer bacchaenel with plenty flowing wine and gin and all the trimmings, just to show I'm a regular guy as well, but smart enough to only invite liberals.

Oh, and freerepublic would become the new database of people who will "accidentally" be stripped from the voting rolls.

[ConcernedCanuk]

1. Take FOX, et al off the air!!

[rockymountaindem]

2. I'd open lots of museums

I think history is really important for everyone. I'd make sure the whole public was well educated about everything that makes our country great and all the things we've done wrong too.

I'd also try to host the Olympic Games while I'm in office. I'd do it like a reverse 1936 thing. Instead of all that totalitarian garbage I'd invite the whole world to come and see what the US has to offer. I'd get all the great thinkers in there too (like you said).

Lastly, I think I'd promote internationalism instead of this anti-everybody crapola we've got going on now. I'd encourage US citizens to travel abroad.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. In other words, you'd take a page from JFK

If I were president, I'd mention names of books that I was reading whenever possible, invite independent film makers to give special screenings at the White House, invite muscians, dancers, and actors of all types to perform, and whenever traveling around the country, I'd make sure to look in on the local cultural institutions.

I'd also make it known that I could be interviewed in a foreign language (not give a badly pronounced prepared speech).

I'd fund study abroad fellowships for both college and vocational school students.

[Rabrrrrrr]

4. Film screening - brilliant idea!

And actually naming the books - that's also great.

Rabrrrrrr: I'm reading a book on beekeeping and honey processing.

MediaGuy: I didn't know you were into beekeeping.

Rabrrrrrr: I'm not. I'm just curious how it works. I think it's important to know these things, especially since I just a report in the Wildlife Conservation Magazine about how some people have convinced and trained poachers in Zambiaa to raise honey instead of poaching, and the former poachers are totally into it and helping stop other poachers.* Maybe there's something in the idea that will benefit America. But even if not, at least my knowledge has grown and I'll understand how bees are raised and honey is processed, which I've long wanted to know, especially since visiting a fantastic honey producer in my native Wisconsin in 1993."



* that story actually IS in the new Wildlife Conservation magazine (March/April 2004, page 34)

[GoddessOfGuinness]

5. Arts education would be a reality...

Kids would have music in their schools and actually learn how to read and compose it. They'd be dancing and studying prints of famous sculptures and paintings and architecture from all eras. They'd be getting their hands all goopy with clay and paint. They'd be performing classic plays and writing some of their own. They'd be taking field trips to concert halls and museums to see and hear great artists perform from a wide variety of venues.

Of course, while they're absorbed in creating all these wonderful things, they'll begin seeing direct applications for their math, reading, foreign languages, English grammar and comp., anatomy and physiology, social studies, geography, physics, chemistry...

Total arts education is total education.

[Rabrrrrrr]

6. YAY!

I love that idea! You are so right - the arts are the way to comhine all that math, science, literature, and humanities stuff they'd been learning, and come up with a coherent whole life viewpoint.

I'd kill standardized testing as well, and let the schools go back to focusing on teaching kids how to learn. And also how to explore and question.

I'd try as much as I cuold to end the idea of public school being basically a way to train the kids to be prepared for their low-wage manufacturing future: that is, get used to needing permission to pee, having a 17 minute lunch "hour", having bells tell you when you can start and stop, etc.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

10. Amen!

Somewhere along the line we started squelching kids' curiosity along with their creativity in a constant barrage of standardized tests.

It's no wonder they don't want to learn. They don't want to become standardized people!

[toddzilla]

7. buy everyone's television and smash it to pieces.

eom.

[BigMcLargehuge]

8. I'd set aside funds

to send every high school kid in America to whatever country in the world they wanted, for one month.

[readmylips]

9. Fee Education...

An educated society never perishes.

[Rabrrrrrr]

11. Do you mean "free"?

I agreee with you about education. We have to make the country (at least, the freeperish part of the country) realize that education is actually a better defense than tying all your Budweiser cans around your house with duct tape to ward off bio-terra.

Education would be a very high priority for me, if I were president.

[scucci]

12. Hey Rabrrrrrr!

I love your ideas but they seem like a dream I had long ago. This world has become all too real and bloody to believe in any Utopian society. It ain't gonna happen, brother. It makes me want to cry everyday. There is nothing I can do about it. So much polarization, so much mistrust, so much revengeful lust. This hate will never end. It's over. Pack up and go home. :(

[Rabrrrrrr]

13. No, I always have hope

because without hope, then I'd have to kill myself and take as many people with me as possible, since it would all be futile. And I refuse to believe it's futile. Yes, we're probably always gonna have the idiots and the morans who want to destroy, and most times they'll have the upper hand because their's is the easier path but we still have to slog on and fight and try and strive to push humanity forward.

The founding fathers of this country could have given up - many times they could have, whether fighting the british or fighting each other hammering out the constitution - but they believed, and so must we, that human intelligence and reason can overcome any amount of stupid, blind ignorance.

[pfitz59]

14. Legalize prostitution,......

decriminalize pot and lower the drinking age!

[readmylips]

15. Yes, meant FREE education...

fsorry for fast fingers late at night.