So, Patrick, now John Cornyn is now seizing on what you wrote in your blog to put a stranglehold on the Obama administration, and make things all that much more difficult for those of us who are trying to support Obama's laudable, indeed historic efforts to increase government arts funding to appropriate levels.

You've made our work that much more difficult in difficult times. I would like to see you step up and explain to us why you felt it was so vital to do this. And whether you wrote what you wrote in full awareness of the consequences that are now playing their ugly way out in full view. And whether you will now take responsibility for limiting the damage that you have played such a prominent part in bringing about.

Let's not forget that the NEA is already heavily politicized, and has been for a long time. A silver lining to all this is that we may be getting a glimpse of what's been going on all along, but was being kept in the dark by previous administrations who felt much less of an obligation to be transparent.

The problem with this article and the vast majority of these comments is the assumption that a prescriptive approach to government funding of the arts inevitably translates into propaganda.

European governments - whose funding of the arts dwarfs that of our own - have been doing this for years, and I see none of the scenarios that these spooksters are evoking.

So before we go around screaming that the sky is falling, maybe we can take a look at the experience of other countries who are used to high levels of government funding, and the dynamics that ensue. None of them have the perfect answer, but I would argue that the balance that places like Germany or France have struck between state support and artistic freedom is healthier than ours.

I'll just give you one example, of a work by an artist commissioned by a museum which is actually part of the UK government, which would never have happened if all the fears expressed here were true:

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/wallin...