King Tut, PBS, & NPR

It's a sad day for our culture, Bush, when public support is gradually withdrawn from all those institutions that can provide us with non-commerical information and non-commercial entertainment. I'm thinking particularly today about the current threat to withdraw federal funds from National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting System, and public broadcasting stations around the country; and of the much-touted return visit of King Tut to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, opening today.

The public radio and television services stand accused by your right-wing zealots of left-wing leanings. My guess is that anything that disagrees with their fanatical ideology smacks of the hated "liberal bias" to your cohorts on the right. Fairness in reporting must include their opposing propaganda to be acceptable to them--in the same way they insist on including creationism as a viable alternative to evolution in the schools. It doesn't matter if it's true or accurate, only that the opposing position gets equal--or preferably more--time. Now, particularly with your new appointments to executive and board positions, the public media must apparently get in line behind their views or face slow death by strangulation of their funding source. It seems that nothing short of total control of the media, as of everything else, will satisfy those who now have the power to enforce their will; and the for-profit media, guided only by their financial interests, will continue to feed us the regimen of pap, half-truths, and outright deceptions that furthers their corporate agenda.

As for King Tut, I suspect that in the hyped atmosphere of popular euphoria that surrounds his return to the Unoted tates, few people realize--or want to know--that this whole thing is a commercial venture before it is a cultural one. The lion's share of the profits from the outlandish $30 ticket cost goes to the sponsoring consortium led by AEG LIVE and Arts & Exhibitions International. Ellie and I met Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of the Egyptian Surpeme Council of Antiquities when we were in Egypt a few weeks ago: he's the charmingly loquacious man you meet on your television screen whenever Egyptian antiquities get to be TV news. He's netting some needed cash, of course, to support museum work in Egypt, and rightly so. And LACMA cashes in with a small share of the ticket sales and, they hope, a significant boost in memberships.

What's wrong with all this hoopla? The objects in the exhibit are quite obviously treasures beyond any commercial value. Their beauty and their spiritual significance is beyond question. It's a privilege to have them here for our viewing pleasure and our education. What's sad is that they reach us slightly tainted by the commercialism that surrounds them, and by the compromises a museum must make, these days, to make ends meet. Corporate sponsorship is one of them, since corporations will sponsor only what is good for the bottom line. Culture--whether in the museum or on your television screen--is rapidly becoming what you can afford, or what you get someone else to pay for.