The big rip-off

I suppose it's nasty of me to get all bent out of shape when an organization is doing something to promote books and reading. Still, when it's an overpriced, ill-conceived gesture like The Big Read, yeah -- I feel the need to bitch.

You can read all about it here. The story amounts to this: The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded 10 "pilot" organizations around the country sums ranging from $15,000 to $40,000 to promote the reading of four selected titles (Fahrenheit 451, The Great Gatsby, Their Eyes Were Watching God, or To Kill a Mockingbird) in their communities. Basically, it's a federally-funded One City, One Story program. What pisses me off is both the huge amount of money involved -- if I did my math correctly, the grants add up to $265,000 -- and the fact that the NEA picked four books that everyone should have read in high school or college. Way to go out on a limb, NEA! I know people get into an uproar when the NEA spends their tax dollars (in reality, tax cents: less than $1 of each US taxpayer's taxes goes to NEA programs) on artists that some folks consider untalented at best, deeply offensive at worst. But I gotta ask, is it any better to throw our hard-earned money at a reading program that is at best redundant, at worst pointless? It's safe, I know; promoting the reading of books generally regarded as classics can hardly expose the NEA to criticism of the kind they routinely receive for funding pretentious, second-rate "shock" performance artists or the like. But I find it supremely disheartening that the NEA didn't involve any senior members of the American Booksellers Association in the decision-making process; if they had, they might have ended up pushing books that are a little more adventurous and surprising, but no less literary than the titles that were chosen. *Sigh* Another chance for the Bush regime to demonstrate its mediocrity.