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Katha Pollitt and Andrew Sullivan

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Headline

By Katha Pollitt
Posted Tuesday, April 21, 1998, at 4:42 PM ET

Good Morning Andrew,

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We were so harmonious last week in our shared indifference to news from Hollywood, Wall Street and Tobacco Road. How do you feel about sports? I follow sports from the crime angle--usually the first I hear about some celebrated athlete is that he's been charged with rape, domestic violence, child abuse or, like Green Bay Packer Reggie Whatsisname, is sharing his "Christian" homophobic racist prejudices with the public. So you can imagine how grating it is to me that Mayor Giuliani wants to spend up to one billion dollars of public funds building George Steinbrenner and his Yankees a new baseball stadium. This is the same city we are always being told can't afford to keep schools is good repair, let alone cut class size. Or provide day care for all those workfare moms' children. Steinbrenner has pots of money--let him build his own stadium. If sports are so important, the city should build some nice new swimming pools and recreation centers in poor neighborhoods.
Can you imagine the field day conservative commentators would have if the billion dollars was to be ladled out for effete artistic pleasures instead of burly manly ones? The NEA was never more than 200 million (I think it's down to 98 million now), and look at the fuss over its handful of grants to avant-garde artists. But if people are allowed to argue against support for the arts on the grounds of their personal tastes ("why should MY tax dollars go for that pornographic drivel?" etc etc) how come effete types like me have to pay for baseball? Let alone football. There's a gender angle here too--female tax dollars paying for male (mostly male) pastimes. You'll notice no one's proposing a billion dollars of public funds to promote ballet!

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