William wrote: > Why is everyone so shocked and outraged when artists make money from their work? > Few complain when someone makes a high salary in engineering, medicine, or law. > One would think artists are crooks or frauds for making a living.
Making and having money is considered morally compromised and presumptively sinful or disreputable. Doctors and lawyers are protected from this opprobrium because they provide important and highly specialized services that directly help people in distress (except greedy bastard corporate lawyers and cosmetic surgeons who charge high fees for botox or doctors in the thrall of Big Pharma who needlessly and carelessly kill people through malpractice because they really don't care about the poor). Art is pure, it is the avenue for people to get in touch with their passions and inner feelings and insightfulness, so it cannot be sullied by concerns about money and lucre. Artists should starve in their garrets, not eat well in their townhouses. Being suspicious of money and people with money is a favorite theme of American literature since at least Babbit, and probably before that. It's played up in the trivialized version of political discourse played out as high drama by pretty TV anchor persons and pundits who make 6- and 7-figure salaries while spouting ersatz consevato-populist-liberal ideas. Eventually, the suspicion of moneyed interests gets around to banking and investment firms, frankly, when that happens, almost inevitably there's the odor of aniti-Semitism wafting in the background. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
