Democrats introduce the STAGE Act, a $1 billion per year ‘cash infusion’ so ‘artists can find out who they are and become themselves’
Oh no! All the losers with the lesbian theater degrees can’t find jobs since they settled on an “education” that had no applicability in the real world! And, what’s worse is that they’re “artists,” so they can’t be expected to work a 9–5, or stifle their creativity with a boring conventional job, even though that’s where the money is.
Fear not though, because here comes Congress to the rescue, with the details from an NBC News report today:
Democrats fret it could be curtains for local theaters without federal funds
Four years after it began, Covid-19 is in the rearview mirror for millions of people and hundreds of businesses across the U.S. — but not for some theaters that require federal funding, according to some Democratic lawmakers.
Professional nonprofit theaters haven’t recovered from the pandemic, with dozens of stages set to shutter around the country without urgent infusions of cash. Now, a group of Democrats in Congress says ‘the show must go on’ and is introducing legislation that could keep the curtains from closing.
The Supporting Theater and the Arts to Galvanize the Economy Act — or STAGE Act — would allocate $1 billion annually to invest in the industry, helping community theaters pay rent, employ artists and attract new audiences.
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During National Theater Week, Welch, along with Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., met with Hollywood stars Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Danai Gurira at the Capitol to swell support for the bill.
‘Careers are being built, dreams are being built, you know, where communities are coming together. I grew up a very shy, lonely kid. And, like, I found my people in the theater,’ Ferguson, the ‘Modern Family’ star, said in an interview.
Okay first of all, careers are not being built, which is the very reason Ferguson is even in D.C., throwing his support behind a bill to send “urgent” cash infusions (all stolen from me and you, of course) to business ventures that are at-risk of “curtains,” or on the verge of collapse. But secondly, even though Ferguson apparently got his start in a local theater, he’s an outlier, not the norm. It’s a guarantee, if Hollywood is being called in to rally the troops, it’s a joke.
Oskar Eustis, “artistic director” for the New York Public Theater, also lobbied for the bill, saying the billion-dollar-a-year spending program is so that “artists can find out who they are and become themselves before they go out into the wider world.”
Now, I don’t have a problem with “artists” living alternative lifestyles—if a person wants to be a stinky 2024 “hippie” who doesn’t shave, sports neon hair, forgoes shoes, pierces his/her face, smokes pots, and “finds” himself/herself by embracing a transient lifestyle, be my guest. Seriously, go for it, I just don’t want to pay for it.
A “Lesbian Dance Theory” degree was always the butt of our conservative jokes, because it perfectly communicates the stupidity of the person (leftist) who would earn an “education” so utterly worthless in the marketplace—but as it turns out, the joke is really on us.
It was hard not to gloat watching woke, progressive Democrats take out massive loans (sometimes racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt at private institutions) for niche topics that didn’t hold any value in the real world, and end up right back where they started (busing tables or bagging groceries) before accumulating all that debt—the pain of working a dead-end job, but now saddled by serious financial liabilities because of stupid choices based on stupid political ideologies, was hopefully enough to teach them a lesson—but that was before we got stuck paying off those costly student loans, and before D.C. politicians rogered we the tax slaves up for a billion-dollar-a-year stimulus for failing theaters so amateur actors can have “jobs.” Again, if I’m working doubly-hard at my private sector job so I can make a salary and also pay the wage of an unemployed artists, that’s a handout, not legitimate work.
Gurira, a Hollywood figure of whom I’ve never heard, said this:
‘That someone like me, a Zimbabwean American woman, is playing an old notorious British king — you know, that doesn’t happen anywhere but in the theater[.]’
Well, I can tell you right there, that’s why these theaters are dying! A young (and very beautiful) dark black woman playing the role of King Richard III? It’s just asinine because it doesn’t make any sense—since when has woke trash ever been a moneymaker? It’s as ludicrous as finding a black in a wheelchair to play Joan of Arc, or asking someone like Lizzo to play George Washington; it’s the same reason you’d never see Tom Cruise take on a Mansa Musa role, or Bruce Willis play Frederick Douglass. Any theater that makes the stupid business decision to churn out unpopular entertainment should die, and using my money to bail it out is repulsive. A theater exists for entertainment purposes; it’s not supposed to be an apparatus of the Democrat left political machine.
“Unemployed artists” was, and still should be a slur; it should not be a status that qualifies you for a taxpayer-subsidized job!
Image: Free image, Pixabay license, no attribution required.