Throwback Thursday

Long Live the Cultural Elite!

This week’s Throwback Thursday is the introductory essay from the July 1992 issue of WAIL! Magazine. With President Trump wiping out the Board of Directors at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and naming himself as its new chairman (Could there have been a least qualified candidate?), it’s important to understand that the old Republican party also held little regard for the arts, humanities or culture. The then-sitting Vice President Dan Quale, he of potato fame (look it up), used the 1992 campaign as an opportunity to crusade against what he called the cultural elite. That for him was any expression that didn’t fit his particular definition of American, or made him feel too many feels in the wrong places. Enjoy.