"According to folks who get paid to figure out which artist's deserve my tax dollars in the form of a US grant, art is defined as a photo of two dudes taking a leak on each other while a naked midget is in the background trying to unclog a toilet with a crucifix." The NEA hasn't funded individual visual artists since the early eighties. 95-or-so percent of their budget goes to institutions; ballet companies, museums, small presses, symphonies, etc.; the pittance that's left over goes to writers--poetry and fiction in alternate years. If the government's going to extort half my annual income every year, I'd just as soon they held a buck or two back from the satellite death-ray project and gave it to an artist, y'know?