Words of Wisdom

I've noted before that I was lucky enough to be a student of Tony Kushner's when I was young. Anyway, The New York Times recently ran a "Ten Questions" with Tony. Here's question one--it has a line that irked Andrew Sullivan--good (saw the Sullivan link via Atrios). I'll let you guess what pissed Andrew off.

Q. 1. How do you envision the role of the artist in a country — and a world — increasingly dominated by the struggle between religious fundamentalism and secular rationalism?
— Angele Ellis

A. I think this is an interesting question. I don’t have an answer for it. I don’t think that fundamentalists are particularly good representatives of religious faith. Certainly fundamentalists don’t have the monopoly on religious faith they seem to feel they have. I’m a huge fan of both the secular and the rational, and I think both are in desperately short supply these days — the hegemonic grim spirit of the age being incarnate in our thought-disordered bloody, greedy, little plutocrat-slash-soulless-theocrat of an unelected President — but I don’t know that only secular rationalism opposes religious fundamentalism. Living, intelligent faith, believing in a genuinely merciful, compassionate and just God, opposes the murderous, unimaginative verities of fundamentalists of all denominations and creeds; look for instance at recent near schisms over homosexuality in Protestantism. And we should remember as well that the real architects of the debacle in Iraq, the noisiest geniuses of right-wing think tanks at least publically consider themselves secular rationalists — wouldn’t Condi Rice call herself a secular rationalist, wouldn’t Antonin Scalia, or even nutty Ann Coulter call herself that? Surely Bill Kristol does. In this world secular rationalism can be used as a cover for all sorts of chicanery, just as fundamentalism is often an expression of desperation, emanating from poverty, illiteracy and long histories of oppression, exploitation and terror — and this is true in America as well as in other parts of the world. So perhaps the role of the artist, or one role at any rate, is to mix up and confuse all such antinomies.

The role of the artist at all times and in all conditions is to make art. The role of the citizen, artist and otherwise, is to be engaged in political process.

Hint: it's a pretty accurate description.