Ron DeSantis cuts ALL arts funding in Florida
Cites "sexual" Orlando Fringe Festival as his rationale
I guess the arts are just too “woke” for Ron DeSantis, who just vetoed $32 million in arts and culture funding in the state of Florida, which is the entire annual budget for the arts and affects almost 700 groups and organizations. Because why would you need arts and culture in a place where “woke goes to die” in the first place, right?
Apparently all it took was a few drag queens at the Orlando International Fringe Theater Festival for Ron DeSantis to get his knickers in a twist and to declare an end to arts funding across the board.
Museum funding? Gone. Theater funding? Gone. Dance? Music? Any form of artistic expression that doesn’t involve goosestepping and Sieg Heils? Gone, gone, and gone.
This is the logical end result of the Right’s anti-woke culture war nonsense. Anything the culture warriors deem “inappropriate” gets destroyed and along with it anything else of value or enjoyment. Florida now becomes a cultural wasteland where arts funding gets relegated to the garbage heap based entirely on one person’s say-so.
“You have your tax dollars being given in grants to things like the Fringe Festival, which is like a sexual festival where they’re doing all this stuff,” the Governor said at a press conference, adding later that “when I see money being spent that way, I have to be the one to stand up for taxpayers and say, you know what, that is an inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars.”
“All this stuff,” he declares. “Inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars,” he decrees. Well not on HIS watch! Can I get a harumph up in here? Hey over there, that guy didn’t harumph loud enough!
Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
“In referring to the fringe as a ‘sexual’ festival, he incorrectly characterized our festival and misrepresented our contributions to the arts community, locally, nationally and internationally,” Tempestt Halstead, producer of the Orlando Fringe Festival, said in a statement. Halstead said the festival was one of 200 such events around the world that are “contributing to a global movement of artistic expression and cultural exchange.”
Of course Ron DeSantis hasn’t actually SEEN anything overtly sexual or inappropriate since he doesn’t actually sully the Orlando Fringe Festival with his saintly presence. Heaven forfend!
Democratic Representative Anna Eskamani of Orlando said this year’s festival was not “sexual,” though she noted that it “does feature drag queens and other forms of artistic expression that DeSantis has wanted to censor despite courts telling him otherwise!”
Oh, well, there you have it. DeSantis’ “War on Woke” has taken another casualty: arts and culture in the state of Florida.
First they came for the artists.
Yea, that’s just ol Ron all over. Deity forbid you give a nickel to any arts group that doesn’t fit into your narrative.
Shut off the electricity to those museums quickly! They might be “doing stuff”!