In the Washington Post, critic and essayist Philip Kennicott constructs an elaborate straw man today, the “art hater.” In a piece fussing over self-confessed “right-winger” William Safire delivering the Nancy Hanks art lecture, Kennicott implies a majority (or large minority) of America hates art–precisely because it questions authority.

It’s not hard to see that Kennicott means the conservative-Republican segment of America. It does not occur to him that perhaps a large minority of Americans are more offended by liberals who think they represent art in general, and who strut about insisting that if art does not shatter repressive conventions, then it’s not art at all. And if that subversive art isn’t subsidized by the alleged art-haters, then it’s not subversive enough by half:

What if the real problem is that some significant portion of the U.S. population simply hates art? Not fear. Not ignorance. Not even indifference. But loathing.
What would that look like? If you don’t like to listen, or observe, if you don’t like ambiguity or complexity, if you prefer to shout your opinion (even if you openly acknowledge you know nothing about what you’re saying), you are, perhaps, someone inclined to hate art. It’s possible that for years now, arts advocates have been wasting their breath, arguing into a black hole, with opponents who will never happily yield an inch to art.
If that’s true, then perhaps arts advocates don’t need the tools of persuasion that Safire is offering them. Perhaps they simply need a little more fight in them, a willingness to confront openly what H.L. Mencken called “the booboisie” rather than persuade soccer moms and uber-parents that art will help Junior ace his SATs.
American art used to confront and shame the art haters, exposing their provincial ignorance and bald hypocrisy, their cant and dogma and lies. Art used to be about more than convincing people that piano lessons will help your darling get into MIT. But no more. By limiting the debate to the idea that art is useful for developing practical skills, the arts world disengages from a more epic battle with forces in our society that prefer a world closed to questioning, impatient with the new or threatening, and comfortable only with certainties passed down from authority figures. Perhaps that’s why these forces have recently taken on such prominence in our cultural discourse.