04-17-2022, 03:20 PM
Good artists have often gone commercial. Advertising hires huge numbers of photographers and graphic artists... and writers of ad copy. Don't bother writing a novel; write ad copy that will get people into a dealership to buy some expensive car. An advertising jingle (Barry Manilow has made huge money off ad jingles for State Farm Insurance and McDonald's -- more than off concerts and records).
One must say of college football teams: they bring in the dough from people who last read a college-level text just before the last final exam and would never set foot on a college campus except to watch the Wolverines take on the Spartans. Heck, a few years back the Michigan State Police auctioned off some tickets for Michigan basketball games for the Final Four -- tickets seized from drug suspects whose only appearance at college might have been to deal some 'recreational substances' on or near campus.
It's up to people to decide where they take their entertainment dollars. The local little theater or a football game? Classical music or rap? Cinematic marvels of the Golden Age of American Cinema or hits to be forgotten ten years from now? I cannot judge.
One must say of college football teams: they bring in the dough from people who last read a college-level text just before the last final exam and would never set foot on a college campus except to watch the Wolverines take on the Spartans. Heck, a few years back the Michigan State Police auctioned off some tickets for Michigan basketball games for the Final Four -- tickets seized from drug suspects whose only appearance at college might have been to deal some 'recreational substances' on or near campus.
It's up to people to decide where they take their entertainment dollars. The local little theater or a football game? Classical music or rap? Cinematic marvels of the Golden Age of American Cinema or hits to be forgotten ten years from now? I cannot judge.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.