Rachel Maddow on Arts and Arts Education

I am sure by now that you've come across this, as it has already been posted to all sorts of blogs and appeared in the news. But hey, this is August, the dog days of summer, so maybe you've missed it.

It is perhaps one of the most original takes on the arts in America, making the case for the arts as service to the nation, thereby establishing a relevance above and beyond what is ordinarily expressed.

I would sure love to know more about this, such as: did she write it herself? Did Ella Baff help her just a bit? I hope that we will hear more from Ms. Maddow on this subject.

"Sometimes we choose to serve our country in uniform, in war.  Sometimes in elected office.  And those are the ways of serving our country that I think we are trained to easily call heroic.  It's also a service to your country, I think, to teach poetry in the prisons, to be an incredibly dedicated student of dance, to fight for funding music and arts education in the schools.  A country without an expectation of minimal artistic literacy, without a basic structure by which the artists among us can be awakened and given the choice of following their talents and a way to get to be great at what they do, is a country that is not actually as great as it could be.  And a country without the capacity to nurture artistic greatness is not being a great country.  It is a service to our country, and sometimes it is heroic service to our country, to fight for the United States of America to have the capacity to nurture artistic greatness." -- MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, speaking at Jacob's Pillow