Their Illiberal Ghettos

 

Several volunteer musicians of the Santa Monica Symphony are boycotting their summer gala, because Dennis Prager was asked to be a guest conductor at the fundraiser. Objecting to his participation in an open letter, violinists Michael Chwe and Andrew Apter, who are respectively Political Science and History professors at UCLA, declare his views bigoted and “fundamentally at odds with our community’s values and that the proposed concert would deeply damage our orchestra’s relationship with our community.” Prager in various venues has, of course, decried the attempt to ostracize him. The symphony’s music director Guido Lamell invited Prager with a view to raising funds from his radio following and community.

It is tempting to despair at the illiberal ghettos these intellectuals and politicians withdrawing their support from the group insist on barricading themselves in. Lamell and the symphony’s board of directors, however, are standing firm on their invitation to Prager. I’m choosing to be grateful there are individuals among Santa Monica’s cultural leaders who have, if not the civic sense that the public square is much wider than any narrow ideological community, at least the common sense that conservative dollars are as green and effective in funding the arts as progressives’.

The gala will be on Wednesday, August 16 at the Disney Hall. Tickets available here.

Published in General
This post was promoted to the Main Feed by a Ricochet Editor at the recommendation of Ricochet members. Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 25 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. Mike-K Member
    Mike-K
    @

    Maybe they are applying for a job at Google.

    • #1
  2. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    Considering the “community,” I think that the authors are likely correct that Prager takes positions “fundamentally at odds with our community’s values.”  The issue is whether that begs the question as to his appearance at a musical performance unrelated to issues of politics.   We can certainly see how this rationale can, and likely will, be used to squeeze those with different viewpoints out of participation in the arts.  And, as usual, the question arises as to who is really intolerant.

    • #2
  3. Sandy Member
    Sandy
    @Sandy

    When I began to read Prager’s account I was sure it was going to end badly, but I agree that this is an encouraging story. Good for the board of directors, and all the musicians who did not fall in line with the professors.

    • #3
  4. Arizona Patriot Member
    Arizona Patriot
    @ArizonaPatriot

    It is pretty funny to see this type of action from people who pride themselves on being open-minded and accepting.

    • #4
  5. tigerlily Member
    tigerlily
    @tigerlily

    Prager invited Chwe and Apter on his radio show to discuss their opposition to his guest conductor role. Chwe declined, but Apter did take up Prager’s offer and they spent an hour discussing their differences on yesterday’s show. Here is a link to audio of that show (35 minutes in length) for those interested. Apter deserves credit for coming on Prager’s show and he was civil; however, I found him highly disingenuous. Here’s a link to Chwe and Apter’s original open letter objecting to Prager’s guest role and encouraging others to not attend, and here’s Prager’s response.

     

     

    • #5
  6. RushBabe49 Thatcher
    RushBabe49
    @RushBabe49

    Encouraging others not to attend?  How it that these volunteer musicians can so easily undermine the fund-raising of their organization?  If I were the conductor, I’d fire them immediately.

    • #6
  7. Snirtler Inactive
    Snirtler
    @Snirtler

    Sandy (View Comment):
    … I was sure it was going to end badly … Good for the board of directors, and all the musicians who did not fall in line with the professors.

    Yeah, I thought it was going to be one of those stories where progs get away with shutting down their opponents. That this happened at all is sufficiently depressing. I’m just trying to look at the bright side. Prager makes the point that there’s no political talk to shield people from during the concert. It’s meant to be a night of music.

    Arizona Patriot (View Comment):
    It is pretty funny to see this type of action from people who pride themselves on being open-minded and accepting.

    Hoyacon (View Comment):
    Considering the “community,” I think that the authors are likely correct that Prager takes positions “fundamentally at odds with our community’s values.” <snip> And, as usual, the question arises as to who is really intolerant.

    Exactly. I really should stop being surprised at how these supposedly smart people keep failing to recognize the intellectual and cultural ghettos they’ve built for themselves.

    Most days I think people can be better than they are. By shunning Prager (and his followers presumably) for fear of “normalizing hatred and bigotry”, these self-righteous progs dismiss a real opportunity to forge tenuous ties with individuals on the other side and see if there’s common ground. Love of music and support of the arts could have been that common ground. Instead of showing how to rise above political polarization, they sharpen it.

    • #7
  8. Saxonburg Member
    Saxonburg
    @Saxonburg

    Prager had Apter on his show yesterday.   Kudos to the Apter for coming on Prager’s show, but Prager is the most gracious host there can be under such circumstances.   It was exasperating, but Prager kept it cool and generally just let the man explain his objections, often without rebuttal.     Prager knew his audience would hear Apter’s explanations and realize how ridiculous they were.

    Apter was alarmed that Prager routinely uses the metaphor that Leftism (not Leftists) is a cancer on America that needs to be treated aggressively. Somehow Apter believes that this might lead to people like him being subjected to chemicals or radiation or surgery or something.  Anyway the metaphor was apparently too violent.

    Apter also held that Dennis’s objection to gay marriage makes him a bigot.    Apter would not admit to any advantage of a straight couple over a gay couple. (I think the obvious advantage of having the ability to produce children was not in question.)

    The strangest claim Apter made was that it was Prager who was making this concert political … by responding to Apter’s attempts to undermine it.    I could not comprehend his argument, but I think Apter thinks he is so correct and so pure that his actions are not political.  He was only warning the good people and suggesting an appropriate course of action for them.    After all, he wasn’t stopping the concert.

    I am certain that Prager never brings politics into his concert venues.    This was forced on him, and he had to respond.

     

     

    • #8
  9. Snirtler Inactive
    Snirtler
    @Snirtler

    tigerlily (View Comment):
    Prager invited Chwe and Apter on his radio show to discuss their opposition to his guest conductor role. Chwe declined, but Apter did take up Prager’s offer and they spent an hour discussing their differences on yesterday’s show. Here is a link to audio of that show (35 minutes in length) for those interested. Apter deserves credit for coming on Prager’s show and he was civil; however, I found him highly disingenuous.

    Thanks for the links. I’ll have to check out Apter on Prager’s radio show.

    I agree Chwe and Apter are disingenuous. Somewhere in their letter they object to Prager’s lack of formal musical training. Who are they kidding? They should just have the spine to admit that it’s all about the difference in politics.

    • #9
  10. Snirtler Inactive
    Snirtler
    @Snirtler

    Saxonburg (View Comment):
    Apter was alarmed that Prager routinely uses the metaphor that Leftism (not Leftists) is a cancer on America that needs to be treated aggressively. Somehow Apter believes that this might lead to people like him being subjected to chemicals or radiation or surgery or something. Anyway the metaphor was apparently too violent.

    <snip>

    The strangest claim Apter made was that it was Prager who was making this concert political … by responding to Apter’s attempts to undermine it. I could not comprehend his argument, but I think Apter thinks he is so correct and so pure that his actions are not political. He was only warning the good people and suggesting an appropriate course of action for them. After all, he wasn’t stopping the concert.

    This, from a tenured professor at a leading American public ivy, is how the snowflake population in America has risen.

    And yes, they’re so pure as the driven snow, only conservatives are guilty of incendiary rhetoric.

    • #10
  11. Snirtler Inactive
    Snirtler
    @Snirtler

    Mike-K (View Comment):
    Maybe they are applying for a job at Google.

    Rather more grim. The boycott leaders are professors teaching and preaching diversity (except intellectual diversity) to America’s future.

    • #11
  12. Snirtler Inactive
    Snirtler
    @Snirtler

    RushBabe49 (View Comment):
    Encouraging others not to attend? How it that these volunteer musicians can so easily undermine the fund-raising of their organization? If I were the conductor, I’d fire them immediately.

    By asking people to boycott the concert, the musicians reveal how devoid they are of goodwill. Cutting off their nose to spite their face …

    • #12
  13. Snirtler Inactive
    Snirtler
    @Snirtler

    anonymous (View Comment):

    Snirtler: Several volunteer musicians of the Santa Monica Symphony are boycotting their summer gala, because Dennis Prager was asked to be a guest conductor at the fundraiser.

    Find their home addresses and publish them. Find their employers. Track and publish all of their social media posts. Shun them in public. Send any questionable social media posts to their employers.

    This is how they play the game against us. Alinsky’s rule 13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.

    Do you want to win, or lose with dignity?

    As a squish, I have to ask, aren’t we supposed to be better than them and better than that?

    If it were up to me, conservatives would buy up all the remaining tickets and some Prager-affiliated donor would make a sizable contribution to the symphony and a public statement that Americans should welcome those rare opportunities, like the concert, to set aside their ideological differences, etc.

    • #13
  14. DocJay Inactive
    DocJay
    @DocJay

    Glad to see it working out.

    As a non squish I have to agree with anonymous.  We can’t beat this enemy by the old rules, pretty and moral though they were.

    This activism against differing opinions is escalating. Whatever has been done to counter it doesn’t seem to have worked so well so far.   Correct me if I’m wrong here.

    • #14
  15. Snirtler Inactive
    Snirtler
    @Snirtler

    DocJay (View Comment):
    Glad to see it working out.

    As a non squish I have to agree with anonymous. We can’t beat this enemy by the old rules, pretty and moral though they were.

    This activism against differing opinions is escalating. Whatever has been done to counter it doesn’t seem to have worked so well so far. Correct me if I’m wrong here.

    On what’s been done to counter prog activism, not sure if you’re referring to this instance or in general. I’ll assume you mean what’s been done in this Prager guest conducting story. Prager has responded by going to conservative media outlets and trying to muster countervailing support from the right.

    One measure of an effective response will be attendance or ticket sales. If in spite of Prager’s participation at the concert, the symphony surpasses past attendance or returns, that would validate the invitation to him and constitute a middle finger to the sanctimonious and perpetually offended boycotters.

    • #15
  16. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    I read the article. I live here. So far, the reactions of the city of Santa Monica, and the Orchestra (not a city-run organization) have been just right. Disney Hall (yet a third entity involved) hasn’t budged either.

    So what’s the gripe this time? If Rachel Maddow was invited to read “Peter and the Wolf” in a small suburb of Casper, Wyoming, or if a prominent pro-choice politician is invited to give the commencement at a Catholic college, some people boycott. So what?

     

    • #16
  17. Snirtler Inactive
    Snirtler
    @Snirtler

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    I read the article. I live here. So far, the reactions of the city of Santa Monica, and the Orchestra (not a city-run organization) have been just right. Disney Hall (yet a third entity involved) hasn’t budged either.

    So what’s the gripe this time? If Rachel Maddow was invited to read “Peter and the Wolf” in a small suburb of Casper, Wyoming, or if a prominent pro-choice politician is invited to give the commencement at a Catholic college, some people boycott. So what?

    No gripe with anyone in a position to halt or impede the performance who has actually resisted calls to do so.

    People are free to boycott or call for it. My gripe is with the particular academics and pols calling for boycott who think Prager’s views are sufficient to shut down the show and that letting him conduct is to normalize bigotry.

    Also grousing about reducing moral-cultural life to questions of political ideology.

    • #17
  18. Mike LaRoche Inactive
    Mike LaRoche
    @MikeLaRoche

    As Chwe and Apter demonstrate, most universities have become Marxist-infested dens. These are not honorable people. I wholeheartedly endorse anonymous’s counter-progressive activism.

    • #18
  19. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Snirtler (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    I read the article. I live here. So far, the reactions of the city of Santa Monica, and the Orchestra (not a city-run organization) have been just right. Disney Hall (yet a third entity involved) hasn’t budged either.

    So what’s the gripe this time? If Rachel Maddow was invited to read “Peter and the Wolf” in a small suburb of Casper, Wyoming, or if a prominent pro-choice politician is invited to give the commencement at a Catholic college, some people boycott. So what?

    No gripe with anyone in a position to halt or impede the performance who has actually resisted calls to do so.

    People are free to boycott or call for it. My gripe is with the particular academics and pols calling for boycott who think Prager’s views are sufficient to shut down the show and that letting him conduct is to normalize bigotry.

    Also grousing about reducing moral-cultural life to questions of political ideology.

    I should hastily jump in and say “gripe” wasn’t directed at you, Snirtler. It’s a fine post and I suspect that you’re more outraged by the musicians’ UCLA connection (your connection) than to the volunteer symphony’s home address (my connection). (for the edification of non-Angelenos, Disney Concert Hall is in downtown L.A., a central location that’s about 20 miles from Santa Monica.)

    The article points out that my neighborhood voted Democrat by 80%/20%; I thought, “Is that all?” But it’s not a hotbed of PC hate like the Middlebury or Berkeley incidents; so far, and I still wouldn’t bet my life on it, the old rules are holding.

    Dennis Prager is a local guy, known here long before his radio show went national. At least up through the Bush years, he was relatively popular among non-conservatives as a “morals guy”, a secular dispenser of common sense truths about temptation, weakness, and human nature. He was unpredictable sometimes; early on in the Bill Clinton sex scandal, when even Slate, Salon and Time magazine were nervously flipping coins over his fate, Prager flatly said that Clinton wasn’t going to be removed from office and that conservatives shouldn’t expect big gains out of it. Some people on the right hated him for that, especially as many assume that a morals guy should check his cold political judgment at the studio door. What might loosely be called “the gay issues” have been a particular area of local controversy the past twenty years, partly because his pushback against the growth of gay rights was once (though no longer) widely shared by African-American radio listeners in central Los Angeles.

    • #19
  20. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    anonymous (View Comment):

    Snirtler: Several volunteer musicians of the Santa Monica Symphony are boycotting their summer gala, because Dennis Prager was asked to be a guest conductor at the fundraiser.

    Find their home addresses and publish them. Find their employers. Track and publish all of their social media posts. Shun them in public. Send any questionable social media posts to their employers.

    This is how they play the game against us. Alinsky’s rule 13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.

    Do you want to win, or lose with dignity?

    Yes.

    • #20
  21. She Member
    She
    @She

    Such things are not confined to the Peoples’ Republic of California.

    Speaking as someone who’s right in the middle of “Trump Country,” I’ll just say that I’ve seen the same sort of thing with the local community orchestra when its performance has been underwritten by the frackers or the coal mine, or when a Republican Congressman who thinks he can sing (he can’t, which is my only, and perfectly apolitical, objection to his appearance), donates money so that he can get up on stage and make a horse’s behind of himself.  There generally follows an outcry from orchestra members, several letters to the editor of the local newspaper, and some spamming of the organization’s Facebook and Twitter feeds.  Things have not gone nearly as far as what’s outlined in the OP, but it never ceases to amaze me that we can’t even take donations, schedule performers or invite guest artists without either a purity test beforehand, or prior planning as to how to handle the fallout if we do.

    I identify the start of the “rot” as occurring in 2010, when a fellow board member insisted that we change the name of the “Christmas Concert” to a “Holiday Concert.”  I opposed it then, and I oppose it now.  Thank goodness we’re not completely passive, and the content of that show, at least, hasn’t changed.  Whatever it’s called, when people show up for it, they’re treated to a Christmas Concert.  Which is as it should be.  And, that’ll show ’em.

    • #21
  22. Von Snrub Inactive
    Von Snrub
    @VonSnrub

    Well all their information can be found online. What’s the strategy? Dox them and dox them hard?

    • #22
  23. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Why?? Who?? This isn’t Berkeley. Two volunteer musicians want to boycott the concert? It’s still going on, no interference from the sponsoring community that is paying the bills, and NOW you’re going to cultural war?

    This is a conservative community that sponsors almost nothing, takes no chances, risks nothing in culture, doesn’t do a damn thing but whine and cry, and people wonder why we don’t win.

    I don’t.

    • #23
  24. Larry3435 Inactive
    Larry3435
    @Larry3435

    One of the many advantages of Ricochet membership is that this site regularly provides me with material to include in my response to the next fund-raising letter I receive from my alma mater, UCLA.  Without these specific stories, I would have to explain my refusal to donate money by simply saying that I do not want to contribute to making UCLA a rich, evil, capitalist exploiter of the masses (which, by the way, it certainly is).

    • #24
  25. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    If this is a concert where the musicians just shut up and played the music, I’m impressed. There is nothing more boring than opening remarks from the conductor.

    • #25
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.