The
Minnesota Department of Revenue says it’s been hoodwinked by a poet and a rock
singer, and it wants its money back.
On
Tuesday, April 23, 2013, MinnPost published an article
about a Minneapolis couple, a poet and rock singer/songwriter, who are living a
Minnesota tax audit nightmare because the state doesn’t believe they’re really
artists. Their Kafkaesque ordeal reveals the real-life hazards and cultural
betrayal of an ideology so narrow that it can only define value—any
value—in terms of financial profit. These two artists don’t deserve professional status, the
bureaucrats say, because they don’t make enough money off their work (what's "enough" is apparently at the discretion of the taxman): on the books they’re
just “hobbyists,” so they shouldn’t write off their expenses.
Poet
and college professor Lynette Reini-Grandell and her husband, musician Venus
DeMars, are being dragged through the mud to set an example. "I personally
am beginning to think it’s part of an attempt by one branch of the state
government to discredit arts spending and take back the Legacy money,"
said Reini-Grandell. Minnesota’s tax-fed Legacy fund supports cultural and
environmental projects.
If
it’s a crime for poets, writers, and musicians to not get rich off their
creations, then we wouldn’t have heard much more from Mark Twain after he went
backrupt. Walt Whitman would have been shut down for being the sluggard that
self-published his first two versions of Leaves of Grass rather than waiting for
a publisher to launch him. If Wallace Stevens had been cut off from writing
poetry before his first book got published at age forty-three (another
tinkering hobbyist), he wouldn’t have won that Pulitzer or National Book Award.
The
very idea of measuring the value of artistic endeavor on its increasing monetary value and
defining “real artists” as those who make formidable and ever-increasing
profits can only come from the kind of culture-starved mentality that plagues a
hefty slice of the GOP.
For
a tax auditor to claim that poets and musicians who are not getting wealthy off
their work are mere hobbyists displays a cultural ignorance that runs rampant
in our consumerist society. Forced to justify their work, the plight of Lynette
Reini-Grandell and Venus DeMars should ring alarms in the head of every parent
who reads books to her children at bedtime, every teacher who devotes himself
to instilling a love and respect for literature and the arts (and the critical
thinking that goes along with it) to the next generation, and every citizen who
has a creeping suspicion that there’s more to life than shopping.
The
great irony of this story lies in the fact that Minnesota is one of the most
cultured states in the nation, with Minneapolis ranked “the most literate city
in America” for its wealth of writers, literary publishers, dance, film, music,
and visual art, and for having more theater seats per capita than New York.
Minnesota bred the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerlad, Sinclair Lewis, Bob Dylan,
Joel and Ethan Coen, Garrison Keillor, and Prince. Creative people thrive here
and move art in new directions. But according to the Minnesota Department of
Revenue, those who aren’t getting fat on their work are just playing
around.
The
Minnesota taxmen hell-bent on making an example of Reini-Grandell and DeMars
represent a mindset that has hollowed us out. They and their kind prove that
the United States is not a haven for creative, innovative spirits or even a
democracy—as some artists clearly show us in their stories and images. As Brad
Pitt’s character so bluntly states in the final lines of Killing Them Softly, “America’s not a country. It’s a business. Now
pay me.”
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