Sonny Bono: “I was not going to speak but I am sitting in my office choking on the rhetoric that I am hearing on what a great…”

“I was not going to speak but I am sitting in my office choking on the rhetoric that I am hearing on what a great contribution the NEA is to the arts. I have been in the arts for 30 years. That has been my occupation. I know of no one in 30 years in the arts that has been assisted by the NEA. I do not see where the NEA is this amazing contribution to mankind and has brought all these artists forward. Furthermore, there is no equity as far as how artists are selected or chosen. There is no system. There is no equity. And I would not qualify and many of my colleagues that are artists, successful artists, would not qualify today. So finally we have a system, the Ehlers amendment, that would at least have a fairness as far as qualifying or as far as assisting artists, and we are denying that and we are giving it to a group. I wish Congress would stop thinking that they are experts on everything. They certainly are not experts on art and they do not know what they are talking about when they talk about the NEA.”