Artists as Entrepreneurs?

I just saw a clip of NDP leader Jack Layton's campaign stop in Quebec today, where he promised increased funding for the arts. He said that Conservative cuts to arts funding are preventing artists from making a living. But it was interesting to me that he said he considers artists entrepreneurs.

My concept of entrepreneur must be different than Layton's. A quick search for definitions of entrepreneur backs me up. Here's a representative definition:

Entrepreneur: [an] individual who starts an enterprise with its associated risks and responsibilities.

If no one finds an entrepreneur's product or business venture useful or worthy of investment, it fails. If someone values it enough, it will be profitable.

It is the entrepreneur who runs the risk that his product or business venture will not be profitable. It is not the business of the government to bail out private products and ventures that are not profitable on their own.

I agree that artists should be like entrepreneurs - let the free market support or reject them. I think the demand for good art will always be there. I'll privately support such art as I like. But if artists can't survive without government funding - my taxes - propping them up, maybe that says something about the demand for their art.

Mr. Layton, if artists really are entrepreneurs, then the Conservatives are the ones who have this one right.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

More evidence of the CBC's far-left bias showing through: Columnist's labeling Palin backers 'White Trash' spurs review at Canadian TV:

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is reviewing complaints from both Americans and Canadians about a Web site columnist who recently described Sarah Palin’s supporters as “white trash,” compared the vice presidential candidate to a “porn actress” and called her daughter’s boyfriend a “redneck” and “ratboy.”

The incendiary column by Toronto-based writer Heather Mallick appeared on the CBC News site on Sept. 5, after the close of the Republican National Convention. On the same day, Britain’s Guardian newspaper published another column by Mallick in which she trashed Palin’s home state of Alaska as a “frontier state full of drunks and crazy people.”

Several years ago, Coach's Corner was put on a 6-second delay because of a perceived slur against French Canadians and Europeans by Don Cherry. His offense was declaring that the majority of hockey players wearing visors on their helmets are French Canadian or European. A Winnipeg lawyer did the math and found this statement to be factual, but it was still much too offensive for the CBC.

So you can imagine how the CBC dealt with Heather Mallick after she posted the article on a CBC website almost two weeks ago. Wrong. The CBC is still proudly displaying the article on its website. Watch the CBC twist itself into logical pretzels defending Mallick.

Meanwhile, will Stephen Harper continue to sign her paycheque? Will taxpayers' money continue to be spent on hopelessly mediocre programming and one-sided journalism?