As can be expected of such predictable speeches, NEA Chairman Dana Gioia outlines the kind of death knell against cultural conversation that one would expect of an embittered elder priding himself on walking uphill to school and back (both ways, meh!) in the snow.

Without citing any specific studies and relying only on his suspicions, Gioia claims that today’s Americans “live in a culture that barely acknowledges and rarely celebrates the arts or artists.” He condemns the mass media for not placing as great an emphasis on “presenting a broad range of human achievement” and, like an old fogey in the truest French sense of the term, fails to observe the Internet as a medium that might very well rectify the wrongs currently committed by the old guard. With an egregious prejudice evincing his clear displacement from his roots, Gioia declares that “no working-class or immigrant kid would encounter the range of arts and ideas in the popular culture,” failing to consider that any kid hungry or motivated enough to go to the library or get his hands on culture will, in fact, do this, regardless of what his teachers tell him what to do. He presumes that the mass media dictates precisely how such a hypothetical kid will respond to the world around him. To exist in the Gioia universe is to live without hope, without the possibility of infectious enthusiasm for the arts passed down from old to young, or from the popular to the more cultivated. It is to live without the possibility of cultural redemption, and without any expansion or evolution of the current terms that, presumably Gioia and the NEA, now believe contemporary culture up to be. Which is to say, inexorably fixed.

I think the key to understanding Gioia’s disreputable cynicism resides in his declaration of entertainment as a corrupt force. What then is the alternative? Culture that is crammed down your throat like prescriptive castor oil? Artistic achievements that are dictated, rather than presented in an invitational manner?

He declares art “an expendable luxury.” Ah, but this assumes that those who lack the funding or the emolument to create will stop creating. This also assumes that art is based upon a marketplace, an environment which Gioia champions, rather than the burning desire of the individual to put paint upon a canvas or write words upon a paper, no matter how cruel or dismissive the artist’s naysayers are.

There is no better place to observe the old guard’s resolute hysteria than a speech from an establishment goon like Gioia. Gioia champions words like “consensus” over “community.” He is a man who would prefer to not see more artists, but “complete human beings capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society.” But who determines what is complete? Who determines “successful and productive lives?” The marketplace? The NEA?

Gioia cannot accept the possibility that arts and culture might exist in a fantastic anarchy completely outside the marketplace, capable of having its terms overwritten by an underclass or a figure who falls outside of the establishment. He cannot accept an amateur like Heinrich Schliemann discovering the true location of Troy. Or James Joyce, that feckless upstart, self-publishing Ulysses. (Likewise, Walt Whitman.)

This is the man who purports to lead our august body for the arts. But what Gioia outlines in this preposterous speech is not an artistic world that I’m acquainted with. And if Gioia believes that the ridiculous “Praise to the Rituals That Celebrate Change” is the kind of thing that will awaken the young from their apparent Wii-immersed haze, then we’re in an altogether different sort of trouble.

I cannot count the number of sleazeballs, both small-time and corporate, that I’ve talked with today. But I’m pleased to report that I’ve found a broadband provider who will offer a dry loop DSL line with VOIP that will also give me a static IP. All this with minimal setup fees and without a yearly contract. The guy I spoke with was professional, friendly, and crystal-clear about technical details, answering every question I asked of him. It was a clear case of one geek talking with another — a conversation I was close to giving up one of my testicles for.

Now that things are in action, it’s enough to make me buy a top hat and dance in the streets. I don’t care how hot it is. Of course, the proof will be in the pudding.

I can tell you this much: Verizon is a bunch of liars.

I was very close to signing a yearly contract with them for a phone and high speed internet combo package. The sales rep I spoke with insisted three times that I would be getting a static IP. Skeptical of this after my experience with Optimum, in which I was told the same thing, after muddling through a series of vague Verizon pages, I found a Verizon site that claimed: “Static IP addresses are only available thru Verizon Business DSL.”

I managed to reach someone in Verizon DSL Technical Support, who waffled around the subject, until I said, “Answer the question. Is there any way that a residential DSL customer can get a static IP? Yes or no?”

“Basically no,” he said.

So essentially Verizon and Optimum are lying to you — and, in the case of Verizon, conning you into signing a yearly service contract. They are telling you they have a static IP when, in fact, they don’t, if you’re a residential customer.

I didn’t have much of a voice. So I was unable to pursue this further. But all I can say is that if you’re in Brooklyn trying to find a broadband provider with a static IP, be extremely careful to get something written down before signing on with these turkeys.

I’m only surprised that there hasn’t been a class action suit filed for those who were suckered into this nonsense. I can’t be the only one they’re lying to about static IP addresses.

When I get my voice back, I plan to conduct some experiments and upload my results to YouTube. But for those who have their larnyxes, call Verizon and Optimum. Tell them that you’re interested in residential DSL with a static IP address. See what they say.