What was rarely mentioned in the NEA controversy was something that used to be taken for granted by advocates of free expression, namely, that government sponsorship of the arts is the most effective means ever devised for undermining artistic freedom. It doesn't take a lot of brains to figure out that art is bound to become less political if it's politicians who are financing the art. Truth and gratitude have rarely lived side by side, and if you doubt that, then consider the chilling statistic that in the last 25 years only 20 grants out of 80,000 have been controversial, a statistic usually cited to show that art and federal money are comfortable bed-fellows, but which really proves just the opposite: that NEA funding has reshaped the meaning of art in America by rewarding primarily those artists who didn't upset the status quo, who made sure that their political disgust rarely made it past the "conceptual" stage, who learned, in other words, to domesticate themselves in order to receive the legitimacy that recognition of any kind brings.