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April 20, 2007
Another heart warming use of your tax dollars...
They laughed when UNESCO announced a whole new category of cultural anxiety, the grave danger faced by humanity's "intangible cultural heritage." Ancient dances of obscure tribes, almost forgotten rituals and nearly extinct musical instruments must be saved (UNESCO said) by government intervention, naturally under UNESCO guidance.
This sounded hopelessly vague to everyone not employed in the world of professional culture-protection. But nobody at UNESCO laughed. Nobody there ever laughs. Policy comes out of the feverishly ambitious minds of a few dozen solemn owls in Paris who spend their time looking for ways the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization can extend its bureaucratic empire of taste.
Decades ago, Maclean's magazine ran a skeptical article about UNESCO, suggesting it might be no more than a trivial, wasteful boondoggle, designed to provide employment for an expanding army of well-educated civil servants. How cruel of Maclean's, I thought at the time. And how wrong and ignorant I was. Since then, extensive reading on this subject has reversed my opinion. UNESCO probably does no major harm, except addle the brains of those who take it seriously. But it's a typical UN agency in the sense that it lives in a costly world of endless meetings at which pompous committees urge, advocate, classify, deplore -- and accomplish not much.
When the heavy thinkers in UNESCO arrived at the idea of "intangible cultural heritage" (ICH) and sold it to their member nations a few years ago, they must have known they had a big winner, maybe the most lucrative gimmick in the history of cultural politics.
UNESCO expands according to how much money it can winkle out of the various nations of the world when taxpayers are looking the other way. From that standpoint, ICH shows more promise than anything else in UNESCO history. It has a unique quality. It expands infinitely. No country on Earth will ever run out of dying traditions. Local departments of culture were quick to see the job opportunities and support the UNESCO idea.
"Snake charmers of the world, unite!: The follies of a UNESCO-shaped global culture," by Robert Fulford, National Post (Canada), April 10, 2007
UNESCO - Wikipedia
Doesn't that just warm the cockles of your heart?
Posted at April 20, 2007 06:17 AM | Categories: America
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