On their recent visit to Southern California, Prince William and wife Catherine and about 1,300 bodyguards toured Skid Row. Nothing too unusual about that. We expect British monarchs-in-training to spend an hour or two slumming it when they visit their former possessions. Such expeditions give a boost to their innate British snobbishness while providing a great photo opportunity: ("Kate, how about a hug for that half-starved rickety lad with the big eyes!") What is more, it shows that today's aristocrats really, really care about the underclass, unlike yesterday's aristocrats who used them for target practice.
On Skid Row, the royal couple visited Inner-City Arts, a nonprofit organization that for two decades has provided free arts instruction to poor, starving, chronically abused children. The visit highlighted two of Prince William's main interests: promoting the arts and doing absolutely nothing useful.
Cynthia Harnisch, president of Inner-City Arts, spoke to the royal couple about Skid Row and the challenges of poverty and homelessness faced by many students at the school, to which Prince William responded, "Yes, but how are finger painting lessons going to help them escape all that?"
Just kidding. The prince would never say that. ...
Middle-class kids can afford to waste their time learning to pirouette or to play electric violin. They are going to go to college and eventually, hopefully, go into business or medicine (or more likely marketing or law). But for a lot of the kids in my neighborhood, arts education is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It's a luxury they can't afford. And the last thing Skid Row needs is another out-of-work musician singing the blues.
[read on at above link]
and more----
'Art in the Streets' has earned the museum accolades from the art world. But in glorifying graffiti, it celebrates a crime that destroys the city's vitality. By Heather Mac Donald May 1, 2011
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