How Do You Stay Vital?

Simple - make sure your interests have their own exeutive-branch pusher:

Quincy Jones: "I have traveled all over the world all the time for 54 years. The people abroad know more about our culture than we do," he said. "A month ago at my high school in Seattle, I asked a student if he knew who Louis Armstrong was. He said he had heard his name. I asked him about Duke Ellington and John Coltrane. He didn't even know their names. That hurts me a lot," Jones said.

Jones' lament seems far more of a condemnation of government schools than a lack of artistic production and knowledge. Additional government support would likely do for the arts what it's done for public education. Dismayingly, the Post reports that the leader of President-elect Obama's arts review transition team, William Ivey, has expressed some interest in this idea. Ivey, a former chairman of the arts endowment, wrote last year that the cultural environment had been neglected and needed to be fixed. "If the task requires consideration of a new government agency -- a Cabinet-level department of cultural affairs -- so be it," said Ivey.

The president's cabinet; keeping poverty, pollution, crummy housing (and sometimes war) in business since . . . forever.