User Clip: Governmental Literary Criticism, 1997

By way of a simplistic attack on the NEA and a pseudo-populist performance of bafflement at Aram Saroyan's poem "lighght," John Ashcroft articulates a labor theory of aesthetic value. Regarding the poem, Ashscroft says (at 11:00), "Now I suppose you might say most people would not recognize this as great art just by looking at these letters. I was not extremely well educated. I went to the public schools, and, frankly, I have to confess I did not see that this was great art when I first saw this. As a matter of fact, I thought it was a misspelling—but it could be great art." close