By Joseph Spear Bill Clinton swiftly and deftly dispatched one of the major problems of the past decade this month when he named William Ivey, director of the Country Music Foundation in Nashville, to head the National Endowment for the Arts. Just like that, we went from the age of Robert Mapplethorpe and Karen Finley to the age of Alan Jackson and Reba McEntire. I remain ambivalent about government funding of art, but if we're going to do it, better to subsidize the heart than the libido. The Ivey appointment could also spark a resurgence for country music, which has been suffering from lagging sales.
Country music is still a huge business.
More than 40 percent of all the radio listeners in the nation tune in to country music at least once a week. The country music radio format is top dog in half of the nation's biggest cities. The fact is, aficionados will hasten to tell you, country hasn't really been country for a long time. The audience is button-down, educated and relatively well off. Many of the performers attended college.