ART DON'T LIVE HERE NO MORE. I saw most of the first "1/2 Hour News Show" -- that allegedly conservative, allegedy comedy show on Fox -- and thought it blew. National Review's David Frum has seen two episodes of the thing, and thinks they both blew.

Here you might think the fascist frostback and I have found common ground. But no, no, no, no. Robespierre and an ordinary citoyen might agree that today is a fine day, but simple Jacques might simply mean that the sun feels good on his cheek, while the Incorruptible would probably mean that it is a fine day to purge the Assembly or slaughter some royals. See what lesson Frum draws from the "News Show" debacle:

[The show's creator] Joel Surnow told NRO on Friday that he wanted to produce a program that would set Michael Moore's hair on fire. He has not done it. More seriously, he has failed to do something much more important: create a conservative institution with cultural power. The Daily Show and now Steven Colbert have taught a generation of college students that Republicans are ridiculous, absurd, hopelessly past it. And their work has had an effect: today's 20-somethings are more Democratic than any equivalent cohort since World War II.

"The 1/2 Hour News Show" does not counteract Comedy Central's clever cultural sabotage. On the contrary: it contributes to it. If there is anyone under 72 still watching it, they are not thinking, "Gee - conservatives can tell a joke." They are thinking, "Conservatives are a joke."

Longtime readers of alicublog will see the problem, but for the rest of you and for the record I will spell it out.

There is a difference between artists and propagandists -- and a similar difference between admirers of art and admirers of propaganda.

The root of the difference is intention. Artists do what they do because they can hardly help themselves. If one can be said to decide to be an artist, it is only in the same sense that one could be said to decide to scratch an itch. Despite the impression you get from those monsters of ambition on American Idol, artistry is seldom a smart career decision. Poverty and rejection are the artist's fringe benefits. No one gets into the business to become rich -- no one sane, anyway.

In a sense the artist is not even trying to do anything like what most of us are trying to do in our work. Most of us are looking to achieve a concrete goal: move the sales curve, sell a car, build a better mousetrap. If artists wanted to do something similarly normal and "productive," they would turn instead to the professions near to art -- copywriting, industrial design, etc. These jobs have goals, metrics, benchmarks. The arts don't -- not unless you think awards ceremonies are meaningful, or that Wild Hogs is superior to Citizen Kane because it had higher opening-weekend grosses.

While it is true that most artists are not immune to the necessity of making a living -- even if they were, they would still want audiences, readerships, people who will understand and appreciate what they've done -- at their core, they are just trying to scratch that itch; being obliged to somehow make the scratching pay doesn't change that, it just complicates it.

Propagandists are more like the bootblack and the marketing manager and the nail technician: if they can find a way to increase their yield, they are wholly fulfilled. Now, we can say this for them -- mere lucre is not their aim. You can even get them to work for free, or very little, just as you can get an artist to do. But what they must have is yield, a result. In their world, this means souls turned in their direction.

Here you might ask: isn't that what artists do? They want to turn souls in their direction, too. They want to put bums in seats. They want a crowd around their canvas.

Yes, but while the artist desires attention, he does not want (except for the merchandising part of himself, born of poverty and necessity) to draw anything from the audience but attention. Oh, he probably wants love, approval, admiration, and all that -- but only because his gig is so psychologically damaging that he cannot get enough of these primary emotional needs met in the normal way. (That is part of the reason why artists are such problematic friends, lovers, and credit risks.)

If he has made a political work of art, the artist may think he wants a political result, but his observers know better. Do you really think Oliver Stone made JFK because he wanted the assassination files opened? No, obviously he made it because he felt a deep soul-ache that could only be healed by mass viewing rituals in cineplexes across America.

But the propagandist wants souls turned his way because he wants them to do something for him. He wants results. In his black, rubber heart, he does not get the appeal of Madame Bovary or Lolita or The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. What action plan follows upon these? What agenda is advanced? What polling results will be affected? Whereas a well-crafted Swift Boat ad, or blog, or National Review column will make people do things -- vote, or fail to vote, or stay mad at the people you want them mad at, or stay worshipful of the people you want to remain unquestioned.

That is why David Frum -- whose soul, if he ever had one, must be fatally wearied by the lifelong application of his verbal talents to propaganda -- looks at this failed comedy show and thinks -- says! -- that the great failure there was not a failure to clear a grateful public's minds and lungs with laughter, nor a failure to provide them with a fresh angle from which to view their world, but a failure to "create a conservative institution with cultural power."

To him culture is not a spring that refreshes the spirit, but a storehouse of destructive power to be used against his enemies.

What a thin, choked, stunted way of life and of thinking that is! Yet these people get big pay and loud megaphones, while great poets, as Charles Bukowski used to say, die in steaming pots of shit. Is this any more or less the way of the world than once it was? I will only say, by way of a hint, that there were fewer cable stations, PR firms, and Republicans 20 years ago than there are now.