Pop quiz: Who uttered the following line—a Cook County official commenting on the legalities of a tax on small music venues booking rock, rap, and DJ shows, or Reverend Shaw from Footloose preaching about a ban on loud music and dancing?
At least that’s what I gathered after reading the news the Reader broke about how the county is trying to strong-arm small music venues into ponying up hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. Its spurious claim is that clubs with a capacity of 750 or less that book rock, country, rap, and DJ shows have been cheating the county out of funds from a 3 percent county amusement tax because they’re taking advantage of an exemption set aside for “live theatrical, live musical or other live cultural performances.”
The truth is that Cook County isn’t really interested in some kind of philosophical discussion about the nature of high art. It’s acting as a tax collector, of course, not a cultural gatekeeper. It could try to extract funds from the opera, symphony, or moneyed fine-arts patrons with say, a financial transaction tax, but instead it decided to play the bully and shake down the little guys—the PBR-stained bars and divey dance clubs—for their lunch money.
