That drag show at the mall? You might as well blame Sam Brownback as Laura Kelly | Opinion

Just when you thought state politics couldn’t get any more absurd, the Kansas Department of Commerce has gotten its name tied to a Halloween drag show at Towne West Square in Wichita.

And the Kansas Republican Party has chosen to lie about it, blaming Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

Really, if there’s a governor to blame for this, it’s Sam Brownback. More about that in a minute.

What really happened is this: The Department of Commerce has given the nonprofit arts group Fisch Bowl a grant to help offset administrative and utilities costs for OpenStudios, which provides some free studio space to artists at the mall.

One of the OpenStudios artists is organizing a Final Friday Halloween party in the mall called “Mall Monster Mash,” with a DJ, a costume contest, and yes, a drag show.

The Department of Commerce’s logo wound up on fliers for the event because it’s a standard condition for organizations receiving grants from the department’s Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission.

Elizabeth Stevenson, executive director of OpenStudios, explains it thus:

“At the request of the KCAIC … I had asked all of our artists to put the KCAIC logo on all their printed material and social media posts, which is why the logo appeared on the promotional material created specifically for this event. However, the KCAIC has no direct role in this event, nor is any of the money they have granted our organization being spent on this event.”

Republican governor candidate Derek Schmidt, a notorious dodger of the press, actually called a press conference to talk about it. The state GOP sent out a fundraising letter bashing Kelly and asking for $15.

The Republicans lied through their pearly whites in their e-mail, claiming “Governor Laura Kelly and her administration sponsored a drag show they deemed appropriate for ‘all ages.’”

Schmidt seemed to have made no effort to inform himself what was really going on, so his press conference was long on speculation and pearl-clutching, but abysmally short of facts.

But the real author of this mess is Brownback, our former elected governor and self-appointed guardian of Kansas morals.

It goes back to 2011, when Towne West had a Sears and a food court, and Kansas had an Arts Commission that supported artists.

Brownback’s appreciation of art is as sophisticated as a velvet Elvis painting and he didn’t like some of the avant-garde artistry the commission supported. One of his first acts in office was to abolish the Arts Commission.

That sparked a big hoo-haw and the federal government and other funders promptly withdrew $1.2 million in arts funding for Kansas, because there wasn’t a state agency to handle the money.

The next year, the Legislature and governor established the Creative Arts Industries Commission.

The key word was “industries” and it was put under the Commerce Department as primarily a workforce development program. Its mandate was to turn the state’s creative energies toward such endeavors as making decorative lamps to be sold at Walmart.

It’s how we got from supporting artists to giving arts grants to pay the Evergy bill at a struggling shopping mall.

The commission’s all about marketing and promotion, especially self-promotion, so demanding their logo on programs they’re not actually sponsoring is pretty much on brand.

And, it’s become one more chance for Derek Schmidt to confirm his homophobia (as if we didn’t already know), take a cheap shot at the governor and promote his “Leave it to Beaver” vision of the way Kansas ought to be.

If anything, it lends credence to Kelly campaign assertions that Schmidt is Brownback, version 2.0.

If anybody’s all that worked up about Friday’s drag show, all they have to do is what nearly everybody does regarding Towne West.

Don’t go.