Ken Burns interview with Reason Magazine

Ken Burns has done some quite interesting work in the documentary filmmaking field and  here gives an interview to Reason Magazine, a libertarian publication.  Since the 40% of Burns's work is sponsored by government grants, and presumably the rest from private sources, it is not surprising to hear Burns defend government funding of the arts.  In fact he suggests that in a perfect world all arts would be funded by the government in order to remove the perniciousness of commercialism.  Nick Gillespie, who interviews Burns for Reason, tries to challenge him on taxpayers funding of artists but is overwhelmed by an almost tidal flood of points and arguments for such funding to the degree Gillespie can hardly get a word in sideways.  Nevertheless it is an interesting interview to the extent it reveals the thinking of a highly successful documentarian of our times.  To date while not personally knowing enough about his work to make a judgement on its bias or lack thereof, Burns appears in the interview to be reasonably fair-minded and even-handed in his political outlook.  Nevertheless, any true conservative has to have a problem with state sponsorship of the arts which is the use of taxpayer funds without taxpayer approval.  Burns claims he personally is without political bias, that there has never been an attempt to influence his work, and that he is only interested in telling a story about history to as many people as he can.  That's just peachy, but who is to say who gets the funding and who doesn't and for what reasons?  Is it a democratically elected body making this decision?  Or is it a panel of "experts" who are appointed by a political body? And who makes the judgement there is no political bias in an artists' work?  Sounds pretty confusing. Best to keep the government out of the arts.