Funded by the government?
For all of Gabe's moral posturing, the only thing he comes across as is greedy. Whenever he says that the "government" should pay for this or that useless program, read "you".
Gabe lives in a utopian fantasy, in which government could solve every problem. The only reason they haven't so far is that not enough money has been spent. The most insidious problem with this line of reasoning is not the waste of money, but the limits placed on our freedoms every time the government sticks its big snout in another area of life.
Currently the goverment claims power over issues ranging from the amount of water used by toilets to outer space. I can't imagine even Gabe proceeding to say that all of this would be approved of by our founders, or even authorized by the constitution. But, shoot, what difference does it make to him what the constitution says when our artists, the bedrock of our society, aren't making over a hundered thousand dollars a year for the crap they produce?
P.S. On the issue of AIDS, there are two nearly sure-fire ways to prevent contraction of this disease. DON'T HAVE BUTTSEX WITH MEN, and DON'T SHOOT UP. If you want to be really safe, don't have sex with anyone you aren't married to. Of course, this plan of action requires willpower and character, and of course, we can't expect people to posess those qualities anymore. They're certainly foreign to Gabe.
