Unless you are old enough or foolish enough to still try to extract something like news out of the mainstream media, you probably already know about the NEA phone call transcripts. They were released today through the work of artist/blogger Patrick Courrielche at Andrew Breitbart’s new website Big Government. Breitbart and his merry gang seem to have taken it upon themselves to print all the news that apparently isn’t fit to print, also known as “the truth about the Obama administration and their friends.”
The transcripts prove, despite the earlier denials and obfuscations of the participants, that officials from the White House, the National Endowment of the Arts and a federally overseen initiative called United We Serve joined in hosting a conference call on August 10th with a group of artists. The point of the call was to cajole these artists into making artistic propaganda in support of President Barack Obama’s agenda.
There is so very much to be disgusted by here that it’s hard to know what to gag on first. The NEA is the largest single funder of art in the country. They give away tens of millions of bucks in grants to artists and art organizations. Although the NEA wasn’t actually offering to give money to artists in return for their services to the all-powerful state, their very presence on the line creates the implied offer of access and favor. This in and of itself is deeply corrupt and potentially corrupting to artists in a difficult economy desperate for any means of support.
Oh, but that’s not the half of it. Go here and take a look at the legislation that authorized and created the NEA in the first place, its founding document as it were. Read its original principles and mission: how the arts are for all Americans, how the NEA is there to nurture freedom of thought, imagination and inquiry. In fact, just for fun, see if you can find a single proposition in this document that the NEA did not violate, corrupt and/or betray in the course of this phone call.
Then there’s the arrogance. Michael Skolnick, political director for hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, says he’s speaking at the behest of the White House and the NEA when he tells the assembled artists, “You are the thought leaders. You are the ones that, if you create a piece of art or promote a piece of art, or create a campaign for a company, and tell our country and our young people sort of what to do and what to be into; and what’s cool and what’s not cool.”
I’ll retire to Bedlam! Having spent my life in the arts, I was indeed surprised to learn that my role in life was to use my abilities to convince people that some politician’s agenda was cool. In fact, if I’d wanted to be a state prostitute, I’d've moved to Nevada.
I have always believed that art is one of the most powerful tools we have in the search for spiritual truth, a form of communication that can, at its best, reach into the deepest part of the human soul. The Communists, and other tyrants, always understood that. Why do you think they always arrested and silenced the artists first?
No need for that here, thanks very much. Already largely corrupted by the ideology they’ve learned in our universities, our artists are standing by to take Big Brother’s call.
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63 Comments
1. Quite Rightly:It is hard to know “where to gag first,” but, after looking at the NEA appropriations legislation (thanks for the link), I know where I stopped reading to gag the hardest:
“(6) The arts and the humanities reflect the high place accorded by the American people to the nation’s rich cultural heritage and to the fostering of mutual respect for the diverse beliefs and values of all persons and groups.”
If anything is transparent about this administration and its automatons, it is that mutual respect for diverse values is not only completely lacking, it is taboo. The NEA has joined with the Obamatons to make our nation’s rich cultural heritage Public Enemy #1.
Sep 21, 2009 - 3:17 pm 2. Delia:After the gag-reflex inducing Hollyweird ‘pledge’ to 0bama nothing surprises me and now my shock has been replaced by an icky blend of bitter apathy and utter disgust. Bleh.
Sep 21, 2009 - 9:55 pm 3. Pajamas Media » The NEA Scandal: All Your Art Are Belong To Us:[...] Read the entire piece here. [...]
Sep 21, 2009 - 9:56 pm 4. JupiterSuite:NEA: Policing Thought Crime
Yosi Sergent:
“Attach whatever you’re doing to this initiative. Let’s raise the visibility for the Presidents call”
“We are just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government.”
George Will: “Wrong preposition. Not ‘with’ the government, but FOR the government.” http://www.graffiti.org/faq/kataras/kataras_fig3Fairey.jpg
Sep 21, 2009 - 10:22 pm 5. JupiterSuite:The Big Government-Media Complex…
NEA = Nefarious Expenditures on Agitprop!
http://bigchase.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/obey.jpg
ACORN: Child “Services” / Financial “Services” / “Voter” Registration —Democrat Funded
Sep 21, 2009 - 10:24 pm 6. Kevin Erickson:http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
the people on the call weren’t getting NEA money. The NEA doesn’t give money to individual artists.
Sep 21, 2009 - 10:34 pm 7. chrisa798:kevin,
where in andrew klavan’s article did he say that they were? try a little harder with your next rebuttal.
Sep 21, 2009 - 11:00 pm 8. Wontondon:As a conservative artist I would have a snowballs chance in hell of getting a grant.
Sep 21, 2009 - 11:04 pm 9. Art » Klavan On The Culture » All Your Art Are Belong To Us:My works have titles such as ‘Life in a Socialist Fish’ & ‘Sucking on the Government Tit’ to get a grant you need titles like ‘Piss Christ’ and Workers Paradise’
wontondon.com
[...] [...]
Sep 21, 2009 - 11:17 pm 10. Tweets that mention Klavan On The Culture » All Your Art Are Belong To Us -- Topsy.com:[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Susan R Makin and George Kata. George Kata said: art, desigh, design All Your Art Are Belong To Us http://bit.ly/1nSch [...]
Sep 21, 2009 - 11:20 pm 11. AQUA:SHAME, SHAME, SHAME. They are so corrupt, ignorant and downright stupid, they don’t even know what they’re doing.
Picture West Berlin before reunification. Surrounded by Communist East Germany.
West Germany had a huge fund to promote the Arts.
But, certainly, the party in power could not have used the National Art Fund to promote their own party. Ugh!
That kind of decrepitude was for the slaves imprisoned just across Friedrichstrasse inside The Wall.
There was one painter living there in West Berlin part time and Paris part time. He had been one of the most venerable artists in the Soviet Union — but he and his group had gotten the West Germans and the French to literally “buy” them out of the Soviet Union and both countries helped fund his work — by helping him with a studio and materials, etc.
He left The Soviet Union because they were trying to force him and his group to produce “Socialist Art.” They were intimidated. They were threatened. Then they were beaten and tortured and then they were starved. But they continued to refuse. Finally they got their freedom.
He and his wild Russian group — they loved Vodka, Discos, Borscht, The Beetles and Pink Floyd. They were unbelievably happy every single day to be in the West. After some years, he passed away at a relatively young middle age sometime in the late 1980’s. He never got to see the fall of the Berlin Wall or the demise of his despised Soviet Union.
He would have said to American “Voluntary, or Bought Off Socialist Artists,” WTF ????????????
Sep 22, 2009 - 12:38 am 12. Francis W. Porretto:The aspect of this that I hope will strike home with the general public is the way it cross-cuts the “traditional” attitude of the artist as a counterweight to the established order. It’s a shallow tradition, and easily shrugged aside for thirty pieces of silver or so.
After the era of aristocratic patronage, when artists-by-trade largely had to make it on their own or starve in an unforgiving capitalist order, their orientation morphed from toadies toward the powerful to enemies thereof. The reasons for this should require no elaboration. Over the decades, the public gradually accepted the art community’s self-hype about its mission being to “speak truth to power,” to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” and so forth. Their behavior was superficially consistent with their representations of themselves.
What we see from the NEA scandal and the art community’s willing collaboration is that charity can destroy anyone. We’ve known it for a while about welfare; today, with the return of aristocratic patronage in the guise of federally and state-supported arts, we can see it happening to the very persons who were most ardent about “speaking truth to power,” “questioning authority,” et cetera ad nauseam infinitam.
“A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!” — Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
Sep 22, 2009 - 1:39 am 13. caestal:Actually, they get NEA money through “artist groups.” Claiming they don’t is disingenuous at best.
Sep 22, 2009 - 1:48 am 14. Dan:Putting aside the accurately-described-as-Stalinist nature of this story (as always Klavan is right on and righteously, insightfully outraged) let’s consider this: Any artist worthy of the name who lets anyone else, be they pundit, poet, or pol, tell HIM/HER what is/isn’t “cool” utterly misunderstands their role in the machine called Society. ARtists are ARBITERS of cool THEY discover/create, not parrots for a system–anyone’s system, left, right, or center–that gives them marching orders. Heck, artists are supposed, by nature, to be incapable OF marching to anyone’s drummer but their own heart’s. This problem is like so many others in the Age of Obama: Education has been co-opted. Most of these so-called “artists” not only look to Big Brother O for their “paycheck” but have been indoctrinted by their teachers to think that’s how things are supposed to work. Whether because of lefty burned-out-60’s-radicals who, like Bill Ayres, joined academia because even the legal and/or political professions were too hard for them to handle OR because the media has taught them to take its cues on coolness and politics all their lives, these punks who claim to be “artists” are just footsoldiers and pawns in the “Revolution”…and if they’d ever read any history not co-opted and propaganized and “purged” of fact, would know that in this kind of war above all others, it is the pawns who get shot first. They’re not only dangerous, they’re fools.
Sep 22, 2009 - 2:15 am 15. Ed Wallis:Artistsa are genetically sycophants, be it the
“Look at me! Look at my great art!” variety
or just the
“gimme your money…NOW!” variety
(”these sets not sold separately…not necessarily, at least…)
It is strictly the (portion of the) Federal Government of President Obama which carries full responsibility for this offense.
Sep 22, 2009 - 2:40 am 16. genghis:On the other hand, taking a close look at modern American art, there’s not much there. Serious art all but disappeared from the States after the 1920’s. What we have now is mass produced scribblings, smearings, daubings and doodlings meant to pander to the uninformed egos of the newly over-rich while they sip chablis and munch canapes.
Sep 22, 2009 - 2:42 am 17. seansarto:The bigger the ass the more there is to kiss of it…
Sep 22, 2009 - 3:55 am 18. Kazooskibum:The Democrat Party is a criminal enterprise.
Sep 22, 2009 - 3:59 am 19. Klavan On The Culture » All Your Art Are Belong To Us | Museum And Art:[...] the original here: Klavan On The Culture » All Your Art Are Belong To Us Connect and [...]
Sep 22, 2009 - 4:21 am 20. Jack Olson:Impressionism is where you paint what you see. Expressionism is where you paint what you feel. Socialist Realism is where you paint what you hear. The Obama Administration is where you paint what you’re told to.
Sep 22, 2009 - 4:49 am 21. carla:I don’t know. Could be fun. Giant outdoor murals extolling the joy and pleasure of hyper-inflation. Cutting edge ‘new realism art’ genre depicting humane assisted suicide and death counseling. Extensive mixed media audio-visual displays in physician waiting rooms to fill in the hours waiting to see the physicians assistant. Poetry readings while placed on hold while phoning the Obamacare help line. Why not? Otherwise these ‘artist’s would have to get a job.
Sep 22, 2009 - 4:51 am 22. Fantom:WHere does one go for a grant.
I just discovered my dog is an artist. He pooped on a Koran and it looks just like Obama. Amazing talent I tell Ya’.
Sep 22, 2009 - 5:14 am 23. Paul from Hamburg:Carla is right. This could work, but I think I have an even better idea. Since the Constitution doesn’t actually authorize Congress to spend money on art, the NEA funding has to be part of a legitimate spending area. I think Defense spending would work nicely. Money previously used for the NEA can be used to create the 1st All-American Artists Battalion. Just because it would be fun, we could make it part of the 101st Airborne Division. Base it at Aberdeen Proving Grounds; the artists will have fewer distractions compared to a big East or West Coast city. From the standpoint of the artists, this plan has tremendous benefits. First, they would be guaranteed a steady income, food and a place to live. Basic training would improve their overall health and minimize the chance that a great artist would die prematurely. Random-drug testing would ensure that their art was not hindered by drug use. Arguments about the relative merits of one artist over another would be easily settled based on rank and time of service. For the American public in general, we would no longer be subject to countless advertisements for starving artists sales. Best of all, American leftists could actually support the troops by buying the art they produce.
Sep 22, 2009 - 5:48 am 24. Thomas_L......:Leftie artists, let’s face it, most artists do their best when opposing the forces that restrict freedom. I gag when I see Bruce Springsteen posing as Obama’s lapdog. Soviet art! Aren’t they in quite the quandry now? It’s kind of funny actually.
Sep 22, 2009 - 6:07 am 25. ahem:If you consider the history of the last 60 years or so, you’ll realize that the Left’s appropriation of the arts has been a fait accompli for some time. They’re been producing the equivalent of soviet tractors for quite some time.
Sep 22, 2009 - 6:24 am 26. Carla:JACK O:
Brilliant analysis. Bravo.
PAUL:
Sep 22, 2009 - 6:26 am 27. tanstaafl:Excellent suggestions. Would you be interested in a Czar position?
What’s worse: a White House telling artists to push a political agenda or the artists being so eager to take Big Brother’s call?
It’s a tough call, but I’d say the second one.
Recently, I came across CD’s of one NEA project in the library, an “encouraging reading” project, different classic works of literature (e.g., call of the wild, grapes of wrath) to get America’s children reading.
I listened to a few of them, consisting, mostly, of yakking from literary ex-spurts, some passages read from the work.
How the hell I asked myself did I manage to read most, if not all, of those works in the natural course of my childhood w/o some gigantic government undertaking to “encourage” me ?
There is a (highly offensive) element of self-righteous micro-management in the arts that “liberals” and their artistic counterparts seem to propagate, in the spirit of this guy you quote:
“You are the thought leaders. You are the ones that, if you create a piece of art or promote a piece of art, or create a campaign for a company, and tell our country and our young people sort of what to do and what to be into; and what’s cool and what’s not cool.”
Sep 22, 2009 - 6:31 am 28. George S.:here is some interesting art …from the blog of one of pajamas writers.
http://thepeoplescube.com/
…for laughs at the gulag
Sep 22, 2009 - 6:38 am 29. Poor Citizen:No. 17, now that is funny. The NEA should be nothing more than a few folks getting information from the states and passing it on to Congress/President.
Basically, this green monster needs to be abolished immediately and reduced to a hundred people with a phone.
Thats all.
The NEA is a waste of money. All education should be local.
Get rid of it……………..yesterday.
Sep 22, 2009 - 6:39 am 30. tanstaafl:Quoted above, from NEA appropriations legislation
“…and to the fostering of mutual respect for the diverse beliefs and values of all persons and groups.”
Per a recent hour long special on tee vee, political correctness has morphed into the stratosphere, and textbook adoption has been overwhelmed by cadres of reviewers who scan each sentence for a scintilla of slant, bias, prejudice, whatever.
For example, if a textbook mentions yellow fever and mosquitoes during the digging of the Panama Canal, some reviewer’s pea brain somewhere might construe that to be a slam against Latin peoples (I exaggerate
, but not by much !)
Under the tutelage of such micro-thinkers, students’ brains have been being turned to mush for generations!
It would seem the NEA is in the grips of micro-thinkers, as well, the self-congratulatory brain dead.
Sep 22, 2009 - 6:48 am 31. Now and Then:You’re right about this much, a conservative artist would never be a pat of such a thing, because there is no such thing as a conservative artist.
(cue the: “What about Big and Rich?)
Sep 22, 2009 - 6:54 am 32. Bohemond:“the people on the call weren’t getting NEA money. The NEA doesn’t give money to individual artists.”
No, the NEA funds atts groups that make individual grants, and it was as representatives of these groups that individuals were invited to the confab. And, as it turns out, all 21 of these groups (with $2 million new taxpayer dollars) within two days publicly endorsed Obamacare.
Why is anyone surprised? The Chicago Annenberg Challenge scandal has been right in front of us for over a year: the systematic diversion of education funds to left-wing activism.
Sep 22, 2009 - 7:04 am 33. tanstaafl:The aspect of this that I hope will strike home with the general public is the way it cross-cuts the “traditional” attitude of the artist as a counterweight to the established order. It’s a shallow tradition, and easily shrugged aside for thirty pieces of silver or so.
Under current liberal dogma, everything and everyone must be enlisted, nothing can be allowed to function freely, without supervision and direction.
All groups must be absorbed into the Borg…uh, subsumed into the state.
Independent thinkers, too, must stand at the door, panting subserviently, hands outstretched, waiting for their very own thirty pieces of silver to be handed them benevolently from the public coffers.
The fact that many in “the arts” (not to mention “the sciences”) seem to be OK with this arrangement is a travesty.
Sep 22, 2009 - 7:19 am 34. billslayer:NOWANDTHEN:Hey budddy, got an art project for you today! We’ll call it, “Still life of Sweet Little Barry Servicing the Slumlord.” I suggest a heroic constructivist take so that all the strenuous effort on the part of Barry to extract the payload really shows on his determined brow? Whadaya think buddy?
Sep 22, 2009 - 7:20 am 35. Calvin Ball:The other thing about the NEA is that even wealthy artists crave their grants, not for the money, but because they’re the unofficial arbiter of greatness. To get an NEA grant is to arrive. If we abolish the NEA (and we certainly should), they won’t know how to judge each other’s work.
It would be an interesting experiment in sociology to remove the basis for the pecking order, and watch bedlam ensue.
Sep 22, 2009 - 7:24 am 36. Mr Lucky:31. Now and Then.
“You’re right about this much, a conservative artist would never be a pat of such a thing, because there is no such thing as a conservative artist.”
Do you think that intentionally shrinking/excluding a pool of talent is a good thing for humanity?
Sep 22, 2009 - 7:27 am 37. D'oh:My.Easiest.Rebuttal.Ever.
31. Now and Then.
“You’re right about this much, a conservative artist would never be a pat of such a thing, because there is no such thing as a conservative artist.”
12. Francis W. Porretto:
Sep 22, 2009 - 7:52 am 38. misanthropicus:“A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!” — Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
What’s personal is political! – We want to change the world! – Hope and change! – Mind is like a parachute, it works only when open! – Think globally, act locally! –
… and more crap.
Arts as persuassion tools have always been in the political repertoire, from Ramses… to Hitler and Stalin, to name a few (and here we should examine with much attention the liberals’ fascination with this idea).
However, what made America in this matter different from many other polities along history, was the idea that the taxpayers’ money should not be used for proppin’, primpin’ & pimpin’ transient figures of the executive branch – very good idea, and position which is normally observed by authentic artists.
Yet, the American “artistic establishment” is so narcissistically self-centered and so engaged in displaying its elightenment by association with “noble” causes, that a figure like Obama cannot but bring the usual display of enlightenment to histrionic activistic intensity, propensity which is cynically used by left-wing cultural activists for furthering their purposes.
PS: “histrionic activistic intensity” – a couple of days ago, muffled by other stories, we had Charlize Theron’s public, solemn commitment that she would not marry her guy until gays will be granted this right as well.
Sep 22, 2009 - 7:57 am 39. tanstaafl:Comments not necessary.
Some great examples of ObamaArt, from the People’s Cube, linked above
Personally, I’m partial to the G.O.D. poster
Sep 22, 2009 - 7:58 am 40. misanthropicus:RE #6/Kevin Erickson: [...] the people on the call weren’t getting NEA money. The NEA doesn’t give money to individual artists. [...]
Yes, but the organizations receiving money DO GIVE exhibition spaces to individuals AND CAUSES, DO PROVIDE PR for the aforementioned, DO APPROVE OR REJECT requests for support… and this uniformly for “Art Is A Hammer That Shapes Society” type of events -
Kevin, son of Betholt Brecht, you are a loser -
Sep 22, 2009 - 8:03 am 41. SjB:Looks like, “Obama Piss Art” productions?
Sep 22, 2009 - 8:25 am 42. cfbleachers:Not sure that I can join the uproar on this one, not because AK’s point isn’t valid, but rather…because propagandizing issues and bending the will of the easily manipulated…is the raison d’etre for leftists the world over.
Hollywood, lapdog media, academia…do these very tasks. The reaction I am witnessing suggests “surprise” and “disgust” at the notion that leftist positions are being infused with intentional propagandizing…to let the “kids” come to “know” what is “cool”.
Moving the impressionable to a stance based upon phony “news”, or slanted “entertainment”, or by stifling dissent in academia…or by putting a stranglehold on debate in each and every medium…is not new.
Getting CAUGHT…well, that’s a rather new phenomena. The dirty tricks of leftism have been around for a long time. Forging documents to sway a Presidential election, photoshopping photographs to distort a situation in a war, staging photographs to bring sympathy to one side and revulsion against the other, painting a mind’s eye repeated slander against a certain group of people in movie after movie, intentionally omitting facts from the information stream…and inserting others that are intentionally misleading, blocking hiring and tenure of professors who don’t adhere to a strict political viewpoint…there’s nothing new here.
The disgust, I understand. The surprise…I do not.
Just as academicians sacrificed their honor on the altar of hypocrisy, strangling open dialogue and curiosity …closing minds instead of opening them…
Just as journalists sacrificed their honor on the altar of distortion, creating a diseased information stream..now devoid of trust and believability, …turning the reportage of facts on the ground into sand castles in the air…
Just as Hollywood actors, writers, producers and directors sacrificed their honor on the altar of stereotype slander, making the same “bad guy” out of anyone who does not adhere to a far left worldview…
So, today we find the artist community sacrificing its independence and its honor on the altar of state “thought police”…intending to propagandize political issues with their skills and talents…and to “own minds”…with prefab notions and gold glitter.
Disappointed? Sure. Disgusted? Of course. Surprised?
Not in the least.
Sep 22, 2009 - 8:31 am 43. Rick Zalon:The very idea that we, the great unwashed, are obliged to underwrite the entertainments of our betters, is appalling–that tax monies from bowlers and NASCAR fans must subsidize opera fans and gallery patrons defies the very foundational logic of those who purport to be the defenders of social justice.
Until the NEA endows my favorite entertainments (roller disco and custom cars), I will feel dissenfranchised.
Sep 22, 2009 - 8:54 am 44. Paul from Hamburg:#26. Thank you Carla. I don’t know much about art; I am considered by most to be a Philistine. I suppose that makes me completely qualified to be an art czar in the Obama administration.
#12 Thank you. Heinlein was not alone in his opinion. When the NEA was formed, there were artists who thought it was a bad idea because…wait for it…the government might try to tell the artists what to do.
so, once again, we have the classic “Liberal government does what liberals always feared would be done, but wasn’t, by conservatives.”
Sep 22, 2009 - 9:09 am 45. tanstaafl:While government has had the instincts for a long time, paternalism is at new heights.
This energy sec’y Steven Chu (he has a scientific background but has admitted no training or knowledge in climate) has just noted that…”…he didn’t think average folks had the know-how or will to to change their behavior enough to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.”
The notion of Mark Lloyd, diversity guy at the FCC, is that talk radio licensees that don’t move to new rules should have their licenses yanked, their broadcasting power turned over to another government arm, NPR.
(another way, besides art per se, to control what you are exposed to)
As we speak, that monopolizer of the airwaves, the commander-in-chief (”the medium is the message”) is babbling about “climate change” in NY at the UN, ignoring (barely voting present on) his general’s cautions about losing the Afghan war, leaked just yesterday.
Sep 22, 2009 - 9:14 am 46. tanstaafl:I do recall, now that you mention it Paul from Hamburg, artists expressing dismay at the intrusion of government into their realm and how that realm might come to be perverted.
It wasn’t all that long ago, a decade or two?
And now getting an NEA grant is some kind of badge of artistic worthiness ?
Sep 22, 2009 - 9:34 am 47. Marie Claude:“A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!”
so true that with the same sort of assistance, our artists do not initiate the artistic life anymore since several decades now.
Paris isn’t anymore the referrence like it was before WW2, and the marcket went away too.
But I read that Sarko is cutting down some budgets, therefore some new artists will have to perspire to get a life
Also it’s a good new for us, your true artists can go to Paris again !
My curriculum was also “plastic arts”, I gave up exhibitions, cuz this implied a discourse, generally in the sense of the authorities, lefties, of course, they are the aware persons in cultural domain !
It was like you taste some wine, you had to invent a story for your works, when I thought that a work could speak by itself, just that you only have to quote the circonstances of its elaboration
As I was accumulating works at home, I finally resigned, deciding that I wasn’t that important, and focused my interests elsewhere.
But I preserved the critical spirit, and no fake artist can delude my acuity
Sep 22, 2009 - 9:47 am 48. Chris in Toronto:#44 Paul from Hamburg:
’so, once again, we have the classic “Liberal government does what liberals always feared would be done, but wasn’t, by conservatives.”’
Precisely! The sentiment underlying that sentence is exactly why the Patriot Act (for example) was, for me, so horrendous: not so much that I distrusted how the Bush Administration would use its provisions, but instead, how it would be used by collectivist administrations to follow. And now we see the Obama administration hanging on to the powers of the Patriot Act despite having pledged to get rid of it.
Sep 22, 2009 - 9:52 am 49. tanstaafl:The notion that you know better for yourself than government knows for you is over.
The president’s proposed speech to the kiddies on the opening day of skool originally said the kiddies should reflect on & even write down ways they can help the prezzydent.
Yossi Sergant, until a few weeks ago, the NEA’s communications director…(he has been re-assigned)
“…”This is just the beginning,” Sergant says on the call. “This is the first telephone call of a brand new conversation. We are just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government. What that looks like legally. We’re still trying to figure out the laws of putting government websites of Facebook and the use of Twitter. This is all being sorted out. We are participating in history as it’s being made, so bear with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely. And we can really work together to move the needle to get stuff done.”
It’s a whole cloth, your skin should crawl.
(over and out)
Sep 22, 2009 - 10:12 am 50. Cuthbert:I take exception to one thing only – the capitol of state prostitutes and whores is Washington DC not Nevada. Our hookers are just trying to make a living.
Sep 22, 2009 - 11:00 am 51. carla:Yo, MARIE CLAUDE:
Of course the complete history of French art, which I adore, was, until the late 19th century, a matter of royal patronage, i.e. government support. But at least those artists had talent. Modern American art (often difficult to call it art) is a fraud.
Sep 22, 2009 - 12:38 pm 52. seansarto:In my opine, “Art” is nothin’ more then a self’s internal dialouge made material in some fashion…A conversation one has with themselves put on exhibition…Sometimes times it’s just psychosis…
What an audience to such expressions need ta determine is the difference between artistry and con-artistry.
What’s really pathetic is how this Liberal an’ Pro-Nubian Supremicist coup is tryin’ to evoke the FSA programs and the advent of Walker Evans, Agee, Lange..etc…as justification for USA political propaganda. Even if they gotta manufacture a Depression to do such.
Yeah it’s sad ta see Springsten as the black-man’s b*tch…’Specially since the NAVY tried ta set that same dynamic up on me when I was enlisted….At least I had the sense ta not to be fooled by it. A fradulent superior is somethin’ made possible only by an office.
NECA National Endowment of the Con-Artists.
Sep 22, 2009 - 2:22 pm 53. seansarto:I am currently trying to teach my dog to write his memoirs, “My Life as a Chinese Soup Dog”…(I am against ghost-writing).and am petitioning the Chinese government for a grant in the name of social progress.
Sep 22, 2009 - 2:27 pm 54. seansarto:Hmmm…
My dog has such strength in him….so many trials…so many…
I’m getting veklempt…
People have to know!
Sep 22, 2009 - 2:37 pm 55. MJBrutus:Oh, but it gets even better. You see, not only is the ONE&169; attempting to enlist the NEA but let’s not forget about their “localism” plans for opinion journalism on radio. Oh, but it gets even better. You see, not only is the ONE&169; attempting to enlist the NEA and talk radio, but they also want to “bail out” the newspaper industry. After all, just as starving artists are looking for hand to feed them and just as starving lefty radio talkers are looking for hand to feed them, the newspapers are also looking. And who bites the hand that feeds them?
Sep 22, 2009 - 2:49 pm 56. zhombre:A lot of artists have already politicized their art, and veer to this agenda; it’s practically derigueur especially among the legions of untalented conformists in the arts who arrogate to themselves the role of transgressive, talented nonconformist. The Obama WH & the NEA hardly needed to ask. The “arts communities” were simply offered money for what they were giving up for free. Women who work in Nevada brothels apply the same logic.
Sep 22, 2009 - 3:42 pm 57. raba raba:52. seansarto
“pro-nubian supremeicist coup? springsteen as the blackman’s b*tch? the navy tried to set you up in same dynamic?
is that is going on with the NEA? can you give us more insight on this please? does your postion fit in with christian conservatisim?
Sep 22, 2009 - 5:22 pm 58. Banned by Huffpo:I was just awarded a $1.25 million grant from the NEA. The application process was pretty simple. All you have to do is explain the concept of your art project, the memebers of society if will benefit, and how much money you need.
My proposal was to create unique sand sculptures (I can’t go into specifics as far as the exact location, but it’s in Florida) that glorify gay, bisexual, transgender, and hermaphrodite groups.
Fill out a few pages of fluffy narrative on how this will “enlighten” the population at large, hit send, and three weeks later I got the letter in the mail with the full amount requested!
Sep 23, 2009 - 8:54 am 59. Ted:NEA pimping starving artists to da man. Did Skolnick got his training at ACORN too?
Sep 23, 2009 - 9:47 am 60. Marie Claude:#58, you nail it LMAO
Sep 23, 2009 - 3:51 pm 61. Clare Spark:#58 “banned by Huffpo”. I don’t believe you. No individual artist gets that kind of money. Did others here see this as a playful hoax?
Sep 26, 2009 - 10:02 am 62. Marie Claude:Clare, it’s not a hoax, for artists that are priced by the institutions
Sep 27, 2009 - 4:26 am 63. Klavan On The Culture » All Your Art Are Belong To Us : Comfortable Life:[...] Original post: Klavan On The Culture » All Your Art Are Belong To Us [...]
Sep 27, 2009 - 4:36 am