Demand Congressional Investigation: NEA Conference Call Broke Laws

In the aftermath of the Andrew Breitbart/James O’Keefe/Hannah Giles-broken ACORN scandal, President Obama and his allies in Congress have distanced themselves from the community organizing goliath.  Congress has cut off funds, and Obama has refused to speak about the matter.  End of story, right?

Wrong.

There’s only one problem: the ACORN mentality – pinpointing and mobilizing particular groups in support of a radical-left agenda – is no longer restricted to government-funded private non-profits like ACORN.  The ACORN mentality now dominates the government itself.  Taxpayer dollars are being used by elected officials to encourage the deification of President Obama and his agenda.  And one of the chief organs of the government propaganda machine is the National Endowment for the Arts.

Let’s start from the beginning.  On August 25, artist Patrick Courrielche told the story of a conference call he attended on August 10.  That conference call was hosted by the NEA, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and United We Serve.  The goal of the conference call: “to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda – health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal.”  The call would push “a group of artists, producers, promoters, organizers, influencers, marketers, taste-makers, leaders or just plain cool people to join together and work together to promote a more civically engaged America and celebrate how the arts can be used for a positive change!” (more…)

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Tags: "Scrubs", ACORN, Americans for the Arts, Americans for the Arts Artists Committee, Anti-Lobbying Act
Posted Sep 21st 2009 at 11:20 am in Culture, News, Obama, Politics | 6214No Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/bshapiro/2009/09/21/demand-congressional-investigation-nea-conference-call-broke-laws/Demand+Congressional+Investigation%3A+NEA+Conference+Call+Broke+Laws+2009-09-21+18%3A20%3A19Ben+Shapiro

How to Corrupt Artists in One Quick and Easy Telecon

If you’ve ever wondered–and worried–about where government support of the arts leads, look no further than the full transcript of an August 10 telecon  between an official at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and a group of “independent artists from around the country.” The short version: It leads to the use of taxpayer-funded culture as a means of propagandizing for specific, partisan political aims. Which corrupts not just art but artists.

As Patrick Courrelieche, an L.A.-based arts organizer who participated in the call, reported at Big Hollywood, the people running the call, including the NEA’s director of communications Yosi Sergant  and members of the White House Office of Public Engagement and United We Serve, told the assembled crew of “thought leaders” that “we’re going to come at you with some specific asks here” (that’s a direct quote from Buffy Wicks of the Office of Public Engagement). 

Chief among the requests from Sergant (who was either “reassigned” from the agency or “reportedly resigned” after denying the full extent of his role in organizing the call) was “to pick something whether it’s health care, education, the environment, you know… [and] apply artistic, you know, your artistic creative communities’ utilities and bring them to the table.” Beyond the specific policy issues above, the call organizers stressed the ideologically loaded concept of “service” as the animating principle of the Obama administration and wanted the artists to do whatever they could to promote that. As Wicks put it, “We really view [our efforts] as an onramp to a lifetime of service. We really want service to be incorporated into people’s daily lives.”

Given that the NEA prides itself on being the single largest funding source for the arts in the country, such arm-twisting by agency officials, however masked in fulsome compliments to creators’ genius, is disturbing on its face. It clearly sets a political agenda for the very people who are likely to be applying for, well, NEA and other government grants. Does anyone think that the organizers were fishing around for projects that might complicate the public option for health care?

(more…)

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Tags: Andres Serrano, Berlin Wall, Big Hollywood, Buffy Wicks, John Frohnmayer
Posted Sep 21st 2009 at 8:51 am in Culture, History, Media Criticism, Uncategorized | 599870 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/ngillespie/2009/09/21/how-to-corrupt-artists-in-one-quick-and-easy-telecon/How+to+Corrupt+Artists+in+One+Quick+and+Easy+Telecon2009-09-21+15%3A51%3A05Nick+Gillespie