Over the years, many have objected to giving the hard-earned money of working Americans to the National Endowment for the Arts. The reasons vary. For those of us interested in the health of literature and the arts in general, the primary objection involves the NEA’s habitual funding of hopelessly trite, politically correct junk.
Libertarians and free-market types often object to the NEA because it routinely supports “art” that everyone knows could never survive on its own in the market. For many social conservatives, the NEA is guilty of giving our tax dollars to people who use it to deliberately flout the values of the very taxpayers who pay the bills.
I have to confess, however, that I have never considered the possibility that the NEA would be used by a presidential administration to promote its domestic policy agenda. However, it may well be that the Obama administration has been doing just that on health care “reform” and various other initiatives.
The White House has tried to campaign hard for its health-care overhaul, but now allegations have arisen that the Obama administration abused its power by pushing the National Endowment for the Arts into campaigning for it as well.
And the allegations are emanating from the ACORN slayers at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood, which has a transcript of the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement putting in her order for “art” that promotes president Oblarney’s agenda:
I would encourage you to pick something, whether it’s health care, education, the environment, you know, there’s four key areas that the corporation has identified as the areas of service.
Now, we have a new reason to defund the National Endowment for the Arts. The NEA is obviously redundant. Why do we need Stalinesque art celebrating the agenda and “achievements” of the president? Isn’t that what we have the national news media for?
DOUBLE STANDARD ALERT:
As if to prove themselves utterly incapable of applying the same set of standards to Democrats as they apply to Republicans, Obama’s supporters are claiming that the NEA issue is much ado about nothing. Sullivan’s dismissal is typical:
Right-wing blogs are up in arms over an “EXPLOSIVE” audio clip of a conference call involving progressive artists, the National Endowment of the Arts, and the White House Office of Public Engagement, claiming the call proves an Obama conspiracy to use the NEA for partisan gain.
This is from the folks who spent years demanding that the Bushies receive jail time for privately calling reporters and reminding them of facts that everyone inside the Beltway already knew, the same folks who went nuts over a fictional conspiracy to rifle through our library records.
These are not serious people.
UPDATE:
Looks like the White House, while refusing to admit that the NEA conference call was about state-sponsored propaganda, is aware that the NEA conference call was inappropriate. Now, if we can just get the Obots to admit that they would have gone berserk if the Bush White House had done something similar.
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