All Your Art Are Belong To Us

(Analyst's note:  This report is more than a little troubling.)

from Pajamas Media

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.