Posts Tagged ‘Obama adminstration’

Michael van der Galien

Using Arts for Conservative Purposes

by Michael van der Galien

Big Hollywood and Big Government have done tremendous work in recent weeks. They have proved without a doubt that the Obama administration and its allies have gone too far. They’ve crossed the line. Federal agencies are turned into propaganda tools. This is something we haven’t seen in the U.S. since, well, ever. This administration knows no shame. Everything is permissible in order to push its legislative agenda through the collective throat of the American people. And the MSM are covering it all up, refusing to spend time and attention to the ACORN scandal first and now the NEA scandal.

It’s a good thing there are conservatives willing to expose this administration for what it is.

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President Obama and Kalpen Modi, Associate Director of the Office of Public Engagement

But the question is, what’s next? How can this be countered and how can the Obama administration be forced to back down? As it is, liberal groups, news organizations and individuals continue to cover up for the administration. Perhaps someone will be thrown under the bus again, but the thugs of Team Obama will remain in place and continue to “transform America.”

Exposing their tactics is necessary to fight them, but it’s not enough to actually beat them. Mr. Breitbart and team have learned that the tactics the left has used against conservatives for decades; to discredit them works wonders. But if conservatives want to take back the government, we have to copy the left’s organizing skills as well. (more…)

Endre Balogh

Artists: Another ‘Entitlement’ Group

by Endre Balogh

I must admit that when I first heard about the National Endowment for the Arts conference call to enlist the arts community in propagandizing the White House’s agenda, I was a little mystified as to why it was so controversial.  After all, the NEA, through its funding choices, has been actively undermining American values for many years.  Way back in 1986 we were treated to the scandal of Andres Serrano getting $15,000 from the NEA for his mediocre photo of a plastic crucifix in his own urine – “Piss Christ.”  That is just one of a myriad of egregious examples of NEA funding going to support dubious “art” that functions solely to corrode the fabric of civilized society.

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Sure, the NEA gives money to major established arts organizations – symphonies, ballet companies, repertory theater groups, and the like — but that is how they maintain their veneer of staid respectability, all the while promulgating their Leftist, nihilistic agenda through their smaller grants.  For example, I know a truly great American artist, Harry Carmean, who, among his other credits, was the Chairman of the Fine Arts Department at the Art Center College of Design  in Pasadena, California and taught there for 43 years.  He applied for NEA grants repeatedly to help fund his work but was rejected each time because his paintings were deemed “not edgy enough.”   Translation: he actually possesses artistic talent, skill, and discipline, which he uses to create beauty instead of pseudo-artistic, politicized claptrap.  We all know he would have had a far better chance of getting a grant out of the subjective and ideologically driven apparatchiks at the NEA had he used dog feces to paint images of female genitalia. (more…)