Obama Poster Contest Angers Design Community: It’s ‘The Opposite Of Jobs’

President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign recently launched a poster contest, inviting artists from across the country to submit designs in support of the president’s $447 billion jobs plan and re-election. Although three winners will be given framed copies of their artworks signed by the president, artists who apply will not be paid for their labor, and they must relinquish the rights to their own work upon submission, according to the contest website.

Ed. Note: This photo was not in the original HuffPo piece and was added by Big Hollywood.

Many professional designers and illustrators — a group not exactly known for bashing liberals and casting Republican votes — say they find the contest detrimental to their industry. They argue that such competitions, entered by artists “on speculation” in hopes of gaining exposure, are helping to depress wages in an already tough job market, even when the artists know upfront what they’re getting into. …

Of course, this president surely understands, perhaps better than most, the power of an arresting political poster. The “HOPE” design created by artist Shepard Fairey — and emblazoned on countless posters and other objects during the 2008 campaign — already ranks among the most iconic images in American political history, having played an obvious yet incalculable role in Obama winning the White House. Obama’s 2012 campaign is clearly hoping to harness a bit of that poster magic again.

In an email, Fairey told HuffPost that he’s disappointed when he considers the poster contest, although not for the same reasons as the anti-spec crowd. He believes that artists should distinguish between lending their art to political causes, as in the poster contest, and participating in commercial spec work.

Fairey said he didn’t ask to be compensated for the HOPE design because, “In my mind, Obama’s election and the progress that hypothetically would yield was the reward.” That reward, he implies, hasn’t arrived yet. …

“Now that we are in a terrible economy,” he added, “maybe Obama should do what FDR did with the WPA program and put artists and designers to work, rather than just asking for help with his campaign art.”

Full story here.

Few things reveal as much about a person as their priorities. With all the tragedy in the world today, all the righteous causes that could use a little burst of stardom, what does the following reveal about these celebs?

The left-wing Politico:

Some celebrities are speaking out in support of Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private accused of disclosing classified materials to the website WikiLeaks.

Among them: Viggo Mortensen and Michael Stipe, who joined with Amnesty International and the Center for Constitutional Rights and sent a letter Saturday to President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates “asking for immediate action into the inhumane treatment of” Manning. ….

Others who signed the letter include Daniel Ellsberg, Rosanne Cash, Shepard Fairey, Danny Glover and Tom Morello. 

During a rally Sunday outside the Marine Corps Base Quantico, where Manning is being held, dozens were arrested, including Ellsberg.

With Haiti, Japan, three Middle East wars, refugees in Africa, homeless in America, sock drawers to be organized and lint to be plucked from belly buttons, these jerkoffs find a guy accused of being a traitor to America worth their celebrity.

Revealing. Not terribly surprising. But revealing.

Luckily, the press office for this soon-to-be classic has assembled a slick little YouTube video highlighting all of the big moments of the show.  Believe it or not, this video is meant to inspire you to buy a ticket.

Great, terrific, perfect…  um…  a couple things.

First of all, Does Shepard Fairey know you’ve stolen his logo for your set design?  (I guess it’s ok since he stole it from someone else.)

Also, did I really just see an opening number framing America under Bush in 2008 as “Chaos”?  Chaos??  Are you sure that isn’t meant as clever foreshadowing?

And how about those lyrics for “Chaos”:

Round and round
Upside-down
Inside-out
There’s no doubt.
We’re in Chaos!
Here come the hounds of Hell, Chaos!
As far as I can tell, Chaos!

From the show’s web site:

In no way does HOPE show Obama as a saint, but it grants us a view behind the scenes of his cometlike rise and also tells from the personal ups and downs of a man who has worked his way up from a social worker in Chicago to the most powerful man in the world, simply by using his power of persuasion.

In a stirring and modern musical production, HOPE shows the amazing history of the development of a new societal movement to a new generation.

The HOPE production team and its performers do not take up any political stance. We do not express a political opinion in our own name. The presentation of the public opinions and feelings in the musical follows the general interpretation of the current events like they prevail in the media and the society.

As easy as it would be to slam them on this, I actually pity their lack of self awareness.  Remember: this is the same nation who convinced themselves that the Third Reich was just a natural response to the Treaty of Versailles and not an atrocious attempt at world domination fueled by hateful paranoia…  If they can rationalize that, they can pretend their play is not political hagiography.

I also noticed an interesting bit of casting.  The roles of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin are played by the same woman (only major characters in the piece double-cast in this fashion).  Is this a subtle bit of subtext from the director?  Maybe the message is, “All those white women who stood in the way of Obama being President look alike to me.”

So, it appears that producers in Germany think there is a market for hip-hop hagiography.  Maybe there is, for now.  But, as President Obama’s policies continue to drag down the world’s economy and send mixed messages to our international partners regarding the Islamic terrorist threat, the next big Obama musical might be a lot less “Jesus Christ Superstar” and a lot more “Wicked.”

A senior official at the National Endowment for the Arts encouraged artists to promote President Obama’s political agenda in a conference call he organized with the White House. The NEA’s communications director Yosi Sergant eventually resigned in August amid accusations that the grant-making organization was becoming politicized. The administration called it a “teaching moment,” but the media didn’t seem to catch the lesson.

Read the full list here.

Ever wonder why you can’t just skip over those FBI warnings at the start of every DVD?

Ever wonder why “piracy” is always such a big issue for Hollywood when discussing our economic relationship with China?

It’s because writers, actors, directors and producers all live and die from royalties and residuals (payments for the repeated use of a copyright protected piece of intellectual property).  I know most people don’t want to hear this, but being a writer, director or actor is usually not a great life.  Until (or unless) you are lucky enough to make it big, it is fiscally challenging to say the least.  So many actors who are not stars are lucky if they get one or two weeks’ worth of work in Hollywood per year.  How does an actor survive on only two weeks’ pay?  They don’t.  But, one thing that helps them is they get paid for every subsequent use of the show they were on.  Same with the writer and the other creative folks working on the show.

But, as you can imagine, if their work could be legally duplicated and distributed without any payment to them for their work, it would seriously disrupt the financial life of these artists.  That is called copyright infringement, or piracy.  The adherence to the fundamental belief that an artist’s work is protected, a writer’s words and stories are protected, and an actor’s image and performance is protected from duplication and piracy is fundamental to the economics of the artist’s business.

Enter Shepard Fairey.

Shepard Fairey is often referred to as a street artist.  He made a name for himself by creating large posters and sticking them up by the thousands on public places.  Others would call this vandalism, but I digress.  He is heralded as the creator of the Obama “Hope” poster which is seen as a major influence in rallying devoted support to the Obama candidacy.  The “Hope” poster conveyed in one image and in one word everything that the campaign wanted its most fervent allies to embrace, champion and (most importantly) to perpetuate to their friends who might not have been quite as fervent.   The poster has been described as “the most efficacious American political illustration since ‘Uncle Sam Wants You.’” There is no denying its efficacy, even if its message doesn’t send a “thrill up your leg.”  Only problem with it:  It appears to be pirated.

I’m sure that this revelation has sent many of Fairey’s admirers into the same depression that George Harrison fans felt when it became clear that “My Sweet Lord” was just a rip-off of the Chiffons’ hit “He’s So Fine.”  (Seriously, the fact that George Harrison may have ripped off another tune is one thing… but “He’s So Fine”???)

In February (a convenient two weeks after the inauguration), the AP announced a copyright infringement lawsuit against Fairey claiming that the image Fairey used was copyright protected intellectual property owned by the AP.  Fairey’s response was two-fold:  First, he claimed protection of his poster under the “Fair Use” guidelines of the copyright laws, and, second,  it doesn’t really matter anyway because the AP is wrong; the image used as the basis for the poster was not the image AP claims ownership of, it was another photo. Any reasonable examination of the original AP-owned photo and Fairey’s poster would seem to favor the AP’s argument — and just this last Friday, Fairey not only admitted that the AP’s image was, in fact, the image he used, but he also admitted lying, submitting false images and destroying others during the discovery phase of the lawsuit. He still clings to his over-riding defense that his art and use of the photo is not piracy as it falls under the “Fair Use” guidelines.

Now, I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t even play one on TV (although I think I would do a better job than some of those replacement actresses in the last season of “Boston Legal…”  Geez!), so I am not here to argue about the “Fair Use” provisions in the copyright laws.  But, I do suggest you read the provision and consider the issue for yourself.

OK, back to Hollywood and Broadway.

Those actors on stage during act one who see a red light in the house indicating a video camera is on them….  They will go right off stage and demand that the stage manager do something. The stage manager then tells the house manager, the house manager tells the usher, and THAT’s why you are being distracted by a seventy-year-old woman climbing over three rows of seats trying to wrestle a camcorder from an unsuspecting patron during “Phantom of the Opera.” It’s not because the red light is distracting them… it’s because they are protecting their performance and their image from being duplicated and distributed without their permission.  It is their right.  Just as it is the right of a professional photographer to protect their product from being copied, slightly altered and re-distributed without THEIR permission.

So imagine my surprise when I didn’t see one person from the Writers’ Guild or from SAG cheering on the AP.  How could they not?  The writer’s just endured an industry-crippling strike and the major issue was residual payments for use of their product on the Internet.  Though Internet re-plays of “30 Rock” is not exactly the same as barely photo-shopping a photo and distributing it as art, but the core principal is the same:  A work of art or entertainment must be protected from duplication or re-distribution or the entire copyright edifice will begin to crumble.  Michael Moore was so thrilled with the WGA in their unwavering position on the webcasts, that he gushed to the LA Times: 

“This is an historic moment for labor in this country, …To have the writers union stand up like we did, not give back a single thing and make them give — it was a really great moment to sit in there and listen to everything.”

So why are Moore and other left-leaning artists, writers and directors relatively silent on the Fairey issue?  You would think that the protection of intellectual property is something they would champion.

The question answers itself. Fairey is an artist who uses his art for the right reasons. He helped get Obama elected.  He made a great poster in support of same-sex marriage.  He gave President Bush fangs and a trickle of blood down his chin in another poster.  “So what if he broke copyright laws… his art is effective, he’s cool, and he thinks like us, we will look away.”  I love the smell of cognitive dissonance in the morning.

Before you lefties start flaming the comments with claims that Fairey made no money off of the poster so there is no infringement…  understand one thing:  Whether Fairey made money or not, it doesn’t matter with regard to copyright laws.  I can’t put on a production of “Wicked” at the local high school gym as long as I don’t charge any money for tickets.  I can’t make copies of the DVD of “Titanic” and start handing them out for free on the street.  You MUST know that, right?

And by the way, to suggest that Mr. Fairey has not benefitted from his association with the “Hope” poster is disingenuous at best.  Mr. Fairey is currently enjoying the honor of having a special exhibition of his work at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.  A hand-crafted collage version of the “Hope” poster is now in the Smithsonian.  If you think that the sale of future Fairey works will not be influenced by this, you don’t understand market economics.  Also, just because Fairey might not have made any direct income from the poster, does not mean that someone didn’t make any, most notably, the Obama campaign and transition teams.

In all of my searching for some sort of outcry over Fairey’s use of protected work for his poster, I did find an interesting trend.  It seems that in the past, one of the champions of copyright protection with regard to these types of images and artwork has been none other than Shepard Fairey.  You see, before “Hope” there was “Obey,” Fairey’s breakout poster in which he used a photo of wrestler Andre the Giant, modified the image, and affixed the word “Obey.” The iconic image was adapted recently by artist Baxter Orr.  Orr gave Andre a SARS surgical mask and gave it the caption, “Protect Yourself.” What did “Fair-use Fairey” do?  He sued Baxter Orr.  Orr cries hypocrisy:  “”It’s ridiculous for someone who built their empire on appropriating other people’s images,” he said. “Obey Giant has become like Tide and Coca-Cola.”  Fairey’s gentlemanly response?  He called Orr a “parasite.”

But this is only Fairey’s protection of his famous “Obey” icon, right?  He doesn’t care what people do with his “Hope” poster…  that was all done for free and to benefit the Obama campaign, right?  Well….  It seems that many of the posters that got distributed to Obama supporters at events were found on eBay auctions (those damn capitalists) and Mr. Fairey was not amused.  He demanded that eBay take down the auctions, his website called the people engaged in the sale as “greedy” and he subsequently opened up a page for the exclusive sale of signed “Hope” posters.

Any director, writer or actor interested in making long-term money in the entertainment industry should be calling Fairey what he is:  A plagiarist.  But they won’t.  And they won’t protest for an end to the Afghan war even though casualties are mounting under President Obama’s watch.  And they won’t claim President Obama is taking away their freedoms even though he extended President Bush’s declaration of national emergency this past September 10th (something the left continually criticized President Bush for). 

One wonders what fault, if any, the left will find in this President or his loyal supporters like Fairey.

In a strange twist to an already complicated legal situation, artist Shepard Fairey admitted today to legal wrongdoing in his ongoing battle with the Associated Press.

Fairey said in a statement issued late Friday that he knowingly submitted false images and deleted others in the legal proceedings, in an attempt to conceal the fact that the AP had correctly identified the photo that Fairey had used as a reference for his “Hope” poster of then-Sen. Barack Obama.

“Throughout the case, there has been a question as to which Mannie Garcia photo I used as a reference to design the HOPE image,” Fairey said. “The AP claimed it was one photo, and I claimed it was another.”

New filings to the court, he said, “state for the record that the AP is correct about which photo I used…and that I was mistaken. While I initially believed that the photo I referenced was a different one, I discovered early on in the case that I was wrong. In an attempt to conceal my mistake I submitted false images and deleted other images.”

The complete must-read article here.

On September 10, the NEA announced that Sergant would be re-assigned with this curious statement accompanying the move:

“On August tenth, the National Endowment for the Arts participated in a call with arts organizations to inform them of the president’s call to national service. The White House office of public engagement also participated in the call, which provided information on how the Corporation for National and Community Service can assist groups interested in sponsoring service projects or having their members volunteer on other projects. This call was not a means to promote any legislative agenda and any suggestions to that end are simply false. The NEA regularly does outreach to various organizations to inform of the work we are doing and the resources available to them.”

This statement leads any objective and reasonable observer to wonder why Mr. Sergant would be “re-assigned” if there was nothing wrong with this purely “information/outreach” conference call. As has often been the case with this, the most open and transparent administration in history, it is very difficult to get a straight answer. We can’t even learn WHAT Sergant’s new position is, let alone why he was asked to step down from his role as Communications Director.

If the NEA and the White House are shocked that Mr. Sergant would blur the lines between arts advocacy and politics then they are doing their best Claude Rains impersonation. Yosi Sergant is all about art and politics. The only reason anyone knows Yosi Sergant’s NAME is because of his devastatingly effective work rallying artists to the Obama cause and using their artistry to promote the image, the essence, the idea of Obama.

After the election and during the transition, Mr. Sergant continued rallying artists in support of the President-elect. As curator of Manifest Hope:DC a Washington version of the exhibi, he first assembled in Denver for the Democratic National Convention, Sergant rallied support from sponsors to present the Obama Art Fest exhibit at M Street location in Georgetown. Who were two of the main sponsors of this Obama Art Orgy? MoveOn.org’s PAC and the SEIU. That’s right, the same union tough-guys who like to intimidate folks at heath care town halls also like to go to gallery’s in Georgetown and sip cosmos out of recyclable cups.

According their website,  MANIFESTHOPE: DC showcased the works of over 150 different artists advocating improvement in three key areas: HEALTH CARE REFORM, WORKERS’ RIGHTS, and THE GREEN ECONOMY.  Sound familiar?  Yup, that’s right, the theme of the artists work at ManifestHope seems eerily similar to the agenda of the August 10 conference call.

One other fun-fact from the irony department:  One of the judges of the exhibit, along with Spike Lee and Shepard Fairey was none other than recently-resigned Van Jones.  Follow this link to view some examples of the non-conformist artists work.  (Isn’t it great how they’re all such free thinkers and don’t follow the herd?)

If the Administration wanted to know what type of soldier Sergant would be at the NEA they should have just read his interviews over the past year, it’s pretty clear. You see, in the left-leaning arts and performing arts world Sergant is a bit of a rock star. He is the first among them to rise up and organize artists to push a political agenda and message all the way to the White House therefore, he was adulated from left to very left all over the Internet and his quote trail is easy to follow:

“My goal is to get Obama elected. I use the mechanisms I know, which are basically artistic. Look how important the grass roots are. Look at the effect they can have. I drank the Kool-Aid. I am alive with it, I believe…”

And once he was elected did the Administration really think that Sergant would settle into a boring PR position at a funding agency and not use his skills to rally artists around the president’s agenda?  It would be like assigning Mary Matalin a job as spokesperson for the Post Office, she’d be effective, but eventually she’d start using her position to bash Democrats, it’s what she does, it’s who she is.

And so it was with Yosi Sergant.  Before he started in his official capacity at the NEA, he assembled meetings of “hip-hop” artists and graffiti artists to meet with the administration as well as the first, White House Poetry Jam in May.  Sergant considered himself a hip-hop artist.  He said, “Spray-paint brought me to the NEA and I won’t forget that.”  He also told Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop – Won’t Stop blog:

“I think we can revolutionize the way that Americans think about art.”

That’s a terrific sentiment Mr. Sergant.  Trouble is:  That’s not the NEA’s job.  The NEA gives out grants to arts organizations.  They do not revolutionize the way Americans think about ANYTHING.  They fund theatres and museums and let the theatres and the museums do the “revolutionizing”.  And since the NEA re-assigned you after the news of your phone calls came to light, I would have to assume that NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman agrees.

Sometime between when I finished the critique and when it went live online, I was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to take part in a conference call that invited a group of rising artist and art community luminaries “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.” 

Now admittedly, I’m a skeptic of BIG government. In my view, power tends to overreach whenever given the opportunity. It’s a law of human nature that has very few exceptions. That said, it felt to me that by providing issues as a cynosure for inspiration to a handpicked arts group – a group that played a key role in the President’s election as mentioned throughout the conference call – the National Endowment for the Arts was steering the art community toward creating art on the very issues that are currently under contentious national debate; those being health care reform and cap-and-trade legislation. Could the National Endowment for the Arts be looking to the art community to create an environment amenable to the administration’s positions? 

Before arguing why I see this as a gross overreach of the National Endowment for the Arts and its mission, a brief background on the conference call is needed. 

On Thursday August 6th, I was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts to attend a conference call scheduled for Monday August 10th hosted by the NEA, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and United We Serve. The call would include “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!” 

I learned after the conference call that there were approximately 75 people participating, including many well respected street-artists, filmmakers, art galleries, music venues, musicians and music producers, writers, poets, actors, independent media outlets, marketers, and various other professionals from the creative community. I suppose I was invited because of my work in creating arts initiatives, but being a former employer of the NEA’s Director of Communications was probably a factor as well. 

Backed by the full weight of President Barack Obama’s call to service and the institutional weight of the NEA, the conference call was billed as an opportunity for those in the art community to inspire service in four key categories, and at the top of the list were “health care” and “energy and environment.” The service was to be attached to the President’s United We Serve campaign, a nationwide federal initiative to make service a way of life for all Americans. 

It sounded, how should I phrase it…unusual, that the NEA would invite the art community to a meeting to discuss issues currently under vehement national debate. I decided to call in, and what I heard concerned me. 

The people running the conference call and rallying the group to get active on these issues were Yosi Sergant, the Director of Communications for the National Endowment for the Arts; Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement; Nell Abernathy, Director of Outreach for United We Serve; Thomas Bates, Vice President of Civic Engagement for Rock the Vote; and Michael Skolnik, Political Director for Russell Simmons. 

We were encouraged to bring the same sense of enthusiasm to these “focus areas” as we had brought to Obama’s presidential campaign, and we were encouraged to create art and art initiatives that brought awareness to these issues. Throughout the conversation, we were reminded of our ability as artists and art professionals to “shape the lives” of those around us. The now famous Obama “Hope” poster, created by artist Shepard Fairey and promoted by many of those on the phone call, and will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” song and music video were presented as shining examples of our group’s clear role in the election. 

Obama has a strong arts agenda, we were told, and has been very supportive of both using and supporting the arts in creative ways to talk about the issues facing the country. We were “selected for a reason,” they told us. We had played a key role in the election and now Obama was putting out the call of service to help create change. We knew “how to make a stink,” and were encouraged to do so. 

Throughout the conversation my inner dialogue was firing away questions so fast that the NRA would’ve been envious. Is this truly the role of the NEA? Is building a message distribution network, for matters other than increasing access to the arts and arts education, the role of the National Endowment for the Arts? Is providing the art community issues to address, especially those that are currently being vehemently debated nationally, a legitimate role for the NEA? I found it highly unlikely that this was in their original charter, so I checked. 

The NEA published a book entitled National Endowment for the Arts: A History 1965-2008 early this year. Combing through the 40+ year history of the NEA, I could not find a single instance of the agency creating or supporting a national initiative that encouraged the art community to address current issues under contentious debate. 

The NEA was created by the Congress of the United States and President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 as “a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, both new and established; bringing the arts to all Americans; and providing leadership in arts education.”  The issue of health care is curiously absent from this description on their website. 

So I’d like to start a little debate and ask you, the reader, the same question. Do you think it is the place of the NEA to encourage the art community to address issues currently under legislative consideration? 

And before answering, let me give you my take. 

The NEA is the nation’s largest annual funder of the arts. That is right, the largest funder of the arts in the nation – a fact that I’m sure was not lost on those that were on the call, including myself. One of the NEA’s major functions is providing grants to artists and arts organizations. The NEA has also historically shown the ability to attract “matching funds” for the art projects and foundations that they select. So we have the nation’s largest arts funder, which is a federal agency staffed by the administration, with those that they potentially fund together on a conference call discussing taking action on issues under vigorous national debate. Does there appear to be any potential for conflict here?   

Discussed throughout the conference call was a hope that this group would be one that would carry on past the United We Serve campaign to support the President’s initiatives and those issues for which the group was passionate. The making of a machine appeared to be in its infancy, initiated by the NEA, to corral artists to address specific issues. This function was not the original intention for creating the National Endowment for the Arts. 

A machine that the NEA helped to create could potentially be wielded by the state to push policy. Through providing guidelines to the art community on what topics to discuss and providing them a step-by-step instruction to apply their art form to these issues, the “nation’s largest annual funder of the arts” is attempting to direct imagery, songs, films, and literature that could create the illusion of a national consensus. This is what Noam Chomsky calls “manufacturing consent.” 

Now, if you are for the issues being pursued by the current administration, you may be inclined to think favorably of what I am labeling “overreach.” What a powerful weapon to fight those that are opposed to our ideas, you may think. For those in this camp I ask you this – will you feel the same when the opposition has access to the same machine? If history is any indication, the pendulum swings both ways. Is persuasion what the originators envisioned when they brought the legislation that created the NEA to the floor of Congress? 

As a member of the art community for the past 14 years, I raise these questions only after careful consideration. Many of those on the call are from my hometown. My position here should not be construed as a personal attack on the call participants. Many of those on the call worked tirelessly on the Obama campaign and are proud of their victory. They look at this as an opportunity to be involved directly with the White House, which is an exciting prospect to many in the art world whose experience with the government may be limited to paying taxes and voting. 

But the art community must put this excitement aside and ask itself about the proper role of government agencies created to promote the arts.  And if put in the wrong hands, could a message machine built by the NEA be used in a nefarious manner not currently foreseeable? 

In an attempt to recapture the excitement and enthusiasm of the campaign the organizers of this conference call have entered murky waters, a strait that the NEA cannot afford to swim. Previously shackled with the controversy over the Serrano and Mapplethorpe images of 1989 that escalated to a debate over its very existence, the NEA needs to stay far away from any questions of impropriety. 

There is no shortage of problems within the art community that the NEA could tackle. Museums across the country have been hit hard by the financial crisis. Their trusts and portfolios have seen massive declines. Donations, attendance, and memberships are down. Many have had to reduce exhibition hours due to staffing and budget reductions. And countless art galleries, the lifeblood and revenue stream for many artists, have closed or are on the brink of closure.  Rallying the art community around these issues seems a more appropriate use of its resources. 

I’m not a “right-wing nut job.” It just goes against my core beliefs to sit quietly while the art community is used by the NEA and the administration to push an agenda other than the one for which it was created. It is not within the National Endowment for the Arts’ original charter to initiate, organize, and tap into the art community to help bring awareness to health care, or energy & environmental issues for that matter; and especially not at a time when it is being vehemently debated. Artists shouldn’t be used as tools of the state to help create a climate amenable to their positions, which is what appears to be happening in this instance. If the art community wants to tackle those issues on its own then fine. But tackling them shouldn’t come as an encouragement from the NEA to those they potentially fund at this coincidental time. 

And if you think that my fear regarding the arts becoming a tool of the state is still unfounded, I leave you with a few statements made by the NEA to the art community participants on the conference call. “This is just the beginning. 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?…bare with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely… “ 

Is the hair on your arms standing up yet?

The L.A. Times reports details on the Obama Joker poster artist. Read the whole article here.  Here are some highlights:

-Was it an ultra-conservative grassroots group or a disgruntled street artist going against the grain?

Nope, it turns out, just a 20-year-old college student from Chicago.

Bored during his winter school break, Firas Alkhateeb, a senior history major at the University of Illinois, crafted the picture of Obama with the recognizable clown makeup using Adobe’s Photoshop software.

-A still-anonymous rogue famously found his image, digitally removed the references to Time Magazine, captioned the picture with the word “socialism” and hung printed copies around L.A., making headlines.

-”After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ,” Alkhateeb said. “From my perspective, there wasn’t much substance to him.”

-”I abstained from voting in November,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Living in Illinois, my vote means close to nothing as there was no chance Obama would not win the state.” If he had to choose a politician to support, Alkhateeb said, it would be Ohio Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

-Although Alkhateeb claims he was making no political statement with the artwork, he’s plugged into the Washington debate. Though born in the United States, his Palestinian family closely follows Middle Eastern politics.

-”I think he’s definitely doing better than Bush was,” Alkhateeb said of Obama.

-He’s honored by Shepard Fairey’s assessment of his Joker picture, but disagrees with some of Fairey’s comments criticizing the message of the Socialism poster.

“He made a picture of Bush as a vampire,” Alkhateeb said about Fairey. “That’s kind of speaking with two faces.”

So, now you have met L.A. Weekly/MSNBC/S.F. Chronicle/Wasington Post’s racist right-wing nut: a Kucinich-supporting kid of Palestinian heritage from Obama’s hometown.  The left will have to get creative if they hope to “Joe the Plumber” this guy.

We’ll make sure to post the media’s apologies for fear mongering as they role in…

The website Newsbusters points out the silliness behind the outrage – after all, President Bush has been depicted as far worse – he’s been portrayed as everything from a bloodsucking vampire in the Village Voice, to the Joker in Vanity Fair, to God forbid, a Republican- everywhere else. No one seemed to mind then. And while people like Bill Maher point out that Obama has been only at this job for six months (whereas Bush earned the bile over eight years) and therefore any criticism is unfair – that’s pure batpoop. Hatred for Bu$hitler began the moment he took office, and the vile lefties only knew Sarah Palin for a few weeks before they were wearing t-shirts with her face and a vulgar word (begins with ‘C’ and rhymes with bunt) beneath it.

And besides, if you ask me, this new Obama Joker face is pure street art that only elevates his hip persona. It’s no different than the Shepard Fairey ‘Hope’ poster, except it’s far more complimentary and honest. Seriously, we live in a culture where anti-heroes have replaced heroes, and we all know that Ledger’s Joker is far cooler than Bale’s Batman. (At least the Joker didn’t yell at his mom at the premiere.) The Joker scoffed at traditional values, reveled in post-modern humor and more important – was played by Heath Ledger, who’s dead! You can’t get any cooler than that, even if you add a Prince Albert and a nitrous addiction.

Finally, as so many Obamalovers point out, our President is more than a President, he’s a pop culture icon – and you can’t go more than five feet in Times Square without seeing a t-shirt, a button, or a jock strap with his face plastered on it.

At least with these new posters, the media has a message.

Also – a reminder for tonight: Mike Baker, Remi Spencer, Barret Swatek, and Ab News!