Back in December, Rock the Vote came out with a video featuring Eva Amurri and Zach Gilford – who the hell are they, anyway? Guess I’m not young enough to rock — and a bunch of  other unknown wannabe actors encouraging young people to “rock the vote” by withholding sexual favors from anyone who dares to believe that a government takeover of health insurance is a bad thing.

Traditionally used to sell items like beer and aftershave, sex is now being utilized to encourage citizens to give in to an unconstitutional take over of one sixth of the American economy. Has sex really become that commonplace and tacky?

For example, in the video, a geeky-looking guy holding a “no death panels” placard is described as a liar, and the hot chick wearing a partially-unbuttoned plaid shirt is told to “lie right back” to him by telling him, “I’m on my period and I don’t have a vagina.” Har-dee-har. (There’s more, but you can see the lameness for yourself, if you so choose.) (more…)

Big Hollywood today reveals the extensive proof that shows the White House used the National Endowment for the Arts to push a political agenda favorable to President Obama. But it gets worse: the Administration lied about it, and tried to cover it up.

You already know the background: an NEA spokesman participated in a conference call designed to encourage artists to further Obama’s legislative agenda. This was revealed back in August at Big Hollywood. What is new today is the full transcript of the call — and how clearly the NEA was involved in urging artists to propagandize for Obama.

Naturally, the NEA and the Obama administration denied this. According to the Los Angeles Times (in a blog post, of course, and not an actual newsprint story), the NEA denied any purpose to further a legislative agenda:

The NEA issued a statement saying that it took part in the conference to help inform arts organizations about opportunities to sponsor volunteer service projects themselves, or have their members take part in other volunteer efforts. “This call was not a means to promote any legislative agenda, and any suggestions to that end are simply false,” the statement said. (more…)

At first glance, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) conference call of August 10th, 2009 sounds innocent enough because it’s supposedly been organized by Michael Skolnik, political director for Russell Simmons and someone not officially associated with any government agency. Skolnik appears to be acting independently as a concerned citizen and to have taken it upon himself to gather together a group of artists and art organizations hoping to move them towards “national service.” And how nice of the White House, the federal government and the NEA to make the time to participate in the call and aid this group of American artists motivated to help their country and community.

But this is only how things appear.

All evidence points to the fact that the conference call was a ruse, a front for a White House using Skolnik as a kind of beard in order to put an innocent spin on their abuse of the NEA and two non-partisan volunteer organizations (United We Serve – an initiative overseen by The Corporation for National and Community Service – a federal agency, and the White House’ Office of Public Engagement).

The goal: To motivate a group of hand-picked pro-Obama artists (grant recipients or those wanting grants) to push the President’s flagging agenda, especially health care — and to funnel this promotion through the ACORN related- Serve.gov website. 

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Documentation gathered by Big Hollywood’s Patrick Courrielche and the Washington Times, coupled with a newly revealed audio recording of the full conference call, points to eight troubling facts that put the full context of the call in a very disturbing light. (more…)

I recently wrote a critique of the art community’s lack of dissent in the face of many controversial decisions made by the current administration. Entitled “The Artist Formerly Known as Dissident,” one of the key points argued in the article was the potential danger associated with the use of the art community as a tool of the state. Little did I know how quickly this concern would be elevated to an outright probability. 

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.”  (more…)