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This appeared at Huffington Post on September 22, 2009.
The wingnutosphere has been on fire over Patrick Courrielche’s allegations of politicization at the National Endowment for the Arts. But make no mistake: this nontroversy is not about art. The targets here are those much-dreaded, un-American practices of community organizing and volunteerism.
Courrielche posts on BigHollywood.com, a website best known for hosting the Victoria Jackson self-parody blog. He recorded an August 10 conference call hosted by the NEA, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and United We Serve with
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!
Courrielche has the entire audio here. And what nefarious discussion took place during this call? NEA Communications Director Yosi Sergant asked the artists to consider promoting the 9/11 Day of Service,
encouraging all Americans and others throughout the world to voluntarily perform at least one good deed or another service activity on the anniversary of 9/11 each year, and on other days marked by terrorist events. We seek further to inspire everyone to carry forward everyday in their lives, through their actions toward others, the remarkable spirit of unity, understanding, and service that brought America and the world together in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
Sergant told the arts organizations on the conference call:
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… And then my ask would be to apply artistic, you know, your artistic creative communities utilities and bring them to the table.
Listen to the entire audio, and you’ll note that no one is pressured to endorse any specific policy. Not a single penny of NEA money is promised, disbursed, or otherwise mentioned. Quite frankly, there’s nothing illegal going on — a fact Courrielche backhandedly admits:
These may both be coincidences and I am not suggesting that the NEA or these groups definitively violated the law in these efforts. That’s for others to discuss and investigate. As I’ve stated in various television interviews, the organizers never discussed any specific policies. (Emphasis mine)
Nevertheless, Courrielche argues that since art groups accept grants from the NEA, the NEA is “tainting the creative process by encouraging the art community to address highly controversial political issues.” Which is odd, since there’s nothing controversial about the 9/11 Day of Service — unless, of course, you happen to be a member of the Ayn Rand cult, or you think the day would best be used to inspire hatred and fear of brown people. Courrielche again:
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. (Emphasis mine)
Courrielche is coming from the nexus of Randist hyper-individualism and right wing opposition to reform. The problem, of course, is that promoting “health care” is not the same thing as endorsing H.R. 3200. Moreover, “energy and the environment” are transformative issues of American progress — there’s no mention of Waxman-Markey in the audio. Courrielche is the one conflating this call to service with a specific legislative agenda.
Indeed, the web page with Courrielche’s posted audio is really an extended rant. He spills fewer electrons quoting the conference call than he does invoking Glenn Beck-style doom-bunker nonsense about “government overreach” and artists transformed into “tools of the state:”
Many on the phone call may say and believe that this was a worthwhile effort. “What can be more inspiring then the NEA encouraging national service,” they may say. I would say that while it might sound like a noble cause, the big hand of government often enters the scene well manicured, but in times of desperation it all too often takes on the shape of a fist accessorized with brass knuckles.
[...]Setting up a propaganda machine is a dangerous precedent. The creation of a machine to address any issues, even ones with noble intentions, can be wielded by the state to create a climate amenable to the policies of those in power. Does anyone believe that once these artists are in place and we move to the election cycle, that the art they create will be bipartisan? (Emphasis mine)
There you have it: asking arts organizations to consider creating opportunities for volunteerism — such as Rock The Vote’s Health Care Design Contest — is the slippery slope to Orwellian dystopia. Encouraging artists to cover-up graffiti with murals about green energy is the first step into Stalinist darkness.
Strangely, Courrielche doesn’t have a problem with public arts funding. In fact, he complains the NEA “forgot its role to the arts, a community currently in dire straits. If this arts group should be rallying around anything, it should be to directly help the arts community.” Right…which is why the NEA has received a 50% funding boost as part of the stimulus bill. Yet in Courrielche’s capable batshit-factory of a mind, that stimulus funding is now leverage to force arts groups into holding voluntary contests. See how that works?
“This practice has never been the historical role of the NEA,” Courrielche says. That’s probably true of the agency in question, but it certainly has not been true about the historical role of arts. Consider the New Deal WPA’s Federal Arts Project and its predecessor, the Public Works of Art Project. Just as conservatives opposed those programs, they profess dismay at this one. Here’s Ryan L. Cole at National Review Online:
(G)overnments, past or present, do not exactly have a stellar record when it comes to patronizing the arts. Those who believe otherwise would do well to look at the painting, sculpture, and architecture of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or Communist China.
Or Paris. Or Venice. Or London. Public arts funding has a pedigree as ancient as the Sphinx. It is practiced in every modern democracy as a vital part of public works. Indeed, much of that New Deal artistic effort went to improving public buildings, and today there is an entire field of “Public Art” with real economic and cultural impact:
- An average of 55 million viewers experience public art firsthand every day, approximately 1,000 times the audience experiencing art galleries, museums and theaters combined. The Vietnam Memorial alone is visited by more than 10,000 people daily, and artworks in airports or subways are seen daily by over five million travelers.
- Public art receives ten times the media attention other art forms receive.
- An average public art project provides 50 times the economic impact of arts events in traditional venues, yet the cost to the public for public art is less than 50 cents per taxpayer per year, based on the amount of public funding used to fund public art.
Within forty-eight hours of the conference call, twenty-one arts organizations endorsed health care reform. No one on the call had asked for this, but it makes perfect sense. After all, few professional artists enjoy employer-provided insurance; at an offhand guess, I’d venture that at least 80% of American artists would benefit from a public option.
But it isn’t only in their own interests that artists would want to play a role in promoting reform. Both the stimulus and the “greening” of our economy are in the long-term interests of every American. Complaining that Obama encourages artists to promote these things is the same as wanting them to fail. Non-partisanship is not the same thing as non-advocacy.
Which is what really rankles the folks over at BigHollywood:
As Dana Loesch recently reported at Big Government, the Serve.Gov portal funnels citizens to volunteer or service projects connected with ACORN and other leftist groups. The taxpayer-funded website is evolving into a cyber-recruitment tool for the progressive movement. (Emphasis mine)
And there you have it: Obama’s administration is connecting citizens to community service organizations — oh, the horror! — which is only controversial if you don’t believe in public funding for the arts, want America to fail, or believe Ayn Rand was a prophet. There’s no apparent reason why anyone else should care about this nontroversy.
