Dog Days

Last week we had the California Arts Advocates lobbyist in San Diego to present a briefing on the current political realities in Sacramento. The message I took away was simple: change is coming because every aspect of state government is broken. This is echoed in our California headlines about the need for prison reform, education reform, water infrastructure investment, and budget reform. Even the infamous Prop. 13 of thirty years ago is up for reexamination because of the state's chronic budget crisis in good times and bad.

The recognition that reform is needed at the national level has also dominated the headlines for the past year. Whether we're talking health care, finance and banking, or green house gases, the basic subject is the same: how to organize policy and regulation to ensure sustainability. The degree to which reform happens now or is swallowed by politics remains to be seen.

I'm not hearing many of the same conversation amongst arts and culture colleagues. We are all proceeding with the assumption that whatever super structure overhauls come out of DC and our own state capitals we won't need to radically rethink our own business model or change how art is experienced. My impression is most people devoted to the arts think we will just adapt. Even more worrisome, we are treating the macro-trend of declining arts participation as a marketing and programming problem. We aren't thinking of it as a structural probelm.

The arts will be much better off if we lead government agencies and foundations to a new reality instead of waiting for them to push, pull, or overwhelm us with their own agendas. We are undergoing a national redesign and the arts have an important role to play in it. 

Some efforts are underway. This New Cultural Policy proposal for improving our nation through the arts launched last week. It is full of broad ideas. I assume the specificity is still in development or for individual artists and arts organizers to create. And I'm not sure how the authors are communicating these ideas to elected officials or building partnerships. I see it as the beginning of a conversation.
 

Becoming an arts advocate really takes little more than getting over the hurdle of one's own reluctance. My friend and colleague Victoria Saunders articulates this very well in a piece she recently wrote for Americans for the Arts about accepting the role as leader and hub for our local efforts to save the San Diego City School District's Visual and Performing Arts Department. I documented the effort earlier this year here and here.

If you are passionate about the arts you are an arts advocate. All you need to do is start working with others. A little effort and coordination can go a long way. In San Diego our advocacy efforts are all volunteer. There is no staff for the San Diego Regional Arts and Culture Coalition nor dedicated advocacy staff at any of our local service organizations. Wtih volunteer energy working together we've sustained city funding for arts and culture, established strong relationships with local elected officials at all levels of government, and secured media recognition for the impact of the arts in our community.

You can do this too. And now is a good time to start. It's National Arts and Humanities Month. In this quiet period before next year's budget battles, use this national focus to start a small coalition, engage elected officials, and get stories in the media about the local importance of the arts. Don't wait for a crisis. And if you need help from outside your community ask for it.

All artists and art lovers can be powerful champions for the arts. They just have to start.

While leaders from the G-20 nations met in Pittsburgh this weekend to further pave the road to globalization, Michelle Obama shared the arts with her fellow spouses, and protesters tried to interrupt the meeting, one artist quietly and clearly detailed the relationship between free markets, democracy, genocide, and middle-class consumerism.

If you only know Arundhati Roy through her Booker Prize winning novel "The God of Small Things" then you only know half her talent. She is a remarkable commentator on the subjugation of people in the name of progress. The US occupation of Iraq with 150,000 soldiers is nothing compared to India's 700,000 soldiers in Kashmir, its own territory. You can watch the interview below or read the transcript here to find out what is happening in the world's largest democracy from the perspective of its most activist artist.
 

Update: Thanks to Leonard Jacobs for commenting and prompting me to check out his tracking of the anti-NEA campaign at the Clyde Fitch Report. He also links to several other bloggers from the arts world working to unravel the NEA conference call reality. Check out Ian David Moss' Shocking(ly tame) NEA audio and transcript released.

CultureGrrl has today's statement from Rocco Landesman explaining the facts behind the recent conference call that resulted in the reassignment of Yosi Sergant within the NEA. If you read the transcript or listen to the conference call you'll see that these facts are consistent with the content of the call.

 

Alas - I don't expect those targeting the NEA will be satisfied with the reassignment of a political appointee or a list of facts aimed at distancing the agency from his comments.

 

They want to take down the entire agency.

 

These are the same people that targeted Van Jones and ACORN. (Their supporters are making the link: Shepard Fairy Studio Tagged with Anit-ACORN slogans) The NEA was in their sites before the notorious conference call. It just happened to provide them with much more political fuel than the 80s style "indecency" attack they started with. The editor of Big Hollywood, which "broke" the conference call story, published a call for elimination of the NEA in July. Check out all the anti-NEA articles published at this website the last 24 hours to keep the heat on: http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/?s=NEA

 

This is not going away. If arts supporters and champions of the NEA "move on" as CultureGrrl asks, no one will be looking for the next attack. This is not an isolated incident but the beginning of a sustained campaign.

 

If you've never told your Congressman what the NEA has done for your organization in your community, now is the time to start. Don't wait for the next attack.

I went to 9th grade "Back to School Night" last week and learned that my son's history teacher focuses on critical thinking skills before teaching history. He explicitly aims to give students the tools to analyze history, understand the difference between primary and secondary sources, and ultimately be prepared to live as discerning and engaged citizens. The importance of this 9th grade lesson came alive last week as a single account of a conference call during which artists were encouraged to participate in the White House's United We Serve initiative ballooned into a broad attack on the NEA.

I've yet to find any analysis of the background or motives of Patrick Courrielche, the author of this account, or his publishers. Instead, the most fervent follow up reporting has magnified his interpretation of the call as an accurate and unbiased representation of what happened and trumpeted subsequent inconsistencies as evidence that he is right. I've decided to apply 9th grade critical thinking lessons to understand this very recent history as it is still unfolding.

Mr. Courrielche published an opinion piece for Reason.com three days before the conference call entitled "The Artist Formerly Known as Dissident: Artists have a duty to dissent--even against Obama." There are three passages in the article that specifically inform us of the personal bias Mr. Courrielche carried into his participation on the conference call. (I've added bold to his italics)

I've personally known the key players behind the Barack Obama "Hope" posters for many years--one being a former employee of mine, another a former colleague...When asked by my former employee to be involved with the Hope poster distribution, I declined on philosophical grounds...

...it feels to me, as it did during the campaign, that the art community is not meeting its duty of always questioning those in power. And I say duty because the art community, as a counterpart of the press, has been given special rights written into the Bill of Rights, known broadly as freedom of the press, for the explicit purpose of keeping power in check.

It's time for the art community to return to its historical role in political affairs, which means speaking to power, not on behalf of it. Which leads me to the second case where art enters politics on a mass scale. The power of art, in combination with the suppression of free speech or a free press, has been used as a tool by authoritarian governments to control their citizens. From Hitler, Stalin, and Mao to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il, art has been used to deify leaders while preserving the position of the ruling class. Most artists would not want to be referred to as tools of the state, but in the case of Obama's administration, that's exactly what they've been so far.

Mr. Courrielche makes it clear that he does not believe all private citizens have the freedom to participate in civic life as they choose. Instead, he argues that artists must only act in opposition to government and political leaders. The logical extension of his argument is that artists are obliged to never participate in solutions developed by the government.

Mr. Courrielche's juxtaposition of President Obama and the tyrannical despots of the last century echoes the President's most radical opponents who have spent the summer seeking to convince the nation that he is their doppelganger. In this environment, it is impossible to believe the author casually linked the President and these dictators. His bias is clear.

The website Big Hollywood published his account of the conference call fifteen days after it occurred. Based on the fact that he didn't take advantage of the web's ability to publish immediately and a controversy has unfolded through his incremental release of information, it appears he used his skills as a marketing strategist to collaborate with his publishers on a roll out plan for generating as much controversy as possible.

The next publication to pick up the story was the Washington Times where the publisher of Big Hollywood works as a staff writer. When the NEA's then Communications Director Yosi Sergant responded to Kerry Picket of the paper that the NEA had not sent invitations to the call those trolling for a controversy had the inconsistency they needed. In fact, Mr. Courrielche received his invite via email from Mr. Sergant. They've used this inconsistency to suggest wrong doing ever since. (Mr. Sergant has since been reassigned to an undisclosed new position at the NEA.)

The next day, August 28th, Foxnews.com reported on Mr. Courrielche's post and interviewed both him and another participant who disagreed with his depiction of the call. From this point the ricochet of cross referencing by Mr. Courrielche on Big Hollywood, Ms. Picket at the Washington Times, and Fox News accelerated. Mr. Courrielche published a portion of the email invite he received in a second posting though the bottom portion was not included to show its full content nor the attachments. The Washington Times published an editorial calling for the NEA to reconcile the discrepancy between the email and Sergant's denial of sending it. Mr. Courirelche saved his ultimate revelation for an interview with Glen Beck on Fox News where audio clips he'd clandestinely recorded of the conference call were broadcast. Previously he'd only referenced having notes of the call. This interview occurred on September 1st, the same day a shortened version of his August 25th posting appeared as a guest editorial in the Wall Street Journal, another paper for whom the Big Hollywood publisher writes.

Carefully planning the launch of his attack on the propriety of the NEA's participation in the conference call had worked. In the course of one week Mr. Courrielche and his allies successfully caught the attention of the main stream media. From this point he sited other commentators to reinforce their position though most were only speculating based on his account. Those references include Lee Rosenbaum's AJ posting about her experience on a similar call later in August, George Will's reference to the NEA having likely broken laws, and former NEH Deputy Chairman Lynne Munson's negative assessment of the situation. In this same posting Mr. Courrielche plays his hand as a collaborator in a coordinated attack on the NEA by sticking to the exact same message points as the Washington Times and using the plural when recounting their success in exposing inconsistencies in comments from the White House and NEA. On this same posting he rolls out another clip from the conference call to fan the flames of indignation over the inconsistencies without posting audio from the entire call.

The Washington Times used the news that a second conference call with members of the arts community took place to widen the scope of it its attacks. Not surprisingly it credited Mr. Courrielche as breaking this news and links back to his posting instead of the Lee Rosenbaum posting he sites. At the end of last week the paper used Americans for the Arts CEO Bob Lynch's podcast account of his interaction with the Obama administration, and the fact that AFTA received an NEA stimulus grant as further evidence that the agency has become a political tool. They immediately followed this posting with a timeline they contend tracks the transformation of the NEA. Today, the paper is running a longer version of this editorial consolidating all of the assertions it has made over the past two weeks into a call for the NEA to answer its accusations.

The NEA conspiracy frenzy started by Mr. Courrielche and whipped by the Washington Times and Glen Beck has completely short-circuited any examination of the full content of the conference calls or their purpose. While Mr. Courrielche and the Washington Times have called for transparency at the NEA they have not held themselves to the same standard. They seem to be purposefully withholding of the full recording of the August 10 conference call so that it won't undermine their agenda. Without releasing this primary source material or the second half of the original email invitation and its attachment they are only employing smoke and mirrors. They would further bolster their credibility by releasing all communications concerning this matter between Mr. Courrielche, associated Big Hollywood staff, Ms. Picket, and other involved staff at the Washington Times. The evidence that exists implicates them in a conspiracy of their own.

I ask those journalists working to gather more details from the NEA on this story to also request transparency from Mr. Courrielche and the Washington Times. He has primary source material that can elevate the controversy out of the realm of conjecture and innuendo.