NEA Chair Rocco Landesman Mocks Critics

About ten days ago, in a widely ridiculed address to the 2009 Grantmakers in the Arts Conference – so widely ridiculed he had to walk his Obama-Caesar gushing back some – embattled NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman took a moment to launch a shot at his critics:

Am I starting to sound like an advocate? Well, that seems to be a touchy subject. Some quote-unquote “journalists” have recently accused this agency of losing its independence and becoming a propaganda machine.

Ooh, ouch, that stings: “quote-unquote journalists.” I would have responded sooner but the insult went over my head. You see, in the world where I reside — the land of Where Decent People Try To Do The Right Thing — accusing someone of “not being a real journalist” is like accusing them of “not being a dishonest left-wing poseur with more affectations than a washed-up Shakespearean stage actor.”

But what a punk thing for Landesman to do; acting like the big mouth kid who after a well-deserved playground thumping runs home to talk big in front his fat, fawning Aunts. Gee, Rocco, if you and yours hold so much contempt for your critics, why respond to their criticisms in such dramatic ways:

• NEA admits to inappropriate language during NEA call.
• NEA Communications Director Yosi Sergant resigns.
• White House issues new guidelines.
• NEA scrubs leftist call for health-care reform from website.

Too busy scrubbing a website and accepting Yosi’s resignation, Rocco might have missed that someone who probably meets his definition of a “journalist” (i.e., an Obama supporter) had this to say about an NEA conference call that occurred a little more than two weeks after the now-infamous August 10th call:

I’m “creeped out” too…even though, like many on the call, I supported and (with reservations) still support the agenda of the new President.

By any standard, Lee Rosenbaum is a respected and prominent writer in the art community who contributes to, among others, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and New York Public Radio. On August 27th she participated in a conference call hosted by Kalpen Modi (Kal Penn of “Kumar” fame) of the White House Office of Public Engagement (the same office as Buffy Wicks) and Robert Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts — a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that, just two days after the August 10th conference call, joined a host of other national non-profit art organizations in calling for health-care reform, including the “public health insurance option.”

The invitation for the August 27th call was posted on the Americans for the Arts website (it has since been scrubbed, but screen shots are available below), and came directly from Modi. The invitation reads in part: [emphasis added]

“Please join us for a United We Serve / Arts conference call … I’ll be facilitating the call. We’ll also have representatives from” The Corporation for National and Community Service, National Endowment for the Arts, and Americans for the Arts.

“The purpose of United We Serve – a project of the White House and Corporation for National and Community Service – is to engage all Americans in the nation’s economic recovery at a time of great challenge and great opportunity. … The president and First Lady are challenging people young and old, in communities large and small, to roll up their sleeves and work together to tackle some of the nation’s toughest issues: education; health; energy and environment; community renewal; and safety and security. …

Though Modi’s invitation went out prior to Courrielche’s August 25th Big Hollywood expose’ of the August 10th call, Modi’s actual conference call (which Courrielche did not participate in) took place 2 days after the Big Hollywood piece published — and Ms. Rosenbaum wonders if that might have caused “second thoughts about commandeering their constituents for this political adventure[.]” For starters, though the invite said they would, the NEA and the NEH did not participate:

This was the second such conference call: In a post on the Big Hollywood blog (excerpted yesterday by the Wall Street Journal), Patrick Courrielche, who reported that he was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts to participate in the first telephone discussion on Aug. 10, came away fearing that the arts were at risk of “becoming a tool of the state.” …

At the beginning of the second conference call, last Thursday, Modi informed us that “unfortunately our colleagues from NEA and NEH [the National Endowment for the Humanites]” were tied up in meetings and couldn’t participate, as had been planned.

Could it be they were having second thoughts about commandeering their constituents for this political adventure? We can only hope so.

The mind reels at how much more “creepy” Ms. Rosenbaum’s conference call might have been had Courrielche’s article not posted just two days earlier.

Maybe as creepy as those “quote-unquote journalists” at the right-wing extremist Boston Globe found the whole sordid affair.

If Landesman wants to help our side further the Obama-worship narrative with swaggering, grandiose comparisons of the president to Julius Caesar, I’m all in favor of that. What is troubling, though, is when a man in charge of millions of federal dollars saves all his contempt for those who point out wrongdoing and none for the actual wrongdoing.

Stage Right contributed to this article.

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