You might be thinking to yourself, "What is up with the title of this post?" What is "speaking safely?" It sounded ominous to me, but I was unsure, so I Tweeted the question. Here's what I got back:
I ask this question as this is what the Obama administration left as a cliffhanger in a recent phone call to over 75 artists, taste-makers, producers, directors, and others in the professional artistic community via the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
The full story, as told by Patrick Courrielche (a former NEA employee who was invited to the call) can be found at Big Hollywood. He says,
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.
He makes a strong case against using the NEA and its cadre of artists and art professionals to pump pro-current-administration-policy propaganda to the country at large via multiple distribution channels that "the arts" have access to.
Now, I'm all about free speech, and many artists may be for the administration's policies on their own. In that case, have at it. They should use all their private dollars to say or do whatever they want. But for the government to be specifically coordinating strategies with taxpayer money meant to enrich people culturally to propagandize is a gross abuse of power. The NEA's function is not as a political tool. For those of you unmoved by this fact, think again. As Courrielche mentions in his article,
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?
The arts are supposed to be a sort of sacred realm where freedom from coercion remains. But nothing is sacred anymore it seems. The whole point of art is to create from one's talent, time, and will, the messages that come from within, not from within the current administration.
Corrielche leaves us with these concluding thoughts,
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?
Most definitely.
- Possibly related posts:
- All Bad News, All the Time
- Vive la France?
- Hey Big Government, Can I Have My $20 Back?
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