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Which leads me to my opening question: What does it mean when a government official evades the truth? Well, it typically means that the official, or the organization that they represent, has done something that may be considered questionable.
But the contradictions don’t stop there. On August 28th, Joshua Miller reported for Foxnews.com that Siobhan Dugan, a spokeswoman for the Corporation for National and Community Service, the very agency that Sergant claimed was responsible for the invitations, stated that the conference call “was organized by an ‘individual interested’ in the group and was unable to provide a list of those invited to participate on the call.”
So which is true? Did the National Endowment for the Arts initiate the meeting, was it the Corporation for National and Community Service, or was it the interested individual?
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You sort of have to shake off how pathetic this is in order to see how appalling it is. I mean, there’s the . . .
—stupidity: of thinking that all artists are going to agree with the entire Obama agenda.
—ignorance: of thinking that the purpose of art is to “make a stink.”
—vanity: of believing that Obama’s agenda is worthy of any artist’s creative attention.
—and of course the horrible lack of ethics: in implying in any way to potential applicants for taxpayer-funded grants that they must promote the president’s agenda.
What these appointees have done is over the top. During my tenure as deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities — the NEA’s sister agency — during the George W. Bush administration, any action resembling this call would have triggered immediate dismissal. But saying things like the following was simply unfathomable: “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? . . . Bear with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely . . .” Yet this is precisely what an Obama NEA appointee told the arts leaders on this call.
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