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Rocco Landesman is President Obama's handpicked chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Last week he gave the keynote address to the 2009 Grantmakers in the Arts Conference. Those of us concerned about the politicization of life and art in the Age of Obama will not be consoled by a reading of Landesman's speech. The speech bears examination in its entirety, but Landesman's tribute to Obama is especially worth a look: This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept...

Me dancing at the shelter,it was crowded today. At a weapons testing sandbox testing out a machinegun i bought. At Anthroxtacy dancing.

The National Endowment for the Arts held a startlingly inappropriate, creepily Stalinist, and probably illegal conference call for potential grant recipients the other day... and EC analyzes what they're really doing and why it's so damn creepy. If only Comrade Obama knew...he'd put a stop to this!

Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood is out today with new details on the National Endowment for the Arts scandal, including a full transcript and audio recording, as well as a CliffsNotes summary by John Nolte, of the notorious Aug. 10 conference call in which administration officials urged artists to help promote President Obama's legislative agenda. Formally, the call was led by Michael Skolnik, who is not a government employee. But Skolnik declares at the start of the call that he is acting on behalf of the administration:I have been asked by folks in the White House and folks in the NEA about...

They looked marvelous and gave us one elegant thrill after another! The 61st annual Primetime Emmy Awards were dominated by Mad Men, 30 Rock and a whole host of classically coiffured stars, creatively couturing themselves in glamorous gowns and edgy ensembles. Blake Lively floated down the red carpet in her sexy red Versace gown. Olivia Wilde looked fabulous in a mint green Marchesa chiffon gown.

Must go to the site for audio and see the Glenn Beck links too. http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/watercooler/2009/sep/01/official-dishonesty-national-endowment-arts/

The economy is putting a squeeze on the nation's biggest arts complex. The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is canceling its holiday tree lighting ceremony in December. The decorated tree erected in the center's main plaza has become an annual tradition, with a live televised ceremony drawing both New Yorkers and tourists. Lincoln Center blames the cancellation on what it calls "the challenging economic climate" -- and also construction at the entrance to the plaza. “[Construction] will be completed by next year, but it is in no shape to hold the group that the tree attracts," Kate Merlino, a...

Yes, we can! With tax dollars!* * * * *Spin this, Media Matters! On his TV show, Glenn Beck spoke to filmmaker Patrick Courrielche who revealed at Big Hollywood that he had participated in a teleconference call in which the National Endowment for the Arts -- the largest funder of the arts in the U.S. -- encouraged artists to create pro-Obama art: I was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to take part in a conference call that invited a group of rising artist and art community luminaries “to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing...

recently wrote a critique of the art community’s lack of dissent in the face of many controversial decisions made by the current administration. Entitled “The Artist Formerly Known as Dissident,” one of the key points argued in the article was the potential danger associated with the use of the art community as a tool of the state. Little did I know how quickly this concern would be elevated to an outright probability

This copy is for your personal, noncommercial use only. You can order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers here or use the "Reprints" tool that appears next to any article. Visit www.nytreprints.com for samples and additional information. Order a reprint of this article now. August 9, 2009 Drama Confronts a Dramatic Decade By FRED KAPLAN IT’S 1963 as the third season of “Mad Men” on AMC gets under way next Sunday night. And its creator, Matthew Weiner, hopes the show stays on the air long enough to string out his story through the entire turbulent...

Published on More Intelligent Life (http://moreintelligentlife.com) WHEN NOVELISTS SOBER UP By Tom Shone Created 20/07/2009 - 10:57 Writers who drink are old hat. But what about writers who quit drinking? Tom Shone has been studying them for his new novel ...From INTELLIGENT LIFE Magazine, Summer 2009John Cheever was most unhappy to be picked up for vagrancy by the cops. “My name is John Cheever [1]!” he bellowed. “Are you out of your mind?” Found sharing some hooch with the down-and-outs in downtown Boston, he was promptly admitted to Smithers Alcoholism Treatment Centre on Manhattan’s East 93rd Street, where he...

Quote of the day—On Dash Snow, 27-year-old rebel/artist who was found dead in a hotel in the East Village a couple weeks ago [h/t Ann Althouse]: Dash Snow was, in no particular order, a jokester, a jailbird, a thief, a freak, a successful art-brut savage, a doting father, a connoisseur of various cocaine bathrooms, a retired writer of graffiti and the latest incarnation of that timeless New York species, the downtown Baudelaire. — New York Times, July 24, 2009 Yes, you read that right: a doting father. Such a doting father that he was never even married to the mother...

Serenaded by the white goddess: Photographer Willy Vanderperre does a graceful and magnificent job capturing Austrian model Iris Strubegger as an icy marionette, pale of form, cool of beauty, existing in a dreamy realm of her own for V #60. A Touch of Class indeed.

If Mormons’ “HBO moment” was not bad enough, it seems that Hollywood, Broadway and the publishing world aren't likely to give up on portrayals of Latter-day Saints on screen, on stage and in books any time soon. Such Mormon portrayals, often stereotypical, have been showing up since the 1800s. For example, When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced detective Sherlock Holmes in the story, “A Study in Scarlet.” It was set against the backdrop of anti-Mormon inaccuracies about Latter-day Saints and their beliefs popular in England at the time. On a later visit to Utah he apologized for the inaccuracies. Here...

Roger ScrutonBeauty and Desecration We must rescue art from the modern intoxication with ugliness. Spring 2009 At any time between 1750 and 1930, if you had asked an educated person to describe the goal of poetry, art, or music, “beauty” would have been the answer. And if you had asked what the point of that was, you would have learned that beauty is a value, as important in its way as truth and goodness, and indeed hardly distinguishable from them. Philosophers of the Enlightenment saw beauty as a way in which lasting moral and spiritual values acquire sensuous form....

X-Men star Patrick Stewart in foul-mouthed tirade at fan who took picture in theatre Apr 16 2009 By Jane Hamilton HOLLYWOOD star Patrick Stewart launched a foul-mouthed tirade at a fan who took a picture of him onstage. He called the man an "a***hole" as he queued to get the actor's autograph following a stage performance.The 68-year-old X-Men star is touring with acting legend Sir Ian McKellan in Samuel Becket's classic play Waiting For Godot.As the fan waited outside the King's Theatre in Edinburgh afterwards, Stewart pointed his fingers and shouted: "Can you sleep at night?" His co-star Sir Ian looked...

"If you telephone me on the mobile, I would be able to speak to you through my 'ear.'"

TUESDAY'S GREGALOGUE: EMINEM So in Eminem's comeback video, there's a scene featuring him in bed with a Sarah Palin clone, post-coital presumably - but here's the real cool part: he breaks wind.How edgy. How in your face. Way to speak truth to power - even if it came out your ass.Seriously, this is not bad for a white, balding rapper quickly approaching forty and desperately clinging to a shred of relevance - not unlike his white, balding fans already over forty desperately clinging to jobs in telemarketing. I mean, is it any wonder he's resorting to material reused and reheated...

Rap Is CrapPosted By Ben Shapiro On March 29, 2009 @ 7:05 am In Entertainment, Featured Story, Politics | 2 Comments Today, [1] Grammy-winning rapper T.I. (Total Imbecile? Thug Idiot?) was sentenced to 18 months behind bars for illegally owning machine guns and silencers.  In the aftermath of his arrest, prosecutors informed T.I. that he could serve two decades in prison; he quickly agreed to 1000 hours of community service, touring around the U.S. talking to teens about the problems with drugs and gangs.  MTV made a show about him called “[2] T.I.’s Road to Redemption.”  This from a guy...

Tony-winning actress Natasha Richardson was killed by a blunt trauma to the head and her death was ruled an accident, the city Medical Examiner reported Thursday. Richardson sustained an epidermal hematoma - a blood clot that forms upon impact and starts growing between the brain and the skull - after wiping out Monday on the bunny slope while skiing at a Canadian resort. "This is a very treatable condition if you're aware of what the problem is and the patient is quickly transferred to a hospital," Dr. Keith Siller of New York University Langone Medical Center said. "But there is...

President Barack Obama has established a new staff position in his White House with the task of overseeing arts and culture, Kareem Dale. Dale, a partially-blind lawyer previously served as national disability director for Obama's campaign and served on the arts policy committee for Obama in Illinois. No details have been provided about the specific job duties as of yet, but it's been described as "a big step forward in terms of connecting cultural and goverment with mainstream administration policy."

The most ubiquitous woman in fashion — she’s everywhere, everywhere these days — Lara Stone imitates a young Brigitte Bardot for Jean Paul Gaultier’s S/S 09 ad campaign.

Several years ago, after I emerged from the fog of knee-jerk Liberalism that envelops most of the entertainment business, I began to wonder why it was that so many of my colleagues remained mired in the magical thinking that so often seems to characterize the Left. After all, many of my colleagues were reasonable, kind, and intelligent people. Among my friends, were musicians, actors, photographers, and writers - all of whom were highly creative and dedicated to their craft yet, as is typical of those on the Left, they couldn’t be swayed by facts if those facts contradicted the prevailing...

A call for President-elect Barack Obama to give the arts and humanities a Cabinet-level post -- perhaps even create a secretary of culture -- is gaining momentum. By yesterday, 76,000 people had signed an online petition, started by two New York musicians who were inspired by producer Quincy Jones. In a radio interview in November, Jones said the country needed a minister of culture, like France, Germany or Finland has. And he said he would "beg" Obama to establish the post. Listening in New York, Jaime Austria, a bass player with the New York City Opera, and Peter Weitzner,...

The transition team of President-elect Barack Obama is keeping a firm hand on any appointment news, but the buzz in art-and-politics precincts has the new administration seriously considering the idea of an official White House Office of the Arts, overseeing all things having to do with the arts and arts education.

HUGH Jackman has a funny way of selling Australia - both his movie and his country - to Americans. I mean, likening us to Nazis? Let’s check the transcript of the actor’s extraordinary rant this week on The View, a popular women’s TV chat show in the US hosted by Barbara Walters and Whoopie Goldberg. And let’s check if, at the end of it, you’d want to see either the Baz Lurhmann movie in which Jackman stars or the evil country which spent $40 million on tourism ads meant to piggyback the film’s “success”.

Mention the name Moby Grape to a roomful of rock critics, and you'll hear nothing but praise for the 1960s San Francisco rock band. But aside from fans and critics, few people today have ever heard of Moby Grape. Why? Bad advice, bad breaks and bad behavior are three short reasons. Now that a label is trying to right these wrongs by reissuing the group's first five records, old problems still stand in the way. The name Moby Grape comes from an absurdist punch line: What's big, purple and swims in the ocean? But the band that influenced groups ranging...

Keeping with the arts theme, I went back to Staud for these two images of the Yellow Mountains of China. The linked page has a few more.

snip A bomb goes off in a Greenwich Village townhouse, killing three members of the militant Weather Underground. Afraid of being arrested, several of their comrades go on the run. The year is 1970. The latter comes from his own life: Dohrn's parents, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, were two of the Weathermen who fled. While there are similarities between the incidents, Dohrn insists he's not drawing on his parents' experience to tell the tale of two married radicals from a century before. snip "Like most writers today I felt like I needed to respond to what's going on in...

CAMP VICTORY, Iraq, June 17, 2008 – Army Staff Sgt. Dimas Estrada uses taekwondo to keep himself and other soldiers busy, teaching classes in the sport five days a week at the Paul R. Smith Fitness Center here. Army Staff Sgt. Dimas Estrada, left, engages Ukrainian Army 1st Lt. Andrey in a sparring match during a taekwondo class June 10, 2008, on Camp Victory, Iraq. Estrada, an air and missile defense operations sergeant for Task Force Mountain, is carrying on his family's taekwondo tradition while deployed. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Sophia Lopez  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. While...

(WARNING: This story contains graphic descriptions of artwork that is offensive.)(CNSNews.com) - Federal taxpayers are subsidizing a college in New York whose art school is currently displaying works that include a drawing of a man with a crucifix coming out of his rectum, a drawing of a man with a rosary coming out of his rectum, and rosaries decorated with penises. Over the last eight years, at least $4.6 million in federal tax dollars have been provided to the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, which is displaying the controversial artworks. Some of the money has come...

And The Winners Are....

Poppy lovers flocked to the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve on Lancaster's west side during the weekend, enjoying the orange blossoms and the great weather. And Judy Elgin, senior park aide at the State Parks Mojave Information Center in downtown Lancaster, can finally tell callers there are poppies to see. "There are scattered blooms throughout the park and there are more poppies coming out each day," Elgin told an information center visitor in the middle of last week. "And there's much variety in the blooms." The 1,800-acre reserve, on Lancaster Road at about 150th Street West, is a chief destination...

An Artful Approach to Revitalization : Freedom is the key to economic growth Clint Bolick, Goldwater Institute Daily Email, March 17, 2008 The City of Phoenix decided a vibrant arts district would be a nifty idea to revitalize its downtown core. Too often, cities are tempted to achieve such a goal by taxpayer subsidies, eminent domain, tax hikes, or draconian zoning requirements. Instead, Phoenix decided to try a different approach --deregulation. The City is proposing an “arts, culture and small business overlay” that eases zoning restrictions and increases the number of activities that no longer need a special permit in...

Ashley Qualls doesn't sound like a typical high school student. Maybe that's because the 17-year-old is the CEO of a million-dollar business. Ashley is the head of whateverlife.com, a website she started when she was just 14 — with eight dollars borrowed from her mother. Now, just three years later, the website grosses more than $1 million a year, providing Ashley and her working class family a sense of security they had never really known. It all started with capitalism 101, the law of supply and demand. Ashley became interested in graphic design just as the online social networking craze...

If there were any lingering doubts as to whether mixed martial arts had hit mainstream America, that issue has been decided in the past seven days. Quinton Jackson (Pictures) will join LeBron James and other star athletes this weekend in Los Angeles to film a Nike commercial dubbed "Human Chain," Sherdog.com has learned. The spot, featuring a premise of "overachieving with victory, getting knocked down and getting back up," said Jackson's trainer Juanito Ibarra, will be the second Nike ad to showcase a mixed martial artist. Randy Couture (Pictures) became the first in a 1996 spot called "Scars" that featured...

Frederick County Commissioner John L. Thompson Jr. believes artists should not get more tax breaks than other property owners. He hopes to repeal a property tax credit for renovations on buildings used for arts and entertainment. The credit was introduced in 2004 and the county has no record of anyone applying for or receiving it, Frederick County Treasurer Lori Decker said. Thompson, the sole commissioner to vote against the credit in 2004, said he is bringing it up again because he hopes the commissioners elected last year will be open to reconsidering it. "Artists and entertainers, they should pay money...

South Pasadena, California 10/20/2007 - A California “undercover investigator” identifying himself to this reporter as "Agent Egan" entered the Fremont Center Theatre at 8:00 PM curtain time tonight and halted the performance of Pulitzer Prize and National Medal of Arts author Ray Bradbury’s play Dandelion Wine. Bradbury was in attendance awaiting the start of the performance with a theatre full of celebrity guests including The Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner.

...One justification for keeping the arts has now become almost a mantra for parents, arts teachers, and even politicians: arts make you smarter. The notion that arts classes improve children's scores on the SAT, the MCAS, and other tests is practically gospel among arts-advocacy groups. A Gallup poll last year found that 80 percent of Americans believed that learning a musical instrument would improve math and science skills. But that claim turns out to be unfounded. It's true that students involved in the arts do better in school and on their SATs than those who are not involved. However, correlation...

...A primary arena for the conservative-liberal wars has been the arts. While leading conservative voices defend the traditional Anglo-American literary canon, which has been under challenge and in flux for forty years, American conservatives on the whole, outside of the New Criterion magazine, have shown little interest in the arts, except to promulgate a didactic theory of art as moral improvement that was discarded with the Victorian era at the birth of modernism. Liberals, on the other hand, have been too content with the high visibility of the arts in metropolitan centers, which comprise only a fraction of America. Furthermore,...

There is an experiment I'd love to conduct. I'd like to survey a cross-section of Americans and ask them how many active NBA players, Major League Baseball players, and "American Idol" finalists they can name. Then I'd ask them how many living American poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, architects, classical musicians, conductors and composers they can name. I'd even like to ask how many living American scientists or social thinkers they can name. Fifty years ago, I suspect that along with Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Sandy Koufax, most Americans could have named, at the very least, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg,...

A growing number of families are homeschooling. Many of these are doing so in order to accommodate their advanced and gifted learners. The advent of the Internet has made homeschool support and information readily available. People in cities, suburbs, and rural areas can access the same online bulletin boards, courses, and web sites. Though some parents spend a small fortune on home education, it can also be done on a very modest budget. Some families take great pride in making the most of their library cards and buying gently used textbooks, joining educational co-ops, or bartering for tutoring services. Why...

An expert on the "Mona Lisa" says he has ascertained with certainty that the symbol of feminine mystique died on July 15, 1542, and was buried at the convent in central Florence where she spent her final days. Giuseppe Pallanti found a death notice in the archives of a church in Florence that referred to "the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, deceased July 15, 1542, and buried at Sant'Orsola," the Italian press reported Friday. Born Lisa Gherardini in May 1479, she is thought to have been the second wife of Del Giocondo, a wealthy silk merchant, with whom she had...

They can crush a stack of concrete slabs with a bare fist, walk with catlike balance on a bamboo pole, and generate deadly kicks and punches at lightning-fast speeds. Real-life martial artists have long defied what many people would think is humanly possible, and their seemingly superpowered abilities have inspired generations of movies and television shows. But where do the true skills end and the special effects begin? Maybe Hollywood magic doesn't enter the equation as soon as you think. For the upcoming television special, Fight Science, researchers used high-tech equipment to put real martial artists to the test.

Last year, outrage from Muslim students led Harper College, located just outside Chicago, to remove an exhibition of works by Amir Normandi depicting the oppression women suffer in many Islamic countries. Partly in response, Normandi, an Iranian-born Muslim, has curated a new exhibition of works by local and international artists entitled, 'Desire No Shackles, / 'Imagine No Borders', to examine oppression, and the notion of borders in Islam and other contexts.

MARINE CORPS RECRUIT DEPOT SAN DIEGO (Aug. 18, 2006) -- Since August 2005, almost every drill instructor who has graduated from Drill Instructor School here has attended the Instructors’ Course at the depot’s Marine Corps Martial Arts Program facility. The course is designed to give drill instructors more knowledge and experience with the materials taught in MCMAP before they teach it to the recruits. “Instructors’ courses are recommended for all drill instructors to make them more proficient in MCMAP to help the recruits out,” said Staff Sgt. Jeff J. Vandentop, course instructor on the depot. A minimum of a gray...

This summer's twin Russian ballet and opera seasons in London are drawing to a close: the Bolshoi has barely a week to go at Covent Garden and the Mariinsky (formerly the Kirov) has already left the Coliseum. Both companies have enjoyed packed houses, winning new fans and rewarding old ones. Critical opinion has largely favoured Moscow's Bolshoi while devotees of St Petersburg's Mariinsky may feel bewildered by some of the comment in the British press. "The reviews didn't represent what the audiences saw," says Paul Cardwell, from the UK-based Mariinsky Theatre Trust's board of directors. He admits a season devoted...

Rare Post Fight Pictures of Matt Hamill and Tito Ortiz

Garry Trudeau was inarguably the most famous person in the room Friday. But the man behind the long-running comic strip "Doonesbury" said he felt a little chagrined as he stood before about 400 Vietnam veterans and their spouses. "It's humbling to receive an award for storytelling in a room of people so filled with stories," the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist said. Trudeau was in Tucson to accept the President's Award for Excellence in the Arts from the Vietnam Veterans of America at the group's national conference, held this week at the Hilton El Conquistador Hotel, 10000 N. Oracle Road.

A meeting of Wisconsin newspaper editors took me to Wausau last month for the first time in several years, and it's apparent this little city in the heart of our state isn't sitting still. Downtown Wausau is clean and vibrant. Storefronts, old and new, are filled with thriving businesses. The old Grand Theater has been restored and will soon serve as anchor for a community center in the same downtown block. Our conference was held at the spanking-new Jefferson Street Inn, a delightful suite hotel that is drawing meetings and conventions downtown, although I didn't quite know what to make...