BUDGET INCREASE FOR THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT OF THE ARTS

The Drudge Report ^ | 01-28-2004 | Matt Drudge

[Captain Peter Blood]

BUSH TO SEEK BIG BUDGET INCREASE FOR NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS... Laura Bush plans to announce the request -- for the largest increase in two decades -- on Thursday... Developing...

[Old Fud]

The Bush Family believes in reading, arts, sports, and well rounded American citizens.

The Bush family, therefore, can bankroll the aforementioned laundry list.

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Well, looking at that budget roller-coaster a few posts back was interesting.

[Mo1]

I love Bush, but this is one program I have to join the bashers on

I have to agree with you and I'm not thrilled with this idea either

But before we go off the deep end .. is there any other information about this, other then the headline from Drudge??

[Sunshine Sister]

THIS SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!! WHEN ARE THOSE JACKASSES IN WASHINGTOM GOING TO SEE THIS! WE ARE SICK AND TIRED OF SEEING OUR TAX DOLLARS GOING TO SUPPORT SMUT?

[Revolting cat!]

Welcome to the Great Yearly Philistine Debate, Mom!

[Johnny_Cipher]

Well, looking at that budget roller-coaster a few posts back was interesting.

Yes indeed. Did you happen to catch the spending trend for the years 1992-2000?

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Exactly. I'm not going to whip myself into a lather until I hear more than an inflammatory Drudge headline. He's not exactly President Bush's biggest fan.

[searchandrecovery]

George W. Bush "My name is george and I am a shop-a-holic.... I use the National Credit Card.... your grand-children will be paying for this stuff... so what do you care?"

George W. Bush: "I've just kited (er, written) a check to Alan Greenspan, to be used to buy more printing presses! Alan, please print more money as soon as is humanly possible! I've got ideas, BIG ideas about what your grandchildren should work to pay off."

[Happy2BMe]

NEA PAST FUNDING PROJECTS

• In Minneapolis recently, the Walker Art Center arranged a production of ``Four Scenes in a Harsh Life'' by Ron Athey, an HIV-positive actor- playwright. In his performance, Athey takes a scalpel and carves a pattern into another man's back. The blood from the wounds is then blotted with paper towels and dangled in the air over the heads of the audience.

  Major funding for the Walker Center comes from the federal government. This year, it received $104,500 from the National Endowment for the Arts.

• Last year's biennial exhibition at the Whitney Museum in New York was titled ``Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire.'' Among other delights, it offered a video of a young man spitting blood, a photo of amputated genitalia perched atop two skulls, framed samples of an infant's diaper stains, a giant splash of fake vomit, menstrual blood, and the aforementioned Mapplethorpe and Serrano portraits. Visitors were made to wear badges proclaiming: ``I can't imagine ever wanting to be white.''

  The Whitney is subsidized by the NEA. Grants in recent years total well over $300,000.

• Photographs by artist Joel-Peter Witkin drew attention when activists tried to display them in the US Capitol. His work includes pictures of a corpse's head sawed in half and repositioned so it seems to be kissing itself; an obese nude woman holding three dead fetuses; and a nude man strapped beneath heavy weights that are suspended above his head by means of a pulley chained to his scrotum. The latter is titled ``Testicle Stretch with the Possibility of a Crushed Face.''

  The NEA has given several grants to Witkin, some worth up to $20,000.

• A poem published in ``The Portable Lower East Side'' in 1991 exalts the attackers who raped and slashed a Central Park jogger nearly to the point of death. An excerpt:

  My soul sinks to its knees &/ howls under the moon rising full,/ ``Let's get a female jogger!''/ I shout into the twilight/ looking at the middle class thighs/ pumping past me,/ cadres of bitches who deserve to die/ for thinking they're better than me./ You ain better than nobody bitch.

  The Portable Lower East Side acknowledges ``generous support'' from the NEA.

Warped, hateful stuff. But don't stay up late waiting for the NEA to apologize for this pollution. Instead of conceding, for example, that the bloody mutilation show in Minneapolis was an abomination, NEA chairwoman Jane Alexander insists it was ``a study exploring modern day martyrdom as it relates to AIDS.'' (If you don't understand, you must be a yahoo.)

No one is forced to buy Time magazine or advertise in its pages. It pays for its art with private funds. Yet Time shows more consideration for public sensibilities and opinion than the NEA, whose every dollar comes out of your pockets and mine.

When the NEA was created in 1965, nobody said anything about ``Testicle Stretch'' or glorifying rapists. Elitist and insufferable, it has become as grotesque a travesty as the ones it subsidizes. The time has come to shut it down.

[IGOTMINE]

ANOTHER strategic error.

I can't believe that Karl Rove is urinating on the base like this.

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Yes indeed. Did you happen to catch the spending trend for the years 1992-2000?

Yes, I did...and I noticed it in the eighties, too.

[jimkress]

But, if it goes to fund patriotic art- what's wrong with that? A good use of money, so far as I'm concerned.

Don't use the government to stick a gun in our face and confiscate our property for something that YOU think is "a good use of money". That's immoral.

If you think it's "a good use of money" use YOUR own money.

[KantianBurke]

The Bush Family believes in reading, arts, sports, and well rounded American citizens.

The Bush family, therefore, can bankroll the aforementioned laundry list.

MEGA BUMP!

[jpsb]

the national endowment for the arts is the organization that funds urinating on the Christain cross.

[Pubbie]

You know what's amazing is that the same people who say "Bush isn't a real Conservative" everyday are the same people on FR who want Condi RINO Rice for POTUS in 2008.

If you thought Bush was a bad President then you're going to suicidal during a Rice Presidency.

[dr_who_2]

...and it wouldn't be the first one either.

[jgrubbs]

“Government is not the solution to our problem,
government is the problem.”

--President Ronald Reagan

[jimkress]

Don't use the government to stick a gun in our face and confiscate our property for something that YOU think is "a good use of money". That's immoral.

If you think it's "a good use of money" use YOUR own money.

[Neenah]

I just came on line after hearing this news on the radio. I have not read the thread yet, but I can say one thing...I am MAD !!

Are there no standards left to fight for Mr. Bush ? Just WHAT DO YOU STAND FOR ?

The same old statements made in post after post on subjects questioning Pres. Bush, that it is better than the alternative, are getting more and more meaningless to me.

IS THERE ANY PERSON LEFT IN THE WORLD THAT WILL STAND FOR WHAT IS RIGHT?

....or should I just throw another $$ at the artist that took the cross and dumped it in a jar of URINE ?????????????