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Four weeks ago, Big Hollywood posted audio of a conference call in which Obama administration officials asked "grant recipients to plug Barack Obama’s domestic agenda." At least six federal laws and regulations were violated when then–NEA communications director Yosi Sergant and White House Office of Public Engagement deputy director Buffy Wicks tried twisting the arms of artists and arts groups interested in getting federal arts grants to produce government propaganda. To protect the scandal from expanding further, the White House threw Sergant under the bus, denied that they were involved issued new guidelines for the NEA and promised that it...

[snip] Courrielche said officials on the hour-long call -- including NEA Director of Communications Yosi Sergant and Michael Skolnik, political director for hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons -- encouraged the artists on the line to create works of art in their respective fields related to health care, energy and the environment. "What I heard was a well thought-out pitch to encourage artists to create art on these issues," Courrielche told FOXNews.com. "We were told we were consulted for a reason, and they specifically stated those issues as the issues we should focus on, to plant the seed. It doesn't take a...

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? [taken from October 2010 articles/blog posts]NASA's Islam Outreach Minister Charles BoldenGOP lawmakers are critical of Charles Bolden for leaving last week on a trip to China just as the agency he leads begins pursuing an ambitious new agenda. It is the latest in a series of controversial moves that some speculate could result in Bolden's ouster. A law signed a week ago gives NASA four months or less to develop a dozen different plans for the future, including a detailed report on how it would replace the retiring space shuttle.It's an ambitious schedule, one that NASA...

In the midst of the National Endowment for the Arts controversy, their former communications director Yosi Sergant has submitted his resignation. The NEA's Sally Gifford sent the Washington Times the following release.:

"This is just the beginning," Yosi Sergant told participants in an Aug. 10 conference call that seems to have been organized by the National Endowment for the Arts and certainly was joined by a functionary from the White House Office of Public Engagement. The call was the beginning of the end of Sergant's short tenure as NEA flack -- he has been reassigned. The call also was the beginning of a small scandal that illuminates something gargantuan -- the Obama administration's incontinent lust to politicize everything... Did the White House initiate the call...Or, even worse, did the NEA, an independent...

Even though Obama's popularity has been sliding significantly, Shepard Fairey, designer of the viral blue-and-red Manifest Hope poster, thinks it's the perfect time to release a slick and comprehensive anthology of celebratory Obama-related artworks: Art for Obama, which he co-edited with Evolutionary Media Group founder Jennifer Gross, comes out October 2. In addition to getting a look at the imagery, we spoke with Fairey about Obama's approval ratings, how political art reaches beyond politics, and his thoughts on the artistic deification of our leader.Watch the Slideshow Siegel: Tell us about the idea behind Art for Obama. Fairey: People undervalue...

Via twitter from Jonah Goldberg JonahNROJust got email from NEA. Yosi Sergant resigned, effectively immediately.

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...

Back in the days of Joseph Stalin, that madman and his cabal made good use of the talents of filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, who had a natural ability to take the Soviet inclination to turn art and bend it to the will of the country's communist rulers and produce cinematic works that glorified Soviet accomplishment. ... Now, I'm not saying that Barack Obama is in any way similar to Joseph Stalin or Ivan the Terrible (especially Ivan, who'd have a peasant's head hacked off just for blinking the wrong way), but I'm sure one can see the parallels between Stalin and...

*NEA conference call full audio and transcript here** Should the National Endowment for the Arts encourage artists to create art on issues being vehemently debated nationally? That is the question that I set out to discuss a little over three weeks ago when I wrote an article on Big Hollywood entitled The National Endowment for the Art of Persuasion?” The question still requires debate but the facts do not. The NEA and the White House did encourage a handpicked, pro-Obama arts group to address politically controversial issues under contentious national debate. That fact is irrefutable. But some have claimed that...

<p>WASHINGTON -- "This is just the beginning," said Yosi Sergant to participants in an Aug. 10 conference call that seems to have been organized by the National Endowment for the Arts and certainly was joined by a functionary from the White House Office of Public Engagement. The call was the beginning of the end of Sergant's short tenure as NEA flack -- he has been reassigned. The call also was the beginning of a small scandal that illuminates something gargantuan -- the Obama administration's incontinent lust to politicize everything.</p>

So why can’t the silver-tongued post-partisan healer seal the deal on this health-care business? Surely it should be the work of moments for the greatest orator in American history to whip up a little medicinal Gettysburg, a touch of Henry V-in-the-Agincourt-casualty-tent, and put this thing away. Yet there he was the other night with the usual leaden medley of tinny grandiosity (all the this-is-the-moment, now-is-the-hour stuff), slippery reassurances (don’t worry, you won’t be “required” to change your present health arrangements), imputations of bad faith to anyone who takes a different view (they’re playing “games”), and the copper-bottomed guarantee that you...

At least in part due to Glenn Beck's influence, Obama administration aide Yosi Sergant was asked to resign today. Beck attacked Sergant and the NEA on his Fox News talk show, accusing the agency of propaganda efforts similar to those used by Nazi Germany. And now Sergant has been tossed overboard, making him Beck's second victim in his campaign to rid the administration of perceived radicals, socialists, communists, fascists, anarchists and all other manner of nefarious influences. Conservatives are considering this an opportunity to attack the N.E.A. I hate to evoke this name, because it has a tendency (like Hitler's)...

Yosi Sergant has been asked to resign from his post as Communications Director for the National Endowment for the Arts, reports the Huffington Post.: At issue was an August conference call in which the NEA encouraged select artists to participate in an administration project dubbed "United We Serve" and led by the first lady. The NEA released a statement: "On August tenth, the National Endowment for the Arts participated in a call with arts organizations to inform them of the president's call to national service. The White House office of public engagement also participated in the call, which provided information...

The communications director for the National Endowment for the Arts is no longer in his job amid a flap over suggestions he suggested artists work to further President Obama's legislative agenda. A conservative artist writing on the site Big Hollywood first complained that the official, later identified as Yosi Sargent, had been on a conference call with artists aimed at furthering President Obama's legislative agenda -- a bit of a no-no for the agency, which does its best to stay apolitical. [SNIP] Huffington Post's Ryan Grim reported that Sergant had been "asked to resign," and played it as another scalp...

UPDATE: The National Endowment for the Arts Public Affairs Specialist Sally Gifford contacted The Washington Times and clarified that Mr. Sergant is still an employee at the NEA but is no longer Director of Communications.