Agitprop: Hey, Let’s Get the Artists to Defend Abu Ghraib!

As historians begin to sift through papers from the Bush administration, the extent of its nefariousness is slowly but surely coming to light.

We already knew U.S. attorneys were sacked for holding the "wrong" types of political views. We knew the EPA censored technical papers on climate change. We knew, from Imperial Life in the Emerald City, that job applicants seeking work in the Iraq-reconstruction effort were asked for their views on Roe v. Wade.

But only now is America discovering how the administration's ide ological tentacles reached into previously sacrosanct realms, to pervert even the arts for political gain.

According to transcripts of a conference call some time ago, the then-communications director for the National Endowment for the Arts suggested artists and arts organizations ought to get on board George W. Bush's agenda by selecting some part of it -- the Iraq War, the war on terrorism, or tax cuts -- and using their gifts to advance the cause. Why there has been so little media coverage of this shocking and outrageous . . .

Wait, hold the phone a sec.

My mistake. Turns out it wasn't the Bush administration after all. In fact, the incident happened just recently, when the NEA's Yosi Sargent urged artists to do their part in advancing President Obama's agenda.

Sorry for the mix-up.

"I would encourage you to pick something, whether it's health care, education, the environment," Sargent said in an August conference call hosted by the NEA, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and United We Serve. "Then my task [to you] would be to apply your artistic, creativity community's utilities and bring them to the table."

Suggesting that those in on the call were "participating in history as it's being made," Sargent also said: "We are just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government, what that looks like legally . . . [S]o that we can . . . really work together [to] move the needle and to get stuff done."

Filmmaker Patrick Courrielche, who broke the story, described the tenor of the discussion on the blog Big Hollywood:

"We were encouraged to bring the same sense of enthusiasm to these 'focus areas' as we had brought to Obama's presidential campaign, and we were encouraged to create art and art initiatives that brought awareness to these issues . . . .The now-famous Obama 'Hope' poster, created by artist Shepard Fairey and promoted by many of those on the phone call, and will.i.am's 'Yes We Can' song and music video were presented as shining examples of our group's clear role in the election."

Courrielche's piece drew the attraction of radio host Glenn Beck, but Courrielche is no right-wing rabble-rouser: He's a Hillary Clinton fan who wrote, prior to the NEA kerfuffle, that artists had a duty to be "always questioning those in power . . . .It's time for the art community to return to its historical role in political affairs, which means speaking to power, not on behalf of it."

What's remarkable about this story is how little it's been remarked upon elsewhere. Most major news outlets have ignored it. The few that have brought it up have done so in the context of covering Beck and the Van Jones affair: Sargent, who was reassigned to another position inside the NEA, is portrayed as just another notch on Beck's coup stick.

The fact that the White House joined in on a call attempting to mau-mau artists into churning out agitprop? Apparently that's too politically inconvenient to be worth dwelling upon.

Yet it is worth dwelling upon -- particularly in light of the oft-stated desire within the arts community for more government involvement in its affairs. In January, producer Quincy Jones made the news when he started a petition campaign urging the Obama administration to create a Cabinet-level arts czar. The received impression was that it would be absolutely spiffy to "bring arts and government under one umbrella," as a news account put it at the time. The possibility that there might be a downside to marrying art and the nation-state simply didn't come up.

But the conference call offers a helpful reminder of what such a marriage might lead to. One day you're applying for a grant from the NEA; the next day you're getting a call suggesting you might want to produce some "art" supporting an emergency-appropriations bill for continued U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. The tit-for-tat doesn't need to be explicit to weigh heavily on the mind.

The arts community also has been subdued about this episode, and that's too bad. Courrielche reports that the NEA told arts groups, "This is the first telephone call of a brand new conversation." Artists might want to reflect on how that conversation might go a few years hence -- when it is picked up by, say, a President Mike Huckabee or a President Sarah Palin.

My thoughts do not aim for your assent -- just place them alongside your own reflections for a while.

--Robert Nozick.

Contact A. Barton Hinkle at (804) 649-6627 or .