Snubbing Laura

U.S. News- Washington Whispers ^ | 02/16/04 | Paul Bedard

[Pokey78]

First lady Laura Bush is about to get the cold shoulder on Capitol Hill. House Republican insiders say the GOP leadership is leaning toward rejecting the surge in spending for the controversial National Endowment for the Arts that Mrs. Bush recently announced. Conservatives hate the agency, known for funding some weird and sexual projects, and just won't listen to Mrs. Bush's arguments that the NEA has changed.

[TomServo]

GOP leadership is leaning toward rejecting the surge in spending for the controversial National Endowment for the Arts

Kill it! Just kill it for cryin' out loud.

Want Shakespeare? Fine - go to the library. Want to see the works of Robert Mappelthorpe? Fine - go to any bathhouse. Want to see fine art? Super - go to a museum. Don't live near a museum? Tough.

Want to see alternative art? Take a dump on a canvas and voila!, your own alternative art.

Just kill the beast. Nobody should be compelled to pay for someone else to see/hear somebody else's definition of art.

[TomServo]

And one more thing - I'm partial to Monet. But I'm not going to demand someone else pay for me to see it.

[nopardons]

You're waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind the times. The new projects were supposed to be Shakespearean plays and classical music and for real, representative art ( OLD MASTERS ), brought to poor regional schools, whose kids would otherwise NEVER be exposed to that stuff.

[NRA2BFree]

Want to see alternative art? Take a dump on a canvas and voila!, your own alternative art.

You definitely have a way with words. LOL!

[kenth]

The schools have budgets for teaching literature and for introducing children to art and history. Good parenting and a good teacher would make a much bigger difference than throwing money at the NEA.

You increase the budget, it stays increased. At some time we will likely have a leftist president or legislature who will work to once again fund all manner of 'dump on canvas'.

[July 4th]

The state didn't pay for: the Mona Lisa, Le Nozze di Figaro, Starry Night, Beethoven's 5th...

(Granted, people did pay for those things. Private people.)

[TomServo]

One more time, NP. I don't give a damn about the Government bringing art, in whatever form, to anybody. And I don't liked being mugged so that others may experience the arts. Does that clarify it?

[Baynative]

With all due respect to the First Lady. Urine in bottles and hairy leffed lesbians getting naked and pouring chocolate over themselves IS NOT ART!

DON'T INCREASE THE FUNDING -- END IT!!

[Baynative]

--hairy legged lesbians

[eddie willers]

What you said.

[nopardons]

Really ? All it's going to take is " good parenting "? The parents of the kids in wayoutnowhere, who don't have all that much money, are going to take their kids to N.Y.C. and drag them through the Met and the Frick ? Then, they'll go buy tickets to see La Boheme and hopefully there'll be some Shakespearian play ( there isn't now )on Broadway?

Okay, you can see some paintings on line and in books, you can buy records, but there is NOTHING comparable to seeing a live performance!

I'm against funding the NEA, but this, at least, was something worthwhile.

People here talk about not wanting to lose " our culture ". What exactly IS " OUR CULTURE " ...hip hop, Janet Jackson and whatever his name is, doing soft porn on T.V., MTV, rap music, or is it Grandma Moses paintings and Irving Berlin, and RHAPSODY IN BLUE ?

[tessalu]

Too many Americans are not able to afford healh care, and too many jobs have been fleeing the USA for too long, and these things come first. Whlle there is a lack of health care, the arts should just wait!

[tessalu]

When one is rich, it is most difficult to see that the poor have anything that is sorely needed. But this is what rich people do when they are in office.

[kayak]

With all due respect, you have some misinformation. The White House was decorated in a theme of children's story book characters, just one of which was Harry Potter. And perhaps the media played up that one because the books are so immensely popular with young people (and even many adults) today.

That is just some of the decorations shown on the White House web site ... but I couldn't find the Harry Potter figure displayed there.

About the twins ... I don't drink and don't condone the stunts that the girls have pulled. But from the reaction I have seen on FR, apparently I am in the minority for never having bought an illegal drink while in college. I suspect that the girls have done some rebelling against their parents .... which is not at all unusual among teenagers .... but that in itself indicates that the parents taught them to act differently.

Would you want to be judged solely on the basis of what a very biased media chose to print about you? We have heard nothing of the girls except for those much-publicized escapades. Unlike their predecessor, they are not running around the world on our dime, though they have occasionally traveled with their parents and a small retinue of people. They are not issuing policy statements nor sitting in on high level meetings. They are being college students.

If you see no difference between the previous occupants of the White House and the current ones as far as morality, dignity, and values then you must not be looking very hard.

[kenth]

Below are listed a few of the grants given in 2003. Heck, just look at the grants on the NEA website and where they went and then tell me again how much rural Americans benefit. Mind you, these are the same rural Americans who have their funds forcibly taken to pay for such ventures.

The question of why to fund the NEA at all aside, why should the funding be upped? Why not cut back in other areas to fund Shakespeare?

New York Foundation for the Arts, Inc. (on behalf of Check Your Body at the Door)
New York, NY
$25,000
To support a fine-cut edit of Check Your Body at the Door, a video documentary about popular, social, and club dances and dancers in New York City. The documentary is filmed in the clubs and the studio, and features a group of dancers, ages 16 to 46, demonstrating a variety of styles including free-form house jazz, hip-hop, vogueing, fast footwork and other new free styles.

Cambodian American Heritage, Inc.
Fort Washington, MD
$10,000
To support instruction in Cambodian classical dance and music. The project will culminate with a concert in observance of the Cambodian New Year.

Center for Traditional Music and Dance, Inc.
New York, NY
$50,000
To support the New York World Festival. The festival will focus on the rich musical traditions of countries of the Western Caribbean and the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

Texas Folklife Resources
Austin, TX
$50,000
To support the third International Accordion Festival. The event celebrates the accordion's central role in the traditional music of the United States and throughout the globe.

Orange Show Foundation
Houston, TX
$10,000
To support conservation and restoration of the Beer Can House, a work by self-taught artist John Milkovisch. The Houston landmark, consisting of a house and grounds decorated with methodically trimmed cans, will be used as an artist-in-residence project space.

Cinema/Chicago
Chicago, IL
$15,000
To support the 39th Chicago International Film Festival. Over 60,000 people will see 125 films from around the world.

Arts at St. Ann's (St. Ann Center for Restoration and the Arts, Inc.)
Brooklyn, NY
$35,000
To support the 2003 Puppet Lab and Labapalooza! Mini-Festival of New Puppet Theater from The Lab. The project is an ongoing professional workshop where emerging and mid-career puppet artists and collaborators meet weekly to create new, interdisciplinary puppet theater works.

[MissouriForBush]

Everything you have listed is a frivolous, complete waste of hard-earned taxpayer money.

We need to be cutting more -- not spending more.

[EternalVigilance]

DON'T INCREASE THE FUNDING -- END IT!!

Don't Spend It, End It!

Nice soundbite. :-)

And I just signed a petition today to name a new grade school in Texas after her! LOL...

[KantianBurke]

YES!!! YES!!!YES!! NO FUNDING FOR THAT BS!!

Sorry Laura. That $20 million ain't yours to play with. Now go away and leave the taxpayers alone.

[over3Owithabrain]

panama7 Since Jan 8, 2004

A "conservative Republican" living on $200 a month (yet junketing to Vegas) who just showed up last month to tell us of how he has "endured" the "reign" of Bush?

Uh-huh. Or should I say DUh-huh

[Khan Noonian Singh]

It doesn't matter whether the National Endowment for the Arts has changed. Maybe it's now funding some art that we find less objectionable - Who cares?

There is no basis in the U.S. Constitution for the Federal government to support the arts. That should be the end of the story.

How would even a liberal court with its strained interpretations justify the NEA? Usually the liberal jurists fall back on the interstate commerce clause, but it's sure hard to see how that could be twisted to apply here.

[texasflower]

I see that you just signed on recently. Since you have such an obvious dislike for George W. and Laura Bush, why are you here?

It seems odd that you would want to be here since the large majority of us are strong Bush supporters. Despite the complaining of some, the poll going on right now shows over 80% supporting Bush.

Honestly, are you here to cause trouble?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The 'Bloody Crossroads' Laura Bush and Dana Gioia remake the National Endowment for the Arts. BY LEONARD GARMENT (WSJ) [Full Text] We seem finally to have an occasion on which Democrats and Republicans can join in casting their votes for President Bush, enthusiastically or grudgingly. This event is the surprising--nay, startling--recent administration proposal for the largest increase in 20 years in the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Like most people who opine about the arts in America, I was caught off guard. Here is proof of just how off guard: Some months ago I delivered the inaugural lecture of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University. The lecture's thesis was that the culture wars of the 1980s had flattened government support for the arts for the foreseeable future and that arts organizations should therefore be more enterprising in devising ways to induce the private sector to make up the shortfall.

This view was reasonable: We have indeed been through a nasty period in the government-arts relationship. Yet there stands the fact of this against-the-grain budget proposal by the Bush administration--so against the grain that the proposal's chief critics are the antispending members of the president's own party. Thus it behooves me to re-examine my views and ask why. In retrospect, the correct answer appears to lie in the identity of the person President Bush chose to announce the proposed budget increase--his wife, Laura Bush.

My experience with Mrs. Bush and her influence tells me the choice was not window dressing for a political gesture. In 2002 there transpired--mirabile dictu--the administration's choice of Dana Gioia, a first-rate poet, to head the NEA. Mrs. Bush, a longtime poetry enthusiast, had a hand in naming him. When I first met Mr. Gioia, shortly before he began his calls on the senators who would vote on his confirmation, he handed me a CD recorded by his brother, Ted, an accomplished West Coast jazz pianist and the author of "The History of Jazz," the pre-eminent text on the subject.

Soon afterward, Mrs. Bush, in collaboration with Mr. Gioia, invited a group of poets to a forum at the White House to focus on the role of poets such as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes in American social history. The meeting was scheduled for February 2003. Some of the invited poets announced that they were going to use the forum to protest the U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq. Mrs. Bush, declining to play a role in the planned political drama, politely canceled the event.

This was precisely the kind of mishap that had plagued the NEA throughout the 1980s. The endowment could well have become, again, a casualty at the "bloody crossroads" where art and politics meet.

But that did not happen. Langston Hughes got a return invitation to the White House later that year when President and Mrs. Bush hosted 160 guests at a production, based on the musical "Harlem Song," of which Hughes's poetry was a significant part. A band organized and conducted by Loren Schoenberg, director of The Jazz Museum in Harlem, provided the music. Perhaps because the event ran counter to the image of the Bush administration as anti-black and anti-arts, it was largely unreported.

More generally, Mrs. Bush and Mr. Gioia persisted in their efforts to fashion an appropriate arts policy. Last week's announcement was one result. The proposed budget increase is shrewdly targeted to fund a major three-year program titled "American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius." The aim of the program is to connect large and small communities across the country, including "thousands of schools and dozens of military bases," with our cultural achievements. "Masterpieces" will probably not include many works by Robert Mapplethorpe. Some will be unhappy with this fact. But it will be hard for even the disaffected to deny the program's worth.

The endowment has already launched two prototypes for the program. Last year, "Shakespeare in American Communities" began presenting professional Shakespeare productions in 50 states. The endowment also expanded and increased the visibility of its "Jazz Masters" program, which recognizes and rewards contemporary contributors to this country's singular gift to the world and seeks to ensure that the historical essence of jazz does not disappear in the noise of popular culture. Neither prototype is a merely staff-generated idea.

I confess to a personal excitement at these events. Last year I returned to my native New York City in part to help build the aforementioned jazz museum in Harlem. Years ago, I played jazz saxophone professionally--just long enough to figure out the unbridgeable quality gap between me and truly talented musicians like my bandmate, the sparkling jazz saxophonist Al Cohn. (Alan Greenspan, another bandmate, came to a similar conclusion and left music for economics.)

Later, in the White House as counselor to President Nixon, I worked on civil rights and, with Nancy Hanks, support for the arts via the NEA. I became convinced of three things: First, there are indeed American masterpieces, of which jazz is one, that should not be allowed to drown in the heavy popular-culture seas. Second, jazz, like poetry, is part of the social fabric of America--what George Gershwin, writing in 1927, called "the voice of the soul of America"--and is best understood in the context of Harlem, the community in which it flowered, nourishing geniuses like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk, who played in venues such as the Apollo, Minton's and the Savoy Ballroom. Finally, though politics will and should be involved in the support of any public program, a decent politics should be capable of placing itself in the service of some things--like jazz in particular and cultural masterpieces in general--that are beyond politics.

Mrs. Bush's announcement and the events that led up to it sounded all those themes and provide a reason to look forward to the next steps. [End]

Mr. Garment is a New York lawyer and chairman of the Jazz Museum in Harlem.

[des]

With all due respect to you and THE FIRST LADY...I think last Sunday we all found out where we are at. I think Mrs. Bush has a bead on it.

[Mr Rogers]

Sounds like a useful program. Something for the Ford Foundation to support, perhaps.

But not a good use for taxpayer dollars. The federal budget does NOT exist so congresscritters & First Ladies can donate MY money to THEIR favorite charities.

As PJ O'Rourke (sp?) once commented: No one will get into heaven by shouting, 'But God, I gave other people's money to the poor!'

[Tailgunner Joe]

Isn't this the same Laura Bush who helped push us back into UNESCO, because "it had changed?"

[Cincinatus' Wife]

So you solution would be to paint a target on the Bush's back? The Bush administration is reversing the decay in the arts. I'd say that kind of influence on the American people is a good thing. The culture of the celebrity has immuned us to crassness and given us the Janet Jacksons of the world. I applaud the Bushs and their commitment to things better than what we current see touted as art.

[texasflower]

Kayak, I agree with you completely.

Panama, most of us went through some wild times when we were young. I'll bet you did some things your parents wouldn't have approved of either.

I did, and I had very strict parents. I was brought up in church. We attended church twice on Sundays and on Wed night.

My parents were very good parents. That didn't stop me from trying alcohol and partying a bit too much.

The real test of a good parent is not whether or not a child drinks and acts a bit wild. What matters is what the child returns to when the younger years are over.

Remember what the bible says about teaching a child in the way they should go? It's what they return to that matters the most.

From all accounts, these girls are indeed returning to what they have been taught.

A friend of mine has a daughter that had perfect attendance here in Texas from kingergarten, through high school graduation. She was honored at a special event at the Governor's Mansion here in Texas.

The Governor at the time was Governor George W. Bush. He spoke with her at length about some of the things he considered important for young people. This young lady was a abstinance counselor in her school.

She was a peer counselor in many things, conservation, charity etc.

Well, years passed and this young lady had was honored again with a group of young people for musical achievements.

This time, they were invited to the White House, to be honored by President George W. Bush.

With all of the people that he has met over the 6 years from the time he first met her, he remembered her. She was pulled aside from her group and was asked to come to a family dinner at the White House residence the next night.

She did go. The family dinner was just that. President Bush, Laura, Barbara, Jenna and my friend's daughter Georgia.

She says that the girls are very attractive, well spoken young women that are every bit as charming as their parents. They talked about the fact that they were involved in several mentoring programs and other similar projects.

They went through their late teens and early twenties with a bit of wildness, but they are poised, responsible and caring young women now.

One more thing, panama7, I would have been horrified if the President or Mrs. Bush had chatised those girls publicly.

Their discipline should not be public knowledge. That was a private matter as it should have been.

[Mr Rogers]

I'll applaud the Bushs commitment to give THEIR money to the arts. I prefer to give MY money to the arts by buying CDs of classical music to listen to with my 6 year old.

It may well be a worthy cause - but it is NOT a proper function of government. And money increased under a 'conservative' President will not be decreased under a liberal one. It just forms a new baseline for John Kerry or some other liberal pervert to use when 'donating' to their favorite 'art'.

Bottom line - it isn't their money to spend as they wish. It is our money, taken under threat of jail. It should be used for the national defense, highways, etc - not on charities.

[texasflower]

Can you direct me to the petition?

[farmer18th]

You're waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind the times.

That's the way it will be sold. Promise Bach; deliver Maplethorpe. If the First Lady thinks the NEA establishment is going to give up their pet pathologies, she's hopelessly naive.

[texasflower]

Most countries consider art to be an important part of their history and culture.

And a source of national pride.

We seem to be one of the few countries who doesn't care.

I certainly have had some problems with the NEA, but after reading the posted article that was posted just above yours, and reading the quote from Mrs Bush that it had changed, I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

As I said, we seem to be one of the few countries that doesn't care about our culture and history, but I think we need to be.

[WhiteGuy]

Oh well,

Peggy Hill will find some other wasteful program to advocate.

[Texasforever]

Peggy Hill will find some other wasteful program to advocate.

Thanks for sharing Dale.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Let me guess, you're a libertarian.

[metesky]

So you believe that government should fund health care?

[Batrachian]

"First lady Laura Bush is about to get the cold shoulder on Capitol Hill. House Republican insiders say the GOP leadership is leaning toward rejecting the surge in spending for the controversial National Endowment for the Arts that Mrs. Bush recently announced."

Wow, these congressional Republicans are so brave! They vote for uncounted hundreds of billions of dollars on new entitlements, they pass CFR, they let Ted Kennedy write education bills, but when Laura Bush wants a few million more for the NEA, then they finds their onions and tell her NO! I have to laugh, except the whole thing makes me want to cry. Don't worry, I'm not the crying type. I'll suffer stoically.

I'll bet they fund the increase anyway in the end. Our Republicans. Maybe I'll cry after all.

[suzyq5558]

lol!I kinda liked hairy leffed lesbians myself:)hehe

[metesky]

Texas Folklife Resources
Austin, TX
$50,000
To support the third International Accordion Festival. The event celebrates the accordion's central role in the traditional music of the United States and throughout the globe.

Why do I get a mental picture of several hundred unemployable accordionists on stage all frantically whacking away at "Lady of Spain"?

Remember that there's an entire coterie of JFK "conservatives" here, much as "conservatives" like Newt Gingrich were admirers of FDR.

[Peach]

You live on $2,400 a YEAR? I think you are lying. Welfare kings live on more than that.

And as a newbie you show up here complaining about King George and Queen Laura and the best you can complain about is the NEA? hahahaha

Well you little troll. Didn't take long to out yourself did it?

[Wonder Warthog]

"The parents of the kids in wayoutnowhere, who don't have all that much money, are going to take their kids to N.Y.C. and drag them through the Met and the Frick ?"

Actually, yes, they can and do. I was one of those "wayoutnowhere" kids. Those visits to museums took place on our vacations. I preferred the Smithsonian to any of the others--FAR more interesting.

DEFUND/ABOLISH the NEA!!!!

[cynicom]

Laura was a teacher and a democrat before Bush, both good indicators.

[thesummerwind]

Right you are. Laura was correct........ as nearly always. She's beautiful in many ways.

[AppyPappy]

I'm against funding the NEA, but this, at least, was something worthwhile.

Then YOU pay for it. But don't pick some old widows pocket for it.

[kittymyrib]

And don't pick some unemployed person's pocket for it. The bone in my throat is the thought that people have to pay income taxes out of their umemployment checks...now THAT is low of our spendaholic government.

[AppyPappy]

Unemployment is income. They tax income. Get rid of the income tax and it gets fixed.

[I_dmc]

I like R. Lee Ermey's art. Paint cans hanging by ropes, canvas, Ithaca pump.

[kitkat]

***Can you direct me to the petition?***

LOL!

[kitkat]

***Then YOU pay for it. But don't pick some old widows pocket for it.***

Unless YOU'RE an old widow, please don't speak for us. *I* am an old widow, and definitely not a rich one at that. And I want my grandchildren to know that there's something in our culture besides Janet Jackson and Robert Maplethorpe.