Andrew Breitbart’s Zingers Continue to Fly

posted at 4:42 pm on September 21, 2009 by Howard Portnoy
[ Obama ]   

Andrew Breitbart, the blogger who brought the ACORN scandal to light, has provided a complete transcript of a scandal even closer to home for the White House and its inhabitants (h/t James Taranto). The transcript is of an August 10 conference call in which administration officials openly solicited the cooperation of government-funded artists to help promote Barack Obama’s agenda.

The man who initiated the call, one Michael Skolnik, is not himself a government employee, though he plays one (more or less) in the call in which he declares at the outset 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 a month ago in a conversation that was had. We had the idea that I would help bring together the independent artists community around the country.

So what’s the problem, you ask, with a bunch of artists getting behind the president? Isn’t that good old red-blooded patriotism at work?

Depends. When the artists in question have received government grants through the National Endowment for the Arts, then the question of loyalties versus quid pro quo becomes a little stickier.

In a summary of the proceedings and their aftermath, John Nolte writes at Breitbart’s Big Hollywood blog:

[Yosi] Sergant [of the NEA] then turns the call over to Thomas Bates from “Rock the Vote,” who offers up an example of local environmental activism involving a garbage sculpture. Within days after this call Rock the Vote would launch a “health care design contest.”

A mere two days after the call a group of 21 art organizations endorsed health care reform.

Of those 21 organizations, “16 of the groups and affiliated organizations received nearly $2 million in grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in the 150 days before the conference call.”

Is this what Barack Obama meant when he spoke about changing the way business was done in Washington? It will be interesting to see (1) if any mainstream media pick up the story (so far none has) and (2) what the White House’s response will be in the event they do.

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

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