NEA
November 4, 2009
- President Obama has appointed 25 new members to the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, a Reagan-era creation that combines representatives of federal cultural agencies (i.e., National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the U. S. Department of Education, the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, the National Gallery ...
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September 26, 2009
- Dear President Obama: I appreciated your Rosh HaShanah message to Jewish Americans last week, especially the line that read, "Let us resist prejudice, intolerance, and indifference in whatever forms they may take." You declared that on this occasion, "We rededicate ourselves to the work of repairing this world." The time has come to translate these words into action. I want ...
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September 10, 2009
- Three days ago, in an essay about the scapegoating of green jobs advisor Van Jones, who was hounded out of office by wingnut Fox commentator Glenn Beck, I wrote this: We must act now to put a brake on scapegoating before it once again becomes the force that controls public life. The issue will not die down when headlines about Van Jones have faded. Now that Beck has tasted blood, his appetite ...
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August 16, 2009
- It's hard not to have an ambivalent relationship with political power, no matter how modest. There's some truth to the notion that the people who most crave it are least reliable when they have it; but no more truth than there is to the idea that those who are negatively oriented to power will never have any, to their detriment. Barack Obama was such a surprise as a candidate because he broke ...
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May 16, 2009
- I have some advice for Rocco Landesman, the newly appointed Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, but first I have to convince myself it is worth offering. In case he reads this, I'll summarize my advice up front: Rocco Landesman, the intelligence, risk-taking and independence for which you are admired on Broadway will be of little use to this country unless you recognize how much ...
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March 3, 2009
- A few days ago, at a huge writers conference in Chicago, I met a charming and articulate man -- dressed in lizard cowboy boots and a very interesting sort of felt cowboy hat -- who happens to be a lobbyist for the arts. He was very excited to have just been a part of the effort to ensure the 50 million dollar funding of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the hope of continued funding ...
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January 28, 2009
- There they go again! A few right-wingers who want to defeat the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan now before Congress are using one of its smallest provisions, a $50 million supplemental allocation to the National Endowment for the Arts, as a dart they hope will let the air out of the bill. There aren't a great many opponents, and they don't have much support, but in the ping-pong ...
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December 6, 2008
- Just a quick note today to congratulate Bryan Thao Worra, Laotian American poet extraordinaire, for being an NEA Fellow in Literature for Poetry. Insofar as this is one of 42 awards out of a thousand applications and carries with it a 25,000 dollar award, this is all kinds of a big deal, and no one deserves it more than Bryan, who is truly an excellent poet. If you haven't already, head over ...
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