The NEA Has Much Bigger Problems Than Yosi Sergant

First, I recommend that you read this.

Here are some excerpts from the above linked article:

Here are just three examples of some of the NEA “stimulus” grants, according to Stearns:

• $50,000 to the Frameline film house to screen Thundercrack, which Frameline describes as "the world's only underground kinky art porno horror film, complete with four men, three women and a gorilla. Ecstasy so great that all heaven and hell becomes just one big old Shangri-La! You will be seduced into accepting this orgy of sexual liberation!”

• $25,000 to San Francisco’s CounterPULSE to make Perverts Put Out in the NEA’s “dance” category. This weekly performance is called “ a pansexual performance series.”

• A $25,000 grant to Jess Curtis/Gravity, Inc., whose most recent work is the Symmetry Project in which nude couples, including children, are mounted on each other in various poses.

This is the latest in a series of scandals involving the National Endowment for the Arts. In the 1980s, the NEA funded Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” which was submerged image of Christ on a cross in the artist’s urine. Then there was NEA funding for the exhibitions of Robert Maplethorpe’s homoerotic photographs depicting a bullwhip inserted…well, never mind. The spending of tax dollars on such “art” led to successful efforts led by North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms to reduce NEA funding to below $100 million per annum. President Reagan attempted, unsuccessfully, to abolish the NEA altogether.

Here is a quote from this commentary.

The history of the National Endowment for the Arts has not been without controversy. It has been mired in controversy since its inception due to its support of all too many “questionable” programs.

One example: the exhibition of Andres Serrano's work, which included a photograph, Piss Christ, of a crucifix submerged in the artist's urine. NEA controversy grew to include the work of other artists, including Robert Mapplethorpe, Annie Sprinkle, and others. Wikipedia describes the “artistry” of Maplethorpe and Sprinkle.

Robert Mapplethorpe (November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and naked men. The frank, homosexual eroticism of some of the work of his middle period triggered a more general controversy about NEA funding of artworks.

Dr. Annie Sprinkle (born Ellen F. Steinberg on July 23, 1954 in Philadelphia) is a former prostitute, stripper, pornographic “actress,” cable television host, porn magazine editor, writer, and sex film producer. Sprinkle, who is bisexual, married her long-time partner, Beth Stephens, in 2007. Sprinkle is known as the "prostitute and porn star turned sex educator and artist" Her best known theater and performance art piece is her Public Cervix Announcement, in which she invites the audience to "celebrate the female body" by viewing her cervix with a speculum and flashlight. She also performed The Legend of the Ancient Sacred Prostitute, in which she did a "sex magic" masturbation ritual on stage. She has toured one-woman shows internationally for 17 years, some of which were are titled Post Porn Modernist, Annie Sprinkle's Her story of Porn, Hardcore from the Heart, and, currently, Exposed; Experiments in Love, Sex, Death and Art.


I rest my case. In Gun Shy's opinion, taxpayer money should not be used to fund pornography, nor should it be used to promote the current administrations political agenda. The NEA is a run away train that has gone off the tracks. A major revamping is in order in my opinion.

As a bonus for the readers, here are a few of the 45 goals of communism:

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV & motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all form of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings," substituting shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. " Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.