Conservatives are outraged over an actual outrage? Color me impressed.

It may have taken awhile, but thanks to Patrick Courrielche’s exposé at, of all places, Big Hollywood, conservatives are positively fuming over the Bush Administration‘s decision to funnel $2.2 billion through the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives into programs that specifically support the President’s ideological and policy commitments, like the Abstinence Education Program, designed to “enable states to provide abstinence education and mentoring, counseling, and adult supervision to promote abstinence from sexual activity.”

Conservatives are rightly upset with a speech Bush delivered at the 2004 White House National Conference on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, in which he said “[i]t’s hard to be a faith-based program if you can’t practice faith [and] the message to you is, we’re changing the culture here in America.”

“It’s hard to read his comments as anything but a call for groups to engage in a partisan campaign on behalf of the Bush Administration’s policy agenda,” argued John Hinderaker. Nick Gillespie agreed, saying that “[i]f you’ve ever wondered—and worried—about where government support of the arts leads, look no further than the full transcript of an August 10, 2009 telecon[ference call] between an official at the National Endowment for the Arts and a group of ‘independent artists from around the country.’”

Wait wait wait—I thought conservatives were upset because the White House created an office, installed it five federal agencies, then used them to fund a clearly partisan policy agenda to the tune of $2.2 billion. You mean to tell me all those links are about an August 10^th conference call that tried to wrangle up support for the current President’s National Day of Service—a call in which not one cent of the NEA’s $155 million budget was dispensed or even offered?

They are.

All the outrage centers around a conference call designed, in the words soon-to-be-becked* Yosi Sergant, “to raise the visibility” for a program whose purpose is to encourage “all Americans and others throughout the world to voluntarily perform at least one good deed or another service activity on the anniversary of 9/11 each year, and on other days marked by terrorist events.” The problem, it seems, is that the NEA is supposed to be above partisanship, and supporting the President’s United We Serve initiative is seen by conservatives to be a partisan issue. Here are some of its highly partisan goals:

We want to make Americans’ lives better by asking everybody to participate in shaping the life of their community and make the quality of life better.

Clearly, “making Americans’ lives better” is a partisan issue. Which would be acceptable, were the administration not being so heavy-handed:

[H]ow do we move the people who look to each of you for guidance to get involved? We have to leave that to you because nobody else knows how to do it better than you do[.]

Clearly, dictating that individual organizations ought to do what they think is appropriate in a manner of their own choosing is but one step from installing Obama as Dictator for Life. Which is what they will do, because these are doggedly partisan projects:

I hearken back to an example that happened right before election day during the campaign when a bunch of DJs got together and put on a conference call for all the top radio and club DJs around the country who got onto a telephone call and encouraged everyone to make DJ mixes using songs that would encourage people to get out and vote.

And when these hip-hop-listening kids went out and voted for whomever they so desired, who did they vote for? The Dictator for Life, who now wants them to

to go out and donate blood or adopt an alley way or identify some walls in [their] neighborhood that have been stricken with graffiti that need a mural.

According to conservatives, encouraging artists to encourage kids to donate blood is now a partisan activity because it falls under the heading of “service,” and “service” is communism; “service” is socialism; “service” is Marxism; “service” is fascism.

So now, for conservatives, “service” is partisan.

That’s the root of all this outrage—that the NEA would listen in on a conference call designed to spread the word about the National Day of Service.  For more on this and other trivial items that are suddenly important after eight years of whistling while actual civil liberties were being non-hypothetically violated on a regular basis, watch the Glenn Beck Show tonight on FOXNews.

*beck v. trans. beck-ing, beck-ed, to be baselessly attacked by an idiot with a megaphone, then have those accusations alter your life for the worse because it’s politically expedient for your spineless superiors to demote or fire you

Alternatively (and to maintain my honor):

beck, v. trans. beck-ing, beck-ed, to baselessly attack an innocuous public official, then have those accusations alter that official's life for the worse because it's politically expedient for their superiors to demote or fire them, esp. when done by idiots with megaphones. Also intr.

(x-posted.)

Comments

[happyfeet]

The National Day of Service is gay I think. Like roller boogie gay or like that Julia and Julie movie what has Amy Adams in it. Her mom was like a bodybuilding mormon or something. That's sort of unusual, no?

[SEK]

The National Day of Service is gay I think.

And you're welcome to think that . . . but if you learned that Bush officials talked to church leaders and asked them to spread the word about the National Day of Prayer, you wouldn't be upset, would you?

[happyfeet]

That would be a dorky thing for them to do. Did they do that for reals?

[SEK]

All the time. There's absolutely nothing wrong or unusual about an administration touching base with its constituents to help spread the word about an event likely to be of interest to them. It's even, as the Bush administration proved with its block grants for abstinence-only sex ed, quasi-legal for them to say, "Do what we want, or we won't give you money!"

[happyfeet]

People in government shouldn't be spreading the word about the National Day of Prayer. I think that's Kirk Cameron's job. Kirk is a very special person.

In Kirk Cameron’s new movie, “Fireproof,” he has to kiss the actress playing his wife. That was a problem.

Cameron will not kiss any woman who is not his wife.

“I have a commitment not to kiss any other woman,” the former child star of “Growing Pains” told Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford Monday on TODAY in New York.*

Good on you, Kirk!

I think though that our little president man needs to stop being so grandiose about thinking that him and his doofus tribe of angry progressives are at all capable of deciding what kind of effect they want to have on the culture and then having that effect. It's simply not unmeaningful that the little president man's approval ratings are falling falling falling like Nancy Pelosi's fearful tears. People simply aren't that simple. Not even Americans.

[Karl Steel]

It's simply not unmeaningful that the little president man's approval ratings are falling falling falling
That's not precisely true. I just checked the data (which link, admittedly, provides a bullshit chart, since the notion of averaging out across polls to arrive at the truth is, obviously, stupid). Then there's this.

What do the figures look like if you account for regional differences?

More to the point, what does this have to do with anything?
And, in re: "what kind of effect they want to have on the culture and then having that effect," what is your theory of cultural change? Or, like climate change, do you simply not believe in it? Are you some kind of evo-psych nutjob instead of a Gramscian nutjob? Or do you work in the resistance/containment dynamic of New Historicist clichés? Pick your poison.

And, by the way, Did they do that for reals?

Jackass, did you read the post?

[happyfeet]

I just don't think the little president man is delivering on what his marketing promised. And when you live and die by Marketing and ohnoes you have Marketing Fail as bad as these ones, you need to focus on holding onto your market share until you can refocus your brand. Little president man is shedding market share and the credibility of his brand is in tatters. You know what the mostest ruinous real people credibility killer thinger is for him? That Cash for Clunkers fiasco.

Anyway.

I read the whole post and I didn't catch about the National Day of Prayer. Let me read it again. Ok no. Can you quote what you're talking about? Was it in one of the links or something?

[Karl Steel]

Little president man is shedding market share
Not true. See links above.

Bush officials talked to church leaders and asked them to spread the word about the National Day of Prayer
Oh, you're confused about whether Bush talked to church leaders and asked them to spread the word about the National Day of Prayer?
That wasn't clear from what you wrote.

Well, let's hold your hand and walk you to a little door labeled Google.

Now, if we hold to the strict standard of whether Bush personally promoted the NDP by contacting particular churches, well, that's hard to prove, at least in the five minutes I'm willing to give the research. But if the question can be heard as 'Did Bush give his approval to the National Day of Prayer by meeting with leaders of its task force (i.e., 'church leaders') at the White House,' and 'was the task force during the Bush era restricting this unofficial government support to fundamentalist Christians and excluding moderate Christians, Muslims, and Jews,' then the answer looks like yes.

You're welcome.

[happyfeet]

Okeydokey. The trendline on the little president man's market share is clear as day from what you linked. Try squinting your eyes a little maybe. That helps sometimes. And you just got all excited and went off half-cocked about the National Day of Prayer thing and that's not going to escape the notice of people what read this thread I don't think.

You're mean.

[happyfeet]

If back in January your broker had moved you into a fund what had little president man's trend line you'd be even grumpier than you are.

[happyfeet]

While we wait for Mr. Dr. Steele's reply here's VV for you cause of she's cute as pickles. She's a big Barack Obama fan, VV is. And that's okay.

[JPRS]

Scott, that's a pretty bad troll infestation you got there. Have you tried an exterminator?

[Karl Steel]

You're mean.
And you're stupid. And a bad speller. And lazy.

If my broker put me in the Obama fund in November 2008, I'd fire her; if he bought in the last few weeks, I'd be okay with that. Nonetheless, I still don't see what the presidential polling has to do with Scott's original post. Or really what it has to do with anything, since Obama's not currently running for any office. Could you explain that further?

And maybe I missed the bit where you explained what model of social change you believe in? The one, you know, that makes Presidential efforts to influence culture contemptible (since you're against presidents "deciding what kind of effect they want to have on the culture and then having that effect")? I mean, most people thought FDR's fireside chats were kind of neat, whereas you, being a...doctrinaire Marxist who believes only in the potency of the base? being a object relations psychoanalyst who believes in longstanding influence of ego relations with the mother? a Jungian (you know, the woo-woo version of Evo-Psych)? what? ... think FDR's fireside chats, Bush's 'keep shopping,' etc., deserve your contempt?

Frankly, I don't really get what you're driving at.

Or what you think was ok abt the Bush-era handling of the NDP.

Also, I don't understand why you get calling Obama "little." Bush, being only 5' 11" (and no doubt shrinking), is little. Obama, at 6' 1", is a bit short, but generally not someone we'd call 'little.' Or do you mean this word in some sense other than a literal description of height or width? We need a little more explanation here.

[Karl Steel]

also: "is shedding" != "trendline"
Obviously.

[happyfeet]

The point is that if the little president man and his neo-marxist team of adolescent douchebags can't massage a basic approval rating out of people what have been stupefied by a supine dirty socialist media, then it's entirely too ambitious for them to think that they can inculcate a mass desire to perform dirty socialist service work.

I think Bush should have not deigned to notice the national day of prayer cause of the national day of prayer is almost not quite but almost as gay as the national day of abject dirty socialist service.

And little president man is little. Metrosexual dirty socialist waif boi. Too much arugula too few chili dogs I guess.

[happyfeet]

you didn't say whether or not you thought VV was cute as pickles

[Ahistoricality]

Karl, HappyFeet is a regular troll here, someone SEK seems to .... like? respect? accept? I don't know. Anyway, HF is a performance art troll who argues, if you can call it that, in circles (e.g. "if the ... president ... can't massage a basic approval rating out of people what have been stupefied by a supine dirty socialist media...") and has no respect for the English language as we know it. HF's only known goal is to keep you talking, getting more and more frustrated until you do or say something you regret, then cites it incessantly.

That said, who considers 6'1" "a bit short"? Shorter than what? He's close to the norm for contemporary politicians; the only President manifestly taller was Abraham Lincoln.

[happyfeet]

White House officials say they are enacting specific steps to make sure such a call never happens again.

I don't get that why would that do that? They can't do that. It's wrong. It's wrong cause of there was nothing wrong with that call. OMG. They're letting themselves be bullied. We can't let this stand. We have to let the little president man know that it's ok for him to have these calls so he can get the word out about the hopings and the changings.

Who's with me? Silence is sort of like assent, just quieter.

[Karl Steel]

AHist: I don't really get why SEK plays ball with HF.

Shorter than what?
Than me.

[Karl Steel]

as an afterthought, because, as I've said before, HF is basically just ripping off Fafblog's style. It's not only that he's a stupid illogical troll; it's that he basically the Judd Hirsch to Fafblog's Alan Alda, or the Yahoo Serious to Fafblog's PeeWee Herman.