OUT OF INDIA
Research by Lucy Maness Warner
Compiled on February 23, 2016


The Romani, generally considered to have come from Northwest India, also have genetic similarities to people from Pakistan. The earliest historical mention of Romani related groups go back as far as 400 AD in Grecian territories, though they are dated also in 800 AD in and 1100 AD in Central and Western Europe. One of the earliest groups to be mentioned emerged in Spain under the Moors. There is no evidence that they have ever had a written language and a mythological tradition. There probably was such tradition, since most groups of people do have stories that have been handed down generation to generation. As for religion, they have generally adopted the religions and clothing of their host countries.

From the “History…” below comes an interesting statement: “. Kashmiri Pandits are Kashmiri Brahmins.[29]” One of the localized names for Romani groups, however, literally translates “untouchable,” and according to the same article, no Romanis have developed a known written language, except undoubtedly those in Kashmir. If they are Brahmins they are also certainly settled people rather than travelers. Another group name mentioned in an historical reference indicates that they were magicians and musicians, undoubtedly traveling performers.

Though the Romani have been one of those generally disparaged groups wherever they went, believed to murder, rape and steal, they are also extremely interesting in their stubborn adherence to their traditional life style, which is colorful and romantic. Now, reading this, their intricate cultural ties known to go back as far as 400 AD, probably go back even farther. In that they are reminiscent of the original Indo-European speaking groups who morphed in a long series of languages and cultures of Europe and Asia, and even some have migrated into the Americas and North Africa. See the several Internet articles below, which give a great deal of information about those whom we know best under the name “Gypsy.”

Whatever else is true of these people, their nomadic heritage which has held true in some places until present times, though the old beautiful and ornate “gypsy wagon” pulled by horses has probably disappeared to traveling around in automobiles. There are some twenty different groups of modern day nomads of various cultural ties, some with ancient religion, culture and language, given in the following Wikipedia article, which is interesting as a source of further study.

A group called “Irish Travelers,” who are light skinned and travel nowadays by automobile both in Europe and the US, are also considered to be of a low class and given to crime. I’m sure that any nomadic group who show up in Europe or the US would be feared and possibly hated.

One exception that occurs to me are the reindeer herding Sami, of Scandinavia, most of whom have now settled down and follow other traditional European trades. Those who choose to follow the old ways have maintained some very interesting folk beliefs, tent dwellings, etc. There was a wonderful TV documentary showing them milking their reindeer and telling stories around the fire within their tents. The Christian story of Santa Claus is discussed in that film, as it bears a close resemblance to a Sami belief.

SEE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Modern_nomads which states among other things, “This category is ambiguously titled and should be split to distinguish two separate scopes: groups practicing actual nomadic pastoralism today (Category:Nomads), "itinerant" groups (sometimes described as "nomadic" in a loose sense of the word) traditionally itinerant groups (romani, "indigenous travellers", etc.) neo-itinerant groups or individuals (migrant workers, "perpetual tourists" or "snowbirds", globetrotters, New Age travellers, etc.). I also suggest that the curious will read this article. It includes some twenty or more different types of nomadic people who do still exist around the world.]




Excerpt from the Wikipedia article “Languages of the Romani People,” –
“Etymology[edit]

“The demonyms of the Romani people, Lom and Dom share the same etymological origin,[15][16] reflecting Sanskrit ḍoma "a man of low caste, living by singing and music". [17][18]” This statement is in contrast to the proposed origin of some Roma people, based on Genetics, as being of the Brahmin caste.”




THE FOLLOWING IS A RECENT THEORY OF ORIGIN BASED ON DNA AND LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE, COMING FROM THE ARTICLE CALLED “HISTORY OF THE ROMANI PEOPLE,” WIKIPEDIA.

EXCERPTS:

[NOTE: An extremely complex map of proposed migration patterns is shown in this article.]

“The Burushos of Hunza have a paternal lineage genetic marker that is grouped with Pamiri speakers from Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and the Sintior Sindhi Romani ethnic group. This find of shared genetic haplogroups may indicate an origin of the Romani people in or around these regions.[27]” This may indicate that the Indian populations traveled east into India from Pakistan, rather than being originally Indian, but Roma linguistic and genetic clues have showed up across Europe and Asia, so their true origin may not be truly discovered yet. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me if they were to be found one of the earliest groups to have settled in those areas, rather than late comers.

Another genetic study, however, on the Domba groups of Roma indicates origin in India itself. “the ancestors of present scheduled tribes and scheduled caste populations of northern India, traditionally referred to collectively as the Ḍoma, are the likely ancestral populations of modern European Roma.[28] …. Autosomal data permits simultaneous analysis of multiple lineages, which can provide novel information about population history. According to a genetic study on autosomal data on Roma the source of Southasian Ancestry in Roma is North-West India. The two populations showing closest relatedness to Roma were Kashmiri Pandits and Sindhi. Kashmiri Pandits are Kashmiri Brahmins.[29] The classical and mtDNA genetic markers suggested the closest affinity of the Roma with Rajput and Sindhi populations from Rajasthan and the Punjab respectively.[28][30]”

Under the heading “Early Records,” their appearance in parts of Europe is placed much farther back than 1100 AD. “Early records[edit] -- Many Antique historians mention a tribe by the name of Sigynnae (Tsigani) on various locations in Europe. Early records of itinerant populations from India begin as early as the Sassanid period. Donald Kenrick notes the first recorded presence of Zott in Baghdad in AD 420, Khaneikin in AD 834.[31]”

ORIGINS

“The Romani have been described by Diana Muir Appelbaum as unique among peoples because they have never identified themselves with a territory; they have no tradition of an ancient and distant homeland from which their ancestors migrated, nor do they claim the right to national sovereignty in any of the lands where they reside, rather, Romani identity is bound up with the ideal of freedom expressed, in part, in having no ties to a homeland.[5] The absence of traditional origin stories and of a written history has meant that the origin and early history of the Romani people was long an enigma.

. . . . An alternative view is that the ancestors of the Romani were part of the military in Northern India. When there were invasions by Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi and these soldiers were defeated, they were moved west with their families into the Byzantine Empire between AD 1000 and 1030.[10] Genetic evidence connects the Romani people to the descendants of groups which emigrated from South Asia towards Central Asia during the medieval period.[11]”

. . . . Their early history shows a mixed reception. Although 1385 marks the first recorded transaction for a Romani slave in Wallachia, they were issued safe conduct by Sigismund of the Holy Roman Empire in 1417.[31] Romanies were ordered expelled from the Meissen region of Germany in 1416, Lucerne in 1471, Milan in 1493, France in 1504, Aragon in 1512, Sweden in 1525, England in 1530 (see Egyptians Act 1530), and Denmark in 1536.[31] In 1510, any Romani found in Switzerland were ordered to be put to death, with similar rules established in England in 1554, Denmark in 1589, and Sweden in 1637, whereas Portugal began deportations of Romanies to its colonies in 1538.[31]

Later, a 1596 English statute, however, gave Romanies special privileges that other wanderers lacked; France passed a similar law in 1683. Catherine the Great of Russia declared the Romanies "crown slaves" (a status superior to serfs), but also kept them out of certain parts of the capital.[37] In 1595, Ştefan Răzvan overcame his birth into slavery, and became the Voivode (Prince) of Moldavia.[31] . . . .

Settlement[edit]

In 1758, Maria Theresa of Austria began a program of assimilation to turn Romanies into ujmagyar (new Hungarians). The government built permanent huts to replace mobile tents, forbade travel, and forcefully removed children from their parents to be fostered by non-Romani.[31] By 1894, the majority of Romanies counted in a Hungarian national census were sedentary. In 1830, Romani children in Nordhausen were taken from their families to be fostered by Germans.[31]

Russia also encouraged settlement of all nomads in 1783, and the Polish introduced a settlement law in 1791. Bulgaria and Serbia banned nomadism in the 1880s.[31]

In 1783, racial legislation against Romanies was repealed in the United Kingdom, and a specific "Turnpike Act" was established in 1822 to prevent nomads from camping on the roadside, strengthened in the Highways Act of 1835.[31]

Persecution[edit]

Main article: Antiziganism

In 1538, the first anti-ziganist (anti-Romani) legislation was issued in Moravia and Bohemia, which were under Habsburg rule. Three years later, after a series of fires in Prague which were blamed on the Romani, Ferdinand I ordered them to be expelled. In 1545, the Diet of Augsburg declared that "whoever kills a Gypsy, will be guilty of no murder". The massive killing spree that resulted prompted the government to eventually step in and "forbid the drowning of Romani women and children".[38] In 1710, Joseph I ordered that "all adult males were to be hanged without trial, whereas women and young males were to be flogged and banished forever." In addition, they were to have their right ears cut off in the kingdom of Bohemia and their left ear in Moravia.[39]

In 1530, England issued the Egyptians Act which banned Romani from entering the country and required those living in the country to leave within 16 days. Failure to do so could result in confiscation of property, imprisonment and deportation. The act was amended with the Egyptians Act 1554, which ordered the Romani to leave the country within a month. Non-complying Romanies were executed.[40]”

Pre-war organization[edit]
In 1879, a national meeting of Romanies was held in the Hungarian town of Kisfalu (now Pordašinci, Slovenia). Romanies in Bulgaria set up a conference in 1919 to protest for their right to vote, and a Romani journal, Istiqbal (Future) was founded in 1923.[31]

In the Soviet Union, the All-Russian Union of Gypsies was organized in 1925 with a journal, Romani Zorya (Romani Dawn) beginning two years later. The Romengiro Lav (Romani Word) writer's circle encouraged works by authors like Nikolay Aleksandrovich Pankov and Nina Dudarova.[31]

A General Association of the Gypsies of Romania was established in 1933 with a national conference, and two journals, Neamul Tiganesc (Gypsy Nation) and Timpul (Time). An "international" conference was organized in Bucharest the following year.[31]

In Yugoslavia, Romani journal Romano Lil started publication in 1935.[31]

Porajmos[edit]

Main article: Porajmos
During World War II, the Nazis murdered 220,000 to 1,500,000 Romanies in an attempted genocide referred to as the Porajmos.[41] Like the Jews, they were sentenced to forced labor and imprisonment in concentration camps. They were often killed on sight, especially by the Einsatzgruppen on the Eastern Front.

Post-war history

In Communist central and eastern Europe, Romanies experienced assimilation schemes and restrictions of cultural freedom. The Romani language and Romani music were banned from public performance in Bulgaria. In Czechoslovakia, tens of thousands of Romanies from Slovakia, Hungary and Romania were re-settled in border areas of Czech lands and their nomadic lifestyle was forbidden. In Czechoslovakia, where they were labeled as a “socially degraded stratum,” Romani women were sterilized as part of a state policy to reduce their population. This policy was implemented with large financial incentives, threats of denying future social welfare payments, misinformation and involuntary sterilization.[42]

In the early 1990s, Germany deported tens of thousands of migrants to central and eastern Europe. Sixty percent of some 100,000 Romanian nationals deported under a 1992 treaty were Romani.

During the 1990s and early 21st century many Romanies from central and eastern Europe attempted to migrate to western Europe or Canada. The majority of them were turned back. Several of these countries established strict visa requirements to prevent further migration.

In 2005, the Decade of Roma Inclusion was launched in nine Central and Southeastern European countries to improve the socio-economic status and social inclusion of the Romani minority across the region.

Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005 - 2015 has been not success at all. The Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015 is coming to the end of its originally defined term. It initiated crucially important processes for Roma inclusion in Europe, and provided the impetus for an EU-led effort covering similar subject matter, the EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies up to 2020 (EU Framework).

America

Romanies began immigrating to the United States in colonial times, with small groups in Virginia and French Louisiana. Larger-scale immigration began in the 1860s, with groups of Romnichal from Britain. The largest number immigrated in the early 20th century, mainly from the Vlax group of Kalderash. Many Romanies also settled in other countries of the Americas.

Romani nationalism

A small Roma nationalist movement exists.

The first World Romani Congress was organized in 1971 near London, funded in part by the World Council of Churches and the Government of India. It was attended by representatives from India and 20 other countries. At the congress, the green and blue flag from the 1933 conference, embellished with the red, sixteen-spoked chakra, was reaffirmed as the national emblem of the Romani people, and the anthem, "Gelem, Gelem" was adopted.

The International Romani Union was officially established in 1977, and in 1990, the fourth World Congress declared April 8 to be International Day of the Roma, a day to celebrate Romani culture and raise awareness of the issues facing the Romani community.

The 5th World Romany Congress in 2000 issued an official declaration of the Romany non-territorial nation.




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Romani_people

Names of the Romani people
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Map Historical Distribution of Romani People By Language – See Website.

“The Romani people are also known by a variety of other names; in English as gypsies or gipsies (seen by some as a slur, as discussed below) and Roma, in Greek as γύφτοι (gýftoi) or τσινγάνοι (tsingánoi), in Central and Eastern Europe as Tsigani (and variants), in France as gitans besides the dated bohémiens, manouches, in Italy as zingari and gitani, and in Spain as gitanos.

Self-designation also varies: In Central and Eastern Europe, Roma is common. The Romani of England call themselves (in Angloromani) Romanichal, those of Scandinavia (in Scandinavian romanidialect) Romanisæl. In German-speaking Europe, the self-designation is Sinti, in France Manush, while the groups of Spain, Wales and Finland use Kalo/Kale (from kalo meaning "black"). There are numerous subgroups and clans with their own self-designations, such as the Kalderash, Machvaya, Boyash, Lovari, Modyar, Xoraxai, Lăutari, etc.

. . . English usage[edit]
In the English language (according to OED), Rom is a noun (with the plural Romá or Roms) and an adjective, while Romany is also a noun (with the plural Romanies) and an adjective. Both Rom and Romany have been in use in English since the 19th century as an alternative for Gypsy. Romany is also spelled Romani, or Rommany.[2][3][4][5][6]

Sometimes, rom and romani are spelled with a double r, i.e., rrom and rromani, particularly in Romania in order to distinguish from the Romanian endonym (români). This is well established in Romani itself, since it represents a phoneme (/ʀ/ also written as ř and rh) which in some Romani dialects has remained different from the one written with a single r.[7]

Roma is a term primarily used in political contexts to refer to the Romani people as a whole.[8][9] Still, some subgroups of Romani do not self-identify as Roma, therefore some scholars avoid using the term Roma as not all Romani subgroups accept the term.[10]

Because all Romanies use the word Romani as an adjective, the term began to be used as a noun for the entire ethnic group.[11]

Today, the term Romani is used by some organizations — including the United Nations and the US Library of Congress.[7] However, the Council of Europe and other organizations use the term Roma to refer to Romani people around the world, and recommended that Romani be restricted to the language and culture: Romani language, Romani culture.[12][13][14]

Etymology[edit]
The demonyms of the Romani people, Lom and Dom share the same etymological origin,[15][16] reflecting Sanskrit ḍoma "a man of low caste, living by singing and music"[17][18] . . . .

Gipsy/gypsy originates from the Middle English gypcian, short for Egipcien. It is ultimately derived, via Middle French and Latin, from the Greek Αἰγύπτιοι (Aigyptioi), i.e. "Egyptians"; cf. Greek γύφτοι (gýftoi), a corruption of the same word. It was once believed that the Romanies, or some other gypsy groups (such as the Balkan Egyptians), originated in Egypt, and in one narrative were exiled as punishment for allegedly harbouring the infant Jesus.[33]

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) states a 'gipsy' is a member of a wandering race (by themselves called Romany), of Indian origin, which first appeared in England about the beginning of the 16th c.

According to the OED, the word was first used in English in 1514, with several more uses in the same century, and both Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare used this word.[34]

. . . . Use in English law[edit]

Gipsy has several developing and overlapping meanings under English Law. Under the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, gipsies are defined as "persons of nomadic habit of life, whatever their race or origin, but does not include members of an organised group of travelling showmen, or persons engaged in travelling circuses, travelling together as such."[41] This definition includes such groups as New Age Travellers, as well as Irish Travellers and Romany.[42][43]

Gipsies of Romany origins have been a recognised ethnic group for the purposes of Race Relations Act 1976 since Commission for Racial Equality v Dutton 1989 and Irish Travellers in England and Wales since O'Leary v Allied Domecq 2000 (having already gained recognition in Northern Ireland in 1997).[44]”



The following article about modern day gypsy life and traditions is interesting also. This is the first reference to spiritual life among gypsies, and the sections called Hierarchy and Family Structure are fascinating. I suggest reading the whole article as it contains information other than that in any of the other articles above.

“http://www.livescience.com/44512-gypsy-culture.html, Reference:Gypsy Culture: Customs, Traditions & Beliefs,” by Alina Bradford, Live Science Contributor | January 26, 2015 03:09am ET.

Photograph -- Three unidentified Roma girls in Romania. The Roma constitute one of the largest minorities in Romania. Credit: dinosmichail / Shutterstock.comView full size image
Roma migration path on map -- Pin It This map shows the migration of Roma people from northwest India to Europe. Credit: PNASView full size image


“The Roma today

Spiritual beliefs

The Roma do not have an official faith and in the past, they typically disdained organized religion. Today, they often adopt the predominant religion of the country where they are living, according to FRUA, and describe themselves as "many stars scattered in the sight of God." Some Roma groups are Catholic, Muslim, Pentecostal, Protestant, Anglican or Baptist, according to Open Society Foundations.

The Roma live by a complex set of rules that govern things such as cleanliness, purity, respect, honor and justice. These rules are referred to as what is "Rromano." Rromano means to behave with dignity and respect as a Roma person, according to FRUA. "Rromanipé" is what the Romani refer to as their worldview.

Language

Though the groups of Roma are varied, they all do speak one language. This language is called Rromanës, or the Romani language. Rromanës is related to a northern Indian dialect, called Punjab, and is spoken by about 5 to 6 million Roma people throughout Europe and the United States, according to FRUA.

Dress

Typically, Gypsies love opulence. In day-to-day life, Roma women wear gold jewelry and headdresses decorated with coins as a display of prosperity and generosity towards others, according to the FRUA.

Weddings are huge affairs with large, custom-made wedding dresses. Often, the girls in a group will compete to see who can have the largest, most extravagant wedding dress. Some of this has been documented in the American show My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.

Hierarchy

Traditionally, anywhere from 10 to several hundred extended families form bands, or kumpanias, which travel together in caravans. Each band is lead by a voivode, whom the families elect for lifetime. This person is their chieftain. A senior woman in the band, called a phuri dai, looks after the welfare of the group’s women and children.

Smaller alliances, called vitsas, are formed within the bands and are made up of families who are brought together through common ancestry.

Family Structure

The Roma place great value on extended families, according to FRUA. Families typically involve multiple generations living together, including unmarried young and adult children and a married son, his wife and their children. By the time an older son is ready to establish his own household, a younger son often will have married and brought his wife and children into the family.

Romani typically marry young — often in their teens — and many marriages are arranged. Weddings are typically very elaborate, involving very large and colorful dress for the bride and her many attendants. Though during the courtship phase, girls are encouraged to dress provocatively, sex is something that is not had until after marriage, according to The Learning Channel. Some groups have declared that no girl under 16 and no boy under 17 will be married, according to the BBC.

Romani professions

The Roma have a long history of training, trading and caring for animals. They also have worked as metal smiths, and repaired utensils and sold household goods they made themselves, according to FRUA. Many worked as traveling entertainers, using their rich musical background to earn money.

While there are still traveling bands of Gypsies, most use cars and RVs to move from place to place rather than the horses and wagons of the past.

Today, most have settled into houses and apartments and are not readily distinguishable. Because of continued discrimination, many do not publicly acknowledge their roots and only reveal themselves to other Romani.

While there is not a physical country affiliated with the Romani people, the International Romani Union was officially established in 1977. In 2000, The 5th World Romany Congress in 2000 officially declared Romani a non-territorial nation.

April 8 is International Day of the Roma, a day to raise awareness of the issues facing the Roma community and celebrate the Romani culture.




Search Terms From Wikipedia And Other Sources

Sinti
Romanichal
Balkan Egyptians
New Age Travelers
Irish Travelers
Romany
athinganoi, literally "untouchables"
Melchisedechians
Origin of the Romani people
Zott
Didicoy
Romani, Domari and Lomavren languages
Burushos and Pamiris
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunza_Valley


Nations and Names --

Tsinganoi[edit]

In much of continental Europe, Romanies are known by names cognate to the Greek term τσιγγάνοι (tsinganoi). The name originates with Byzantine Greek ἀτσίγγανοι (atsinganoi, Latin adsincani) or ἀθίγγανοι (athinganoi, literally "untouchables"), a term applied to the sect of the Melchisedechians. [45][46][47] The Adsincani appear in an 11th-century text preserved in Mt Athos, The Life of Saint George the Athonite (written in the Georgian language), as "a Samaritan people, descendants of Simon the Magician, named Adsincani, who were renowned sorcerers and villains". In the text, emperor Constantine Monomachos employs the Adsincani to exterminate wild animals, who were destroying the game in the imperial park of Philopation.[48] NOTE – GO TO THE WEBSITE FOR LIST AND LOCATIONS.

Bohémiens[edit]

Because many Romanies living in France had come via Bohemia, they were referred to as Bohémiens.[49] This term would later be adapted by the French to refer to a particular artistic and impoverished lifestyle of an individual, known as Bohemianism.
Other[edit]

Armenian: գնչու gnčʿu
Arabic: غجر ghájar
Basque: ijito,[50][51] buhame[52][53] (in the Northern Basque Country), kaskarot[54] (in Saint Jean de Luz), erromintxela (for Basque-speaking Romanies)
Georgian: ბოშები bošebi
Persian: کولی Koli
Japanese: ロマ Roma
Chinese: 罗姆人 Luō mǔ rén

See also[edit]

Dom people
List of Romani people
Lom people
Lyuli
Origin of the Romani people
Romani people by country
Zott
Didicoy

WHERE DO THEY GET ALL THAT STUFF?


All of you know by now that there is a disgusting television show called “The Walking Dead.” You either watch it, engrossed in the shock/horror/suspense, or you immediately change the channel. I, needless to say, am of the latter kind. I am, however, interested in the origins of these stories which are coming, amazingly, from some Fundamentalist Christians.

I first went to the Net to look for Bible references, if any, of groups of “walking dead” resembling those in the lowbrow TV show, which is surprisingly popular, though not among my friends. The best information comes from the blog of Santi Tafarella, a present day blogger, and not the Italian-American dance band leader Santi Tafarella from the 1920s. Some of his mandolin works are available on Google. This blogger apparently likes his music and has coopted his name. (Go to YouTube -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5xDdWZj4MM – for a musical treat.)

All of the Net references except these few go back to a comic book series. Not wisdom literature or any other kind of scripture, but quoted by a cult following nowadays to bolster their claims about a Zombie Apocalypse. It’s just one more idiotic fad. Oh, yes, there is an action video game as well.



https://santitafarella.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/matthew-2751-53-the-bibles-night-of-the-living-dead-passage/,

Are Luke 24:6 and Mark 16:6-7 in Contradiction? Cringe inducing: Christians talk about Obama’s sincerity in prayer
Matthew 27:51-53: The Bible’s “Night of the Living Dead” Passage
Santi Tafarella’s blog on books, culture, and politics
Posted on June 17, 2010


"Matthew 27:51-53.

Have you ever noticed what it says?

Immediately after Jesus’s death, Matthew has this very, very strange Night of the Living Dead story that he includes in his gospel. Matthew says that there was, immediately following Jesus’s death, an earthquake, and this earthquake was accompanied by an astonishing mass resurrection in which “many bodies of the saints which slept arose.” And not only did they arise from the dead, Matthew claims that they entered the very city of Jerusalem, appearing “unto many.” It’s so wild a passage that I’ll quote it in full (from the King James version of the Bible):

“51And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
52And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,
53And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.”

There are three pretty good reasons to doubt that this story actually happened:

Outside of this one gospel, no other ancient writer knows anything about this (not even as a rumor). It is as if a UFO had descended on Jerusalem and absolutely no one, apart from Matthew, thought it worthy of marking in historical memory. An event of so dramatic a nature would have changed everything in history. But not even the other gospels know the story. Why? Obviously because it did not happen.

Even if we gave Matthew the benefit of the doubt, and held open the possibility that he recounted a real event, we still must ask a simple question: where did the author get the story? And the answer is this: We simply do not know. If Matthew believed that the story was true, and not a bit of folklore, we will never know what evidence or testimony convinced him that it was true. We have only a spectacularly implausible tale.

Matthew has other stories of similarly poor quality, and they also lack credibility. See, for example, Matthew 28:11-15, in which the author circulates a conspiracy theory around which Jews are said to have tried to cover-up the resurrection of Jesus. The story, like Matthew’s “Night of the Living Dead” passage, provokes from us similar questions: Where did Matthew get the story? How does he know the story is true? How do we know whether Matthew isn’t just circulating a grotesque and fantastic antisemitic rumor?

But Matthew’s Night of the Living Dead passage (Mt. 27:51-53) is more than just implausible (if read literally). It also raises serious red flags concerning the whole of his gospel. In other words, it drives us to a number of unpleasant conclusions, such as these:

If Matthew can include such a wildly implausible and fanciful story in his gospel, maybe a lot of other things that he asserts are fanciful as well.

It seems that Matthew was not somebody who worried all that much about getting his facts straight before promulgating a story. Nor was he worried that people might spread his story without knowing anything more than what he told them in his book.

Matthew 27:51-53 would seem to provide clear evidence that the author of “Matthew” (whoever he was) had a very low regard for verification (either getting it for himself or distributing it to others).
And, of course, the biggest issue that Matthew 27:51-53 raises is this:

If Matthew can make a wild claim concerning many people rising from the dead, it casts doubt on the story he offers of one person rising from the dead (Jesus).

If a person is discovered to have spread a wild and unfounded rumor, it is reasonable to be suspicious of any other claims that he might make as well, don’t you think?"

SEE ALSO Video – “A Hard Day’s Night Of The Living Dead”



https://www.bible.com/bible/1/ezk.37.7-10.kjv

From Ezekiel:

“7 So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. 8 And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them. 9 Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.
Read Ezekiel 37”


This sounds like the scripture behind the Negro Spiritual “Dem Bones Dem Bones Dem Dry Bones,” which is rousing and beautiful when sung. It never occurred to me that it would be taken literally, but then I’m not a Fundamentalist Christian. When I was young, people would tell ghost stories for their entertainment (I remember well the days before TV was in every home), but very few adults believed them. My grandfather, who was in his eighties in 1950, did admit to having attended a seance, and witnessing the table “rising.” Someone suggested that a member of the party was simply pushing up with his knees causing the movement, but he swore it really did. Nowadays there is a revival of spiritualism. Interesting as it is, I can only opt out.



Other Biblical references:


https://www.openbible.info/topics/spirits_walking_the_earth

Spirits Walking The Earth

1 John 4:1 ESV / 22 helpful votes

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Isaiah 26:19 ESV / 15 helpful votes

Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.

Matthew 27:51-53 ESV / 6 helpful votes

And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.

Zechariah 14:12 ESV / 3 helpful votes

And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the peoples that wage war against Jerusalem: their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet, their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths.

Mark 6:47-51 ESV / 2 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land. And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. And about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded,

Matthew 14:26 ESV / 2 helpful votes

But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear.

Unless otherwise indicated, all content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Contact me: openbibleinfo (at) gmail.com. Cite this page: Editor: Stephen Smith. Publication date: Feb 18, 2016. Publisher: OpenBible.info.


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CAUCUSING VS POLLS

These articles are about the Iowa caucus only, but they do speak of the things which make the process seem both chaotic, inefficient, unnecessarily time consuming for the voter and lacking in access. The Democratic and Republican parties set their own caucusing rules, and those that the Democrats decided upon are the most unfair and convoluted. The Republicans simply meet at the caucus locations and listen to speeches, then vote on paper by secret ballot. That is simple and fair, especially if they allow absentee balloting.

The Democratic Party has just this year allowed tele-conferencing which would still require going to the satellite location, but it should increase access for outlying locations. Unfortunately, they have only allowed four satellite sites so far. That is extremely limited. The Dems still need an absentee ballot method of voting, in my opinion, as well. Just because citizens don’t caucus shouldn’t mean that they don’t get to vote. The 2016 method is an improvement, but it still does not give every person a chance to vote. See the first three articles below on the numerous problems that are involved. The facts that the turnout in 2008 was shockingly low – just 17% of registered voters – and that those who did caucus were predominantly wealthier, with incomes of over $50,000 is to me evidence that the limitations of access are causing real problems.

The reason given for continuing to use caucusing rather than an ordinary paper ballot method at all local polling places as the other states do, is that it is their beloved “tradition” and supposedly a purer form of democracy. Given the drawbacks to voting under that system, it's highly debatable. To me, it should give way to efficiency and go with precinct ballot elections. For the General Elections that is what they do, thank goodness.

The first three articles highlight the problems. My strongest complaints are the lack of secret ballot voting and the continued need for better access. Until this year, 2016, there was no mechanism set up for greater access due to disability or transportation problems, and no proxy voting. There is still no proxy voting, so voters do have to show up in person and participate physically. That would be a difficult thing for me, for instance, with arthritis in multiple joints, to do. There are four – far too few -- satellite locations communicating by tele-conferencing as of this year, to be set up by groups at their locations more convenient to them and tele-caucusing for the military. To attend a satellite site a voter must complete an application through “iowademocrats.org” after which he will be assigned to one of the four tele-caucusing sites. He still has to arrange some sort of transportation.

See the following two items about tele-caucusing and satellite caucusing.

http://iowademocrats.org/satellite-caucus-applications-now-available-for-2016-iowa-democratic-caucuses/ -- “DES MOINES – As part of the Iowa Democratic Party’s continuing efforts to expand participation in the Iowa Democratic Precinct Caucuses, today the IDP released satellite caucus application forms for the 2016 caucuses. Satellite caucus locations, which will be instituted for the first time next year, are meant for groups of Democrats who want to participate in the caucuses, but are unable to attend their precinct caucus due to a hardship (limitations of mobility, distance, or time). Satellite caucuses will be held at the same day and time, 7 p.m. on February 1st, 2016, as the precinct caucuses.

http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P16/IA-D, The Green Papers
2016 Presidential Primaries, Caucuses, and Conventions,” states: “Military (tele-caucus) and other voters (satellite caucuses) who can not [sic] attend the precinct caucuses in person may participate in the 2016 Iowa Caucuses via tele-conference. There will be no absentee or proxy voting at any precinct caucus. The satellite caucuses are allocated 3 delegates and the military tele-caucus is allocated 2 delegates to the state convention.”


The following two articles discuss the problems in general of the Democratic Party of Iowa’s caucusing rules.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/iowa-caucuses-are-horribly-undemocratic

Why the Iowa caucuses are horribly undemocratic UPDATED
By Zachary Roth
01/29/16 07:23 AM—UPDATED 01/29/16 03:54 PM

Photograph -- Hillary Clinton; “Iowa caucuses inaccessible to some,” 1/29/16, 3:42 PM ET

STATEMENT FROM PETCO AFTER AN EMPLOYEE COMPLAINT:

We appreciate the concern and questions raised around this erroneous story; however we’ve learned that the partner who spoke to MSNBC was never scheduled to work on Monday, the day of the Iowa Caucus. She never formally requested time off and was under the impression that the Caucus was being held on Tuesday. For the record, it’s important to point out that Petco wholeheartedly supports and encourages civic involvement among all our partners at every level of the company. We also have a voting policy that allows partners scheduled to work on election days the ability to arrive to work late or leave early without loss of pay.


For years, critics of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status have pointed out that the state — small, rural, and 94 percent white — is an awful proxy for the nation as a whole. The effect is made worse by the fact that New Hampshire, the third whitest state in the nation, follows Iowa in the presidential nominating process. But that’s just the start: The wacky way in which Iowa’s Democratic caucuses award delegates — explained by MSNBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald here — grossly violates the concept of one person, one vote. (The Republican process isn’t much fairer: It allowed Ron Paul’s supporters in 2012 to manipulate the party’s convention process and get 23 of the state’s 28 delegates, even though he only came third in the actual voting.) Then there’s the fact that, for Democrats, there’s no secret ballot: All voting is done in public, forcing people to expose their political views to their neighbors and co-workers whether they want to or not. And this year, there are also concerns about basic administration: Democrats are said to lack people to run the caucus in hundreds of sites, and incorrect or changing caucus locations are adding to the confusion.

But the tightly limited hours are perhaps the most glaring problem — especially at a time when Democrats are emphasizing the importance of expanding access to voting, and are responding to the needs of working people. The caucuses start at 7 p.m. sharp — no one gets in if they show up late — and last until 10. There’s no absentee or early voting.



MSNBC LIVE WITH THOMAS ROBERTS, 1/27/16, 1:52 PM ET
What's a caucus?

Bowing to pressure this year, the Iowa Democratic Party is allowing people to apply to hold satellite caucuses. But participants still must be free for three hours on a specific evening, so that doesn’t help people who can’t leave work. And only four satellite caucuses will be held this year, the party said.

Not surprisingly, turnout for the caucuses is strikingly low. In 2008, the last year both parties had competitive contests, 359,000 people showed up for either the Democratic or Republican caucuses. That was just 17 percent of Iowa’s registered voters, and far fewer than the 517,623 who voted in New Hampshire’s primary that year, even though Iowa’s population is more than twice New Hampshire’s. Broadly speaking, caucus-goers appear to be richer than those who don’t make it, at least among Democrats. In 2008, 42 percent of Democratic caucus-goers made less than $50,000 a year, according to exit polls. By contrast, 47 percent of those who voted for Obama that fall made less than $50,000.

On the Democratic side, the lack of access is especially jarring at a time when both of the party’s leading candidates have emphasized making voting easier as key parts of their platforms, highlighting a contrast with the GOP, which has supported restrictive voting rules.

“We’ve got to make it easier to vote, not harder,” Hillary Clinton wrote in an op-ed last week. Both she and Sanders have endorsed automatic voter registration of the kind enacted this year in Oregon and California — Bernie Sanders even introduced a Senate bill to take the idea national, and to make Election Day a national holiday. And consider that Clinton’s top lawyer, Marc Elias, last year filed suit against cuts to early voting in Ohio and Wisconsin, claiming that the changes unfairly burdened the right to vote — lawsuits that were applauded by Clinton’s campaign. But even those states’ shortened schedules offer exponentially more access than do the caucuses.

The restricted hours are increasingly out of step not only with the direction of the Democratic Party, but also with broader economic trends. Many of those who will be shut out are likely to be low-wage workers, who typically have little control over their schedules. Indeed, 48 percent of Iowa’s jobs pay less than $15 an hour, according to Bureau of Labor statistics. Nationally, too, a growing share of jobs are in the low-wage service sector. A bill introduced in November by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, which would encourage more dependable employee schedules, highlighted the problem. Both Clinton and Sanders have taken pains to reach out to the low-wage worker movement as it fights for a higher minimum wage and better working conditions. On Thursday, fast-food workers walked off the job in Des Moines to protest their low pay.



MTP DAILY, 1/28/16, 5:35 PM ET
Harkin Expects 'Solid' Clinton Win in Iowa

Clinton is aware of the problem. Back in 2008, she seemed to blame the caucuses’ limited hours for her defeat in Iowa to Barack Obama, whose sophisticated turnout operation — his campaign even offered baby-siting help to supporters — and appeal among plugged-in party activists gave him an advantage. “You know, there are a lot of people who couldn’t caucus tonight,” Clinton noted in a speech after the results were in. “There are a lot of people who work at night, people who are on their feet, people who are taking care of patients in a hospital, or waiting on a table in a restaurant, or maybe in a patrol car keeping our streets safe.”

But asked twice whether she’s still concerned that the caucuses won’t give those people a voice, her campaign didn’t respond.

Sanders’ campaign said the senator would like to see the party do more to improve access. ”He is committed to working with the state party to expand participation through the implementation of new policies such as ensuring employers give time off to their workers so they are able to caucus,” Brendan Summers, Sanders’ Iowa caucus director, said in a statement.

Sam Lau, a spokesman for the Iowa Democratic Party, pointed to the satellite caucuses as evidence that the party understands the need to make the process more accessible.

“This year we are starting small, but we hope the satellite caucuses are able to grow in the upcoming years so as many Iowans as possible have the ability to caucus,” Lau told MSNBC. “While we firmly believe that the caucuses are a unique and important form of democracy, we are constantly looking for ways to make them better and more inclusive, and will continue to do so moving forward.”

CORRECTION: This story originally reported on a worker at Petco who said she was unable to caucus because she had to work. In fact, she has caucus night off. See statement from Petco at top of story.



GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT IOWA CAUCUSING


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa_caucuses

Iowa caucuses
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Process[edit]

A 2008 Democratic caucus meeting in Iowa City, Iowa

The Iowa Caucus operates very differently from the more common primary election used by most other states (see U.S. presidential primary). The caucuses are generally defined as "gatherings of neighbors." Rather than going to polls and casting ballots, Iowans gather at a set location in each of Iowa's 1,681 precincts. Typically, these meetings occur in schools, churches, public libraries and even individuals' houses. The caucuses are held every two years, but the ones that receive national attention are the presidential preference caucuses held every four years. In addition to the voting and the presidential preference choices, caucus-goers begin the process of writing their parties’ platforms by introducing resolutions.[9]

Beginning with the 2012 Presidential election, Iowa switched from the old winner-take-all allocation to proportional allocation. The change was made to prolong the race, giving lesser known candidates a chance and making it harder for a frontrunner to secure the majority early. It was also hoped that this change in the election system would energize the base of the party.[10][11]



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/01/23/heres-how-the-iowa-caucuses-work/

Iowa caucuses: Here’s how the voting works
By David Weigel
February 1, 2016


Tonight, a few hundred thousand Iowa residents will gather in a couple thousand caucus sites and finally, finally kick-start the presidential nomination process. It's been 44 years since the first presidential caucuses that mattered, and 40 years since both parties held them. And yet, for the 315.8 million Americans who do not live in Iowa — and for the slightly smaller millions who live in primary, not caucus, states — the process perpetually needs explaining.

What time do the Iowa caucuses start? At 7 p.m. Central time, across the state. Expect the cable TV countdown clocks to start much sooner.

When will we know the winner? In 2008, the caucuses were called for then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) by 8:30 p.m. Central. Both men won by nine points, and early counts matched the exit polls. In 2012, the late surge of former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) forced an election night tie with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and the networks (and more importantly, front-page editors) only seemed able to call a winner after midnight. That call was wrong. What looked like an eight-vote victory for Romney had been scrambled when eight precincts, with a total of 298 missing votes, missed the count. Santorum had won, a fact that was not reported until 16 days later. Short answer: This year? Probably by 10 or 11 p.m. Central. (You'll be able to see maps here.)

How is a caucus different from a primary? The answer differs depending on which party you're asking about. Instead of heading to one of Iowa's 1,681 precincts and pulling a lever, voters will head to a caucus site that may toss several precincts together. Instead of seeing their votes tabulated by the state elections office, they'll see them reported to the state parties, which will in turn report them to the news media.

Here's where the parties diverge. A Republican caucus is odd but simple, a peanut-butter-and-tuna-fish combination of a normal election and a PTA meeting. At nearly 900 caucus sites, voters will gather, then hear speeches from whichever campaigns have precinct captains assigned to whip up votes. (Presidential candidates can show up and do this for themselves, in one of the most intimate examples of democracy in all of politics.) Then they'll write their choices on paper and hand them in.

The Democratic caucus process is more complicated. When they show up at one of the 1,100-odd sites, voters will be asked to gather in sections designated for the candidates. They will be counted. If one candidate fails to get at least 15 percent of voters in his corner, they are released, and caucus captains for the surviving candidates can personally lobby and answer questions, enticing them to join up. After that, delegates are assigned based on the support for each candidate.

It sounds confusing, and it is. For starters, the number of delegates for each precinct will be assigned based on Democratic turnout in that precinct from the last two elections. (There is no raw vote total released, only projections of how many Democrats turned out.) If there's a massive surge of voters in, say, an Iowa City precinct, if there's a massive fall-off in a rural precinct, it does not matter — the same number of delegates are at stake. This might be best illustrated by the live recording C-SPAN did from one key caucus site in 2008.

Has that mattered in the past? Yes, it has. In 2004, the Democratic presidential campaign of former Vermont governor Howard Dean was clearly starting to flag before the vote. The final Iowa poll pegged then-senator and future secretary of state John F. Kerry (Mass.) at 26 percent, future tabloid cover star John Edwards at 23 percent, Dean at 20 percent and former House minority leader Dick Gephardt at 18 percent.

The final result: Kerry 38, Edwards 32, Dean 18, Gephardt 11. Dean was hit three times: first by his falling level of overall support, then by the 15 percent rule, and finally by the superior acumen of volunteers for the Kerry and Edwards campaigns. In real time, they pulled people from Dean to their side.

How does any of that matter this year? It's an open question, but we all have a few questions that can't be answered until caucus night. Donald Trump, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and even Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) are all claiming that new voters will swarm the caucus sites and break the turnout models. Will they? Former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley has run a traditional Iowa campaign, but he's struggled to break out of single digits in the polls. Who will O'Malley's supporters pull for in the second stage of the caucuses?

By David Weigel February 1

REMINISCENCES OF A SUPER HERO
Lucy Warner
January 30, 2016


When I was young I used to watch Batman, and thought he was hysterically funny, but probably gay. As it turns out he has six children with three different wives. His statements in this interview are ever surprising and funnier than he was as Batman. His sly and eccentric sense of humor is wonderful. I really do like true individuals, and he is certainly that. Enjoy your reading.




http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/adam-west-behind-the-mask-305457.html

Adam West: Behind the mask
By Robert Chalmers
Saturday 13 August 2005


As Batman in the original television series, West represented an icon whose fame rivalled that of James Bond and The Beatles. But ever since the mid-1980s, by which time he'd retreated to a farm outside the remote town of Ketchum, Idaho (pop. 3,003) he has become increasingly reluctant to speak to journalists.

The process of arranging a meeting with West has taken months and involved the submission of previous interviews, dozens of phone messages and emails. Even though the actor has finally agreed to see me, when I get to Idaho his mobile is switched off, and have to spend two days at a Tyrolean-themed motel in Ketchum before I manage to get through to him. He suggests meeting the following morning in a coffee shop, from where we'll drive up to his house.

"Otherwise," he says, "there's no way you could find where I live. I hope," he adds, "that you are not planning to cannibalise me."

He arrives on time, looking amiable but furtive, in a baseball cap and shades; he wears both indoors, even though everybody recognises him as easily as if he'd arrived in cape and cowl, and people in the café greet him by name.

"I sometimes feel tempted," he says, "to renounce my status as a recluse."

West orders black coffee and heads for the most isolated corner table. I hand him the latest issue of this magazine, and a copy of my latest novel. He explains that he's unable to take me back to his house: this is because the yard has been flooded, he has people coming to dinner and, "I have to pack."

At 76, Batman is a little less muscular than he was, appears slightly deaf and is experiencing back pain, but the resonant baritone is largely unchanged. Highly articulate and immediately engaging, West is a reflective man whose manner suggests both serious intensity of thought, and experience of mental pain. ("He is always thinking and analysing," the actor once said of Batman, "maybe at the expense of his * emotional health".) If he can be difficult - and he can - his behaviour, these days at least, has its origins in diffidence, not vanity. That said, some low part of me assumes that his reticence, and his remark about cannibalism, indicate some unspeakable behaviour in his past.

"I am a simple man," he says. "Though my wife says I am complicated."

"I'll trust her on that one."

"Well, you're probably right. But I am simple in that I no longer feel the need to walk on a red carpet. I am a private person. I don't need a lot of company. And I find it really, really difficult to talk about myself."

Ketchum is best known as the place where Ernest Hemingway came to experience silence and tranquillity, an ambience momentarily interrupted on 2 July 1961 when he blew his brains out with both barrels of a 12-gauge shotgun. Today, however, the town serves as a sanctuary for film stars including Tom Hanks and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

West suggests moving on to Sun Valley Lodge, where Hemingway wrote much of his later work. Wincing from discomfort in his lumbar region, he hauls himself into his pick-up and makes the short drive to the Lodge, now an extensive complex of cafés and luxury cabins. As we walk through the immaculately tended gardens I can see what he finds so attractive here (topiary, sommeliers, swans, etc). And yet, I tell him, I'm surprised he didn't settle in the US stars' most famous mountain retreat - Aspen, Colorado. A favourite haunt of Johnny Depp, Bill Murray and Jack Nicholson, Aspen was home to Hunter S Thompson until the writer, who made a pilgrimage to Ketchum shortly after Hemingway's suicide, despatched himself with a .45 in February.

"I got banned from Aspen," West says.

"Why?"

"Well, you know, we'd been partying and..."

"And?"

A pause.

"Liquor?"

"Yes."

"Women?

"Yes."

"Police?"

"Yes."

All this was some years ago, West recalls.

"I was escorted out of town and advised it would be unwise to return. About 15 years later, I had a letter from the Aspen authorities saying it would be OK to come back - to visit."

These days Adam West, who has six children, lives quietly with his third wife, Marcelle, making a living from voiceovers and independent film projects. And yet - as 15 years' banishment for one evening's excursion might suggest - West, as a younger man, was a gregarious character with a global reputation for swift bonding with strangers, especially women. We sit on the terrace of one of Sun Valley's elegant restaurants, and West tells me how, on the strength of his popularity as Batman, he was invited for an audience with Pope Paul VI. He arrived the day before, and went out for a drink.

"I woke up the next morning with the worst hangover of my life," he says. "I made it to the Vatican, and I was at the back of this line of people who each knelt down to kiss his ring. Then it was my turn. He put out his hand. I realised that, if I knelt down, I wouldn't be able to get up again, I was so hung over."

Mindful of the consequences, if he collapsed or vomited on the pontiff, West simply bowed his head slightly and shook the Pope's hand.

"He looked at me and said: 'Oh, Signor West. I have seen all of your shows. I love Pipistrello.'"

"Were you both in costume?"

"No. Well... he was in his, obviously. I wasn't wearing mine. I didn't want to steal his thunder."

West - who has a BA in literature and psychology, studied under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio-West, and has just written a film version of the life of Thomas Jefferson - has a dry wit which makes him immediately likeable, even though his extreme wariness leads me to wonder if this interview will go the distance. After the Papal ceremony, he says, he went to the Sistine Chapel with Sophia Loren.

"She looked... how can I put this? When you go to the Sistine Chapel with Sophia Loren, it can be quite some time before your thoughts turn to the ceiling."

He believes - and who would argue - that he was the definitive Batman. Adam West is a man who, as somebody once said: "was capable of playing Alice in Wonderland as though he was acting Hamlet."

The original ABC production, 120 episodes first screened between 1966 and 1968, also starred Burt Ward as Robin. (Ward, who has had his differences with Adam West, is married to the daughter of venture capitalist Victor Posner, and oversees a Great Dane sanctuary in southern California.)

"Batman was comedy," West says, "let's face it. What I loved about Batman was his total lack of awareness when it came to his interaction with the outside world. He actually believed nobody could recognise him on the phone, when he was being Bruce Wayne, even though he made no attempt to disguise his voice."

"In the same way that Inspector Clouseau never notices his accent," I suggest, "when everybody around him is also French."

"That's right. In the first episode, Batman goes into a nightclub in the cowl, cape and bat gloves. When the maître d' says: 'Ringside table, Batman?' he replies, 'No thank you - I'll stand at the bar. I would not wish to be conspicuous.'"

In another episode, the dynamic duo meet fellow superheroes The Green Hornet and his sidekick Kato. "Gosh, Batman," says Robin. "Why are they dressed like that?"

"Well, Batman was the theatre of the absurd. In a lot of ways," West adds, "the show was very like your novel."

"Have you read it?"

"Yes," he says, with a mutinous look. "I read the whole thing just now - while you were in the men's room."

West - who mentions, with some satisfaction, that the Latin motto on Bruce Wayne's family crest means: "Art, Nonsense and Money" - says he finds it difficult to take life too seriously.

"Or," he adds, "to take people too seriously. Unless they're aiming a 9mm handgun in my direction. Life is full of ironies and absurdities."

That said, he is nothing if not protective of the character of Batman. Burt Ward has mocked West for having drawn an analogy between his Batman and Charlton Heston's Moses in The Ten Commandments. There are moments, as West discusses the more recent film versions of Batman, when he can sound like a man perturbed by blasphemous representations of that other defender of the oppressed, Jesus Christ. (A modern Batman, in West's view, "should be using his fortune to help the needy, the homeless, and people without hope".)

He is genuinely troubled that, in Tim Burton's 1989 remake, Batman pursues villains without stopping to comfort their wounded victims - behaviour that his own scrupulously moral crusader would never have contemplated.

He also recently went to see Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, but left after an * hour. "It was too noisy," he says. "I'm afraid it just didn't hold me."

And, unlike the original Batman, it is not a film for all age groups.

"It's certainly not for young kids. It could be OK if they are 14 or 15. And," West adds, "of a violent mindset."

Billy West Anderson - he adopted his screen name for his first film, The Young Philadelphians, in 1959 - was born at Walla Walla, in Washington state, close to the Idaho border. His father Otto was a farmer; Audrey, his mother, had theatrical ambitions and never took to agricultural life. When West was 12 he found her in bed with the local preacher. An alcoholic, Audrey divorced when her son was 15 and took him to live in Seattle. She told him it was his birth that stopped her becoming another Joan Crawford.

"There is a curse running through our family," West's daughter Nina said recently. "Alcohol, and manic depression. That's what she suffered from."

His mother's disappointed ambition, West says, "meant I always felt guilt about what I achieved as an actor".

He got his BA from UCLA in Santa Barbara, then began a postgraduate degree in "communications" - what today would be called media studies - at prestigious Stanford College, but left when he was offered a job in broadcasting.

His first major break came in Hawaii: in the mid-1950s, he was presenting a daily television show on which he shared top billing with Peaches, a male chimpanzee.

"They can be vicious, chimps, can't they?"

"Now you come to mention it," West replies, "I did have to have one ball replaced."

One evening, he recalls, he met film star Natalie Wood, who was visiting the island.

"I remember hoping that she didn't turn on the TV the next morning and see Peaches and me in hula skirts, strumming ukuleles and singing Mala Mala Mala to a puppet octopus."

In 1966, ABC cast him as Batman - billed as the most expensive production in the history of US television. West seized his chance with the urgent determination of a man weary of collaboration with the lower primates.

He was chosen mainly because the producer had enjoyed West's performance as Captain Q in an advert for Nesquik, a powdered milk drink. "The Boy Wonder", Burt Ward (previously known as Sparky Gervis) had been an estate agent.

In recent years, Ward has argued that West's distinctive style as a comic actor - ironic earnestness, which invests the most ludicrous plot with a kind of surreal plausibility - simply betrays his woodenness as an actor; a theory which, having recently watched dozens of episodes of Batman, I think is deeply unfair to its star.

West, for his part, says he was inspired by Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps his finest moment comes in the 1966 feature film, Batman: the caped crusader is running along a boardwalk, clutching a fizzing bomb which he repeatedly attempts to discard but can't, because he runs first into a group of nuns, then a woman with a pram, two lovers in a rowing boat, and a family of ducks.

"Some days," Batman complains, "you just can't get rid of a bomb."

On occasions, West says, numerous takes were required as the cast couldn't stop laughing.

"In one episode, where Catwoman had produced a set of cat ornaments," he recalls, "I ad-libbed the line: 'Drop that golden pussy Robin - it may be radioactive.'"

Certain critics feel that they can detect a certain element of camp in Batman. This may be because the story concerns a mature, powerfully-built man and a naïve teenage boy, who avoid relationships with the opposite sex, but spend long hours together, wearing tights, in a secret cave; they explain their excursions, which routinely involve bondage, by informing their elderly aunt that they are "out fishing".

Off the set, neither actor had a reputation for sluggishness in courtship. West had been divorced twice: his first marriage, to Billie Lou Yeager, ended in 1956; his second wife, a Tahitian dancer called Nga Frisbie Dawson, mother to his first two children, left him in 1962. From the first screening of Batman, he says, the adulation of women fans was such that: "Burt and I were like kids in a candy store."

When Batman was cancelled in 1968, after disappointing ratings for its third series, West and Ward continued to appear, in costume, at county fairs and Bat conventions. Two years ago, the pair collaborated on a feature film called Return to the Batcave. At one point Robin turns to Batman and suggests that, at their age, it might be prudent to use the staircase, rather than the batpoles. West looks at him, and says: "There were stairs?"

Even at the height of Batman's popularity, West's relationship with Burt Ward was problematic. At one stage each was refusing to enter the set before the other, so that producers had to rap on their doors simultaneously and lead them out shoulder to shoulder, like Premiership football captains.

"Looking back," I ask him, "were you perhaps a primadonna?"

"Only in so far as I had no patience with fools, or people who didn't get it, so to speak."

"You strike me as potentially a bad man to get on the wrong side of."

He leans forward, mock-forbidding.

"I am a little unsure as to what this phrase means, but - Robert - be very careful with me."

Both actors have written autobiographies. West's Back to the Batcave, published in 1994, is a perceptive account prefaced by a runic observation from Henry James; it also quotes Oscar Wilde, Dickens and Horace.

The opening page of Ward's Boy Wonder - My Life in Tights (a no-nonsense inventory of his sexual conquests) shows a picture of Burt dressed as the Pope, holding a sign that reads "Party Zone".

If West's book is one of the best show business memoirs I've come across, Ward's, which was published the following year, is possibly the worst book I have ever read - more excruciating, if such a thing is possible, than Orange Colored Sky¸ the notorious single he recorded with Frank Zappa in 1966. Boy Wonder, published in 1995, accuses Adam West of practically every failing known to man: drunkenness, lechery, greed and self-love; West is also portrayed as a poor tipper secretly troubled by the allegedly modest dimensions of his penis. Ward, meanwhile, refers to his own manhood as "the monster" and "the beast in the bat trunks".

From the moment I mention that I've read Boy Wonder, which was advertised with the slogan "Holy Tell-All, Batman!" I can tell that Ward's book has been a significant factor in Adam West's loss of interest in public speaking.

"It was apparent to me..." West says, after a deep sigh, "that Burt fell victim to making up stories to sell books. But in a way it was flattering, because he made me sound like King Kong."

I tell West about the Literary Review's annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award - a trophy that Burt, on the strength of this book alone, should be allowed to keep in perpetuity, like Real Madrid with the European Cup.

The erotic content of Robin's autobiography is too lengthy and detailed to relate in full but I have abbreviated a couple of typical passages.

At the Holiday Inn, Buffalo, New York state, for instance. "A ravishing young woman is * wearing my Robin costume... large breasts... peach skin... thighs... passionately engorged my organ... width and length... intense, pounding and unrelenting... 'Now I know why they call you the Boy Wonder', she whispers."

Another encounter, at a hotel in Springboro, Ohio, proved to be less rewarding.

"Restaurant... exquisite waitress... instant chemistry... my room... eyes... lip ... thighs... intoxicated with lust... luscious triangle... 'I am married', she whispers... enormous husband... pounding at my door... gorilla fists... dove through window... face-first in mud... patrol car... police station... indecent exposure."

In marked contrast to West's book, serious literary references are entirely absent in Boy Wonder, with one exception. At one point, Ward describes how a fan called Karen left him a note which quoted Sir Francis Bacon's 1597 essay Of Friendship: "A principal fruit of friendship is the care and discharge of the swelling of the heart which passions of all kinds do cause and induce."

Though he was initially attracted to Karen, Ward writes, "If Francis Bacon really wrote that, then either he was one of the horniest men of all time or out to lunch. Her note," he continues, "was so kinky that I never got in touch with her. She was too weird."

The most memorable moment in Boy Wonder, I suggest to West, "is when Ward refers to: 'My never-ending vortex of horniness.'"

"Isn't that amazing?" West replies. "His vortex of horniness?"

"And he does, with no apparent irony, compare his penis to the Hindenburg."

"I know," says West, looking increasingly agitated. "I think all that came from the fact that Burt felt insecure."

"There is one especially bizarre moment..."

We are interrupted by Gregg, the Sun Valley barbecue cook, who's spotted his childhood idol from across the lawn. His arrival is so perfectly timed that I suspect West has summoned him with some Masonic signal of distress. The actor gives Greg - who is wearing one traditional starched chef's hat, and carrying another - the kind of welcome a hypothermic mountaineer might extend to a St Bernard.

"Mr West," Greg says, "you have brought me so much joy in my life. The least that I can give you is this hat."

He puts his present on the table, and returns to his stall.

"At one point," I continue, "Burt Ward wrote..."

"Isn't that great!" says West. "Look! He brought me a hat!"

"Ward wrote..."

West ostentatiously raises his wrist and peers at his watch.

"I have to get back," he says.

"At one point," I go on, "Ward makes insinuations about your own sexuality; he mentions you mud-wrestling with a Swedish man who looked 'rather like a Viking...'"

"He says I was what?"

"And he claims you once said: 'Robin - kiss me.'" [A remark that, from what I've seen of West, I have no doubt was a joke].

"In his book?"

"Yes. And he goes on: 'I found myself asking, was there more to my fellow crime fighter than met the eye?'"

"You see," West replies, "I don't even understand what he was talking about. I think that, from time to time, Robin had a real problem with not being Batman," he adds. "Burt wanted to play Batman. But he was a marvellous Robin. He was perfect."

"He does portray you in his book as something of a monster. Before you worked together again in Return to the Batcave, did you have to talk certain things over?"

"Erm..." West's wrist is raised for a second time. "I'm sorry to be looking at my watch again. I think it has stopped."

"So - in order for you to work together once more..."

"Burt has come up to me," West says, "and he has apologised. And I know he feels badly about what he did. To me, it was just funny."

He gets to his feet.

"I'm gonna have to go really soon. I think my watch stopped. Is this interview so horribly difficult that my watch stopped? The thing is," he goes on, "I think I am so boring. I am being serious. I am not sucking up. God," he says, "what do I have to say that could be interesting?"

His back pain returns as he begins his retreat.

"I hate to leave you like this. It's good to walk. Ouch."

He walks away, looking flustered.

"You forgot your sunglasses," I tell him.

"I'm gonna hit the john," he says. "It's good to stretch a little. I've got to go back to work."

And with that, Adam West disappears.

But Greg the chef is back.

"Has he left his hat?" he asks, looking at the gift, which is still on the table.

"I'm not sure," I tell him. "He might be coming back."

"Thank God for that."

Greg returns to his barbecue stall.

West then reappears, from behind where I am sitting, looking slightly more composed.

"I thought you'd fled."

"It's good to walk," he repeats, with a look that suggests any further exchange involving Robin's memoirs will be our last. I turn over the page in my notebook which has other quotations from Boy Wonder, including West's alleged instruction to Ward [his capitals]: "KEEP YOUR EYE OUT FOR THE BIG POLYNESIAN MAMA WHO LOOKS LIKE SHE GOT HIT IN THE FACE WITH A PLANK."

West clearly feels, not unreasonably, that there should be a statute of limitation concerning his actions from four decades ago, and that his social life while filming Batman represents an ancient wound which Robin's book reopened.

And yet it was when the series ended that West's problems really began. He was so identified with the role that, as he puts it, "I could have played a naked Jack the Ripper, and * someone would have said: 'Yeah, I hear that Batman's back in a cape.'"

He began to experience the depression his daughter describes as a congenital trait.

"I became very self-destructive," he says. "I suppose that came from being disillusioned and frustrated." He was drinking heavily and generally 'wild', though: "I held on to my sanity during the lean years."

"Then," he says, "I had an epiphany. I realised I had been squandering what gifts I had. I called my agent and got back to work."

He says his wife Marcelle, mother of his four youngest children, oversaw his recovery. His lowest point came when he was in his Batman suit - this, remember, is a man who could have had a career as a Stanford academic - waiting to be fired out of a cannon, at a carnival in Evansville, Indiana.

"I felt I had betrayed Batman."

West has remained in work as an actor, consistently, for the past 20 years, but the great sadness of his professional life is that he has never found another outlet in mainstream comedy. He has made films and television pilots he's proud of, but many of the later titles on his CV tell their own story: Zombie Nightmare, The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood and Young Lady Chatterley II. In the last of these, he plays an anthropology professor who is sent to Britain to investigate the history of Lady Godiva and - for reasons I couldn't quite follow, even after substantial study of the video - is billeted in the stately home of a titled nymphomaniac.

Once we get up to leave, and I turn off the tape recorder, West's mood changes. He takes me to Ketchum's Hemingway monument, a simple bronze bust set on a marble plaque by a small river. He climbs down the bank, though the effort clearly causes him some pain, and reads out the inscription: "Best of all he loved the fall; the leaves yellow on the cottonwoods; leaves floating on the trout streams and above the hills... The high blue windless skies... Now he will be a part of them forever."

"I love the way it's so simple," he says.

He talks about his favourite passages from Hemingway, and how he was close to the writer's son Jack, and read the eulogy at his funeral, five years ago.

"Jack Hemingway was a wonderful guy," West says. "He had many of the attributes of his father, but he was afflicted with the same gene - the gene which I've always been terribly afraid of indulging too much. And yet what is life," he adds, "without a glass or two of wine?"

"In your autobiography," I remind him, "you describe your mother with the words: 'She was an alcoholic.' Of yourself, immediately after Batman ended, you say: 'There was a lot of drink about.' Are these phrases synonymous?"

"I think that most of us repeat, to some extent, the behaviour and attitudes of our parents," he says. "The difference between me and my mother was that I was always able to pull up before I crashed. She wasn't."

As we drive back into town - in one of those scenes which you sense is unlikely to be repeated - I'm listening to Batman reminiscing about drinking Scotch with Margaret Thatcher, when Arnold Schwarzenegger crosses our path on a mountain bike.

"Was that..."

"Arnold," West says. "He's a good guy. He's up here a lot."

He talks enthusiastically about his forthcoming projects, which include Climbing the Walls, a new book about the frustrations of playing Batman, and a film he's narrated, on the history of the cowboy.

"Why did they yodel?" I ask him.

"Three reasons," he says, without hesitation. "Loneliness, fear of the coyote, and sitting on the saddle backwards."

"Can you really believe there was no camp dimension to Batman and Robin?" I ask him. "I couldn't help noticing that The Picture of Dorian Gray is mentioned at least twice in your book."

"I can say," West remarks, "as a straight guy - as I am - a heterosexual man, playing someone like Batman, that... you don't really know."

He turns to face me and asks: "What are you going to do with all this?"

"Do you still think I will cannibalise you?"

"No," says West, good-naturedly. "Of course not. Now I think you're going to crucify me."

A pause.

"Did Oscar Wilde ever, er... out?" he asks.

"Well, he had no choice, after the trials."

"You know," West says, "that is a really interesting concept. That Batman - because he lives with Robin, who is younger than him, and they run around in costumes... that Batman gets arrested on suspicion of immoral behaviour. That's a very interesting idea for a script; I think that's something I could work on."

As is often the case with West, it's not easy to tell if he's joking or not. I watch him drive off in his pick-up, and wonder what's going through his mind; my guess is that he's pondering whether his version of Batman - in common with that other holy crusader, who was also immortal, unmarried, betrayed by a close associate and cruelly killed off before his rightful time - might, even now, be capable of resurrection.

The Doctor Of Common Sense

E T Williams, JANUARY 30, 2016


The disgusting diatribes of E T Williams – anti everything civilized – are literally shocking to me. According to Williams, every intellectually inclined, progressive American or European is “an elitist.” He probably goes along with the idea that studying in school is “acting white.” If he is a sample of a “real” black man of “the people,” then I admit to being an elitist, and I’m glad of it. I want social and economic progress in this country, not either of the two opposing sides both of which are equally radical and mindlessly anarchist. His website The Doctor Of Common Sense blasts every moderate and well educated black person, especially Barack Obama and including Jesse Jackson and Oprah Winfrey. See below for some samples of his “work.”

I do wonder who his audience is. Some approving comments from Glenn Beck and features on Fox News give a hint, as well as “news” from The Daily Mail, a scandal sheet listed on Wikipedia as a tabloid. Williams also has one of those radio call-in talk shows, which almost always draw the fringe of alarmist thinkers and the wildest pseudo-news, including space aliens and Bigfoot. All fascists and general rabble rousers, no matter what their color, are working together for what goal? The destabilization of the nation we have built since 1865, I believe. We white and black “elitists” have worked for economic and social fairness under the rule of law, and yes, the “improvement” of individual Americans. Why should I not want voters to be able to read a newspaper?

That is the ideal for a democracy. Without a still more progressive set of laws including those made for the purpose of leveling the playing field between rich and poor -- which is at this time as divergent as that of the “Roaring Twenties” according to a recent news article -- we have in practice, though not in theory, an oligarchy with the goal of manipulating the American voter into electing radical rightists or leftists. They are using racism, religion, election manipulation and the American Dream” class system to do that.

Neither group, the far right or the far left, is good for a peaceful society. Sanders, by the way, is not a radical but a man working for economic and legal fairness, which we do need immensely in this country, despite the advances since the Civil Rights movement. The “conservatives” have had their feet on the brakes during this whole time. Lyndon Johnson did manage to push through some very good changes, but the fight against all such things has been fierce ever since I can remember. Even in the relatively peaceful 1950s the KKK and other such groups have frequently been in the news in various parts of the country, including some in the North.

The peace-loving Middle Class and the struggling poor are being pushed aside, and it truly worries me. Democracy is not made “fair and balanced” by drawing together the black and white haters for a slugfest, but by enlightened discussion among the moderates, the open-minded, and those who are actually concerned about serious problems like environmental stability and increasingly intense poverty, police brutality and more. Our arguments and pursuits as citizens should be about those things rather than about punishing the LGBT element for their probably innate tendencies. A gay couple absolutely needs to be able to buy their wedding cake with no interference. Aaron and Melissa Klein, the owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, recently refused a lesbian couple’s request over their religious views. Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries has charged them with violating anti-discrimination laws and ordered them to pay the couple $135, 000 in damages. The bakers are “taking the case to a higher court.” See: http://www.religionnews.com/2015/10/01/wedding-cake-showdown-bakery-owners-refuse-to-pay-damages-to-lesbian-couple/.

This man Williams hates gays as much as the fundamentalist Christian and their Islamic counterparts do. In fact, he seems to hate pretty much everybody. Thank goodness most citizens will relegate him to the wacko fringe group and certainly not be influenced by his views. He’s in the same class as Rush Limbaugh who has been going down in his level of influence in the last couple of years due to some really foulmouthed and racist comments; Glenn Beck who unfortunately is still going strong; and the whole Fox News crew who haven’t changed much since they went on the air. It’s really interesting that Fox commentator Megyn Kelly lambasted Trump recently and that Fox is actually standing up for her on her comments. It is a slight ray of sunshine on a persistently cloudy day.

To see Williams in action, go to the sites mentioned below. If this blog article doesn’t give you “enough already” about Williams, go to the Net and look him up for yourself. The video about the “phony” and gay predilection of Obama is not to be missed. It sounds like a clip from some of the worst Fox News bloviators. To give credit where it’s due, I owe that magnificent word to Mr. Bill O’Reilly from Fox. When I had cable I used to tune the TV to that channel occasionally just to see what the cast of characters there were saying. O’Reilly is the most entertaining of the bunch.



E T WILLIAMS’ TAKE ON THE WORLD:


Obama Is A Nightmare, Impeach The Bastard - YouTube
Video for e.t. williams Obama gay▶ 5:18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5JXzIjhLHA

Jun 18, 2012 - Uploaded by The Doctor Of Common Sense
Check Out My Other Station Called "Thetruthdamit" Obama Is A Nightmare, Impeach ... Happened To Common Sense, ET Williams on Common Sense, Obama is a clown, Stop ... Homosexual Movement: Beautiful or Insane?

The Gay Mafia Is Upset With ET Williams - YouTube
Video for e.t. williams Obama gay▶ 6:59
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKwX_Zoa2RI
Mar 28, 2013 - Uploaded by The Doctor Of Common Sense
The Gay Mafia Is Upset With ET Williams, You are dude if you have a penis, you ... Obama & Homosexuals are destroying the Damn Country ...

E.T. Williams: The Doctor of Common Sense PlayList
datab.us/.../E.T.%2BWilliams%3A%2BThe%2BDoctor%2Bof%2BCommon...
Obamacare Fraud and Playing The Race Card with ET Williams ... idiots.com/ NEW COMEDY STATION http://www.yout ube.com/user/Dr ofCommonSense?f ...

Muslims & Liberals Upset About Goat Videos. Youtube Tries ...
https://boudicabpi.wordpress.com/.../muslims-liberals-upset-about-goat-v...
Aug 23, 2014 - Youtube Tries Banning ET Williams TAKE THE POLL: ... NEW COMEDY STATION http://www.youtube.com/user/DrofCommo... Join The Talk ...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMkEc5Qj71Y

Muslims In Germany Get Handouts On How Not To Rape Women And Piss In Public
The Doctor Of Common Sense
Published on Jan 30, 2016

Muslims In Germany Get Handouts On How Not To Rape Women And Piss In Public – For this article see also http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic...


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Culture Wars – The Liberal and Conservative Opinions 2015


The following three articles for consideration concern the national funding of art and the humanities, and the Republican opposition to it. The final is both shocking and enlightening, a series of quotations of Senator Jesse Helms’ statements down through time on liberal culture and such tender subjects as black people. He was a senator from North Carolina, which was not the most racist state in the South, but it wasn’t free from that intellectual pollution either. Like Donald Trump, some of his statements would be funny if they weren’t being taken as good political policy by many modern day US citizens. The origin of the NEA and NEH was Lyndon Baines Johnson's Great Society program. I had thought it would be Roosevelt's work. See the following very interesting articles which I found this morning. Enjoy your read.



http://www.liberalamerica.org/2015/02/11/28-reasons-im-done-talking-to-most-of-my-conservative-friends-and-family-members/
By Tiffany Willis on February 11, 2015


I’m a Southern girl. Born in the South, raised in the South, and have rarely lived anywhere BUT the South. I actually love the South. I’ll die in the South. Being a Southern girl, I have more than my share of right-wing friends, neighbors, and family members — and some of you have in recent years crossed the line into nut-jobbery.

The fact is — I love you guys and that will never change.

I’ll admit that I’m disappointed and disturbed to see intelligent and/or educated people who are willfully ignorant. But while it does change my opinion about you on some level, more than anything I’m embarrassed for you. It hurts me to see you post conspiracy theories on your Facebook timeline, only to have them debunked with a quick Snopes link. It hurts me to see you expressing unapologetic and blatant racism and ignorance. It absolutely tortures me to see you being on the wrong side of history on so many issues.

Although I’ll always love you guys, I have had to quit — for my own sanity and for the sake of our relationships — attempting to engage in intelligent conversation about politics and social issues with most of you. From now on, we’ll talk about the weather, recipes, our mutual friends, our children, our illnesses, thrift shop finds, and our old memories. I want to know what’s going on in your lives. What books are you reading? What home improvements are you planning? Hell, I’ll even follow you on Pinterest!

I very much appreciate those of you who can still have an intelligent conversation and listen to another point of view. Hopefully this small group of sane conservatives never changes.

Here is why I have to abandon attempts at intelligent conversation with most of you.

1. You support revisionist history.

When I was in a high school history class, I’ll never forget one thing our teacher taught us: what you read in history books isn’t always accurate. The example she used was history books in the Soviet Union, now known as Russia. She informed us, to my shock and horror, that the Soviets pretty much included what they liked in the history books and left out everything else. As a result, she said, there were generations of Russian students who were misinformed.

Oh we were dismayed, my classmates and I! Those poor little Russian kids who were being taught false history. But wait….you guys on the right are trying to do the same thing right here in the Good Old U.S.A.

Last year, I wrote an article about Texas’ plan to revise history and include Moses as a Founding Father. When I shared the article with an educated Texas adult and asked “is this OK with you,” his response was:

“Why teach our children at length regarding the horrors of slavery as we have eliminated that curse from our society? We don’t deny it occurred here or anywhere else in the world, but, why dwell on a segment of our past that has been corrected? I don’t think it is appropriate to drag our dirty laundry through our history lessons at length.”

Because it’s HISTORY. You don’t get to just rewrite history books if it’s unpleasant. What are you thinking? Shall we rewrite the Revolutionary War? “A minor disagreement with Great Britain.” How about the bombing of Pearl Harbor? “A spat with the Japanese.”

2. You cite Jesus as your reasoning for rejecting marriage equality.
Yet the Bible only mentions homosexuality six times. Six. Times. 6. This many:

So why is this one of the biggest issues on your agenda? Why are you putting so much energy and hate into an issue that clearly wasn’t one of God’s major concerns?

As Christians who are pro-family, why would you deny people the right to the sanctity of marriage? If marriage strengthens families, why would you not want everyone to have this, even if you disagree with their choice of mate?

YOU (we) have destroyed the sanctity of marriage. There is no possible way that gay marriage can do more harm to marriage than heterosexuals have done. Yet we seldom hear a sermon bemoaning the divorce rate or people living together before marriage. Why is that? Because the pews would be empty.

3. You use Biblical scripture to excuse yourself from feeding the hungry.

There is nothing you do that makes me more disgusted with you than your abuse and misuse of 2 Thessalonians 3:10.

For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, If any will not work, neither let him eat. 2 Thessalonians 3:10

You are deliberately taking the scripture — ONE VERSE! — out of context when you use them to justify your own hatred of poor people. And again, you’re showing your ignorance.

From Liberal America reader Eric Susee: “2 Thessalonians 3:10. are NOT the words of Christ. They are the words of Paul of Tarsus, a man who never met Christ.”

Biblical scholars have pointed out that the author of 2 Thessalonians was referring to Christians who stopped working in anticipation of Christ’s return.

4. You lie when you say you value “freedom of religion.”

I had lunch with some conservatives a while back, and the topic of freedom of religion came up. They expressed concern at the “war on Christianity.” I cited a recent event that had occurred in which protesters interrupted the U.S. Senate’s first Hindu-led prayer. The response from my fellow diners? “Good.”

I don’t know how educated people can be so ignorant. Seriously. You can’t even see your own contradictions.

5. You claim God speaks to you and tells you to do things.

Over and over and over, we see right wing nutjobs in the news saying they’re doing this horrible thing or that horrible thing because God told them to. This is, to quote the Christian Courier, “a very convenient method of authenticating what you want to do.”

He does NOT do that.

God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son. Hebrews 1:1

But conservatives believe these nuts. Here is what I think: not only should sensible conservatives not believe these nuts, you need to start speaking out against them. These are the false prophets that the Bible warns us about, in my humble opinion. Most of you lack the courage to take a stand against these idiots even when you know they’re nuts.

6. You question my faith.

“Christian Left is an oxymoron.”

Oh my, I’ve heard that so much from the right, and believe it or not, I often hear it from my “friends.” First of all, your questioning of my faith genuinely means very little to me. What it does is destroy my opinion of you; I now view you as self-righteous hypocrites.

Recently, I found out that a woman from my church questioned her teen son for spending time here at my home with my children. I believe her words were “why would you want to be around someone so liberal.” I’ve never had a conversation with this lady. We’ve never even made eye contact. But alas, her comment (and more that she said) has forced me to now see her differently.

Keep questioning my faith, though, my people, because you can be sure I’m questioning yours. One thing I won’t do, however, is accuse you of not being a believer as you do me. What I will suggest to you is that my faith may be stronger than yours. I’ve educated myself, dared to question all things, and STILL believe. Most of you are too afraid to even learn. It may, after all, test your faith.

I’ll pray for you! :)

7. You care more about your guns than you do about children.

After the Sandy Hook massacre, and following other similar tragedies, I asked many of you if you loved your guns more than you do children. I made the statement of “I’d give up my gun forever if it would bring back even one of those children.”

I asked you if you’d do the same. You admitted that you would not.

8. You get excited about people dying.

You really, really like to see death. And not just to terrorists. You love the death penalty. You love war. You love seeing kids like Trayvon Martin being shot. They deserve it, you say. But his murderer has shown — again and again — since his acquittal that he is a dangerous person.

9. You assume that everyone who needs help are losers and parasites who refuse to work.

Approximately 47 million people receive food stamps, and most of them are children or the elderly, in addition to people who are employed. The numbers, from a 2012 USDA report:

10. You weren’t concerned about uninsured people– including me.

Most of you know that when I made the decision to become self-employed that I would be giving up my employer subsidized health insurance. I’m 47 years old, and like most people my age, have at one time or another had preexisting conditions that would cause insurance companies to deny me a private policy.

I didn’t want a free ride. I was eager to pay for my own insurance. Obamacare opened that door for me and millions of other hard-working Americans and disallows insurance companies from rejecting millions of Americans who were previously rejected. But without even knowing fully what the Affordable Care Act is, you chose the path of ignorance. You didn’t care.

11. The Creation Museum — that is all.

You think this is OK. It’s not. These people just make stuff up. Do you really think kangaroos floated from Africa to Australia on rafts? Why are you condoning this ignorance?

12. You’re liberal in youth, yet grow conservative in age.

I call this the Dead Peter Syndrome in men and/or the Formerly Hot Syndrome in women.

A couple of years ago, a man confronted me on Facebook about my liberalism. I knew him when I was growing up; he was a friend of my parents and his children were my playmates. He called me a stupid, misguided, amoral, liberal. Yes, those were his words. I had one question for him:

“When I was a little girl, didn’t I sit on your lap while you smoked a joint and drank beer?”

I’m afraid I burned the bridge of that friendship — and good riddance.

Similarly, many women who embraced the sexual revolution are now taking a stance against women’s rights and suggesting that I’m killing babies with my IUD.

You don’t get to live it up as a young person and then try to take a moral high ground when you get old and aren’t interested in living anymore.

13. You don’t want people who disagree with you to vote.

Oh, Gerrymandering, you ugly devil, you. But do we question why this is so common and seldom questioned by people on the right? It’s because you, my conservative voter loved ones, agree with it. You think it’s perfectly acceptable (and necessary) to suppress the vote. It’s for the “good of the nation.”

I once heard someone tell his wife to not inform her Democratic friend how and where to vote. “She’ll cancel out your vote.”

There you have it.

14. Some of your best friends are black. Or Mexican.

A conservative I know professes that “my best friend is black” and balked when I called him and his wife racist. Why did I call him racist? Because my little girl — at that time about 12 — went to a movie with one of her African American friends and his mother. The conservative and his wife were “very concerned” about me allowing my little girl to consort with “blacks.” But oh, no, they’re not racist, are they?

I don’t care how many black or Hispanic friends you have. If you think that mentality is OK, then yes, you’re racist.

15. You scream about undocumented immigrant children at the border, but you hire Mexicans to do your dirty work.

I live in Texas. Duh! Every single upper-middle-class or wealthy person I know has at one time hired cheap labor to do their menial tasks like home repairs, yard work, housekeeping, and childcare. They actually seek out Hispanic people because they know that they do good work and that they’ll work for cheap.

16. You insist on calling undocumented immigrants “illegals” and “aliens.”

They are human beings. They are undocumented immigrants. Many of them are children. It reallyyyyy makes me furious to see you deliberately depersonalizing these human beings who are doing nothing but seeking the American Dream that you are so proud of.

And you do this on purpose. You know what you’re doing. You’re proud of your very unethical and un-Christian attitude towards these human beings.

17. You don’t mind using force against “lesser” groups to get what you want.

Case in point, protesting outside of abortion clinics.

Or protesting at the funerals of gay people. And yeah, I know that is Westboro Baptist Church and not you, but if you refuse to speak out against them, then you’re a part of the problem.

18. You love war, death, and destruction.

And why do you love war, death, and destruction? Because ‘Murica. Because you think this somehow makes us superior. We may be militarily superior, but we are ethically inferior.

Even when confronted with the lies, now confirmed officially, that got us into the Iraq war, you don’t care. You like for America to be the world’s largest terrorist organization and the world’s most formidable bully.

19. Speaking of war, you think draft dodging is OK and military service is for the little people.

Why doesn’t it bother you that Dick Cheney et al are draft dodgers? Or that Mitt Romney has an entire baseball team of sons and not one of them served in the military? Or that none of the current generation of Bush children have served in the military. Let me tell you in one sentence, as was told to me personally by a wealthy draft dodger:

“Wouldn’t you get out of it if you could?”

Dying for your country is such a noble cause — if you’re not one of the elite. Right?

20. You claim to care about the Constitution, but in reality you don’t.

Oh yes, you scream “CONSTITUTION” at the top of your lungs, but when idiotic Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) recently tried to strip the Constitution of the 5th and 6th Amendments, where were you? Where was your outrage?

You love the parts of the Constitution that please you personally — NOT the entire Constitution.

21. It’s impossible for you to see your privilege.

If you were born into a family and a place that allowed you to thrive, you’re blessed and fortunate. This isn’t the norm. A lot of success and stability depends on the structure that we have during our formative years. The vast majority of young Americans have not had your advantages and I can’t seem to make you understand that. I’ve stopped trying.

22. You don’t care about children.

You care about fetuses. Once those fetuses begin to breath outside the womb, your concern is gone if they’re born into a poor family that needs help.

Or how about poor children who are in school? Most of you want to do away with free and reduced lunches, for God’s sake. And let’s not even talk about free breakfasts for kids. What is wrong with you people??? There is no better investment that we can make as a nation than in the early childhood health of our children.

23. You’re greedy and miserable.

You spend more time bemoaning what is being taken from you that you do in being thankful that you have enough to share.

24. You think our religion is the only one.

I’m a Christian — a proud follower of the most amazing man I’ve ever studied. Most of what is good about me comes from the teachings of Jesus. I love my religion and my Holy Book. I use the Words in Red as a compass. But who am I to look at other people who feel exactly the same way about their own religions and judge them?

We’re all on this earth doing the best we can, making the best decisions that we can.

And we’re all taking our best guess. The evidence for and against their religion is no different than the evidence for and against ours.

25. You are lazy and you refuse to read.

I provide sources for you that will debunk most of your BS, or at least help you to see it a little differently. You refuse to read it. You stick to Fox News, World Net Daily, etc…You refuse to ever entertain another point of view.

I have a conservative friend who I adore. He and his wife grew up with me. I think he’s awesome because he did something amazing for me: he recorded Rachel Maddow for a week and watched her show. Did he agree? Meh, not really. But him being willing to even listen to another viewpoint won him favor in my book. Thank you, Michael.

26. Your misfortune is God’s blessing.

When something bad happens to you, you sanctimoniously think it’s God testing you and making you stronger. When something bad happens to me (or gay people or atheists or etc…), you think it’s God punishing them.

Really?

27. “Everyone has their lot in life.”

Except you, of course. Well, no….you do have a lot. Your lot is to have every privilege and entitlement and make sure your children have the same.

28. You think you’re the only one working and paying taxes.

“My tax dollars….” Here’s a clue: you’re not the only one paying taxes. Liberals pay taxes, too. Just how far do you think your $2,000 a year in income taxes goes? Or your $10,000, or even your $50,000? No matter how wealthy you are and how much income tax you pay — and most of those complaining aren’t paying that much — you’re actually probably paying more for wars (that you love) than for food stamps for children in poverty.

So anyhow….tell me, my loves, what are you cooking for dinner tonight?

All of this said, let me say this: I’m very grateful and appreciative of my sane conservative friends who can actually participate in an intelligent and respectful discussion. To name just a few (and if I leave anyone out, I’m sorry — these are just the ones I interact with the most on these issues): Michael, Laura K., Whitney, Laura M., and my pastor, Brent.

Thank you, my dear ones, for being sane. For understanding that things aren’t always black and white. And for disagreeing with me without belittling my very existence. And for not rubbing midterm losses in my face. And for never once calling me stupid or amoral for being a liberal.




ON FEDERALLY FUNDED GRANTS TO ART AND THE HUMANITIES


http://www.upenn.edu/pnc/ptkoch.html

"The Contest for American Culture: A Leadership Case Study on The NEA and NEH Funding Crisis"

Cynthia Koch, 1998
Associate Director, Penn National Commission


"The National Endowment for the Arts has always been bigger than life," Mr. Armey said. "What makes it so big? It is made big by the concerted, well--funded, well--motivated efforts of the arts elite in America who want the focus to be not whether or not there will be funding for the arts but whether or not they will be in control." (1)
Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, Republican Majority Leader, July 10, 1997


The most recent round of the national debate over funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) ended one year later, on July 21, 1998. On that day the House of Representatives approved $98 million for the NEA for fiscal 1999 and rejected the conservative Republican position that tax dollars should not be used to support the arts. This is the latest chapter in a concerted assault on the arts -- and eventually humanities -- that has been raging with more or less ferocity since May 1989 when Sen. Jesse Helms, on information supplied by the conservative Christian American Family Association, condemned Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" in an NEA-funded exhibition at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

But conservative discomfort with the endowments has existed since their founding; it first received national attention during the Reagan Administration. The real debate is not about money, or accusations of obscenity, or even -- as the National Endowment for the Humanities was dragged into the controversy -- over disagreements about how history is taught in our nation's schools. There are enduring enmities between those who favor a government role in supporting our national cultural life, and those, who for a variety of reasons, do not. Those in favor point to the record of support by governments in Europe, historical precedent, and the need to foster arts and scholarship in locations and disciplines where such activities would not be supported by market forces or private philanthropy. Opponents often take a libertarian approach, arguing against government involvement at all, or as social conservatives they oppose support for the arts and humanities on moral grounds as part of a broad-based critique of government rooted in religious beliefs that are at variance with prevailing public policy and values.

The philosophical differences between the two sides represent varying views about human nature and its relation to government. Endowments proponents generally hold modern liberal-moderate political views: minimal intrusion on the part of the state in private life combined with confidence in an activist government to guarantee individual rights and broad access to social goods such as economic, educational, and cultural opportunity. This view is opposed by many political opponents of the endowments, but by far the strongest opposition comes from Christian conservatives who advocate elimination of the NEA (and the NEH in the heat of the 1995 funding crisis) as part of their broader social agenda. For them individual rights and free expression, fundamental values in the liberal tradition, are radically at odds with a world view from an older ideology that sees human beings as basically flawed, their capacities for good nurtured only in the strict observance of Christian dogma. A government that fails to enforce these precepts is at odds with their deepest beliefs and must be changed. The Reverend Peter J. Gomes described the fervency of these political convictions in "The New Liberation Theology":

Within the Christian Coalition are groups adamantly opposed to abortion, homosexual civil rights, and the United Nations. Many are in favor of "creation-science" as an alternative to the theory of evolution; seek some kind of constitutional amendment that permits prayer in the public schools; want government vouchers for private education. Nearly everyone in the Christian Coalition agrees that the coarsening of our culture -- through pornography, sexual violence, and the demise of the traditional nuclear family -- comprises the greatest threat to our civilization. Their agenda is clear, and they now have the resources to put that agenda before the American people. They are organized, ambitious, and filled with a zeal that contrasts sharply with the tired-out politics and issues of the major parties. They are at war with the powers that be, and with the culture, that have for so long denied them and the legitimacy of their aspirations.(2)
While members of the Christian Right are certainly the most organized and vocal opponents of the endowments, their position also reverberates with those -- mostly the politically ambitious -- who attack the "eastern Establishment" and "cultural elite" in timeworn but often effective arguments that divide Americans along class and sectional lines.
The Terms of the NEA/NEH Debate

The arguments on both sides are, by now, familiar to many Americans. The Right, on the attack in the culture war of words, employs powerful arguments that are based in emotion and are hard to refute rationally. Their campaign is well funded, well organized, and apparently able to exert an influence in the press and in Congress disproportionate to their number. The two sides of the debate often take the following positions:

Opponents: Should the United States, which has no history of royal patronage or an established church, be engaged in directly sponsoring arts and learning? At risk, opponents of arts funding argue, is the independence of expression. Should America have an official art? Should it commission scholarship? A body of work that has been approved and funded by government agency smacks of communism or fascism.
Proponents: Exactly the opposite is true. The U.S. government, like all countries, has an interest in fostering the nation's culture. It is in the interest of American taxpayers to protect accessibility and freedom of expression by supporting culture with their tax dollars. Otherwise the arts and learning become the province of the few. The wealthy elite and corporations will inevitably silence points of view in opposition to their interests if they are paying the bills. Moreover, without government support the arts cannot survive in the American free enterprise system where media conglomerates aggressively market entertainment as "art" to an insatiable popular audience.

Opponents: Elitist! Large cultural institutions, artists, and intellectuals -- most of the them located on the East Coast -- have no right to use the tax dollars of working people across the nation to subsidize arts and scholarship that benefit only themselves. It is far more democratic to let the market decide which art should prosper. Besides, great artists will produce their masterpieces in spite of -- perhaps because of -- poverty. Look at Vincent Van Gogh, Mozart. Artists with NEA grants get lazy, too comfortable. If big museums and symphonies were producing what people really want, they wouldn't need subsidies.

Proponents: For each American taxpayer, the price of two postage stamps was the value of the federal contribution to the arts in 1994; today it is almost half that. The nation's great cultural and educational institutions, its artists and scholars, produce cultural "capital" that benefits the whole nation through traveling museum exhibitions and theater and opera productions, scholarship and preservation projects that inform the nation through research products that include TV and film productions, better informed teachers, and scholarly monographs that extend the frontiers of knowledge. Should America renounce its world leadership in the arts and higher education for the price of two postage stamps per taxpayer?

Opponents: Federal support for arts and education is unconstitutional. It is another misguided product of the 1960s Great Society that we can no longer afford.

Proponents: The federal government has been in the business of advancing arts and education since the founding of the Library of Congress in 1800 and the Smithsonian Institution in 1846. Since the establishment of the two national endowments in 1965, America's cultural life and educational leadership have grown to an unprecedented degree. American arts and learning are the envy of the world. Without federal dollars and the imprimatur of a federal grant that attracts private support, the arts will wither away.

Opponents: Americans will always be world leaders with or without federal subsidy. That "imprimatur" issue is exactly the point. There should be no "government seal of approval" on any art. And it certainly should not be on obscene and pornographic art, and as for the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian -- and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- they're on our list, too.

The Dollars Involved

It is well known that the actual dollar contribution of the federal agencies to the nation's cultural life is minute. The combined 1998 appropriations for the two national endowments is $.78 per person in the United States, while the total government (including state and local) spending on culture in this country is $6.25. In other Western countries the government share of spending on culture is much higher: $27.40 per person in the United Kingdom and $97.70 in Finland, the biggest spender in Europe. The combined budgets of the NEA and the NEH will amount to approximately 1/100 of 1% of the 1999 federal budget of $1,751 billion. In the United States private philanthropy's share is much more important than it is in other countries, but it only amounts to another $2.96 per person -- bringing our total support for culture to less than $10 per person. NEA and NEH appropriations since 1966 are shown in Figure 1.(3)

Early Efforts to Establish Cultural Endowments

The National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities Act of 1965 provided for the establishment of a National Council on the Arts and a National Council for the Humanities, the two endowments, and ultimately arts and humanities councils in every state. The two endowments probably trace their roots most directly to the Depression-era WPA programs: the Federal Art Project, Federal Music Project, Federal Writers Project, and Federal Theater Project. Besides providing needed employment for artists, they also gave many Americans their first experience with "public art" as communities dealt with artists on civic boards determining standards for highly visible public commissions in schools, post offices, and city halls. Art and artists were no longer the province of the "high" society of art museums and symphony orchestras, but rather of society as a whole. (4)

During the Depression some legislation was proposed at the federal level that would have had the power to institutionalize some of these activities on a permanent basis. (5) But with the beginning of World War II, the political will to establish a national cultural agency disappeared. As the economy improved, WPA legislation was phased out and conditions largely returned to their pre-war stasis: government support for the arts -- with the exception of practical necessities such as monuments and military bands -- was perceived as a frill and outside the legitimate realm of government support. During the war the government sponsored propagandistic arts projects to advance the war effort; but with the exception of programs sponsored by the Office of Inter-American Affairs (headed by Nelson Rockefeller), which sponsored tours and cultural exchanges with Latin America, whatever modest arts funding existed was usually buried in the budgets of nonarts programs.

The immediate precursor of the national endowments came as an extension of Rockefeller's activities with the OIAA during World War II. In 1954 Rockefeller, then an undersecretary in Eisenhower's Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, developed a plan based on the Arts Council of Great Britain to create a National Council on the Arts. But necessary legislation failed in Congress. Nancy Hanks, who worked for Rockefeller at the time and was later to become a popular chair of the NEA, described the derision with which this proposal was met in Congress where the bill was referred to as the "President's toe dance bill." Nonetheless, according to Hanks, this legislation saw life a few years later in 1960 when Rockefeller became governor of New York and it served as the model for the New York State Council on the Arts. (6)

The 1965 federal legislation was also patterned after the 1954 bill (according to Hanks) and it was in that year that cultural and educational advocacy efforts in a number of areas finally coalesced. The Rockefeller Panel Report, The Performing Arts: Problems and Prospects, made front page news describing serious funding problems in some the nation's largest arts organizations. The Elementary and Secondary School Act, authorizing schools to "develop innovative projects which . . . utilize the service of arts groups and cultural resources in their communities" was passed, and a crucial piece of legislation was crafted in Congress that brought together the parallel but divergent efforts of arts and humanities advocates.

As had been the case since the 1930s, advocacy for the arts and humanities -- while never popular among American political leaders -- enjoyed the support of a few leaders at the highest levels. The Kennedys' Camelot, inspired by Jacqueline Kennedy's love for the arts, briefly placed the arts at the center of the national life, with practical policy consequences. For example in 1961, Arthur Goldberg, secretary of labor for the Kennedy Administration, brought the department into action as arbitrator in the Metropolitan Opera Strike, stating, "the nation must come to accept the arts as a new community responsibility and part of this responsibility must fall to the federal government." In 1963 August Hecksher, former director of the Twentieth Century Fund, who had been appointed two years earlier by President Kennedy as his special consultant on the arts, issued a special report on the relationship between the arts and the federal government. This led to the establishment within the Executive Branch of a special advisor on the arts. In 1964 President Johnson appointed Roger L. Stevens, a theatrical producer, to the newly permanent post of special assistant to the president on the arts. Stevens became an active arts advocate with Congress and succeeded in getting a plank in the Democratic National Committee platform that year pledging continued support for the arts. (7)

At the same time humanities advocates organized the first Commission on the Humanities, a "blue-ribbon" panel of scholars convened by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Council of Graduate Schools, and Phi Beta Kappa that was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The commission issued a report calling for the establishment of a national agency consistent with President Kennedy's "New Frontier," a national call for excellence in scholarship justified by a belief in the implicit value to the nation of a thriving cultural and intellectual life.

As support for cultural funding grew, long-standing political divisions that had stymied previous federal efforts became more public as debate intensified. Arts and humanities advocates were generally liberal Democrats and Republicans, while conservatives of both parties espoused small government and untrammeled free enterprise. Not insignificantly, arts and humanities supporters were also well educated and drawn from urban areas where many leading cultural and educational institutions were and still are concentrated. Their opponents were often from the South or rural areas and frequently anti-intellectual.

By 1965, the year of the successful legislation that combined the two separate arts and humanities advocacy efforts into a single National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act, more than 100 separate bills in favor of cultural funding were introduced in the 89th Congress. The leading sponsor in the House was Frank Thompson of New Jersey joined by John Brademas (Indiana), Sidney Yates (Illinois), John Lindsay (New York), Lloyd Meeds (Washington), and many others. Leading supporters in the Senate included Claiborne Pell (Rhode Island), Hubert Humphrey (Minnesota), Jacob Javits (New York), Claude Pepper (Florida), Joseph Clark (Pennsylvania), and Abraham Ribicoff (Connecticut). It was Pell who spearheaded the combined arts and humanities legislation, joined in the House by Thompson. (8)

Opponents in the early 1960s used arguments against the endowments that still ring familiar: "With the nation $290 billion in debt," declared Rep. Howard Gross of Iowa, "an additional $200,000 each year for a council might be better deferred until we have a balanced budget in this country and start retiring the Federal debt." Rep. Howard Smith of Virginia, an outspoken foe and chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, displayed his animosity for the cultural elite":

What are the arts? And here is where I display my ignorance. I do not know. . . I suppose fiddle players would be in the arts and the painting of pictures would be in the arts. It was suggested that poker playing would be an artful occupation. Is this going to subsidize poker players that get in trouble? (9)
In Senate debate over the National Arts and Cultural Development Act in 1963, another precursor to the final legislation, Strom Thurmond was the only opponent of the bill to speak. Doubting the constitutionality of arts subsidies, he objected to the supporters' contention that government involvement in arts subsidies was covered under the "general welfare" clause and raised the specter of government control of the arts: "the Federal Government has the power to control that which it subsidizes and experience proves that when the Federal Government has the power, that power is eventually exercised." (10) This argument of the defeated opposition would surface again and again in the next thirty years.

The Reagan Crisis

The 1966 appropriation to the NEA was nearly $2.9 and $5.9 million went to the NEH. Funding and programming at the endowments grew throughout the 1970s, expanding to new audiences and dramatically increasing the arts and humanities presence in local communities and national institutions.

To be sure, there were controversies in the 1970s since the endowments were always easy targets. One of Sen. William Proxmire's "uncoveted" Golden Fleece awards was given to the NEA in 1977 for a grant it made to an artist who filmed colored crepe paper as she threw it from an airplane. The NEH received its share of Golden Fleeces, too. Joseph McLellan, writing for the Washington Post in the mid-1980s, recalled "sporadic, scattered protests (usually in Congress, sometimes in the press) about budget increases" and noted that when in the first ten years Nancy Hanks increased the NEA budget from $2.5 million to almost $75 million, George Will called her "the Mayor Daley of the Arts." Proxmire "found the NEA budget as hard to cut as the Pentagon budget. When he attacked the soaring NEA budget, his phone rang off the hook with protests from grant recipients all over Wisconsin." (11)

But in late 1980, the criticism suddenly took a more ominous turn as Hilton Kramer reported on the front page in the New York Times just three weeks after the election of Ronald Reagan:

“An important debate on the future course of Government policy on the arts is in progress in the inner councils of President-elect Ronald Reagan's advisers on cultural affairs. . . . Its outcome is likely to determine how the two Federal agencies will allocate funds and establish priorities for years to come.
At the crux of this debate is a firmly held belief, reported to be virtually unanimous among otherwise divided Reagan advisers, that the activities of both endowments have been profoundly compromised by politicization and an accompanying lowering of standards under the Carter Administration.”

Despite their consensus on the problem, Reagan arts policy advisors were reported to hold widely "widely divergent conclusions" on solutions:

One calls for the adoption of narrower programs designed to meet stricter standards of professional accomplishment. This, in effect, would mean a significant withdrawal from programs of popularization and mass appeal, and a renewed emphasis on programs encouraging high art and professional scholarship.

The other was characterized as "more extreme":

It takes the view that the endowments have strayed hopelessly off their intended courses and become mired in social and political causes unsanctioned by the legislation that brought them into being. As a result, there is now no alternative but to abolish them altogether. It would, of course, require an act of Congress to abolish the agencies. (12)

The Washington Post carried a far less alarming piece, in which the chairmen of Reagan's two transition team study groups apparently tried to quiet the rumor mill:
"Some people have said they are concerned that the Moral Majority and NCPAC are out to get the National Endowment for the Humanities," said Richard J. Bishirjian of Ronald Reagan's transition team. "The important thing to understand is that Reagan has no intention whatsoever of turning loose people who are destructive to the humanities. That's not the case at all."

Across the street, transition official Robert S. Carter said, "All we're going to do is to make a report by Dec. 22 on the situation as we find it at the National Endowment for the Arts -- with very possibly no recommendations." (13)

But such comments did little to quell the anxieties of cultural advocates. Neither did reports in both newspapers that Michael Joyce, executive director of the James M. Olin Foundation, had prepared a report for the Heritage Foundation that was called "highly critical" of both agencies. As part of a larger study of the federal government prepared as a "blueprint for a conservative American Government," the report found in both endowments "a tendency to emphasize politically inspired social policies at the expense of the independence of the arts and the humanities" and called for "redirecting the endowments toward the highest purposes for which they were intended." Joyce was also identified as serving as a member of Bishirjian's NEH transition team study group and William J. Bennett (then head of the National Humanities Center in North Carolina who would become Reagan's NEH chair) was cited as a consultant to the Heritage Foundation report. (14)

By early 1981 the first major NEA/NEH funding controversy was in full swing. Its dimensions are suggested by the number of newspaper articles on the NEA and NEH that were carried in major papers. Instead of thirty-seven articles which had been the nearly invisible level of coverage prior to 1980, suddenly there were close to one hundred. But still the fracas was limited in scope: it was a story largely covered by and for Washington and arts insiders. All but one story, which was carried by the Christian Science Monitor, were found in either the New York Times or the Washington Post. Nonetheless, the sequence of stories selected from that year's coverage outlines a pattern of activities and press coverage that would become familiar and broader in scope with the next two funding controversies:

January 16, 1981, Washington Post, "NEA, NEH Seek Budget Increases for '82."

February 5, Washington Post, "Budget Cuts Threaten Arts."

February 18, Washington Post, "Reagan Seeks 50% Cuts in Endowment's Budgets."

February 25, Christian Science Monitor, Midwestern Edition, "Arts Groups Efforts to Keep U.S. Funding: Just the First Act."

March 22, Washington Post, "Cutting the Endowment: An Argument," Toni Morrison.

March 25, Washington Post, "Distinguished Voices Protest NEH Cuts: Pleas and Protests, Fall of the Ax, Cont'd."

April 15, Washington Post, "Arts Reshuffle? Arts Reshuffle? NEA, NEH May Be Replaced: Independent Agencies May Replace NEA, NEH."

April 29, Washington Post, "Endowment Staffs May Not Face Cuts: OMB Says Budget Slash Shouldn't Mean Firings."

May 7, Washington Post, "NEA, NEH Review: The Endowments: Task Force Named."

May 16, Washington Post, "NEH Freezes Grant Awards: Proposed Endowment Cutback for This Year Prompt Humanities Group's Interim Action."

June 5, Washington Post, "Arts Task Force Named, White House Task Force Named, And Rescissions from NEA, NEH 1981 Budgets Will Be Less Than Expected."

June 9, Washington Post, "Charlton Heston to the Rescue: The Actor Comes to the Aid of the Arts."

June 11, Washington Post, "Higher Funding Ceilings Advocated for Endowments."

June 12, Washington Post, "Higher Funding Backed for Arts, Humanities: Endowments Funding; Subcommittee Supports 'Essential Program.'"

July 14, Washington Post, "Task Force Favors Saving NEA and NEH."

July 18, Washington Post, "Individual Grants May Be Prohibited."

July 23, Washington Post, "House Boosts NEA, NEH Funding."

September 11, Washington Post, "Reagan Aide in Line for NEA . . . Frank Hodsell Expected To Be Named Chairman."

September 17, Washington Post, "Tax Breaks for Arts Patrons?"

September 26, Washington Post, "Touching All the Bases: Arts Staffs Go to Bat for the Sake of the Game: Going to Bat for the Arts and Humanities."

October 24, Washington Post, "NEA, NEH Bonuses: Bonuses Going to 102 Employees of NEA, NEH, Cash Awards to 102 Endowment Employees."

November 5, Washington Post, "Conferees Clear NEA, NEH Funds."

December 13, Washington Post, "The Amazing Endowment Scramble: When Politics and Professors Meet, the Fracas is Anything but Academic.'

December 24, Washington Post, "NEA, NEH Funding Bill Signed." (15)

Familiar in these headlines -- because they would recur again and again in future press accounts -- are reports of grassroots advocacy efforts; celebrities testifying on Capitol Hill and writing op-ed pieces pro and con; threats to gut the agencies, privatize them, and cut grants to individuals; countermoves by the agencies; and antiendowment stories that highlight arts patrons, college professors, and endowment staff as beneficiaries of federal largesse. But these articles in major newspapers give only the barest indication of what was going on throughout the country. Arts advocates reacted vocally, which quieted the endowments' opponents and helped their supporters in Congress:

In 1981 the Reagan administration ran into a . . . flood of protests when it threatened to cut the Carter arts budget in half. Star-studded protest parades marched down Broadway to Lincoln Center; theaters staged momentary blackouts to dramatize the budget situation; volunteer lawyers began to talk about class-action suits of artists against the Reagan administration; audiences were given postcards to send to their congressmen. (16)

In the end both agencies did sustain cuts, which appeared at the time to be minor. In fact, the 1982 cuts were severe. The arts appropriation dropped from $158.8 million in fiscal 1981 to $143.5 million the next year. The NEH lost close to 14 percent of its $151.3 million budget in 1982 and would not regain its 1981 level of funding until 1989. In an era of double-digit inflation this represented a real dollar cut of approximately 50 percent over the course of the 1980s -- an amount consistent in the end with the Reagan administration's original objective. The NEA, which had a more effective lobbying network in well-known performing arts advocates and a large and dedicated institutional base of arts organizations, did return to (and exceed) its 1981 appropriation by 1984; however, even that did not keep pace with inflation. (17) Figure 2 shows the effect of inflation on the endowments' appropriations. (18)


If by 1985 the opponents had not succeeded completely in their original budget cutting objectives, they had nonetheless found their flash point. In September of that year, McLellan wrote that a few weeks earlier a "trio of Texas congressmen" had spearheaded the effort to withhold grants to individual artists whose work was "found offensive to the average person." He dismissed the effort as "a bit of noise" that was "quietly buried by the endowment's congressional friends, who have by now accumulated a lot of experience in handling such problems." (19) But his sanguinity was proved wrong. In 1989, when the next furor broke, the charge that the NEA funded "offensive" art found a national audience as social and political conservatives joined forces with those who saw political advantage in attacking the "arts elite."

The Serrano-Mapplethorpe Controversy

The storm . . . broke on the Senate floor on May 18, as Senator Alfonse D'Amato rose to denounce Andres Serrano's photograph Piss Christ as trash. "This so-called piece of art is a deplorable, despicable display of vulgarity," he said. . . . Not to be outdone, Senator Jesse Helms joined in the denunciation: "The Senator from New York is absolutely correct in his indignation and in his description of the blasphemy of the so-called art work. I do not know Mr. Andres Serrano, and I hope I never meet him. Because he is not an artist, he is a jerk. . . . Let him be a jerk on his own time and with his own resources. Do not dishonor our Lord." Within minutes over 20 senators rushed to join [D'Amato] in sending a letter to Hugh Southern, acting chair of the NEA, demanding to know what steps the agency would take to change its grant procedures. "This work is shocking, abhorrent and completely undeserving of any recognition whatsoever" the senators wrote. (20)

The offending work was a 60-by-40 inch photograph of an inexpensive wood and plastic crucifix submerged in a transparent container of the artist's urine. It had been shown, with no public outcry, in a three-city exhibit organized by the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. SECCA had received an NEA grant, as it had for years, for its "Awards in the Visual Arts" series and had selected Serrano and nine other artists from among five hundred applicants for inclusion in the exhibition and as the recipients of $15,000 fellowships. But as Carole S. Vance, who summarized the controversy in a September 1989 article for Art in America put it, "How the senators came to know about the regional show was not accidental."

The show had closed by the end of January 1989, yet throughout the spring, the right-wing American Family Association, based in Tupelo, Mississippi, attacked the photo, the exhibition and its sponsors. The association and its executive director, United Methodist minister Rev. Donald Wildmon, were practiced in fomenting public opposition to allegedly "immoral, anti-Christian" images and had led protests against Martin Scorsese's film The Last Temptation of Christ the previous summer. The AFA newsletter, with an estimated circulation [of] 380,000 including 178,00 churches, according to association spokesmen, urged concerned citizens to protest the art work and demand that responsible NEA officials be fired. The newsletter provided the relevant names and addresses, and letters poured in to congressmen, senators, and the NEA. (21)

A few weeks later when "Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment" was scheduled to open at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, the furor escalated. The Mapplethorpe show had been organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania. The ICA had received $30,000 from the NEA for the show, which originated in Philadelphia and was scheduled to travel to five other cities.

A retrospective of the artist's work over a twenty-year period (Mapplethorpe had died of AIDS in March 1989), the exhibit included more than 150 photos: formal portraits, flowers, children, and sexually explicit gay and sadomasochistic erotic poses. It was presented in Philadelphia from December 1988 through January 1989, where it was well received, and then moved on to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, where its run was uneventful. But according to Vance, what happened next was entirely a different story.

. . . But by June 8, Representative Dick Armey (R-Tex.) sent [NEA acting chair] Southern a letter signed by over 100 congressmen denouncing grants for Mapplethorpe as well as Serrano, and threatening to seek cuts in the agency's $170 million budget. . . . Armey wanted the NEA to end its sponsorship of "morally reprehensible trash," and he wanted new grant guidelines that would "clearly pay respect to public standards of taste and decency." Armey claimed he could "blow their budgets out of the water" by circulating the Mapplethorpe catalogue to fellow legislators prior to the House vote on the NEA appropriation. Before long about 50 senators and 150 representatives had contacted the NEA about its funding. (22)

Amid cries of censorship from the arts community and liberals, the Corcoran canceled the show rather than run it in Washington during budget negotiations. Outraged, a local alternative arts group, the Washington Project for the Arts, ran the show instead. With the exhibit later scheduled to travel to Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center, trustees there voted to uphold their contract with the ICA and hosted the show accompanied by warnings and other safeguards against children viewing the explicitly sexual material. Nonetheless, the museum's director, Dennis Barrie, was arrested on charges of violating community standards of decency. The arrest was a result of pressure exerted on Cincinnati law enforcement officials by a local religious alliance, Citizens for Community Values, which included among its program objectives a determination to fight pornography through the criminal justice system. After a trial that shook the museum community to its core, Barrie was acquitted by a jury of four men and four women in October 1990. (23)

The turmoil affected the budget debates in both houses. Angry members of Congress vowed to gut the NEA budget, though they were stopped by more moderate amendments that signaled congressional disapproval of the controversial grants by deducting the total cost ($45,000) of the Serrano and Mapplethorpe grants from the 1990 appropriation. In late July Jesse Helms's bill to prevent the NEA from sponsoring "obscene or indecent" art passed a Senate voice vote but died in the House of Representatives. Congress authorized a $2 million increase in the NEA budget but withheld $45,000 -- the amount spent on the Serrano and Mapplethorpe exhibits. In September a Congressional committee added an antiobscenity clause to NEA appropriations that would ban federal funds for art that "may be considered obscene, including but not limited to, depictions of sadomasochism, homoeroticism, the sexual exploitation of children, or individuals engaged in sex acts and which, when taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value." (24)

While it had no immediate impact on funding for the arts, the controversy secured the conservatives' first concession to their agenda and inaugurated a new wariness on the part of the arts community. As described by Judith Tannenbaum, who was then acting director of the ICA:

The bill that was finally passed by both the House and the Senate in October 1989 represented a compromise from the original Helms amendment and the harsh punitive measures earlier proposed for both ICA and SECCA. That legislation, enacted to appropriate funds for both the NEA and the [NEH] in 1990, however, did include a clause requiring that Congress be notified of any grants recommended for funding to ICA or SECCA. No one could have predicted just six months before that we would now be grateful for what amounted to being placed on probation, and that, similarly, the arts community would accept an obscenity clause of any kind. Yet these compromises represented a victory of sorts, given the more extreme Senate bill that might have been adopted. (25)

In the spring of 1990 the National Council on the Arts voted to reject two grants to the ICA that had been recommended for funding by peer review. It was felt that funding the exhibits, although their content was entirely uncontroversial in nature, might be perceived "as an act of defiance towards Congress." (26) That decision was overturned the following August, but the council refused to reconsider grants that had been rejected on similar grounds to performance artists Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, John Fleck, and Tim Miller. It was their case that eventually made its way to the Supreme Court, which upheld the "obscenity clause" as constitutional in June 1998. (27)

The 1995 Funding Controversy

With the election of the 104th Congress in 1994, Republicans gained control of Congress for the first time since 1954 and for the first time since the founding of the cultural endowments. Those elected among the 367 Republican candidates who signed the Contract with America took seriously their pledge "after four decades of one-party control, to bring to the House a new majority that will transform the way Congress works. That historic change would be the end of government that is too big, too intrusive and too easy with the public's money. It can be the beginning of a Congress that respects the values and shares the faith of the American family." (28)

Major provisions of the Contract called for congressional term limits, a balanced budget amendment, the line-item veto, and welfare reform. Less noticed in the Contract's appendix was call for the outright elimination of the NEA and NEH. (29) In the companion "contract" produced by the Christian Coalition in 1995, Contract with the American Family, "profamily" stipulations also led to calls for the elimination of the federal Department of Education; the repeal of Goals 2000 -- the hard-won legislation leading to national educational standards in key areas of elementary and secondary student performance -- and elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). (30)

The influence of the Christian Coalition was evident when their Contract was announced at a May 17 press conference in the Capitol attended by a number of prominent senators and members of Congress, including Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Prepared by Ralph Reed, Jr., then the organization's executive director, with assistance from Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum, Douglas Johnson of National Right to Life, and representatives from RNC for Life and the American Family Association, the Christian Coalition Contract urged "privatization of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) because we do not view such funding as a proper role for the United States Government." But the Coalition quickly moved to justify its position in terms of the NEA's support for "public funding for obscene art" growing out of the Mapplethorpe-Serrano controversy: "Over the years, the NEA has incurred the anger of individual members of Congress, but it was not until 1989 that the agency became the focus of intense criticism." Their attack on culture also included the CPB and NEH, which was charged with "politicization." The recently released National History Standards were held up as the prime example. (31) The Christian Right's objections to the endowments were now codified in a single document endorsed by the congressional leadership.

In the framework of the Republicans' Contract, elimination was addressed more often as a budgetary -- rather than ideological -- issue. Advocates for culture and education were told that if the nation were ever to achieve a balanced budget, the nation simply could no longer afford the "bloated bureaucracies" of the Department of Education and the cultural endowments. The Department of Education carried the additional onus of inconsistency with the American tradition of local control of education. (32) At this early stage in the dispute it appeared that the three disparate wings of the Republican party -- fiscal conservatives, libertarian advocates of small government, and the cultural and religious right -- were powerfully united in opposition to national cultural and educational activities.

The attack on the NEH took many by surprise when in January 1995 the Senate voted 99 - 1, in a "sense of the Senate resolution," to oppose the National History Standards. Almost immediately the history standards were linked to the NEH as Mapplethorpe was to NEA. And on January 24 William J. Bennett and Lynne Cheney, both former NEH chairs, called for elimination of the NEH in a House committee public hearing. This marked the transition for the NEH to the forefront of the controversy. It was now publicly known that the NEH, along with the NEA, was a target for the Christian Coalition, Heritage Foundation, and Cato Institute and culture wars press coverage now included the humanities as well as the arts. (33)

Lynne Cheney, chairwoman of the NEH from 1986 to 1993, set forward the conservative critique of her former agency in a March 10 New York Times op-ed piece:

Reading the world history standards, one would think that sexism and ethnocentrism arose in the West, when Western civilization has in fact led the way in condemning the unjust treatment of women and encouraging curiosity about other cultures. The American history standards make it seem that Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism (mentioned 19 times) are far more important than George Washington (mentioned twice) or Thomas Edition [sic] (mentioned not at all). So outlandish was the standards' version of history that 99 members of the U.S. Senate voted to denounce them. (34)
Sheldon Hackney, chairman of the NEH at the time, saw the Senate vote against the history standards in an entirely different light. In his view the argument against the standards had been structured in such a way that disagreement with Lynne Cheney and the conservative critics was essentially a "lost cause." In an interview he pointed out that the senators knew that arguing against Cheney was impossible because she described the content in such a way that a vote in favor of the standards was a vote that favored Sojourner Truth over George Washington. "That's really why the Senate voted that way." But the "rapidity and content of the attack floored [the drafters of the History Standards.] They were not ready." (35)

No one in the humanities community was ready for the onslaught. Suddenly the humanities, along with public broadcasting, was cast into the center of the press maelstrom. As in the Mapplethorpe-Serrano controversy five years earlier, the media coverage of the endowments reached fever pitch again, although it had never fully subsided after 1990. (Figure 3) What was new was the involvement of the NEH.

The calls for elimination of the endowments were incessant and they had their intended impact in Congress. The three-year reauthorization that both endowments received in 1990 expired and in 1993 and 1994, in a climate still heated by Mapplethorpe-Serrano, neither the White House nor leaders in Congress had pushed for reauthorization. Continued funding was appropriated on a temporary year-to-year basis, thereby avoiding the all-out confrontation of reauthorization hearings. To the endowments' opponents in the new Congress, this was unacceptable. One of the first pledges made in January as the 104th Congress reorganized was "no appropriations without authorization." And in March, when $5 million appropriated to each agency by the previous Congress was rescinded, arts and humanities advocates felt the first blow to their budgets. But like the strange sense of relief experienced by arts people five years earlier, when the final 1990 appropriation legislation carried a compromise version of the original punitive Helms amendment on obscenity, the $5 million rescission seemed more a relief than an assault. Or, as it was put in a retrospective memo sent to humanities councils: "By March, a lot had happened. We avoided a serious rescission, and the councils were fortunate to take no cut at all. Did we dodge a bullet, or the bullet?" (36) Like the arts advocates who had faced years of vocal attack that threatened their core purposes, now the humanities constituency was grateful for small abuses.

And so amid the press clamor in the winter and spring of 1995, reauthorization hearings were held with friends and opponents testifying. By March advocates were lined up to counter the damaging testimony from opponents such as Cheney and Bennett who spoke in January. Charlton Heston once again testified on behalf of the arts; David McCulloch and Ken Burns were among those favoring the humanities. By May a House committee approved the Goodling/Cunningham bill (named for its chief sponsors, William F. Goodling of Pennsylvania and Randy Cunningham of California) calling for a three-year phase out of the NEH, two years for the NEA, with significant cuts every year leading to "zero" funding.

Chilling as these provisions were to the arts and humanities communities, they at least paved the way for appropriations discussions, which took a tortuous route in the House throughout the summer of 1995. In the Senate the authorization committee headed by Sens. James M. Jeffords (Vermont) and Nancy Kassebaum (Kansas) approved a reauthorization bill proposing a gradual series of cutbacks totaling 20 percent over five years. Varying appropriations proposals in both houses called for everything from "zero" funding to cuts of 20, 40, and 50 percent. The most effective friends of the endowments were moderate Republicans like Jeffords, Kassebaum, and Alan Simpson (Wyoming) in the Senate and Reps. Steve Gunderson (Alaska), Peter J. Torkildsen (Massachusetts), Nancy Johnson (Connecticut), and Marge Roukema (New Jersey), who worked strategically within their own party. In the House Democrats Sidney Yates and Pat Williams (Montana) continued their strong support, as did the ever loyal Claiborne Pell. "Dear Colleague" letters were circulated and trade-offs negotiated, which at times involved funding for the National Biological Survey and the Naval Petroleum Reserve and even the Federal Emergency Relief Agency. In the House the appropriations battle came down to a single up or down vote on what came to be known as the Chabot Amendment (after Steve Chabot from Ohio), which would have eliminated the NEH; the amendment was defeated by a wide majority. According to Jamil Zainaldin, president of the Federation of State Humanities Councils, this was the crucial moment for the NEH. It clearly demonstrated that the House leadership was not willing to "fall on its sword" over the NEA and NEH, nor possibly were a majority of Republicans. (37)

The result in the House was a bill that called for the NEH to receive $99.9 million in 1996 to be phased out in three years. The NEA was to receive a similar amount, but was subject to a two-year phase out and formal reauthorization before it would receive its 1996 funding. The Senate subsequently approved a budget for the NEH of $115 million and $99.9 for the NEA. Finally, in September a House-Senate conference committee reached a compromise of $110 million for the NEH and $99.5 for the NEA.

But this was only the beginning of the end of the story. The federal fiscal year ended on September 30, but by November only three of thirteen appropriations bills had passed Congress and received presidential approval. The Interior appropriations bill, which included the cultural endowments, was among those in limbo. At issue was the Contract with America provision to balance the budget in seven years with the Congressional Budget Office and the Administration's Office of Management and Budget offering differing estimates of annual targets needed to achieve a balanced budget by 2002. As late as March 28, 1996, six months into the fiscal year, Congress was still debating five of the spending bills, dealing with nine cabinet agencies and the District of Columbia. They were eventually melded into a single $160 billion measure covering spending for the last half of the year. (38) Only a series of thirteen "continuing resolutions" or temporary spending agreements between the White House and Congress kept the government functioning at all between October and April, but not without disagreements that led to two federal government shut-downs. Americans felt these most acutely in delays in securing passports and visas and in closed Social Security and Veterans' Affairs offices, but the greatest outrage resulted from the closing of the National Gallery of Art during the international tour of the Vermeer exhibition. Bad press also resulted from the closure of national parks, monuments, and the Smithsonian Institution. And in the end people blamed Speaker Gingrich and the Contract with America.

Finally, on April 25 Congress approved funding for the agencies that had received no appropriation and the endowments were funded at the level agreed to in the conference committee the previous September. The president signed the appropriations and national attention turned to the presidential election. Press coverage of the endowments fell below its 1989 level (39) and, at least in Washington, the NEA and NEH breathed a sigh of relief. Yet each had been dealt a crippling blow: the cut to the NEA budget was 39 percent and to the NEH 36 percent.

Fifteen months later, in July 1997, the crisis began its final phase. On July 10, in a 217-216 vote, the House voted to eliminate the NEA and disperse its remaining budget of $99.5 million to the states. (40) A day later conservatives voted to strip the agency of $10 million in shut-down costs and rejected the provision for distributing the balance to the states; they voted instead for elimination. The unity of the 104th Congress's first 100 days gone, the debate split the Republican party into factions. Ultimately this showdown lead to the defeat of efforts to eliminate the NEA:

The windup to the debate in the House today over the endowments produced passionate speeches from both sides of the issue, a rare floor speech by Speaker Newt Gingrich and an odd circumstance in which warring Republican moderates and conservatives joined forces to defeat the block-grant compromise that Mr. Gingrich had championed.

"We are not going to give the money to aging hippies anymore to desecrate the crucifix or do other strange things," said Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California. . . . Mr. Hunter was one of a number of Republicans who support an amendment offered by Representative Vernon J. Ehlers, a Michigan Republican, to replace the arts agency with a block-grant program.

The Republican leadership had aggressively pushed Mr. Ehler's proposal on Thursday as a compromise to head off a floor fight between moderates and conservatives. . . . Mr. Gingrich was the last to speak on the issue, imploring House members to support "a new approach and a new way of funding the arts at a Federal level." But in the end the block-grant amendment was rejected, 271 to 158. (41)

President Clinton threatened to veto the entire $13 billion Interior Department appropriations bill if funding were not restored to the NEA. The vote to totally eliminate the NEA also faced strong opposition from moderate Republican Sens. Slade Gorton (Washington), Jeffords, and John Warner (Virginia), who held key positions. In the fall the NEA emerged from a House-Senate conference committee with a $98 million for 1998.

At the same time -- July 1997 -- efforts in the House to eliminate the NEH failed by a voice vote. NEH Chairman Hackney had known the crisis was over for the NEH a few months earlier "when the NEH was reported out of [Ohio Rep. Ralph] Regula's [appropriations] subcommittee with $110 and the NEA $0, [and] a reporter from the DC Times asked Regula why and he replied, 'Nobody's telling me they're doing terrible things.'" (42)

For the NEA it took a year longer. On June 26, 1998 the Chronicle of Higher Education reported, "The NEA found unexpected support Thursday on the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, which reversed an earlier decision by one of its subcommittees to eliminate financing the agency next year."

The cultural endowments are badly hobbled but cautiously optimistic after their struggles against elimination. Their budgets have not recovered their pre-1994 level and there is little immediate prospect for such. Both agencies underwent massive layoffs and major program restructuring in the wake of the 1995 assault. Their ability to support large national projects, individual artists and scholars, and -- in this year's appropriations language for the NEA -- grants to New York cultural institutions are now curtailed. The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the NEA's 1990 "decency clause." But looking toward the future, both agencies are now headed by respected intellectuals with strong roots in Southern and heartland culture, who are expected to be able to bridge the chasm between the opposing sides in the culture wars. William J. Ivey, chairman of the NEA, was formerly director of the Country Music Foundation in Nashville, a research and educational institution. (43) NEH chairman William E. Ferris, Jr., a folklorist, was founding director of the University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture.

The Leadership Issues

At the time of their founding the endowments were championed by a powerful group of bipartisan leaders: Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Nelson Rockefeller, and a group of influential senators and congressmen. Richard Nixon, never a friend of the endowments, nevertheless found political advantage in their support. At the urging of Leonard Garment, his "arts loving saxophone playing legal aide," he oversaw substantial increases in the endowments budgets -- at least until his 1972 nomination was secure. (44) Also under Nixon (although credit for them must go to Claiborne Pell) the state humanities councils were organized, expanding public programs in the humanities to local communities through relatively modest grants to the states -- and, not incidentally, building a political base for the humanities in local communities. (45) Budget growth continued during the Carter Administration accompanied by a number of initiatives at both endowments that extended the reach of the arts and humanities to minority communities and other nontraditional audiences.

With the election of Ronald Reagan, however, the dynamic shifted. Critics at the time made their arguments on political grounds that opposed the expansion of arts and humanities programs to traditionally Democratic constituencies. The Heritage Foundation report prepared at the time of Reagan's election decried the NEA's Expansion Arts Program (described in the endowment's 1979 annual report as "a point of entry for developing groups that are established in and reflect the culture of minority, blue collar, rural and low-income communities") as an example of the dilution of aesthetic standards. The NEH was lambasted for sacrificing "scholarly excellence" in favor of "political" projects that did not properly belong "in the realm of humanities." A 1980 grant of $199,953 to a group called the Working Women: National Association of Office Workers, which held classes and film forums on the struggle of office workers for improved conditions, was criticized as an example of the politicization of the humanities with "populist" or "social action" programs considered to have little scholarly merit.

Ironically -- in terms of later charges of elitism against the endowments -- those involved in crafting the Heritage Foundation critique were proponents of elite culture. Their interest in limiting endowment expenditures in nontraditional areas coincided with Republican political objectives. The report on the arts endowment, written by Samuel Lipman, a concert pianist and music critic for Commentary magazine, assisted by Hugo Weisgall, a composer and professor of music at Queens College, was particularly telling on this point, as reported in the New York Times:

"Because the current direction of the NEA is in the hands of those with few esthetic commitments and less discernment, art is increasingly seen as mere entertainment, a diversion whose importance -- and the amount of money it receives -- is measured by the number of people who can be found to make up its audience." Deploring what it calls "a flawed conception of art" and the "trifling sums" now allocated for individual composers, writers and visual artists, the report goes on to say that "the NEA spends millions of dollars yearly to fund programs and policies which are unconcerned in any way with enduring artistic accomplishments; the best of these projects do no more than fossilize the popular culture of the past, and the worst are little more than high-flown welfare and employment schemes." It calls for a categorical distinction to be made between "serious art" and what it characterizes as "art for the sake of social service." (46)

However, it was not until the Mapplethorpe-Serrano controversy, when the religious Right joined the political Right, that criticism of the NEA captured national attention.

But the 1980s criticism took its toll in terms of leadership. With Reagan budget growth for the endowments was no longer championed by the president, and by 1989 the endowments relied ever more heavily on their friends in Congress, primarily Claiborne Pell and James Jeffords in the Senate and Sidney Yates and Pat Williams in the House. (Frank Thompson and John Brademas left Congress in the 1980 and 1981, respectively.) With this change in leadership and increasing criticism during the Reagan administration, by 1989 the endowments were vulnerable and were subjected to furious press coverage -- much of which was negative and broadened to encompass the whole country.

Figure 3 documents the number of articles on either the NEA or NEH appearing in major newspapers for the twenty-year period since the late 1970s, showing the rise and fall of their public visibility coinciding with the major assaults on the agencies by conservative activists. Most articles in the late 1970s and 1980s were carried in the Washington Post or the New York Times; modest increases in coverage are registered for 1981 and again 1985, when early budget cutting efforts were initiated. But in 1989-90 with Mapplethorpe-Serrano, the number of articles skyrocketed and expanded to include newspapers across the country. The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, St. Petersburg Times, Newsday, San Francisco Chronicle, Orange County Register, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Chicago Tribune, San Diego Union-Tribune, Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), and Christian Science Monitor regularly covered the controversy. In the early 1990s the number of articles moderated slightly but never again dipped to the nearly invisible levels that the endowments had earlier enjoyed. Coverage by newspapers throughout the country became regular; no longer was the fate of the endowments presumed to be of interest only to the readers of the Washington Post and the New York Times. The content of the coverage also changed. Earlier debates over budget growth, quality, and politicization of the endowments were replaced by appeals to emotion in the charges of pornography and attacks on the cultural elite. A June 1989 Washington Times editorial by Patrick Buchanan, founder of the Christian Coalition, was a clarion call for what would become the culture wars of the 1990s:

The decade has seen an explosion of anti-American, anti-Christian, and nihilist "art." . . . [Many museums] now feature exhibits that can best be described as cultural trash . . . as in public television and public radio, a tiny clique, out of touch with America's traditional values, has wormed its way into control of the arts bureaucracy. . . . As with our rivers and lakes, we need to clean up our culture: for it is a well from which we must all drink. Just as a poisoned land will yield up poisonous fruits, so a polluted culture, left to fester and stink, can destroy a nation's soul. . . . . We should not subsidize decadence. (47)

Participants were forced to take sides in an all-or-nothing, winner-take-all conflict that was largely fought in the media. Citizen outrage expressed to members of Congress was the ammunition and budget cuts to the cultural endowments were the spoils of war. The mediated nature of virtually all communication on the issues put rational argument at a disadvantage. Simplification and emotionalism on the part of the opponents were more powerful and effective than the defenders' appeals to free speech and "good news" stories about the agencies' many successes. A comparison between Figures 2 and 3 shows that public criticism of the endowments has always been an effective tool for opponents: as press coverage increased, the endowments' budgets declined over the past twenty years. Nervous members of Congress counted the postcards, telephone calls, and letters from constituents as harbingers of public sentiment, but in the end news coverage meant criticism, which translated into fewer cultural dollars.

In the most recent controversy, support for the endowments from elected leaders was badly compromised by the newly empowered conservative Republicans emboldened by the power of the religious Right. Stalwarts such as Yates, Pell, and Pat Williams continued to support the endowments, but their help was often behind the scenes and subject to the vagaries of an uncertain political landscape. Republicans too were at a disadvantage, their power circumscribed by the fervor of the new conservative Republican majority. Other leaders, including the president, seemed more inclined to wait and watch, choosing their moments for action very carefully.

Nevertheless and at the most important level the political process worked. Despite the extreme rhetoric and distortions that characterized much of the press coverage, within Congress the endowments received their hearing. Part of it might be attributable to a continuing culture of civility within Congress itself. For example, some believe that this year's failure to carry through on plans to eliminate the NEA was testimony to the respect many members of Congress feel toward long-time arts advocate Sidney Yates, who is retiring this term. (48) And Zainaldin saw a sense of fair play at work in Ralph Regula's handling of his appropriations subcommittee hearings in 1995. "I think Regula had made a decision that he was not going to let the NEA and NEH go down without a public hearing, which allowed for a bigger debate to take place." Zainaldin found that Regula, while maintaining his loyalty to the Republican leadership and while he had many "bones to pick" with both endowments, made sure that Yates, who was on the committee -- and through him other supporters -- were allowed to make their case. In so doing he let the public debate move forward, allowing the political process to work. Regula, according to Zainaldin, "played a high-minded role. He was civil." (49)

In the end a real national conversation on the arts and humanities took place between and among members of Congress and their constituencies. Unlike in the past, leadership came not from highly placed elected officials but rather from vocal conservatives outside of government -- Ralph Reed, the Reverend Donald Wildmon, Lynne Cheney and William J. Bennett. Cultural advocates relied on a network of organizational leaders (the American Arts Alliance, American Council for the Arts, American Association of Museums, American Council of Learned Societies, Federation of State Humanities Councils, National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, National Association of Local Arts Agencies, National Humanities Alliance, to name a few) but looked principally to NEA Chair Jane Alexander and NEH Chair Sheldon Hackney for personal leadership.

Hackney's approach was decidedly lowkey. In countless speeches and meetings he articulated rebuttals to the libertarian argument by describing important projects of national scope that would not have been possible without the NEH. At the same time, he stayed out of the headlines by avoiding a direct show-down with the religious Right: "the more of that [high-profile confrontation] I was seen doing, the less chance the NEH had of surviving," he stated in an interview. Distinguished and respected, he was effective in forging important ties with Republican Senators Mark Hatfield (Oregon), Slade Gorton, James Jeffords, Robert Bennett and Nancy Kassebaum. (50) His was a leadership that sought consensus rather than polarization. Through his efforts the often antagonistic entities within the humanities community learned to be mutually supportive. Characteristically, he believes that in the end the "real thing that worked" was the outpouring of citizen support for the endowments through letters, telephone calls, faxes, and telegrams to members of Congress throughout the country, demonstrating that the endowments were providing solid programs that were valued by millions of Americans.

Jamil Zainaldin, of the Federation of State Humanities Councils, seconded Hackney's conclusion on the value of grass roots advocacy. He also gives credit to another sort of quiet leadership: effective lobbying by influential citizens, particularly on behalf of the arts, which has a constituency that includes prominent board members of major cultural organizations. He credits Jane Alexander's visits to every state and more than two hundred local communities, where she spoke about the arts with great "integrity" and from the "soul," with mobilizing influential Republican supporters. Grass roots proponents also pressured their members of Congress, often in alliance with influential board members and business leaders. (51)

Grass roots advocacy was perhaps most effective with members of Congress from rural areas, whose constituents had benefited from many state humanities council programs. "The combined effect of arts and humanities advocacy at the grass roots and through powerful constituencies and the diplomacy of Hackney and Alexander was," according to Zainaldin," to win over some Republicans whose conservative credentials were impeccable -- Thad Cochran (Mississippi), Slade Gorton, Nancy Kassebaum, and Robert Bennett." This, in turn isolated the most radical conservatives in their opposition to the endowments. What was proved was that the majority of Americans, while nervous, did not buy the elimination of the endowments. "Most people," according to Zainaldin, "are pretty tolerant if they think a problem is an exception to the rule, if they can see the big picture." (52)

But that was certainly not the view shared at the time by the leaders of the endowments' defense. Rather, they feared that the Republican leadership would work very hard for the abolition of the endowments to keep their most conservative members happy. Balancing the unstable elements within the Republican coalition -- traditional economic conservatives, libertarian small government advocates, and the cultural/religious Right -- was the central GOP leadership problem. (53) The fact that the endowments survived at all is testimony not only to the cultural advocates' leadership skills, but also to moderate Republicans' ability to assert their influence within the party.

The years between the founding of the endowments and the conservative assault saw dramatic shifts in the position of the arts and humanities in America. Born out of a Cold War and Great Society ethos that trumpeted American achievement in the arts and scholarship as a point of national pride, by the 1990s critics charged artists and scholars with being destructive of the American family and un-American; the endowments, as their federally funded standard bearers, had to be abolished for the good of the country. Cultural advocates, forced to defend themselves, truly became politicized; they turned to their allies in communities and institutions and marshaled public and Congressional support for their survival. Deeply affected by the debate, cultural advocates are wary now. They have learned to live with lower budgets and in the public eye, self-censoring and careful to avoid public controversy. (54) But many also learned the importance of funding and delivering programs that have meaning and value for Americans in all their geographic and demographic diversity.

Is the conflict over? Probably not. Doctrinaire conservative opinion makers continue to oppose the endowments as evidenced on the websites of the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, and Family Research Council -- all of which continue to carry position statements advocating the abolition of the endowments in the summer of 1998. And in a highly publicized meeting arranged last March by James Dodson, the Colorado religious broadcaster whose "Focus on the Family" radio broadcasts reach millions, Speaker Newt Gingrich met with Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed and secured the speaker's commitment -- against a threat by the religious Right to abandon the party -- that the Republican party would press three initiatives important to Christian conservatives: the religious freedom amendment, which Christian conservatives hope would reintroduce prayer in the schools; tax deferrals for tuition at religious and private schools; and elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts. (55) For the most part, opposition to the NEH seems to have once again receded to the background, while opposition to the NEA on "family values" grounds continues -- as it has since the Mapplethorpe-Serrano controversy -- to animate opposition from the religious Right.

But there are encouraging signs in the middle, which may well represent the enduring victory of the culture wars. A rancorous and emotional public debate that was started by radical conservatives with the goal of damaging the cultural endowments may ultimately prove to have strengthened them. Because, in the contest for the endowments' survival, members of Congress heard from citizens across the country about support for the arts and humanities and learned that culture is no longer the province of the few. The president listened, and whether from political instinct or personal preference, appointed endowments chairmen whose scholarly and artistic specialties reflect the broad interests of Americans whose culture has long been considered outside the province of high art and serious scholarship.

No longer championed unquestioningly by presidents and powerful friends in Congress, the endowments in the past decade have been the subject of a national debate centered around their value in American society. The debate has been messy, as politics always are, but the result has been a demonstration that culture in America has many faces. It has strong roots in local communities and in a variety of artistic and intellectual traditions. The Christian conservatives may never be satisfied; but in the contest for control of American culture, the endowments, albeit battle scarred and perhaps chastened, can take heart in the knowledge that their right to exist has been proved in Congress and in the court of public opinion.

What that signifies is enormous. It means that the most extreme charges have been put aside and that there is a bi-partisan consensus -- very likely for the first time since the endowments' founding -- for a legitimate role for the federal government in the support of American culture. Charges of elitism and domination by East Coast intellectuals and moneyed interests simply did not hold up under public scrutiny when arts and humanities organizations from across the country demonstrated that local communities in Kansas and Utah, Washington, and Mississippi value the federal agencies.

It also means that the new leadership of the endowments have an unparalleled opportunity. For the past decade millions of Americans have engaged in a national conversation in defense of the arts and humanities. Now is the time to keep that conversation going by involving an even greater number of Americans from all walks of life in exploring the world of ideas. If this is accomplished the NEA and the NEH can look forward to playing an even more important role in our national life in the decades to come.

Endnotes

I am grateful to former NEH Chairman Sheldon Hackney and Jamil Zainaldin, former president of the Federation of State Humanities Councils, both of whom were interviewed for this paper and guided me with their comments on the first draft. Also Esther Mackintosh, associate director of the Federation of State Humanities Councils, and Judith Tannenbaum, associate director and senior curator of the Institute for Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, graciously answered my questions and provided me with useful information. I also thank Steve Cherrington at the NEH and Aaron Fineman at the NEA for supplying budget information. Ann Young Orr at the NEH was also very helpful.

(1) Jerry Gray, "House 217 to 216, Votes to Replace Arts Agency with Grants to States," New York Times, 11 July 1998, p. A15.

(2) Peter J. Gomes, "The New Liberation Theology," 99, no. 2 Harvard Magazine (November-December 1996): 35.

(3) Figures compiled from budget information provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts; 1997 population statistics from the Agency for International Development; "Pop Grants Unsettle British Arts," New York Times, 25 June 1998, p. E-7; and information on philanthropy from Creative America: A Report to the President (Washington, D.C.: President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, 1997), p. 19.

(4) J.C. Taylor, "A Poignant, Relevant Backward Look at Artists of the Great Depression," Smithsonian, 10, no. 7 (October 1979): 52 as quoted in Fannie Taylor and Anthony L. Barresi, The Arts at a New Frontier: The National Endowment for the Arts (New York: Plenum Publishing Corp., 1984), p. 10.

(5) In early 1937, Rep. William I. Sirovitch of New York offered a joint resolution that called for a Department of Science, Art and Literature, whose head would carry Cabinet level rank. In August of the same year Rep. John M. Coffee of Washington introduced a bill calling for the establishment of a Bureau of Fine Arts, with a Commissioner appointed by the President, directors responsible for six fields of artistic endeavor, and a system of four regional bureaus. In January 1938 Claude Pepper introduced Coffee's bill in the Senate, and the measure received consideration, but failed to pass. Taylor and Barresi, Arts, pp. 10-11. I am indebted to Taylor and Barresi, chapters 1-2, for much of the historical information on the founding and early history of the NEA.

(6) This sequence of events is described in Taylor and Barresi, Arts, p. 13.

(7) R. W. Apple, Jr., "Elected Bodies With Hardly a Cultured Bone," New York Times, 26 July 1998, p. AR2:2 describes politicians' reluctance to be involved with the arts and Jacqueline Kennedy's role in encouraging JFK's interest; other historical information from Taylor and Barresi, Arts, p. 26-29.

(8) Taylor and Barresi, Arts, pp. 41, 42, 50.

(9) Ibid., p. 32.

(10) Ibid., p. 34.

(11) Joseph McLellan, "NEA: The First 20 Years; Looking Back On the Up-and-Down Union of Government and Art," Washington Post, 26 September 1985, p. D1.

(12) Hilton Kramer, "Reagan Aides Discuss U.S. Role In Helping Arts And Humanities," New York Times, 26 November 1980, p. 1.

(13) Carla Hall, "Reagan and the Endowments; Early Optimism from the Transition-Team Leaders, But an Uncertain Future for Federal Arts Funding," Washington Post, 23 November 1980, p. G1.

(14) Kramer, New York Times, 26 November 1980, p. 1.

(15) Selected results from Lexis-Nexis search of major newspaper coverage of NEA and NEH for 1980.

(16) McLellan, Washington Post, 26 September 1985, p. D1.

(17) Budget figures supplied by National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities.

(18) Adjustments for inflation supplied by the NEH.

(19) McLellan, Washington Post, 26 September 1985, p. D1.

(20) Carole S. Vance, "The War on Culture," Art in America (September 1989), reprinted in Richard Bolton, ed., Culture Wars: Documents from Recent Controversies in the Arts (New York: New Press, 1992), p. 106.

(21) Ibid., p. 107.

(22) Ibid.

(23) Information on the Citizens for Community Values received from their website, July 1998. The outcome of the Barrie trial is stated in Judith Tannenbaum, "Robert Mapplethorpe: The Philadelphia Story," Art Journal (Winter 1991), pp. 73-74. The American Association of Museums scheduled an emergency session at its 1990 annual meeting to hear from Board members and Dennis Barrie of the Contemporary Arts Center.

(24) "NEA Chronology," Christian Science Monitor, 6 August 1993, p. 13.

(25) Tannenbaum, "Robert Mapplethorpe," p. 74.

(26) Ibid.

(27) National Endowment for the Arts et al. v. Finley, 000 U.S. 97-371 (1998).

(28) Contract with America: The Bold Plan by Rep. Newt Gingrich, Rep. Dick Armey, and the House Republicans to the Change the Nation, ed. Ed Gillespie and Bob Schellhas (New York: Times Books, 1994), p. 7.

(29) There is some uncertainty about inclusion of the endowments in the Contract with America. Sheldon Hackney and Ann Young Orr, now chief of staff at the NEH, recall the outright elimination of the two endowments as appearing in the appendix of the originalContract in circulation in the fall of 1994. The published version cited above makes no mention of the endowments. Jamil Zainaldin believes the appendices were never clear, but recalls that the original Contract contained a provision in an appendix to reduce funding to the endowments by 5 percent a year for the next three years. In the weeks between the election and the swearing in of the new Congress in January, he believes those provisions were eclipsed by the drive for elimination. He identified William J. Bennett and Lynne Cheney as activists promoting this shift.

(30) Contract with the American Family: A Bold Plan by Christian Coalition to Strengthen the Family and Restore Common-Sense Values, intro. Ralph Reed (Nashville: Moorings, 1995), pp. 105-15.

(31) Contract with the American Family, pp. 110-11.

(32) I am indebted to Gary B. Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn, History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the American Past (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), pp. 218-19 for their analysis of the connections between conservative opposition to Goals 2000 and the cultural endowments.

(33) Jamil Zainaldin, "Chronology of 1995 Legislative Activities," report delivered to the National Conference of State Humanities Councils, September 10, 1995.

(34) Lynne V. Cheney, "Mocking American at U.S. Expense," New York Times, 10 March 1995, p. 29.

(35) Interview with Sheldon Hackney, March 11, 1998.

(36) Zainaldin, "Chronology."

(37) Interview with Jamil Zainaldin, September 21, 1998.

(38) "Latest Federal Shutdown Threat Lacks Crisis Atmosphere," New York Times, p. 11.

(39) See Figure 3.

(40) Jerry Gray, "House 217 to 216 Votes to Replace Arts Agency with Grants to the States," New York Times, 11 July 1997, p. A15.

(41) Jerry Gray, "House Votes End of Federal Funding for Arts Agency," New York Times, 12 July 1997, p. 1.

(42) Interview with Sheldon Hackney, March 11, 1998.

(43) Melinda Henneberger, "Something Different at the Arts Endowment: Optimism," New York Times, 30 August 1998, p. 16 reports on new signs of support for the NEA. Reps. Dick Armey and Jesse Helms were reportedly favorably impressed by Ivey's ties to country music.

(44) Apple, New York Times, 26 July 1998, p. AR2:26 and personal correspondence with Sheldon Hackney, September 30, 1998.

(45) State humanities councils have a distinctly separate history from the arts councils, which came into being as state arts agencies in 1966. Enabling legislation for the humanities councils was spearheaded by Claiborne Pell in the early 1970s.

(46) Kramer, New York Times, 26 November 1980, p. 1.

(47) Vance, "The War on Culture," p. 109.

(48) Henneberger, New York Times, 30 August 1998, p. 16.

(49) Interview with Jamil Zainaldin, September 21, 1998.

(50) Ibid.

(51) Henneberger, New York Times, 30 August 1998, p. 16.

(52) Interviews with Jamil Zainaldin, March 5, 1998 and September 21, 1998.

(53) Personal correspondence with Sheldon Hackney, September 30, 1998.

(54) Interview with Judith Tannenbaum, June 30, 1998.

(55) "Religious Right, Frustrated, Trying New Tactic on the GOP," New York Times, 23 March 1998, p. 1.

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CONSERVATIVE THINKING AND RACISM -- JESSE HELMS


http://clclt.com/theclog/archives/2008/07/07/top-ten-quotes-from-jesse-helms

Top Ten Quotes From Jesse Helms
Posted By John Grooms on Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 10:45 AM


1. "White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races." - Ad created by campaign strategist Helms and friends for the blatantly racist (and successful) U.S. Senate campaign of Willis Smith in 1950. During the same campaign, Helms described UNC as "the University of Negroes and Communists."

2. "I didn't see any point in a naked man cavorting around on the stage." - Jesse giving his learned opinion on, and opposition to, a Charlotte Repertory Theatre production of Angels In America.

3."The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights."

4. "Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of life which must be faced." - Helms responses in TV editorials at WRAL-TV in Raleigh during the Civil Rights movement, which he also described as filled with "moral degenerates."

5. "Watch me make her cry. I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing 'Dixie' until she cries." - Said to US Sen. Orrin Hatch about Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, an African-American.

6. "The government should spend less money on people with AIDS because they got sick as a result of deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct."

7. "Your tax dollars are being used to pay for grade school classes that teach our children that CANNIBALISM, WIFE-SWAPPING, and the MURDER of infants and the elderly are acceptable behavior." - Included in fundraising letter sent by the Helms campaign in 1996.

8. "The [Washington] Post caters to homosexual groups. Just about every person down there is homosexual or lesbian."

9. "Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard." - In response to a question about a possible visit by President Clinton to Fort Bragg.

10. During his career, Helms supported brutal rightwing military dictators, including the notorious Roberto D'Aubuisson of El Salvador. When confronted with irrefutable evidence that D'Aubuisson directed Salvadoran death squads that murdered thousands of civilians, Helms replied, "All I know is D'Aubuisson is a free enterprise man and deeply religious."

Tomorrow: Top Ten Quotes About Jesse Helms.