Notes from WPS1 radio interview on Daniel Durnings Art and Technology show in August, 2004 (Edition #3)

Excerpt from a G.W. Bush letter to Americans For The Arts:

September 10, 2002

I am pleased to join fellow Americans in observing October as National Arts and Humanities Month.

The arts enhance our lives, stimulate our creativity, and allow us to express our emotions, thoughts, and aspirations through countless forms of artistic expression. Through the humanities we learn about ourselves, and about the important contributions of those who came before us.

Now you've got to give the guy some credit. He's asking the important question, such as "Is our children learning?" He will tell you that arts ignobles us and impresses us with many forms of impressions. Many may take the arts for granted as normalcy. But he knows that irregardless of what state we come from, or what car we drive, you can't misunderestimate the arts' power to inspire us with inspiration.

http://www.americansforthearts.org and the Ad Council teamed up. I think that's smart, because even if they can't get Americans to like art, at least they can give us some more advertising. We really need is more advertising.

I'm from Michigan. State of the arts. City of the arts.

When kids think Rudolf Nureyev is a defenseman for the Maple Leafs, clearly there isn't enough art in our schools. (That is a campaign message of Americans For The Arts).

Incidently, Bush would not make that mistake -- he knows too much about hockey.

Roy Williams 'He's from Odessa, Texas, you know. Shaun Rogers, Cory Redding, Rod Babers "He knew all these Texas kids; it was incredible."

In March of 2000 he thought that the prime minister of Canada was "Poutine". A few months earlier he couldn't name the man who had taken control of Pakistan (General P. Mousharraf). He also blanked on the leaders of India (Dr. Manmohan Singh), Chechnya (Sergei Abramov) and Taiwan (Lee Teng-hui) in 2001. He thinks Greeks are called Grecians. But he knows who Roy Williams, Shaun Rogers, Cory Redding, and Rod Babers play for in the NFL.

Seriously, though, I do believe that artists have a capacity to cut through the crap in ways that politicians seldom do, and that is one of the reasons that it's so important that there be a Department of Art and Technology. At the other conventions the candidates are all trying to project the idea that they are in control. That they will make things right. But the truth is that year after year these men have proven themselves unequal to the task of dealing adequately with environmental and social problems. I don't want to get too bleak here, but art is at least, at it's best, more honest about the situation in which we find ourselves collectively.

The experimental party has an unconvention....