Yosi Sergant Gets Hypovehiculated

Wall Street Journal
BEST OF THE WEB TODAY
SEPTEMBER 25, 2009.

Looking for a job? There are openings at the National Endowment for the Arts..

By JAMES TARANTO
Late yesterday we received an email from our pal Victoria Hutter, of the National Endowment for the Arts' Office of Communication: "This afternoon Yosi Sergant submitted his resignation from the National Endowment for the Arts. His resignation has been accepted and is effective immediately."

In case you haven't been following this story, let's bring you up to date: In August, as we detailed Monday, Sergant organized a conference call for federally subsidized artists in which he and other administration officials--including Buffy Wicks of the White House Office of Public Engagement--urged them to produce propaganda for the president's legislative initiatives. Two weeks ago, after the call was exposed by whistleblower Patrick Courrielche, Sergant was "reassigned."

On Tuesday, as we noted Wednesday, the NEA issued a bizarre statement from chairman Rocco Landesman, in which he denied that anything was wrong with the conference call save for some "language" that was "unfortunately, not appropriate," but also implying that the agency had dealt harshly with its employee--never named in the statement--who hadn't really done anything wrong: "This employee has been relieved of his duties as director of communications."

Full Story