Yosi Sergant: Obama’s Former Hipster-In-Chief Opens Up
Photo by Darius Twin
I’m too busy editing other folks’ material right now to be posting much if my own. Luckily my students have been producing such great copy, all I have to do is repost it.
Here is a truly great piece by reporter Hillel Aron on Yosi Sergant, the former NEA Communications Director and top Obama Hipster who got eaten by the right-wing press machine after making some off-the-cuff remarks on a conference call. Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs and the usual crew pounced and that was that,
Sergant is credited with getting the iconic Obama “Hope” poster to go viral and he tells the story here,
This is his first in-depth interview since getting forced out and it’s a real eye opener.
Here’s a taste:
“Didn’t it piss you off that no one spoke up for you?” I asked Yosi.
“No, I got it,” he said.
“Really?” I asked incredulously, “cause you spent two years of your life helping this guy become president, and no one came to your defense. I’m pissed. Why aren’t you pissed?”
“I wasn’t worth defending.”
“Really?”
“I don’t believe that what I did was wrong,” he said, “I believe that what I did came at a time when all the focus was on health care reform, and that that’s where they needed to put their time and energy… could they have stood up for me if they wanted to? Sure. Am I worth the political capital? They had just lost Van Jones. READ THE WHOLE STORY.
February 9th, 2010 at 8:01 am
Good work, Hillel. You better get an A in the class.
I notice that both Marc and Celeste have become typical professors in that they have students doing their work for them.
Yosi had to have known that the NEA has been historically politically left-wing and that conservatives didn’t like that. Artists think that they can take taxpayer money and do whatever they want with it, especially insult people who love our traditions and nation. I’d rather hand the money to them and tell them to get lost than produce insulting work, as they unwittingly do in Canada.*
*(The Canadian equivalent of the NEA gave an Argentine artist “a grant of $130,000 to create a 300-metre long flying banana that would float over Texas protesting the policies of George W. Bush.” He took the money and skipped town without producing it…and, they said that he doesn’t have to.)
As for me, I’d rather see paintings by Bob Ross (on PBS!) than instulting “art” from the NEA. At least the clouds and trees are happy rather than flashing their rear-ends at taxpayers.
Why can’t the NEA produce quality stuff like this billboard, which asks a good question?
Maybe now, Yosi should do a poster of himself and countless others who have been thrown under Obama’s bus. That must be one big bus!
Good luck, Yosi…and Hillel, too. Watch for vehicles coming from the left before you step into the road. They’re worse than those from a Stephen King novel.
February 9th, 2010 at 8:04 am
(Is that a cigarette in Obama’s mouth in the top right?)
February 9th, 2010 at 9:22 am
I clicked on read the whole thing and it jumped to LA Observed and the story didn’t go farther than blah blah Van Jones. Was there supposed to be more?
February 9th, 2010 at 9:52 am
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/pcourrielche/2009/09/21/full-nea-conference-call-transcript-and-audio/
That…is the link to a full transcript of the conversation that cost the guy his job????????
Woody, I suggest you read it.
It was a goofy load of on and on about simply trying to create a national campaign to encourage people to become involved, do volunteer work within their communities. BE CITIZENS. You know…like the Tea Baggers are doing. Only consciously, with purpose and for productive results.
I could not find any reason this guy got kicked out. It was hard to read the transcript as some of the high lighting of the I presume damning parts was in red.
Someone please tell me what the furor was about. PR campaigns are always used to create awareness about everything. Like the Right doesn’t do it? They are masters of unscrupulous misleading disinformation campaigns. So how did this guy, Yosi, get busted for bringing together a lot of media-art-pr mavens for wanting to create a national campaign to foster citizen involvement– participatory democracy.
Woody is always railing about people being left to choose how and when they do good works. Thats what Yosi boy was trying to create a campaign about– encouraging people to find something in their communities to get involved in. It wasn’t about telling people WHAT to get involved in.
What am I missing here?
This was not about funding artists to do social/political commentary it was about getting artists to create PR to encourage people to get involved.
It was nothing more than a marketing strategy first meeting with people who supposedly were connected to other networks…
February 9th, 2010 at 9:53 am
PS I hated that derivative HOPE poster. Dreadful.
February 9th, 2010 at 9:55 am
Why didnt the Democrats say fuck off, Glenn? you have a problem with people volunteering with the Red Cross, the church, the local soup kitchen blah blah…
February 9th, 2010 at 10:03 am
Additional proof of Sarah Palin’s dimness.
February 9th, 2010 at 10:08 am
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/yosi-sergant-the-next-van-jones.html
OK. other side of the story.
But it still only smacks of him commissioning artists in a grand campaign to encourage community service. Hardly the work of the devil and certainly in England or France or in the EU this would be done.
His worst transgression was the inflated, bizarre rhetoric. Rather than just saying: the government would like to give some work to your network of artists and arts supporters…we need to create a PR campaign nationally that would encourage the idea of community service. Instead, the whole conversation sounds like they are talking about a coup or playing charades.
It still was only a conversation about asking those that had the contacts to help create a PR campaign that would spin community service and volunteerism into zeitgeist.
We are heading for putsch with this crap.
February 9th, 2010 at 10:25 am
Anyone with a brain knows that Obama wants a volunteer corps (a word that the can’t pronounce) to serve his socialist agenda. To be specific, he’s working towards a “required voluntary” domestic army.
It starts with brainwashing the kids.
I think that the uniform will be brown shirts.
Surely, Yosi, once he understands “the plan” will want to offer the opposite hope for America. Crawl out from under that bus, Yosi, and join the real freedom fighters.
February 9th, 2010 at 10:46 am
Wake up! Obama wants this: Obama Youth Brainwashing. Nervous? If you’re not, certainly our nation should be. Are you learning, Yosi and Hillel?
February 9th, 2010 at 11:14 am
I’m hoping we can get a regiment from this domestic army to march on Newt Gingrich’s old district in the spirit of General Sherman. My suggestion is that they lay waste to everything except that crosswalk for disabled people.
February 9th, 2010 at 11:16 am
Note to Woody when they come for you – Even insane paranoiacs have real enemies.
February 9th, 2010 at 11:17 am
I hope the domestic army gets stuck in that crosswalk to nowhwhere and marches in circles for months until they realize the problem.
February 9th, 2010 at 11:23 am
Here is yet another example of the creeping madness being circulated…accusing Obama of helping fund this beautiful progressive prison/court house in…AUSTRIA!
I got the crazed email sent to me via a neighbor with lots of right wing bigoted Ohioans on her email forward list. I Googled, found this link and re sent it back to all the goons:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/architecture/prison.asp
Anyone knows NOTHING this progressive could ever get built in the US.
Its wonderful Woody et al have such faith in the power of the good and progressive in the US despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Its as if these sub mental ogres are, in their perverse way, channelling to potential that needs manifestation– telling the sleeping liberals to wake up and do what SHOULD be done! (Hows that for twisting the perspective?)
February 9th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Snopes is no longer considered a reliable reference source, just in case you didn’t get the email about the owners of the site having no qualifications and being big Democratics supporters, which explains their wrong answers and liberal bias.
February 9th, 2010 at 12:38 pm
You like pork outside the U.S.? You’ll love this beach in nowhere.
Ah say, suh. If you’re looking to spend $50,000,000 on a cotton plantation, I can find one in Georgia, and U.S. taxpayers will actually be able to get to it.
Maybe Obama plans on basing his secret army on a secret Caribbean island.
February 9th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
More bs. Truth is a an antidote to wingnut fabrications.
February 9th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
He was thrown under the boss, only ironically.
February 9th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
How much reality does it take before you get your head out of your ass, Woody?
http://www.mimoa.eu/projects/Austria/Leoben/Justice%20and%20Detention%20Centre
February 9th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
But according to you, Woody, because the Snopes reports debunk the right wing email smear attacks you actually are willing to go on record as saying that something as empirically provable as to whether or not a gigantic structure was built in the US…or not is a dismissable fact.
I know someone who is a pathologist. Could you please cut off your head and send it to me so it can be investigated?
February 9th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
I know someone who is a pathologist. Could you please cut off your head and send it to me so it can be investigated?
Anna for the win!
February 9th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
OT, but funny: http://i.imgur.com/o8jCW.png
February 9th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
And, Woody, how is a prison built in Austria with no connection to the US AT ALL…”pork outside the US”?
You must have an 18 wheeler attached to your ass just carry your nose.l
February 9th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Oh lordy. This is fabulous:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20100209/tod-famed-french-intellectual-cites-bogu-7f81b96.html
Americans believe any shit sent to them in an email even tho easily proven false and then there is the French art of intellectual hoax.
February 9th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
And, Woody, you never say how much you are getting paid to post your drivel. No one would spend so much time planting such white trash fodder for free in a space where no one would give a shit about it other than to enjoy kicking your head in– metaphorically of course. Or…you get some weird sexual thrill every time you hit the send button. Oh Tennessee got nothin’ on you and your family quirks. One notes since you are ratcheting up the racism innuendo that it must be time for the annual dance of the pointy hat revels…
February 9th, 2010 at 2:59 pm
Snopes is still run by liberals. Anyone who reads their “explanations” of Democratic issues would consider those explanations to be nothing but misleading excuses.
February 9th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Look at Yosi’s body language in the picture. He has “steepling fingers,” but they are pointed straight down. Not a good sign of confidence or authority. He was kicked all around by the Obama administration and seems liked a whipped dog in his resigned acceptance. I’m sad for him.
And, is he still wearing Obama buttons?! Get rid of them! The rest of the country is.
February 9th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
“no one would give a shit about it other than to enjoy kicking your head in”
So you weren’t going to give it to a pathologist after all Anna.
February 9th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Woody, the issue isn’t the Snopes ability to detect reality. The issue IS reality. Like THERE IS NO FUCKING NEW PRISON IN COOK COUNTY THAT OBAMA HELPED SECURE FUNDING FOR. THE PRISON IN THE SMEAR EMAIL AIMED AT THE IGNORANT AND EVIL IS IN AUSTRIA.
DO YOU DISPUTE THE FACTS, WOODY?
ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION.
February 9th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
CAN YOU ANSWER A DIRECT QUESTION, WOODY?
Or do you need to get out the garlic for fear of the truth and facts.
February 9th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Why are you asking me questions about prisons and Austria, AC? I only mentioned a cotton plantation in St. Croix, where your ancestors may have happily worked but were limited by the Peter Principle, much like you appear to be here.
February 9th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Had enough Anna.
Please don’t encourage the troll.
February 9th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
WOODY has run out of gas:
“You like pork outside the U.S.? You’ll love this beach in nowhere.
…Two weeks ago, on a near party line vote, a huge Democratic majority in the House agreed to spend $50 million to buy the former cotton plantation on the island of St. Croix
———————
St Croix in the USVI, Woody?
A commonwealth administered by Washington, perhaps?
And the land in question, a former cotton plantation, any word on its subsequent use?
And when you say a near party line vote, you mean that representatives from the party of torture did support the measure?
February 9th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
Oh, good grief. I expected such an idiot response. The U.S. and U.S. territories are two different things. How many people who are residents of St. Croix file U.S. tax returns?
I’m glad that you’re satisifed with spending $50 million of tax money during a period of major debt and deficits on a beach that 99.999999% of our citizens will not be able to enjoy. I’m sure there will be a lot of Democractic Congressional junkets there, though.
Really, I’m through on this. I have too much to do.
February 9th, 2010 at 7:26 pm
What Jim said.
Snopes is still run by liberals. Anyone who reads their “explanations” of Democratic issues would consider those explanations to be nothing but misleading excuses.
You were proved wrong again. I can do this in my sleep.
February 9th, 2010 at 8:38 pm
Woody, the dry ice pack and Fed Ex is waiting for you head. My neighbor, the pathologist agreed to a thorough investigation.
You claim the Snopes site is “unreliable” we have proved you wrong; you dispute the lying email accusing Obama of funding a fancy prison that is in Austria. You refuse to respond to any direct response to your spewing and vomiting lies.
You think serial posting puerile vomit is some sort of victory for you and your Brown Shirts.
You are a whore. Its patently obvious you have no values and if there were any other hell than the ones human make on this earth you would burn in it as a heretic–were you actually a christian and were being a christian actually a designation of honor– which you and your Brown Shirt brigade have made sure will never be the case.
February 9th, 2010 at 9:34 pm
The only relevant USVI info for Woody (he may fall in love and demand equal corporate tax-evasion status for Peckerwood County) -
http://library.findlaw.com/2000/Oct/1/127010.html
February 9th, 2010 at 9:37 pm
Incidentally, my guess is that Woody would trade his voting rights for legal corporate tax evasion.
February 10th, 2010 at 7:46 am
Reg, Woody is a maggot and a whore. No character…just accepted the prevailing Alabaman ignorance…showed no moral or (ha ha) christian fiber. Sign of a weak, emasculated, spineless personality.
Now he takes money for spewing the garbage he was suckled with because he can’t raise an original thought on his own.
February 10th, 2010 at 7:57 am
reg, did you have a hand in this?
The children’s section of Directgov sports an unfortunate banner by the name of a gay porn fetish site.
February 10th, 2010 at 9:00 am
So you’re resorting to the pedophile slander again, eh, Woody? Predictable.
Disgusting and pathetic. Grow up.
February 10th, 2010 at 10:19 am
Samuel, its because Woody IS a pedophile. Or at least fantasizes he could be one. He is cross because his sexual orientation and feeble masculinity have been revealed through his posts. You know…jock father and brothers and he was the weakling mama’s boy twisted by the perverted form of religion his people practiced and reduced to reading Superman comics and imagining himself a supra normal being. And his breadth (guffaw) of knowledge is based on his having read through a set of 1950′s World Book encyclopedias. His one foray into literature was to stumble through The Fountainhead. And that is Woody in a nutshell. (pun intended)
All true, by the way.
Of course the reality is he became an accountant and is fed clients through family contacts which leaves him plenty of time to collect a stipend for being a wing nut troll.
February 10th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
“Samuel, its because Woody IS a pedophile. Or at least fantasizes he could be one.”
Now that’s just stupid. I didn’t read the rest.
February 10th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
No, Samuel, its not stupid. You haven’t had the pleasure of over two years of Woody’s posts. Don’t get coy. If you are going to respond to Woody at least know who you are dealing with.
February 10th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Anna,
I’m trying to stay out of the stupid personal attacks at Marc’s request to us all from a month or two ago, but you really take the cake.
I don’t know why you think accusing Woody of pedophelia is any different from Woody’s idiotic comments directed at reg along the same lines.
I have high faith that this request will have no effect whatsoever, but maybe you could stop from accusing people of being pedophiles.
It’s also worth noting the irony, the latent homophobia, and the anti-feminist stance inherent in your constant references to Woody’s supposedly weak masculinity and suposedly suspect sexual orientation.
The only thing that seems worth saying at this point is: just because Woody rolls around in the gutter is no reason to join him down there.
Although I’m sure since I’m not in France or England that I just don’t get it.
February 10th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
Samuel and Dan O., since you two showed class on this, I’ll do the same and will watch the personal attacks…except to say that Anna is bitter that she never had a set of 1950′s encyclopedias.
February 10th, 2010 at 8:19 pm
Dan keep your remonstrations to your self. Worry less about my giving Woody what he dishes out and worry more about the fact that he is a predatory monster who you refuse to take on.
The fact you can’t discern his character through his posts is not my problem– its yours. Your pretense of being above it all is what will bring house down because its the bullshit holier than thou liberal horse shit politically correct stupidity that allows people like Woody to perpetuate their filth.
You have consistently shown yourself to be a chauvinist pussy at once thinking you can tell me what I can and can’t say and a coward for turning your wrath on me rather than on what Woody is and represents.
February 10th, 2010 at 8:22 pm
I notice you don’t seem to mind that Woody thinks calling someone a Tea Bagger is no different than calling someone a nigger.
Well, I DO MIND. I MIND VERY FUCKING MUCH.
You are the worst kind of coward.
February 10th, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Dan keep your remonstrations to your self.
Wow. The utter lack of self-awareness in that comment is stunning.
February 10th, 2010 at 8:28 pm
I notice you don’t seem to mind that Woody thinks calling someone a Tea Bagger is no different than calling someone a nigger.
Perhaps you should consider that he was trying to avoid feeding a troll. Perhaps you should consider doing the same.
Warm regards.
February 11th, 2010 at 6:30 am
Well, I DO MIND. I MIND VERY FUCKING MUCH.
It’s not that you mind that is the problem, I mind too.
The problem is that you think a good response to that kind of talk is to call someone a pedophile, and gay (as if that’s an insult).
Call me a coward if it makes you happy, but I do have the sense not to confuse childish emotional ejaculations, and unadulterated unfiltered id, with courage.
February 11th, 2010 at 8:13 am
Oh, Danny, you do go on. I actually read what Woody writes and thus my conclusions as to his pathological nature. I don’t idly accuse people of reprehensible inclinations. He IS reprehensible.
I will raise the spectre once again of his boasting about going to see the father of one of the dead Birmingham bomb babies…knowing what you know about what a racist he is if that scenario doesn’t curl your soul then you are nothing but walking offal.
Only a sociopath would do such a thing.
February 11th, 2010 at 8:35 am
Anna, your biography of me is quite off. I never sought out the father of a girl killed in the church blast. We were introduced at the Chamber of Commerce, shared a few good laughs about some things we had in common, and had respect for each other.
I never brought up his child’s murder. There’s no pain worse than losing a child, and I would never want to bring it up to such a parent, who still lives with that every day.
So, there. I’ve denied your revision and set the record straight to end your false attack. If I said anything wrong about you or someone else, then the same option is available to you.
February 11th, 2010 at 9:35 am
“Call me a coward if it makes you happy, but I do have the sense not to confuse childish emotional ejaculations, and unadulterated unfiltered id, with courage.”
As well as the maturity, wisdom, common sense, and self-control to deny what lonely attention-thriving public provocateurs want most.
Anna’s still in training. She is currently letting herself become that which she despises.
Please don’t feed the troll.
February 12th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Woody Says:
February 11th, 2010 at 8:35 am
Anna, your biography of me is quite off. I never sought out the father of a girl killed in the church blast. We were introduced at the Chamber of Commerce, shared a few good laughs about some things we had in common, and had respect for each other.
Woody you are a lying maggot. You made a huge point about what a monstrously humane gesture you had made by going to give condolences and it was mentioned as you mention your having given your car to use to an African-American. You are repulsive and your psycho reductionist version of your meeting up and having a laugh with a man whose child was killed by the kind of hatred and racism you are still vomiting forth 50 years later puts you off the map.
What did the two of you have in common, Woody?
Your remarks are those of someone completely insane.
You sound like Garrido who after kidnapping, raping and holding a girl in captivity for 19 years you believe saying you “love her and the children very much” makes your actions normal.
God, you are a monster. And shame on the rest of you for not seeing it.