 Very nice. It's always wonderful to be in San Francisco and in this great new library I want to thank the library. And the last time I was here was when I was chair of the NEA. I wrote this book because, well, the White House gave me two directives. One, stay out of the headlines. Impossible chore. And second, keep a diary, which was pretty ironic in light of the fact that about 18 months later everybody in Washington was ditching their diaries when Bob Packwood was ousted from the Senate because of revelations in his. But I may have been the lone person in D.C. who kept scribbling away. And I accumulated about 14 of them over the course of the four years that I was there, 93 to 97. And around the second year I was in Washington, I knew that I wanted to write a book because I found the environment there bizarre. Coming as I did from the relatively stable, sane world of the theater. I sometimes could make head nor tail of what was going on in Washington. And the learning curve was very steep and as you know the National Endowment for the Arts was under the gun. I'm going to read you some excerpts from the book. The confirmation process for anybody who is a presidential appointment is long and grueling. It involves an FBI vetting. It involves revealing all of your employment since the age of 16, which for an actress was truly daunting. When I reached 360 jobs, I stopped and that seemed adequate to them. I mean some of the jobs only last an hour, right? You're doing a voiceover commercial or something. Anyway, I want to read you my first courtesy call before I was confirmed by the Senate. Courtesy calls are appointments that you have with senators or members of the House, who will be in some way instrumental or voting on what you want to present to a committee. In this case, my first courtesy call was to Senator Strom Thurman. You're going to fund pornography? The senator barked at me across the vast expanse of government desk, made all the more intimidating by his diminutive size, or perhaps I was the one who was shrinking in my chair. Strom Thurman had been South Carolina Senator for 40 years. Over and over again he had been returned to office. He had a reputation for getting things done for his constituents, whether it was a tobacco issue or defense or a local favor. Call Strom, he'll take care of it. As I sat before this taut leathery gnome of a man with hair or color not found in nature, I couldn't help but admire his fortitude. At 90, he was still donning jogging shorts and doing a daily turn around Capitol Hill. He was a survivor and now he was going for the gold. He was determined to be the oldest sitting senator in the history of that august body. His 100th birthday was just around the corner and neither infirmity nor inability was going to stop him. The Guinness Book of World Records was waiting. You're going to fund pornography? His question to me was flung out like a glove slapping the ground. I rose weakly to the challenge and responded that the National Endowment for the Arts did not fund obscenity, that obscenity was considered unprotected speech. He said he didn't care what the endowment did, he wanted to know what I thought. I said somewhat grandly that I was an artist, that as an artist nothing human was alien to me. It was a phrase I had pondered a lot in the past, a phrase originally attributed to the Roman playwright Terence in 350 BC. As I said it, images of the fall of the Roman Empire arose in my mind. Aren't you a moral woman, Thurman shot back? Well, that was a question no one had ever asked me. It took me by surprise and I had to think a minute, all the roles I ever played flashed before my eyes. Mothers, daughters, lovers, wives, murderers, lawyers, judges and drunks, lesbians, nurses, saints and sinners. I had to love them when I played them. I had to love something about every character and moral judgment never came into it. As for my own life, had I been guilty about things? Sure. Had there been regrets? Of course, but overall I didn't think in absolutes. I replied, yes, I'm a moral woman. And then I began to descend the slippery slope. I felt compelled to defend the artist in me and all the artists who had ever existed, knowing full well that controversy and political expediency had been entwined from time immemorial to the present day. Hadn't the Pope in the 1500s asked Michelangelo to put a fig leaf on the private parts of his statue of David. And as I've been writing this, didn't New York's Mayor Rudolph Giuliani threaten to close the Brooklyn Museum because of a painting he thought was sacrilegious? I forged ahead anyway. First Amendment rights protect free speech, I said. This elicited instantaneous disgust. The senator was almost apoplectic. Ah, he spat it out. First Amendment rights are an excuse for people to do things they shouldn't be doing. Whoops, there goes 200 years of jurisprudence, I thought. I made one last try to rescue this disastrous interview. The endowment doesn't fund pornography, I repeated. And not wishing to alienate this venerable institution of the South any further, I beat a hasty retreat out of his office and down the marble halls of Congress. I was shaken. I was scared out of my wits. Was this the U.S. Senate? Was this what a senator of the United States actually believed? What had happened to the Constitution? Hadn't all the battles been fought already by the Continental Congress when they hammered out their brilliant document on the nature of democracy and the civil society? I knew the answer in my heart. I knew these precepts had to be defended over and over again with each generation. But it was a tough first visit to the Hill. And I hadn't even been confirmed as NEA Chairman yet. Things would only get worse as it became clear that the arts and the national endowment for the arts in particular were flash points for many of the issues troubling society in the late 20th century. My journey through the minefield of the next four years would change my thinking considerably about politics, the arts, and the government's role. My visit to Strom Thurmond was only the opening salvo in the ensuing war for the NEA. So that was the beginning. I was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. The last holdout, Trent Lott, finally was won over. And I began my tenure. One of the first things I did was to visit all 50 states because I wanted to hear from people in their own towns what they thought of the NEA. I wanted to know what I was hearing from legislators of the conservative persuasion in Congress was real in the communities of their constituents. And I also wanted to let people know what the endowment was doing for them in their communities, if they didn't know, because the endowment only has six people in public relations. It's not able to publicize itself very well. So I went on the road. And sure enough, I found in virtually every community that I visited that there was great support for the agency with the exception of two places. And they were diametrically opposed. Actually three. One was Fort Wayne, Indiana, where there was an organized demonstration by the religious right at a town meeting. And the second was another excerpt I'll read after this one. But when I got to San Francisco, I met the other end and I will read this excerpt. The other protest of any significance occurred at the town meeting in the gorgeous San Francisco Opera House. I looked out over the vast house and up into the balconies where people sat and scattered bunches. I made my opening remarks for about 30 minutes talking about all that the NEA was doing in San Francisco and in Northern California and praising the art I had seen in the city. The arts are deeply embedded in the history of San Francisco. Its opera, theater and museums are world class. And the city is hailed far and wide for its rich culture. When I threw the meeting open to questions, I wasn't expecting the artists in the audience to be so critical of me. They told me that I was not speaking up enough for artists and homosexuals and that I should let Congress know in no uncertain terms that I would not tolerate violation of First Amendment rights. It was hard to see my accusers in the huge dark space. I held my hand to my forehead to block the light and sputtered some inadequate response. How could I tell them what politics was like? That it did no good to rant and rave because no one in Washington would sit down with you again if you did. The gains were made incrementally and involved compromise and patience. I defended myself weekly protesting that they were not being fair to me and I left the stage a little shaken by their admins. The West Coast was 3,000 miles away from Washington and New York. For all their volatility, it could have been another country. San Francisco has one of the highest concentrations of homosexuals in the world and the city's population had been hit hard by the AIDS scourge. The NEA had been concerned about AIDS from the very beginning because so many artists were vulnerable and those in San Francisco more than most. In 1994, the NAMES Project housed the legacy of the 28,000 men and women who had died of the disease and were immortalized on squares of the quilt. When the quilt last visited Washington, it lay spread out on the mall all the way from the Washington Monument to the Capitol Building. No one who saw it failed to be moved. As a piece of cultural history, it has no equal. The sadness of death is conquered by the indomitable spirit of remembrance in each stitch of the cloth in every photo and poem woven into the squares. When the quilt or a portion of it is not on the road, it is carefully housed in a climate-controlled building in San Francisco and the NEA has helped pay for its conservation. Now, the Gays people had an absolute point because what I met over and over again with was pretty rampant homophobia. In the halls of Congress, and I want to read you an excerpt that I think illustrates just one of the meetings I had. There was one very influential Democrat I needed to win over. Charlie Stenholm from West Texas held sway over about 25 colleagues, many of the moderate Westerners who were known as Blue Dog Democrats. The Blue Dogs were unpredictable as a block and more conservative than others in their party. They had voted to eliminate the NEA, so I set out to court, Charlie. I knew West Texas went on forever and that the arts, like the failing oil wells, were dispersed far and wide between patches of tumbling tumbleweed. I wanted to understand why Stenholm and the others had chosen to abandon the rest of the Democrats on this issue. We had a frank discussion. I began by telling them how much I grew to love Texas when I made a film there in the 1980s. I was one of the producers and stars of a low-budget feature called Square Dance, which introduced 14-year-old Winona Ryder to the world. I had spent the better part of a steaming summer in the state, kicking up my heels, dancing in country Western bars as research for my role. Just as Texas legend has it, the men were taciturn and charming and the women were loud and spirited. I didn't see any reason why they wouldn't welcome the arts in the farthest corners of their state just as they welcomed strangers in their midst. Charlie was clear. The gay and lesbian community had made the NEA a battleground, he said. I pointed out that the battleground included controversial heterosexual art as well and that the NEA did not make the battleground. I suspected that there were plenty of homosexuals in Texas, just as there were in the other 49 states, and that they were part of the tax-paying public too. The Tony Alamo boots shuffled under the low table, just itching to swing up on top to complete the laid-back cowboy look. His constituents wouldn't stand for it, Charlie said. They received so much Christian right mail that nailed the NEA and homosexuals as sinners that we didn't stand a chance. He didn't go on, but the gist of it was that I wouldn't have his vote or those of the other blue dogs if I didn't cut out the grants to gays. Stan Holm was powerful, but not mean. I had the feeling he was acting on purely political motives that he himself was not prejudiced. I met with him again a few years later in hopes of convincing him to change his mind, but that never happened. In my naivete, I still believed it was possible for a congressman to lead rather than follow his constituents and to uphold the constitutional rights of all the citizens of his district, rather than only those of a very vocal special interest group. As time went by, it became clear that the money required to get elected led all the legislators by the nose. But in the first year of my tenure, I still hoped that I could convince the opposition to see the value of the endowment in and of itself without money as part of the equation. Now, of course that never happened, and what I began to learn was that special interest groups that had a lot of money behind them were those that made the legislators beholden to them. The arts didn't have that. They couldn't deliver. The commercial arts, the big studios in Hollywood, the music publishing industry, the music and publishing industries had money and they could make a difference. But the non-profit arts in America simply didn't have the money to contribute and there was no sense anymore that our legislators understood the value of art to society or to their communities. I was always grateful for the administration support of the NEA. The president always put an increase in the budget every year that went to the Hill. But I wanted more from my president, so I'll read a little excerpt. I'm a great admirer of the president's, but I'll read this. I do not know what happened to my letters or calls to the White House and the president. They went unanswered. Roger Stevens, who was NEA's first chairman, his words to me rang in my ear. Always talk to the president. I couldn't get on his schedule. His scheduler often never got back to me or to my chief of staff, Sandy Quarry. Sometimes I thought that if I were simply Jane Alexander's citizen, I would have been able to get to him more easily. After all, he was a gregarious man and an impassioned letter about the arts from an actress on the outside might have elicited a response. I did see him at social events, but only a few sentences at most were exchanged. And even sitting behind him in the presidential box at the Kennedy Center had been no guarantee of conversation. He was always delightful when I ran into him, exuberant and boisterous. Bill Clinton is a seducer and a rescuer by nature. The combination is extremely attractive to most human beings. In a split second, he can make you think you are the most important person in the world, and who doesn't like to think that? One time as I was entering the doors of the West Wing of the White House for a meeting with the secretary to the cabinet, he startled me with a big bear hug from behind and an affectionate hello, Lady Jane. We moved in tandem through the security check, leaving the officer at the desk and me dazed in the president's wake. Does the president know you, he asked? And then he quickly answered himself, well, yes, I guess he does. I've worked for five presidents and I never had one so friendly with so many people. It's hard to keep up with him. These fleeting moments were fun, but that was all they were. In times, someone on the president's staff, probably Leon Panetta, must have urged him to be more presidential because the hugs and the kisses diminished, and he stopped wearing shorts when jogging. Neither was missed much. In time, too, I finally did get a private meeting in the Oval Office, but by then a lot had changed. The 104th Congress was in power, and the 104th Congress was the first Republican Congress in 40 years with Newt Green-Gingrich as Speaker of the House, and the NEA was slated for elimination. It was top of their agenda. I'll just read a couple more excerpts and then we'll open it to questions. I continued to go on the road whenever I could and occasionally I would meet with very clear protest. Stephanie and I flew to Kansas, which was especially important to the NEA now because of Nancy Casabam and Bob Dole, who had become majority leader. The flight was long and it was difficult for me to concentrate on my reading. I gazed out the plane window at the reflection of a full hunter's moon brightened the sky. It slithered across the land, its silver light catching hold in patches of field water along streams, rivers, and pools. Sometimes it ran ahead of the plane and sometimes it lagged behind depending on how we lined up with the moon. Kansas itself was not nearly so magical. As always, there was good art to be found. There were some stunning paintings in Wichita's Art Museum in the Northeast Magnet School of the Arts and Technology. A brilliant teacher of ceramic and fabric art was transforming the lives of kids. One boy had kicked drugs and made ceramics his new habit. He gave me a finely turned reiku pot. In the town of Womigo, population 3500 and NEA grant to restore large paintings from the 1893 Chicago's World's Fair had resulted in the complete restoration of the Columbian Theater and brought the community together as it had never been before. The hardware store, the pharmacy, and the bank, as well as individual citizens all helped match the NEA grant and now took special pride in the restoration they had collectively brought about. Community theater had sprung up there as well, bringing a mini renaissance to Womigo. In Topeka, while riding up to the Museum of History, where our folk and traditional art program sponsored a cowboy boot exhibition, we bumped up against the ugly side of the religious right. The road was lined with people holding signs that said fag, Jane, NEA, or whore, Jane, NEA. I was sickened to see that some of the carriers were small children, maybe five or six years old. The group was not large, maybe several families, but it was beyond me to understand how they could inculcate their children in such venal ways. The Museum had canceled Maya Angelou's visit two weeks earlier because of these people, but we moved intrepidly on and entered through the back door of the building where they did not attempt to follow us. These zealots were sorry figures and in no way representative of the people of Kansas. The town meetings were held, we held, were filled with enthusiastic art supporters and only an occasional dissenter. Still, for all the great people in Kansas, there was a traditional, fundamentalist core. Being in the middle of the country can do that to a state. A kind of hunker down. We'll get by and don't you Easterners try to tell us what to do, philosophy. I knew that from my own father's Nebraska background. He had astounded me at times with a deeply conservative viewpoint, conveying a sense that indecency could creep up behind you and take over the world if you weren't careful. My brother Tom inherited that same backbone whereas my sister and Pam and I were laissez-faire, preferring to believe that people find their own moral compass, given enough freedom, education, and compassion. I certainly never loved my father or my brother less for their rectitude and it served me well in trying to understand the motivations of a state like Kansas which was veering further and further to the right. The battle was fought over a period of three years and finally with the help of arts advocates like many of you here in the room, we triumphed at the midnight hour in 1997. The House gave the NEA for the first time in its 32 year history zero appropriations but the Senate kept the agency alive despite we had a 40% cut when I came into the endowment in 93, the budget was 174.5 million and it was reduced to 99 million and it now is under 98 million regrettably but I have no doubt that after this election year it will start to go back up again. I want to read one brief passage about my main nemesis man named Speaker Newt Gingrich. The relationship between Hollywood and Congress is schizophrenic and hypocritical. The 104th Congress regarded Hollywood stars as elitist and yet when the opportunity presented itself Congressmen all scrambled for a photo up with them. I was not in the Hollywood star category myself having only limited wattage in the movies but it amused me to watch the interplay between politicians and movie stars. Liz Robbins who was lobbying for an organization with the unwieldy name of the council of literary magazines and presses slash literary network held a reception and a dinner one summer night in the garden of her quaint Georgetown home. I was invited to write Wendy Wasserstein, the actress and director Joanne Woodward, Bill Clinton's favorite mystery writer Walter Mosley and the movie star Melanie Griffith. They were to pay calls on the hill the next day and had graciously made the trip to DC to support the endowment. I knew from watching Wendy as a grant recipient and as an NEA panel chairman that she would be a superb spokesman and Joanne was quietly articulate too. I did not know Walter or Melanie but decided to introduce myself to them and thank them for giving their time. It was a balmy evening and I looked over at Melanie dressed in a white designer outfit with breezy decolletage tall as a reed. I introduced myself and told her that I enjoyed her work in films. In her soft kitten voice she gushed a bit about my film work and then said, and what are you doing now? I dropped her like a hot potato rushed over to Liz and whispered forcefully in her ear, prep that girl for the hill. My friend Wyoming Senator Al Simpson was there chatting with another GOP senator Hank Brown from Colorado. We spoke business for a few minutes and then I asked whether they'd like to meet Melanie Griffith knowing full well they were salivating already. They hovered over her as they've never hovered over a fellow politician. Al's six foot six vantage point being perfect for stargazing. Wendy later reported to me about the meetings that transpired the following day. NEA Chairman Alexander couldn't get an appointment with Newt Gingrich but celebrities came and went with relative ease it seemed. Perhaps it was the fact that Newt Gingrich's first novel was being published and he felt he was now in the same league as other writers. In any event he flirted with Melanie and told her there was a good part for her in the film of his book. Wendy managed to steer the conversation to the NEA telling the speaker that the NEA fellowship she received had helped her write the Heidi Chronicles which won a Pulitzer Prize. Gingrich replied, Arthur Murray never needed a grant to write a play. Wendy restrained herself from saying that perhaps the famous ballroom dancer should have applied to the dance program. A little while later as they were leaving Gingrich realized his mistake and said I'm terribly sorry I meant Arthur Miller and Wendy replied yes and he did have a grant it was called the WPA. So these were the kind of bizarre occurrences that were happening with regularity. There was so much that congressmen did not know and I can hardly blame them they're flying by the seat of their pants trying to be up on issues and their aides are most of the time callow youth who don't know much about anything they just graduated from college or an internship program and they're there and I just thought over and over again this isn't any way to run a government certainly not at our top levels in the United States of America but as I say because of arts advocates all across the country the NEA is still alive today and although the stress was enormous on me personally through those years I had a dream one night that I want to recount to you in finishing. Despite the constant pressure I knew I was growing stronger I felt that I could withstand anything that came my way and one day I had what I regarded as a clear strong omen that we would prevail. I dreamed of a peregrine falcon a bird that had once been on the list of endangered species because the pesticide DDT made it impossible to produce viable eggs once the poison was no longer in use however the bird had made an incredible comeback I dreamed that the falcon flew into my outstretched hand and let me hold it in my palm and that was the extent of the dream. The next morning as I walked the three blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue to my office in the old post office building I chanced to look up chanced to look up and there to my amazement a peregrine falcon was wheeling 50 feet above the rush hour traffic chasing a flock of pigeons I expected the clouds to part and a bright ray of sun to shine down so vivid was the omen I skipped the rest of the way to work quite convinced that the NEA was going to be okay after all Thank you I'd be happy to take any questions anybody might have Yes What are the signs that you actually see that the funding for the NEA is going to go up? The reason I believe it's going to go up is that the local arts councils in the nation and the state arts councils have increased their own budgets which means to me it's only a matter of time before the federal government gets the message as well that people in their communities really like their arts also communities are dealing with controversial work in very good ways there was an issue in Charlotte, North Carolina a few years ago where Tony Kushner's play Angels in America was done by the Charlotte Repertory Theater and it was picketed by a group and the mayor thought that he was going to withdraw the funds and close it down etc which he obviously couldn't do under freedom of expression and so on so that didn't happen but the next year the Charlotte Mecklenburg Arts Council reduced the arts budget by millions in punishment to the Charlotte Repertory Theater to make a long story short I just spoke to the arts council leader a couple of weeks ago and the budget has now doubled the community has kicked those guys out of office and they said we want more money in our arts council for the arts in our community so I see that this is happening you know you get very right wing forces and then it polarizes the community and the community has the good sense to say wait a minute what are we talking about here and I see that happening many many places and as I say the budgets are increasing the federal government has got to get the message pretty soon yes in the back there in the right I actually heard that there's going to be a discussion in Congress this week about the NEA around the issue of lesbian and gay film festival funding and I wanted to know what you had to say about that and also how you figured the vulnerability of the NEA in Congress it stands right now we know that we have the votes to keep the NEA going whether we'll get a raise in funding I don't think so but the attacks on lesbian and gays have been going on for over a decade now many in Congress are getting tired of it even in the conservative they know that it's not an issue that they're going to win when I was there in the last few years that's almost exclusively what they were attacking outside of one poor congressman who thought he could make headlines by saying the Indian the NEA funds basket makers and he only succeeded in really maddening the Northern California Indian basket weavers association so they got pretty desperate the attacks on gays and lesbians are ongoing but as I say they've been going on for a long time now I think that Congress realizes there are no constitutional rights to try to stop any grant making to people whatever their sexual preferences so I don't think it's much of an issue right now that gay and lesbian film issue has been around for ten years well hope but it you got to get your calls in to your congress still you just still have to call them yes I'm so happy to hear you and that you've maintained and retained your sanity and sense of humor I developed one there you told us that you traveled all over the United States and I wondered what you did you do anything about studying what the arts are getting in Europe oh sure we're giving about 32 cents per person per year now to the National Endowment for the Arts and Finland now is over 350 per capita per year dollars isn't that amazing so we're pailing in comparison but we are unique in that our funding is still about 90% private and it's citizens like you and me here in this room who make up the bulk of the private giving to the nonprofits in the United States and that means the arts as well corporations kick in about five to ten percent foundations the same thing and then a pitiful ten percent is public money but actually that's increasing because the state and local councils are going up I'd like to see public money 20% and then 80% private the rest of the world funds 90% public money and 10% private and they want to increase their private part you mentioned earlier your travel to Kansas and the controversy you came across with people protesting the arts and Senators Bob Dole and Nancy Kasselbaum both Republicans and I was a little confused and well their stance at being presidential election year and the fact that Senators Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts had lobbied Miss Kasselbaum among other Republicans who were sympathetic to the arts community could you give some clarification over that matter please if I understand your question Nancy Kasselbaum was always a staunch supporter of the NEA but she had very conservative constituents in Kansas she worked very closely with Ted Kennedy obviously a champion of the arts and humanities in the senate and they were partners in creating a lot of fine legislation for the arts and humanities does that answer your question or yeah Bob Dole by the way did not vote for the NEA when he was majority leader and when he was running for president but he was not obstructionist he did not get up except for maybe once or twice and say things against it a non-political question could you name a few of the projects that the NEA funded during your tenure that you're either most proud of or most impressed with yes I'm very proud of the partnerships we created with other federal agencies Justice I sat down with Janet Reno who turned out to be my next door neighbor so Janet and I became friends but before that happened I sat down with Reno to talk about crime prevention for our youth in America I mean they were talking about midnight basketball programs I said come on let's get the arts in there too to make a long story short we have there's a lot of partnership programs going on across the country now for kids after school and kids at risk being caught in the judicial system either in the judicial system in one way or another so and then we have health and human services we have partnerships with them we have partnerships with the department of defense and design and we have a lot of and I was very proud of those Writers' Corps was one and we have Writers' Corps right here in San Francisco some of you may know about it Writers' Corps in San Francisco began with when I sat down with Eli Siegel of AmeriCorps which then became national service and I said you know you need to have an arts program in AmeriCorps too so Writers' Corps won that contract with AmeriCorps and I just love that program those kids and I haven't seen the San Francisco one recently but the kids in the Bronx and Washington DC are doing fabulously Writers' Corps and I know the books here are terrific because they send me them so that's probably one of the things I'm most proud of yes first of all thank you for writing that beautiful editorial in the New York Times where you put into words the value of arts education thanks we beefed up arts education a lot at the NEA too and I was wondering I saw a full page ad from an organization in yesterday's times I think about computers versus arts education a sort of guns and butter issue do you see it that way? no I never did they used to say things to me like congressmen would say well you know what are you going to choose? you're going to choose breast cancer or the arts? I said we can fund them both we're talking about one of the greatest countries in the earth what are you talking about? we can fund it all we need to reduce the defense budget here in San Francisco the last two or three years the arts have really been suffering as sort of a spillover of the booming economy and gentrification and the rise of the cost of living here I made it in the paper this week that 40% of the artists have moved in the last two or three years have left San Francisco and I guess it's a problem that we will have to address here at the local level but is there any talk about this in Washington in terms of like you know spillover areas that gentrify what happens to the artists? boy it is a problem you're right and it's not just San Francisco it's all across the country New York of course they've moved over to New Jersey and way up in the Bronx and parts of Brooklyn certainly the visual artists can't have the spaces that they used to have I've seen it many many places that this problem I don't know what the answers are really don't because I'm not a real estate mogul I don't know how it works I think it's a good issue for you to contact people at the NEA about and so that they start talking about it maybe the mayors can start to put aside certain areas just for artists I don't know the answer it doesn't work okay yeah starts out that way I know where do I go from here? oh yeah I have a few more cities to go to New York and and DC again and then then I'll take a little break with my husband yes in the back for a person in our country how would you like to see that money spent specifically? gosh first of all I would institutionalize arts education in the schools nationwide so that yeah I mean I'm not sure that the NEA we can't pay for all that but somehow we would find grants or artists in residence or something in all the schools in America and that would take a big chunk of money I would have programs for the elderly in the arts everywhere as well as kids and then I would also give substantially to the existing institutions that are having such a hard time doing the kind of work that they dream of doing are performing arts centers dance, theater I would I would well that's a good start I'd have to sit down but there's a lot to do you know to try to keep up with other countries has anybody been to Prague lately? I mean boy you can get really envious when you see the size of those performing arts companies when you see the vitality of art everywhere all over the place oh another thing I would do and we did start it at the NEA you know you can lose a language a recipe or an art form in one generation and the United States has so many wonderful different cultures and immigrants coming in right now and some of them just give up their past just like that and so we had a pretty strong consensus program I would like to make sure that that still happens because now that we have what we call globalization so many cultures are going to just be subsumed by the American commercial arts culture and I don't want to see that happen I was curious about your kind of transition from artist to public servant how you came about to accept the nomination and then agree to change paths where there are people who inspired you in public service as role models I grew up in Boston you can't grow up in Boston when I did in the you know 40s 50s without having some some idealistic sense of what leadership can be like the cradle of liberty type thing and the first militia that marched against George III's troops and so on so I thought it could be really great and I still do I think good government is ours to achieve in this country but we have to have a lot of reform right now I went into the NEA because I was an NEA baby the great white hope that Neil mentioned with James Earl Jones and myself began with an NEA grant in Washington DC and I performed in nonprofit theaters in the United States that had been seated and nurtured and developed because of the NEA I love this agency I'm passionate about it I know what it does and so that's why I just wanted to get in there and try to educate our legislators in the public about it the good thing now is the rhetoric has really really toned down I mean yes you're going to have little about gay and lesbian festivals and stuff like that but I don't think that they're going to be substantial and I don't think they're going to continue in the years to come we hope I think I'll end it there I have a question here yes hello let's go back 30 years you were involved in the great white hope you did a theater and you also did it at the movies it was quite a controversial row for you there were some things that involved an interracial relationship did you receive any adverse attention or negative publicity as a result of being in that row yeah I did in the theater when we took it to Broadway we ran it on Broadway for a year there was a lot of hate mail which after a while my stage manager just opened and took care of and I did have a couple of death threats they were white bigots it was the height of the black power movement in the United States they didn't like to see a white woman in bed with a black man on stage and Jimmy and James Earl and I were the first interracial couple to lie in a bed together we were clothed but that was enough to cause real consternation among some people yes please wait for the microphone I'm curious about your alliances with the media it's been my experience that there's not a lot of support among pundits particularly for progressive issues and of course certainly during the Newt-Ginrich reign they were caught up in all of the rhetoric and incendiary rhetoric about every issue so I'm wondering how do you think the media have treated the issue of the arts then and now it's a good question newspapers like any other entity have to sell newspapers they have to sell themselves so they're going to go for what is sensational what's going to sell papers and they found the NEA a good issue or certainly the discussion about it but then I have to say whenever they interviewed me it was very fair and I felt that I got my point across that I was quoted accurately with the exception of the very conservative newspapers in the country when we knew where they were coming from anyway with regard to the editorials and or let me just say the columnists nationwide I agree with you I think most of them are they like to put one over and get points for that and it was easy the NEA was an easy whipping girl you know and so I think that they could have been stronger the editorials from individual citizens were very fine usually even people like Paul Newman wrote terrific editorials about the heads excuse me about the NEA I don't have a beef with the media I know what they have to do I just want them to do their homework better because a lot of time they're just misquoting somebody else's work and they would often get some of the controversial grants we did totally wrong you know they would look to the conservatives who had brought the issue to our attention to the attention and to begin with and it was highly distorted and inflamed it was like there was one controversy we had of a film called Watermelon Woman which was about an African American group of lesbians who were looking for a mythical film star called Watermelon Woman and it was a charming film and there was just one very gentle scene of love making nothing as as incendiary as some of the ones from commercial Hollywood but boy did they come down hard on that and the press really inflamed it all but I would try to put that right and a lot of people would write letters rebutting it okay I think that's the end thank you so much for coming