Anyone catch this program last night? It was excellent, and I recommend those with an interest in how the arts and politics are intertwined give it a look here.

The artists are some of my personal favorites: filmmaker John Sayles and actor/playwright Sarah Jones. Both of them were amazingly articulate, as was Jehane Noujaim, the documentary filmmaker who made the film CONTROL ROOM.

It has been an interesting time for arts activism. The release and hoopla surrounding "F...9/11". Bruce Springsteen's op-ed piece in the NY Times, regarding the announcement of the moveon.org Vote for Change tour (in which he failed to mention Bonnie Raitt--ahem! an artist activist herself for decades, and not near as squeamish about it as Springsteen is). The right wing backlash up to the highest levels of our government against artists who present their creative work with a political or social commentary message. For instance, my Republican governor, a big Springsteen fan, made sure he got on the news last night to say how disappointed he was in Springsteen for "being political". Do you suppose he would have been disappointed with Springsteen if the tour were in support of Republicans? I haven't seen any of the Republicans complaining about Toby Keith...

The FCC and it's efforts to censor and manipulate the airwaves that belong to us. Sarah Jones, one of the artist interviewed by NOW, recently won a two year battle with the FCC for censoring a song of hers, you can read about here at the Freemuse website on artist censorship. The site is mostly about music censorship, but not exclusively.