Walter B. Jones: “here we go again. Just as this Congress is set to debate the funding of the National Endowment for the Arts, NEA…”

“here we go again. Just as this Congress is set to debate the funding of the National Endowment for the Arts, NEA Chairwoman, Jane Alexander, has again shown us that both she and the taxpayer funded NEA, must go. Last Sunday, at the New York Lesbian and Gay Video and Film Festival, director Cheryl Dunye premiered her film, ``Watermelon Woman,'' funded by the tax dollars of hardworking Americans. In the words of the director herself, this pornographic film depicts black ``lesbians experiencing their sexual desire for each other.'' This film was produced from a $31,000 grant from the NEA. I believe that in the opinion of most Americans, Watermelon Woman has absolutely no serious artistic, or political value. NEA Chairwoman Alexander and the National Endowment for the Arts are attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of taxpaying Americans by marketing this sexually explicit film as black history. As Edmund Peterson, chairman of Project 21 and a leading black conservative put it, in Friday's Washington Times, ``There is no demand in the black community for this movie; this is a classic example, of the Clinton administration, being in bed with the gay-lesbian movement, and funding a project through tax dollars, that can't get funded any other way.''”