What Biden said was an incomplete picture though. For a fuller picture, do pay attention to this NEA scandal. This is how I wrote about it pre-audio:

The “I Pledge” video has been airing at the same time as revelations on the right-leaning website Big Hollywood of a government body organizing an artistic propaganda machine. Film producer Patrick Courrielche was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts to take part in a conference call sponsored by the NEA, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and United We Serve, the organization created by Obama to promote volunteer service. The stated purpose of the call was “to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda — health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal.”
A few days after the call, Courrielche noticed that the starry-eyed Rock the Vote campaign, whose “mission is to engage and build the political power of young people in order to achieve progressive change in our country,” had sent out an e-mail declaring: “We can’t stand by and listen to lies and deceit coming from those who are against reforming a broken system. . . . Young people demand health care now.” Unsurprisingly, Rock the Vote is in favor of a public component to said health care.
A representative for Rock the Vote was on the NEA conference call. He clearly picked up his orders.
These have been tough times for President Obama. With a majority in Congress, and an adamant imperative that his health-care-reform will should be done, he had to let summer recess in Washington begin without his commands fulfilled. You can understand his wanting to use every resource available to him.
Aristotle said that art completes what nature cannot bring to a finish. Perhaps Obama’s NEA might say that art completes what democracy isn’t obedient enough to bring to a finish.
The problem of course, is that if there is a National Endowment for the Arts — which to some of us has always been a problem in a nation that has more than enough private resources and enthusiasm to support the arts without any government involvement — it should not be at the political service of the president. It is not meant to be an extension of his communications office.

Having a hold on the “arts” community is key, too. All of Obama’s dismissive rhetoric about his critics comes out of this thinking. If it is good — that is, if Obama-Rahm-etc. consider it to be good — it just should be. And we will make it be.

Some of us know the road will always be an arduous one, and the utopian vision painted is never going to be real in this world. But others will use their power to remake the world in their image, as undemocratic and unrealistic as that may be. And that’s what the NEA and everything else is for.