Fired NEA Chief Assails Buchanan

John E. Frohnmayer, fired as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts after Patrick J. Buchanan attacked the agency and vowed to padlock it, assailed Buchanan Monday as “a Frankenstein monster that George Bush helped to create.”

The White House forced Frohnmayer from office last month after Buchanan began using past NEA controversies to batter President Bush on the campaign trail. Buchanan, who is challenging Bush for the Republican nomination, said that if elected he would close the agency and “fumigate” it. He accused the NEA, a federal agency, of using tax dollars to fund “pornographic and blasphemous art.”

Frohnmayer, in a speech during an international First Amendment seminar, described Buchanan’s remarks and TV ads as “the most shameless” of recent attacks on the NEA.

“I think that the President has always attempted to support me in supporting the arts. . . . I likewise believe that he has received some incredibly bad advice,” Frohnmayer said.

He said that he does not believe Bush will be anti-NEA if he speaks on the issue during the campaign.

The speech was Frohnmayer’s first public appearance since the Administration demanded his resignation on Feb. 20. The resignation is effective May 1.