Yosi Sergant's strange year as a 'left-wing propagandist'

Back home in Echo Park, the former director of communications for the National Endowment of the Arts talks about discovering that in politics, being right is no substitute for looking like you're right. Sergant masterminded the viral spread of Shepard Fairey's Hope poster for Obama, got a job in the White House Office of Public Engagement, then moved to NEA as a neophyte political flack. A few words on a conference call got him targeted as a bogeyman by the anti-Obama wing of the media, led by Glenn Beck.

Sergant gives his first in-depth interview since leaving Washington to a close friend, Hillel Aron, who reports for USC's Neon Tommy. Excerpts:

His tenure at the NEA was cut short by a seemingly mundane conference call that somehow became a national scandal stirred up by Andrew Breitbart, Glenn Beck, and one of his old bosses....

Yosi can be forgiven for being suspicious of the media. He's seen how they can take what you say, disassemble it, throw most of it away, and reassemble it into something completely different. He's not paranoid. Just a little shell-shocked.

Continued after the jump.

Photo cropped from photo by Darius Twin