The left is in the midst of a concerted effort to rewrite American history and make Americans ashamed of the very aspects of our heritage that they should most celebrate. As part of this sinister endeavor, now the Orwellian leftist revisionists have taken aim at American pop culture, presenting achievements that have captured the imagination of the entire world as reflections of our rotten, racist, desperately corrupt society that is in dire need of redemption via a strong dose of socialist internationalism. Now the Trump administration has taken aim at this dangerous and ridiculous revisionism.
Fox News reported Saturday that the Trump administration official Lindsey Halligan has taken issue with the decidedly leftist slant of the National Museum of American History’s Entertainment Nation exhibit, which is devoted to American pop culture. Halligan said: "American taxpayers should not be funding institutions that undermine our country or promote one-sided, divisive political narratives. The Smithsonian Institution should present history in a way that is accurate, balanced, and consistent with the values that make the United States of America exceptional."
It certainly isn’t doing that now. Instead, the exhibit is one long advertisement for how bad America and those who love it are, and how much the country needs to take a sharp turn left. The exhibit on “Star Wars” (the original movie, not sequel #132) is a particularly ham-handed example of how the exhibit presents pop culture with far-left assumptions that most Americans do not share. “Star Wars, the blockbuster Hollywood space saga,” it says, “inspired a nation in dire need of a new hope.” Oh, that “new hope” bit was so deft that the leftist wonk who came up with it likely got congratulations from the people in cubicles as far as three rows away. After that comes the leftist wallop.
“By the mid-1970s, the nation found itself reeling from its loss in Vietnam and revelations about Richard Nixon’s dirty-tricks presidency. In response, Star Wars creator George Lucas offered a tale set ‘in a galaxy far, far away’ where a struggling republic was fighting for survival. The saga’s motley heroes — a Jedi farm boy, a princess, a pirate, a Wookiee pilot, even droids — inspired hope and raised an enduring question: How can we build a virtuous republic?”
Wait a minute. It’s highly questionable in the first place that “Star Wars” was a meant to be a “response” to Vietnam and Watergate, but the far-left slant makes it all even worse. The Smithsonian conveniently fails to mention that Vietnam was a loss because the left in America made it impossible to win, and that Watergate was a highly partisan affair in which self-righteous Democrats used lawfare against a popular Republican president (sound familiar?).
And it gets worse from there. Fox notes that “one placard, featured alongside a 1923 circus poster, reads: ‘Under the big top, circuses expressed the colonial impulse to claim dominion over the world.’” What’s that? You don’t see how circuses were an expression of American colonialism? Well, you see, “in the 1800s, debates erupted over whether the United States, like its European rivals, should establish and exploit foreign colonies. Meanwhile, circuses crisscrossed the country, tantalizing audiences with performances by the inhabitants of such lands — from elephants and other subdued wild animals to acrobatic troupes. Audiences thrilled at the exotic spectacles that served the world up on a platter — and seemed ripe for the taking.”
Speaking strictly for myself, I’ve been to circuses before they capitulated to PETA, and seen the elephants and the acrobats, both as a child and as an adult, and never once did the experience put me in mind of colonizing the world. Maybe I’m just slow on the uptake.
The leftist slant is thoroughgoing. About the Lone Ranger, we’re told: "The White title character’s relationship with Tonto resembled how the U.S. government imagined itself the world’s Lone Ranger." Mickey Mouse turns out to be racist: “The new character’s outsized facial features, white gloves, and trickster temperament were vestiges of longstanding traditions of blackface minstrelsy."
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Halligan remarked that these displays and others like them “are part of the problem the Trump Administration aims to fix. Framing American culture as inherently violent, imperialist, or racist does not reflect the greatness of our nation or the millions of Americans who have contributed to its progress." She added that “we are working with leadership at the Smithsonian to audit and review all content at the museums, and we are committed to ensuring that such content honors our country’s founding principles, tells the stories of American heroes, and does not promote fringe or activist ideologies masquerading as history."
For its part, the Smithsonian Institution issued a typical pile of nonspecific verbiage: "The museum is committed to continuous and rigorous scholarship and research and unbiased presentation of facts and history. As such, and as previously announced, we are assessing content in Smithsonian museums and will make any necessary changes to ensure our content meets our standards." Yeah, but will you fix the woke displays? No word on that.
Nor would the Smithsonian “answer specific questions regarding who authored the Entertainment Nation exhibit, whether outside academic consultants or activist organizations were involved, or who made the decision to present all exhibit text bilingually in English and Spanish.” Of course it wouldn’t.
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