Sigh. History is not just a matter of saying “Look at these important men.” There is, in fact, quite a lot more to it than that.
Republicans think otherwise. They want the Smithsonian to do some Great Men Worship, god damn it! That’s its job!
House Democrats issued a rebuttal to the White House’s attack on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, arguing in a report that the Trump administration cherry-picked quotes, mangled basic facts and misstated who controls the institution — even as House Republicans escalate the fight by summoning the museum’s director to testify Tuesday.
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Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee), chairman of the House Oversight subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, requested in a July 13 letter that Anthea Hartig, the American history museum’s director, testify Tuesday morning about what he called “the misuse of federal funds” to promote “divisive, politically tendentious revisions of American history.” The letter says the museum’s leaders “either lack an understanding of the Nation’s heritage or are determined to blatantly mischaracterize and disparage the American experiment.”
The hearing follows the White House Domestic Policy Council’s July 4 report, “Saving America’s Story,” which accused the museum of “ideological capture” and cast Hartig — named more than 220 times in text and footnotes of the 162-page report — as “an activist advancing an ideological agenda.”
The Democrats’ response, prepared by the minority on the House Administration Committee and reviewed by The Washington Post, argues the White House report contradicts itself, citing the White House’s claim that visitors “will find no major exhibit dedicated to the founding era or figures such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson” only to concede later that the museum features “remarkable artifacts like the desk Thomas Jefferson used to draft the Declaration of Independence, George Washington’s uniform” and the Star-Spangled Banner.
This is just kindergarten stuff. There’s more to history than a parade of Great Men – a lot more. There’s more to history than can possibly stuffed into one museum, or a thousand museums, and there is nothing wrong with a museum of American history focusing on, for instance, social history as opposed to great man biography.
Furthermore Trump has no jurisdiction over the Smithsonian.
The White House’s lengthy report earlier this month drew a rebuttal from Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III and concern from the institution’s staff and alumni.
“The Smithsonian was established as an independent institution precisely so no president could dictate how our nation’s story is told,” Morelle said in a statement. “Committee Democrats will continue defending that independence because no president gets to edit the American story.”
And of all the people we don’t want editing the American story, Trump is the most.
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