The White House on Tuesday launched its official purge of Wrongthink in the museums of the Smithsonian Institution, announcing it will purify the Nation’s Attic of dangerous ideological content that runs counter to the immortal, all-American vision and perfect wisdom of Great Leader.
As far as we know, the wide-ranging review, announced in a letter to Smithsonian Secretary-for-now Lonnie Bunch III, will only affect what’s shown to the public, how it’s described, how the Smithsonian does everything from hiring to selecting works to display, which artists can receive grants, and what organizations it’s allowed to partner with.
As of yet, no plans to burn or eradicate unTrumpian works or deport disfavored artists or scholars have been announced. But then, the administration doesn’t have to tell you what it’s doing anyway. The Smithsonian has been told that it must replace “divisive or ideologically driven” language with “unifying, historically accurate” materials instead.
We are unsure how far the museums will need to go in complying with Great Leader’s understanding of “historical accuracy,” in which nobody ever asks why the US Civil War happened, especially because maybe it could have been negotiated by Lincoln (who only became president after secession), and the war itself ended in “1869 or whatever.” The main point is that Confederate monuments must be honored because that’s real American history. At a minimum, the museums must explain that Frederick Douglass has done an amazing job that is being recognized more and more.
The letter by three top White House Commissars — Budget Boss Russ Vought, insurance lawyer and culture scold Lindsey Halligan, and domestic policy council poobah Vince Haley — explains that the Great Cleansing “aims to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”
Halligan, you’ll recall, is the apparatchik whose complaint about an exhibition in the Smithsonian American Art Museum prompted the Tragical History Boor to hereby decree in his weird March executive order that we must “restore truth and sanity to American history.” She was then given the job of rooting out “improper ideologies” from all Smithsonian museums.
Halligan has zealously dived into her culture-warring role after being named to the job of ideology-scrubber. In July, she contributed to a whole big Fox News story when the network asked her to comment on a bunch of stuff on display in the National Museum of American History’s “Entertainment Nation” exhibit. Halligan said in an email that “American taxpayers should not be funding institutions that undermine our country or promote one-sided, divisive political narratives,” and by gosh, the Smithsonian should instead “present history in a way that is accurate, balanced, and consistent with the values that make the United States of America exceptional.”
The story suggests that Halligan “blasted” the exhibit because she saw something nasty in the history shed and just had to let them know in an “exclusive email.” But halfway through, the article makes clearer that she was replying to a reporter’s inquiry.
“The examples [Fox News Digital] highlighted from the National Museum of American History are part of the problem the Trump Administration aims to fix,” Halligan said. “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.”
The Fox story calls attention to horrors like the exhibit’s shocking (and completely accurate) observation that, in “Steamboat Willie,” Mickey Mouse’s “outsized facial features, white gloves, and trickster temperament were vestiges of longstanding traditions of blackface minstrelsy.” Don’t be silly. Mickey Mouse, like Santa Claus and Jesus, is white.
It also takes issue with a display on the Lone Ranger which said “The White title character’s relationship with Tonto resembled how the U.S. government imagined itself the world’s Lone Ranger,” and gripes that the exhibit about Selena Quintanilla-Pérez focuses too much on “identity politics” because it quotes her saying “I feel very proud to be Mexican,” and uses the illegal banned word Latinx.
And much, much more. We’re only surprised the article didn’t complain that the exhibit on the signpost from M*A*S*H says the TV show’s “dark humor spoke to audiences grappling with the futility of the Vietnam War,” when in reality we would have won if it weren’t for the liberal media.
Why, those America-haters at the Smithsonian even used both English and Spanish in all the displays’ text, and didn’t answer Fox’s demand to identify whose decision that was.
Anyway, why is Lindsey Halligan, a 35-year-old lawyer with no actual experience running museums, at the center of the administration’s purge of un-American content at the Smithsonian? Well, according to a Washington Post profile published shortly after the weird EO (gift link), she’s a lucky ducky who happened to glom onto Great Leader’s legal team in early 2022 and became one of his top defenders on TV after the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Gulago later that year.
Also, according to Jim Trusty, another former Trump lawyer, she’s “an avid — and well-read — fan of history,” which in this administration may make her overqualified, especially if she has read more than five books on the topic. The Post also notes that not only did Halligan suggest the Smithsonian purge EO to Trump, she was also named in it “at Halligan’s own suggestion.”
Last winter, during the transition, Halligan visited the Smithsonian American Art Museum and was shocked into telling Trump about a terrible exhibit called “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,” which was just improper ideology out the wazoo. As any fool knows, art has nothing to do with race, or at least it shouldn’t. On top of that, Halligan told the Post that when she visited several Smithsonian museums, some exhibits were not America First at all!
“There’s a lot about other countries’ history that has nothing to do with America, and I think, you know, America is so special,” she says, adding: “We should all be focused on how amazing our country is and how much America has to offer.”
Mentioning other countries in American museums? There is only America, and our children must learn that, so that they will not laugh at Great Leader when he mispronounces the names of funny foreign countries like Nipple and Button (which he thought were part of India) and has to be reminded again and again that Japan’s prime minister may not be awake when Great Leader is. That’s America First.
Donald Trump Orders Smithsonian To Re-Revise All The History
What Do They Call Their Smithsonian In North Korea?
Trump Tries To Fire Head Of National Portrait Gallery For Being Too Woke. Yes, Really.
[WSJ (gift link) (archive version) / WaPo (gift link) / Entertainment Nation at the National Museum of American History / Fox News]
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber, or if you’d prefer to make a one-time donation to help us spread our improper ideology, here’s the button.
www.wonkette.com (Article Sourced Website)
#White #House #Launches #Smithsonian #Purge #Degenerate #Art #Culture #History