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In March of this year, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order “restoring truth and sanity to American history by revitalizing key cultural institutions and reversing the spread of divisive ideology.” The White House issued a statement noting that “In the last decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted effort to rewrite American history and force our nation to adopt a factually baseless ideology aimed at diminishing American achievement.” The statement specifically called out the Smithsonian Institution— “once revered throughout the world as a symbol of American excellence” — for promoting the “divisive ideology that American and Western values are harmful.”
And the Smithsonian is still at it. Fox News reports that the taxpayer-funded museum complex with a $1 billion annual budget is promoting an exhibit, housed in the National Museum of American History, called “Entertainment Nation.” It opened in December 2022 and was billed as a permanent exhibition to “celebrate the power of popular culture to shape and reflect history.” It features artifacts and media from movies, television, sports, and music.
In an email to Fox News Digital, White House official Lindsey Halligan slammed the exhibit for its politically biased interpretation of cultural milestones. “American taxpayers should not be funding institutions that undermine our country or promote one-sided, divisive political narratives,” Halligan wrote. “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.”
One placard, for example, featured alongside a 1923 circus poster, reads: “Under the big top, circuses expressed the colonial impulse to claim dominion over the world.” Another, describing early American entertainment, states: “One of the earliest defining traits of entertainment in the United States was extraordinary violence.” About the Lone Ranger, the display states: “The White title character’s relationship with Tonto resembled how the U.S. government imagined itself the world’s Lone Ranger.”
Another beloved American cultural icon the exhibit undermines is Mickey Mouse. A display for the 1928 cartoon “Steamboat Willie” notes, “Mickey challenged authority, but not everyone was in on the joke” and observes that “the new character’s outsized facial features, white gloves, and trickster temperament were vestiges of longstanding traditions of blackface minstrelsy.”
In reference to the Indiana Jones movie franchise, another panel reads: “His character embodied a confident righteousness that, in many ways, captured the essence of the 1980s” above a subheading referring to President Ronald Reagan’s famous speech, asking, “Are you better off?” A section on “comedian” Jon Stewart’s Daily Show refers to it as “the go-to for viewers who mistrusted politicians and the reporting process.” In fact, it is the go-to for viewers looking for Stewart’s angry affirmation of their Left-wing mindset.
Another Entertainment Nation panel places the late Tejano pop star Selena within the divisive context of identity politics: “Selena got us talking about identity,” with a quote from the late singer reading, “I feel very proud to be Mexican.” The text goes on to say that her work “cast a light on the longstanding cultural and growing political influence of Mexican American and Latinx communities within the United States.” (As an aside”: actual Latinos and Hispanics nearly unanimously reject the cringeworthy and unpronounceable woke neologism “Latinx.”)
These examples “are part of the problem the Trump Administration aims to fix,” Halligan told Fox News. “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.”
“We are working with leadership at the Smithsonian to audit and review all content at the museums,” Halligan added, “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.”
The National Museum of American History describes its mission as “empower[ing] people to create a just and compassionate future by exploring, preserving, and sharing the complexity of our past.” The buzzwords “empowering,” “just,” and “compassionate” signal that Entertainment Nation’s imperative is not education but social justice activism – and social justice, of course, means dismantling the “oppressive” power structures of the Eurocentric, capitalist West and redistributing its prosperity to purportedly marginalized, nonwhite peoples.
Its purpose, then, is subversion, and Halligan stated this plainly. “Americans deserve a Smithsonian that inspires national pride, tells the truth, and reflects the greatness of this country,” she concluded. “Not one that serves as an agent for social change and cultural subversion.”
You may recall that in 2020, its National Museum for African American History and Culture in Washington DC was pressured to remove a chart in the “Whiteness” section of the museum’s “Talking About Race” online portal. That racist display described such qualities as “objective, rational linear thinking,” “hard work,” and “respecting authority” as attributes of “white dominant culture” – suggesting that nonwhites should reject these or be considered race traitors collaborating with the oppressor class.
Conservatives rightly protested – among them Donald Trump. Jr., who tweeted, “These aren’t ‘white’ values. They’re American values that built the world’s greatest civilization. They help you succeed here, no matter your color.” Absolutely true, but the race-mongers of cultural Marxism are on a mission to deconstruct that civilization, not succeed within it, and they can only accomplish that mission if they keep driving a wedge of bitter resentment and animosity between whites and the ridiculously termed “people of color.”
Museum officials at the time issued a statement defending the chart, claiming “It is important for us as a country to talk about race.” Please – we talk about race plenty. These saboteurs aren’t interested in the give-and-take of honest dialogue about race, otherwise they would acknowledge and promote how no country in world history has done more for civil rights and to atone for the slavery (which it abolished) of its early history; no, what they want is to impose their Marxist worldview on the Smithsonian-going public and to “rub raw the resentments,” as radical Left-wing strategist Saul Alinsky put it, of racial discontent in order to further the revolution.
The Smithsonian is an institution captured by wokeness, as all our institutions have been. That wokeness must be targeted, rooted out, and eradicated wherever it rears its ugly head. If we are to truly make America – and the West – great again, there must be zero tolerance for these Marxists and their cult of envy, death and destruction.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior
These problems can be easily fixed by changing the placards, handouts, and recorded audio to centrist standards.
Certainly it as the article so clearly points out, the imbecilic individuals that are responsible for including all that reprehensible woke leftist twaddle don’t want to do that, nor do they. care to follow the mandates to refrain from their biased inflammatory rhetoric. Do fire them & cut Smithsonian’s funding until they comply & create content that comports with honesty, dignity & unbiased curation.
Go back before WOKENESS to the way things were before Joetato.
To understand the mind of America, let us read the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence. To understand how that sublime ideal was first rejected, read Woodrow Wilson’s comments regarding that Preamble. The former speaks of God-given natural rights, something granted to all people, in all places, and in all times. The latter totally rejects that notion in favor of the idea that it is government that grants and/or denies at will certain rights. The exhibit spoken of arguably is a manifestation of the latter, ultimately a failure to acknowledge American ideal exceptionalism, in favor of mere administrative authority, Critical Theory (CT) derived “social justice,” and the like.
Something not a lot of people are aware of is that during his days in academia Wilson pioneered the perversion of history to advance an activist agenda.
A great deal of the ills in historiography that exist today can be directly attributed to him.
In the summer of 2000, my husband went to the Smithsonian on a visit to Washington, D.C. My previous visit had been in 1966 and was a wonderful, American experience.
The exhibits were horribly anti-American. The exhibit on WWII zeroed in on everything negative about us, real or imagined. It was sickening and so we simply left.
Every time I read that summation of white folk that they have the qualities of “objective, rational linear thinking, hard work, and respecting authority” (those are bad things?), I wonder, by extension, then, if non-white people are biased, irrational, lazy, pains in the neck? Just asking.
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984
My multi-culti fatigue continues. Every single example above has, at its core, directly or indirectly, the white westerner as a common enemy, the defeat of which provides the raison d’être.
Any people embracing this as the focal point of their existence in the U.S. must return to his ancestral homelands. Let’s begin with those who wave their country’s flag while deriding our country while refusing to leave it. I am sick of the envy. Enough already.
Show pictures of leftists burning Free Speach signs and Hollywood Traitors like Hanoi Jane sitting on the Viet Coing AA Gun
Thank you for publishing this…however the “we are working with” quote from the White House is a red flag to me…literally….Lonnie Bunch has shown his colors many times over many years and needs to be replaced by an outspoken Trump supporter asap if any improvements are to be made. In fact all the museum directors and curators need to be replaced with anti-communists.
I visited the Museum of American History in the mid 80s (during the Reagan Administration). The exhibits were of interest historically, socially and patriotically… something for everyone. One featured a set of MASH, another detailed the progression of medicine through pharmaceutical compounds from snake oil wagons to revolutionary advances of insulin. This past March my husband and I visited the mall. The American History Museum disgraced our nation, its people and itself. The vast space had two major exhibits… Entertainment, mostly film, radio, TV and music. I’ve seen Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers and other displays over the years elsewhere. In passing was a technology exhibit that hardly attracted attention (due to DEI?)
We later had the opportunity to see our Congressman in his office. When asked if we were enjoying our trip to DC, I mentioned my disappointment in the American History Museum. He said he hadn’t been there in some time. I’ll send him this article supporting my claim.