It's quite an exchange. Gill has a very well-planned set of question designed to destroy Hartig, and Hartig's defense is almost entirely restricted to long silences and diligent note-taking, as if she's endeavoring to learn from Gill:
GILL: "Director Hardig... would you say that that the goal of history, even if it's not properly carried out... is to be objective?... Doesn't that seem a little bit concerning? It it certainly does to me because as part of this white supremacy document that your organization has promoted, objectivity is a core and defining aspect of white supremacy culture. Do you think that it's the goal of the Smithsonian Institution to promote white supremacy culture?... Are you promoting a white supremacy culture at the Smithsonian?... One of your goals is objectivity, and your mass action toolkit references objectivity as a defining characteristic of white supremacy culture.... Is Mickey Mouse racist?... According to the Smithsonian Institution, one of your exhibits referenced Mickey Mouse as representing 'vestiges of longstanding traditions of blackface minstrelsy'..."
ADDED: Here's the NYT report: "G.O.P. Lawmakers Join White House in Challenging a Smithsonian Museum/A House subcommittee questioned the director of the National Museum of American History after a scathing White House report characterized it as insufficiently patriotic":
Ms. Hartig contested the thrust of the recent White House report about the museum she leads.
“We unwaveringly attest that it does not fairly or accurately characterize the full body of work at the museum,” Ms. Hartig said at the hearing.... “When historians talk about reframing a traditional narrative, we don’t mean erasing it... We mean adding the evidence, the voices, the objects that earlier tellings left out so that more Americans can see themselves reflected in the national story."...
“We honor the Declaration, the Revolution, the Constitution, our national symbols,” she said. “And we tell the truth about the times that the country fell short of its own founding ideals. Telling our story fully is a form of respect for the American people and a commitment to constantly being in pursuit of a more perfect union....
“Walk the building with me,” she said. “Stand in awe in front of the Star-Spangled Banner. I believe what you will find, madams and sirs, is not an institution that has forgotten its country, but one that loves it enough to tell the full sweep of history, our triumphs and our struggles.”
Posts
98 comments:
he does this regularly, because all these institutions are embedded with this insanity. It's like shooting ducks in a barrel.
Check out his grilling of the Director at NPR last year.
This exchange engages & amuses. These two should do a campus-debate tour
Gill would do better to use “a” instead of “the.”
If you go online to your favorite search engine and type "dumb as a post" into the search box, a picture of Anthea Hartig will appear.
It astounds me; she should be fired today for general incompetence.
Hartig stumbled when she twice said “we didn’t create the Tool Kit.” Gill said both times that the Smithsonian was “promoting” the tool kit. She was smart not to quibble about what the definition of “promote” is but Gill isn’t stupid. He scored a blow making her look bad about dodging the question.
Hartig should take the minutes at a Homeowners Association Board. She took more notes during that exchange than I took during all of high school.
In that exchange, Gill also asks her about 'politeness', another supposed marker of white supremacy according to the Smithsonian.
They should just get to it and fuck.
If one has visited the African American History Smithsonian building...well...it duplicates Obama/Biden policy. Anita Hill had an exhibit but there was no mention of Clarence Thomas. The allocation of space is aimed a the local black population over a museum per se (e.g., visitation reservations required because the locals pack it as a social club; top floor full of 20th century pop/rock music content).
My main takeaway from the video is her routine slippery condescending DC career manager tone, tenor, and thought process.
I didn't see it as her learning so much as the standard way that the career staff deflect just enough to 'pass' but not offend other political factions, and then wait for a change in administration.
After Hartig said Mickey Mouse isn’t racist, Gill tried to show Mickey Mouse was. That was the best part of the exchange.
Minstrels lacking minstrelsy
Both of them did well. Certainly, her testimony was far superior to the debacle of the Ive League presidents a while back.
The pageboy haircut and the pearls gave Hartig an edge.
Latina power is exclusionary, it should be Latinx power.
@Howard --
"Latinx" offended way too many LatinOs and LatinAs so the Thought Police shifted to "Latine"...which can be misread as "Latrine."
Latrine Power with Scrubbing Bubbles
"What are you writing there?"
"Memo to self to never get in this position again."
"Please, please, give me an easy question. Like the color my panties. Please."
The bit about selling the Latina Power knickknacks at the gift shop was small ball. Was his point that it stereotypes Latinas or that there should be hawking some Polish Power trinkets too?
Not touched upon here, 'punctuality' is also a marker of white supremacy, as is, my personal favorite, goal-oriented behavior.
the singing lark that sings unseen / the minstrelsy that solitude loves best
What white ethnicities actually embody these traits of objectivity, politeness, and punctuality?
The WASPs are dead & gone. They’re with O’Leary in the grave.
I never really thought about it, but I guess the early Mickey Mouse is somewhat minstrelsy, but it's a stretch to define him as racist.......Gil is always polite and well spoken in his questioning which makes his questions all the more devastating.. She handled it better than most, which is not to say that she handled it well. The best way to handle it is to come down with a sudden case of Ebola that requires strict isolation and home care.
Goal-oriented behavior is not exclusively white. Blacks are definitely goal-oriented. Their goals are just different. Reparations is a goal for instance.
Gill is far above the typical Congressional blowhard, and he provided an entertaining application of three core tenets of the Rules for Radicals:
"Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."
"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."
"A good tactic is one your people enjoy."
Is not filibuster mark of white supremacists?
Race and traits:
The "N word" is explosive in public discourse, but "Colored-People Time" or CPT is the explosive workplace term. Per a search, this started in a black newspaper in 1914. It's not denied today, but it shifted to "monochronic" versus "polychronic" time keeping.
‘Gill would do better to use “a” instead of “the.” ‘
Why should white people be against "White supremacy" especially since white people built the country and are still the majority?
👆okay, Karen👆
And of course, why is the Smithsonian thinking about race, and how bad white people are, when this is supposed to be a color-blind society?
Anthea Hartig - is she a Trumpster? If not, why hasn't Trump appointed his own person to this position?
I appreciate the Congressman grilling her, but isn't he accepting the left's premise? Namely, that there's something called "white supremacy". Is there jewish supremacy? Is there black Supremacy in, say, South africa?
Why are we accepting the use of this term?
Rabid Diversity? That's a DEIst policy of the far left (e.g. [National] Socialists et al). #HateLovesAbortion
"'Colored-People Time' or CPT is the explosive workplace term."
What about "Notorious Epithet Time" or NET (h/t JSM)? Aaron McGruder used it on The Boondocks so can be blamed for any explosions.
I used to go to Native American pow-wows when I was young. They had 'Indian Time'.
She will tell her best friends how she outfoxed the troglodyte Texas Republican. She called him sir, she wasted time by asking him politely to repeat questions, and used up another large portion of his time by taking those interesting notes.
Her relentless cool was even smoother than troglodyte Gill's. It matched her perfect haircut. And now she can consult those notes this weekend and provide herself with total recall of what color blouse the lady in the fourth row, three to the right, was wearing.
"Reparations is a goal for instance."
Why? Communists think everything should be free.
Gill should have his own 1/2-hour news program.... Somewhere.
Howard said...
Latina power is exclusionary, it should be Latinx power.
F**k you and your genocidal racism, Howard.
Crawl back in your hole.
John Henry
I really enjoyed the note taking. Next time Rubio, Bessant or anyone else gets in front of Whitehorse, AOC or any of the other assholes, when they start asking questions start taking notes.
When they finish asking questions, keep writing for 30-60 seconds saying "Uh-huh, just a second" then when finished writing "What was your question again?"
John Henry
Endeavoring to have your cake and eat it too.
Unless cake is a vestige of longstanding nefarious traditions. 'Oh my', as George Takei might say.
(ai saves the day)
There isn't white supremacy. East Asians have a higher average IQ. They do well by acting white, though.
I used to LOVE going to the Smithsonian in the 50s and early 60s when it was mostly just the castle and the air and space museum was a Quonset hut out back. It really was like wandering around in the attic of a 200 year old house that had been inhabited by families of manic hoarders.
Sadly the castle is closed. The History museum is pretty cool but when we spent a day there 15 years ago it seemed really sanitized.
I don't remember if it was the history museum but there was an exhibit on climate whatsit (I think it was global warming at the time) and I was explaining an exhibit about CO2 to my son. How it was bullshit and why.
Some middle aged guy came up to us with a clipboard and a museum ID tag and started asking us questions. How were we enjoying the museum, where were we from then names and more. Creeped me out entirely. It was exactly what I would have expected of thought police tracking non-believers.
My wife and so thought I was paranoid and they were probably right. It was probably a wholly innocent customer survey.
On the other hand, just because I am paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get me. I operate on the basis that they is no such thing as excessive paranoia
John Henry
I note that IEE and Inga and DDDriver and the rest of the leftist gang are refusing to comment here and defend their side's white supremecy ideas... you know, that things like being punctual, polite, and hard working is racist white people things. I want to see IEE tell us why his side thinks that being polite is racist.
There are some photographs of Anthea Hartig on the internet that make her look a little bit like Jennifer Aniston if you squint real hard and use your imagination.
---- Gill should have his own 1/2-hour news program.... Somewhere.
Wiki says Brandon Gill was editor in chief of the Dartmouth conservative student newspaper. He later started an online political newspaper. He also married Dinesh D'Souza's daughter Danielle. Three Dartmouth grads.
--- There are some photographs of Anthea Hartig on the internet that make her look a little bit like
Ann Althouse's twin sister.
Albinophobia? A Rainbow spectrum?
That said, does the Diversitist favor the Hutu or Tutsi, Mandela's Xhosa or Zulu, Kenyan elite or deplorables, Hamas or Fatah, etc? Is Diversity a fetus... feature of Progressive Critical Theories exercised with liberal license?
Thanks John Henry. That's the exact response I was looking for 😜. I know you prefer Hispanic.
“Sadly the castle is closed. The History museum is pretty cool but when we spent a day there 15 years ago it seemed really sanitized.”
The Castle is open, but not much of interest is in it, as it is the site of the Smithsonian administration. The cool art deco building next to it, the Arts and Industry building has been closed for renovation, it might be open now. I played music at the Smithsonian annual picnic a few years ago. I talked briefly to Lonny Bunch about nothing particularly important.
I've heard that bangs are part of White Supremacy. Is that why you have bangs?
Have you ever been to a black barbershop? Why not?
The goal of any Washington bureaucrat going through a Congressional hearing is simply to keep breathing so that at the end, they are still alive, intact, and continuing to hold their position. It doesn't matter how ridiculous she or her department sounds, acts, or operates. What matters is that there are so many of them to take out, to remove, to disband, that by the sheer numbers, it'll never get done in one administration. And so, the goal is to keep breathing. At some point Trump will be gone. Gill will still be there. But unless he gets a large focused group of Congresspeople to go along with him, there's not much more he can do about cleaning out the Smithsonian.
Trump could. But Trump has a lot on his plate right now. The world. This is how bureaucrats manage to stay alive and keep doing bureaucratic things. They are much like cockroaches. Hard to kill one of them. Impossible to wipe out the entire nest.
She was probably not writing notes at all. She was more likely writing "Brandon Gill is a dick" over and over again like some government salaried Bart Simpson.
BTW, Brandon Gill is not a dick. He actually just gets right to the heart of an issue. In the world of bureaucrats, that would make him a dick.
"These two should do a campus-debate tour"
Someone would get shot.
Walt Disney only had two colors to work with and all of the animated characters had similar, very stark, black and white designs. What did the freaks at the Smithsonian expect? And, if you're fair and "objective," doesn't seem like these early cartoons were more influenced by Japanese Kabuki masks than they were by minstrel shows?
Nevertheless, maybe the creeps have a point. Think about the exploding cigars in Looney Tunes. The unfortunate cat or rat or whatever was always left with a sooty, black (!!!) face. That's got to be racist.
MASS Action Toolkit stands for "Museums As a Site for Social Action Toolkit." For those interested in reading more (and not the New York Times)...
This is a link to it, https://incluseum.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/df17e-toolkit_10_2017.pdf.
And this is a link to the White House report, "Saving America's Story," https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Smithsonian-Report-Saving-Americas-Story.pdf.
There is no excuse for Hartig being unprepared to answer the kinds of questions Gill asked based upon those documents.
Howard said...
Thanks John Henry. That's the exact response I was looking for 😜. I know you prefer Hispanic.
Depends on which of the 5-6 legal definitions of Hispanic you use. Or maybe the 8-10 cultural definitions.
John Henry
It seems she's trying to reframe the word reframe.
Gill was on time, and polite, and objective. Raaaaaaaaacist!
"If you go online to your favorite search engine and type "dumb as a post" into the search box, a picture of Anthea Hartig will appear."
Sorry, that would be Patty Murray. She's so fucking dumb I think it may be contagious.
I get annoyed by people who focus on the color of someone’s skin calling others racist.
We have these people, and, they are mostly women, in our institutions, who are doing their best to bastardize the institution's mission into a left wing crazy standard. How do we purge them, short of repealing the 19th amendment?
Like NPR, the Smithsonian wants to fundamentally transform America.
The white left are addicted to calling everyone a "racist"
It gets old.
"Museums As a Site for Social Action Toolkit", because "Museums As a Site for Displaying and Describing Historical Artifacts" is not nearly activist enough, I guess.
I've had the same experience as Original Mike regarding 'Indian Time'. We were repatriating Native American remains to a deeded acre at our historic site for ceremonial burial on their original tribal land. Took forever. Each Federally recognized grouping of the tribe (and there were 3) squabbled endlessly. We had to stop putting deadlines on the project, as each one flew by. It was eventually completed, and there are still individual burials that continue from time to time. I will say, that when all was finished, it was agreed to have been a success.
You will be lectured to... non stop.
The “Hose Doge committee”??
Taking notes is also quintessentially white behavior.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9rU21tJT9A4
Vance said...
I note that IEE and Inga and DDDriver and the rest of the leftist gang are refusing to comment here and defend their side's white supremecy ideas... you know, that things like being punctual, polite, and hard working is racist white people things. I want to see IEE tell us why his side thinks that being polite is racist.
****
I regularly notice when our Leftist friends avoid commenting on a subject. I figure it's because a) on some topics, the Left's position is just patently indefensible, or b) this topic wasn't covered in the talking points email sent out to them every day.
do these over-paid white leftists allow their fresh leftist/ just out of leftwing college do all the document /exhibit writing? while she has a long union-boss-style cocktail lunch?
Leftist look for racism and force everyone to obsess over racism, non-stop. Guilty! You're all guilty! Except for the white left. They all get a free pass.
*Sorry, that would be Patty Murray.*
Yep. I had meetings with her (and her staff) when she'd come back to Washington state.
Her staffers were competent. She's as dumb as she looks.
Patriarchy <> Right Wings.
Matriarchy <> Left Wing
Do I have it covered?
*** Depends on which of the 5-6 legal definitions of Hispanic you use. Or maybe the 8-10 cultural definitions. ****
The one that gets me is how a blond, blue-eyed Spaniard, with a name like Rodriguez that trumpets his Germanic/Visigothic ancestry, can grow up in an extremely white city like Burgos where he faces not the smallest particle of racial discrimination for a single day in his life, but as soon as he steps off the plane in the United States, he can immediately demand special favors and handouts from any government body, large corporation, or educational institution for being a "Hispanic".
""Her staffers were competent. {Patty Murray['s as dumb as she looks."
I think you meant the people who voted for this dimwit.
Let’s get down to brass tacks. Historically, which of the white ethnicities in the U.S. have been the most supreme?
I just don’t seem them joining together as Whites. Too many differences.
“ We mean adding the evidence, the voices, the objects that earlier tellings left out so that more Americans can see themselves reflected in the national story."
Sounds kind of DEI-ish to me. Not the first part. But the more Americans can see themselves part.
"so that more Americans can see themselves reflected in the national story."
Would that be the story of the slave nation the left hates? Why would they want to see themselves reflected in *that*?
He’s a Dartmouth College alum.
Brandon Gill is married to Dinesh D’Souza‘s daughter Danielle, which is another reason to like him.
Anthea Hartig doesn’t look anything like Althouse.
There were fools in European courts before America was discovered and before Europeans bought African slaves. You don't need minstrelsy to understand Mickey Mouse. Mickey is actually not in blackface but in whiteface. The rest of him is black, but the cartoons were black and white and that left few options. The more ridiculous Donald Duck is all white
"In that exchange, Gill also asks her about 'politeness', another supposed marker of white supremacy according to the Smithsonian"
My answer to this stuff is "Fine. I guess I'll just be supreme."
Dave Begley said...
Anthea Hartig doesn’t look anything like Althouse
You think?
https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA28oP0K.img?w=768&h=512&m=6&x=186&y=165&s=837&d=515
https://live.staticflickr.com/5294/5406192456_4453e44e04_z.jpg
Kai Akker said...
She will tell her best friends how she outfoxed the troglodyte Texas Republican. She called him sir, she wasted time by asking him politely to repeat questions, and used up another large portion of his time by taking those interesting notes.
I just want to point out she gets paid more than most people on this message board.
She may be a stupid mediocrity. and a stupid mediocre woman who got a woman job.
But she is getting paid more than 3 average HVAC repairmen to sit in air conditioning and write stupid things on flyers.
"But she is getting paid more than 3 average HVAC repairmen to sit in air conditioning and write stupid things on flyers."
She probably has underlings who are being paid more than most people on this message board to write the stupid things- she just thinks them up.
WHY is our Smithsonian Institution promoting WHITE Supremacy?
WHY is this lady using OUR tax dollars to promote WHITE Supremacy?
WHY is this Racist WHITE WOMAN not in PRISON??
HOW LONG will we have to continue to allow this to continue?
Hardig is the end result of DEI.... Really.. this is what they produce... very well paid lazy ignorant idiots.
I enjoy the shorts that Gill is in, as he destroys each witness. I didn't watch this one, but how about at the conclusion he demands of the witness, "Are you going to continue to do this?"
Mrs Duffy and I visited the Smithsonian, including the American Heritage museum, about three years ago. The first “artifact” on display we saw as we walked in the door was a 1970’s low-rider from LA. We flew 3000 miles across the country to see a California low-rider. Hanging on the wall was a huge banner reading “Stop Asian Hate.” To the right was the Civil Rights exhibit with the same photos I’ve seen a thousand times with no real new insight. And on it went.
We were hoping to see exhibits and artifacts from the Colonial period, Revolution period, pre-Civil War. We wanted to see letters from Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR and so on.
It was all woke crap. These people who run the Smithsonian should be run out of town. They’re boring, woke, parasites
What's the point of fighting stupidity? The Smithsonian has, for half a century at least, whitewashed (it's just a term) the reality of pre-settler Native culture; facts about share croppers' most slave-like lives; indentured servant contracts; important realities about the limited numbers of slaveholders, though not their real cruelty, and Ellis Island's strict rules, thus the real history of immigration. It is also dumbly presentist. History is context. The Smithstonian abandoned that concept a long time ago. At least the Newseum, that Temple of Babba WaWa worship, died of stupidity.
Nothing screams career leftist government leadership, than claiming you have absolutely no idea what goes on in your own department...
It's great theater, and necessary theater, that changes nothing.
A standard MO would be for the Smithsonian to offer grants for "Technical Assistance," and then pay NGOs/"friends of the administration" to generate the "white supremacy" documents in question. The grant offer would, almost certainly here, target black/DEI "minority-owned businesses." They did this with language about "lived experiences" and "relevant knowledge" to make all non-black vendors uncompetitive. They also gave "preference points" to minority-owned businesses and "historically black colleges and universities" (HBCUs). This was a routine Biden admin practice.
They'd then have the final product approved by a mid-level manager far removed from the executive level add a disclaimer about "External product where views may differ from the official policies of the Smithsonian."
This parallels the USAID system, and happens in numerous agencies. Ms Hartig could then come in and play dumb and slow to minimize damaging sound bites (i.e., she learned from the university admin debacle).
Curious George, Jim:
Hey -- that's "Patty 'Osama the Daycare Provider' Murray" to you. Please show some respect!
I think I'd put Hirono from Hawaii as the dumbest senator, but it's a tight race.
In Egypt, the "Egyptian minute" is a common joke with us furrigners. They always say "One minute!" and we say "Is that an Egyptian minute or an American minute?" They usually laugh.
So we have over 90 comments, and nary a leftist to be found except Howard screeching about how we need to call hispanic people latrines. Why don't leftists want to defend their White Supremecist ideas?
Vance, I know that you know why the Althouse lefties are absent. It's always like this on certain topics. There was not one bit of wiggle room left for their sorry alternate-reality fantasies. They only come out in the dark when they can pretend, and hope to escape, without being as clearly scrutinized.
The funny takeaway from this is that the Smithsonian Director is incapable of disavowing an obviously over-the-top item of woke BS peddled by her underlings. A thoughtful pause, and her saying, "Whoever wrote that should not have done so," would have been a great resolution. "Firing the responsible party will occur, " would have been icing on the cake. But no! She cannot disavow even this absurd example of the boot of leftism pushing on the face of society.
Anthony,
In southern Sudan we had "Sudan Local Time" which some of the locals used in the same way us expats did.
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