"The White House published a list of Smithsonian exhibits, programming and artwork it considered objectionable..."

"... on Thursday, one week after announcing that eight of the institution’s museums must submit their current wall text and future exhibition plans for a comprehensive review. The list borrows heavily from a recent article in The Federalist that objected to portrayals at several museums. It argued that the National Museum of American History promoted homosexuality by hanging a pride flag; overemphasized Benjamin Franklin’s relationship to slavery in its programming; and supported open borders by depicting migrants watching fireworks 'through an opening in the U.S.-Mexico border wall.'...:

I'm reading "White House Lists Smithsonian Exhibits It Finds Objectionable/The Trump administration highlighted material dealing with topics like sexuality, slavery and immigration" (NYT).

Here's that official list put out by The White House.

Most striking item on the list: "The National Museum of African Art displayed an exhibit on 'works of speculative fiction that bring to life an immersive, feminist and sacred aquatopia inspired by the legend of Drexciya,' an 'underwater kingdom populated by the children of pregnant women who had been thrown overboard or jumped into the ocean during the Middle Passage.'"

Notably out of context item on the list: "An American History Museum exhibit features a depiction of the Statue of Liberty 'holding a tomato in her right hand instead of a torch, and a basket of tomatoes in her left hand instead of a tablet.'" There's an image of it, and it looks like really bad art — amateurish junk. But here's the Smithsonian's description of the object and why it is in the collection:

"How much empathy can the country muster for Biden? In both red states and blue ones? In the well-lit spaces on social media and in the darkest corners?"

"Among his supporters and those who voted for his rival? Biden doesn’t have the benefit of having been out of office for years. And while he has been on a redemption tour of sorts, only history can define his presidency. Nostalgia hasn’t had a chance to cast him in a warm glow. The scars of a political dogfight haven’t even begun to scab over. The old ones are still raw and weeping, even as the country accumulates new ones. Vice President JD Vance argued that it was possible to have two thoughts about Biden at once: to wish him good health while also, essentially, calling him a terrible president in the same breath."

Writes Robin Givhan, in "Biden was empath-in-chief. Can a divided country offer him empathy? In the face of Biden’s cancer diagnosis, does the country have the capacity for empathy despite the political rancor, distrust, alternative facts and lies?" (WaPo).

Shame on us for wanting to know the truth about what happened? Who was President these past few years? We're supposed to sink into a pool of respectful silence and not demand to know? We're not supposed to be skeptical about the timing of the cancer news, which seems so perfectly aimed to shut us up about Tapper's book and the Hur recordings?

And what is this "redemption tour of sorts"? I had not noticed. I had to ask A.I., which pointed me to his "paid speeches, interviews (e.g., his appearance on The View), and international trips (e.g., attending Pope Francis’ funeral in Rome)." He wasn't waiting for years to pass, wounds to heal, and nostalgia to set in. He and his enablers were doing positive propaganda. Why should we shut up? Answer: because he has an aggressive cancer. Of course, we feel the silencing power.

What ugly people we are to still want the truth! Who was President these past few years?!

"This is America showing itself because it was never in you in the first place. So why am I upset that you're upending something..."

"... that was never in you in the first place? I'm not saying that we shouldn't be upset. We definitely should be upset. But why are we-- we can't be upset at people that it was never in them in the first place to even care about somebody else."

Said a black woman, heard in episode 857 of "This American Life," "Museum of Now."

She is commenting on the removal of the 2-block-long, 50-foot-tall words, "Black Lives Matter," that had been set in concrete in a street near the White House.

Prompted by the question, "Is this more honest, actually, that they actually are ripping this up?," we hear her struggling in real time to understand why the de-installation of the motto wasn't upsetting her or wasn't upsetting her that much.

One might say the original installation was propaganda and pandering. Jackhammering it out of there said something accidental and authentic.

Trump seeks to excise "divisive" ideology from the Smithsonian Institution.

Read the text of his "Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Restores Truth and Sanity to American History."  Excerpts:

The Order directs the Vice President, who is a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, to work to eliminate improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology from the Smithsonian and its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.

What was happening at the zoo?! 

More generally, how do you decide what is "improper, divisive, or anti-American"? I'm sure some will say that it's improper, divisive, and anti-American to sanitize race out of the presentation of our history and culture.

Does the order step down from that abstraction and get specific as it discusses enforcement of the Trumpian vision?

Joe Rogan observes that "There's actually some things that are organic for some weird reason."

I'm listening to his podcast with Adam Curry (who invented podcasting). Scroll to 2:49:39 for this part, which comes after some discussion of the role of the CIA in the field of arts (Abstract Expressionism) and entertainment (the music of Laurel Canyon):

ROGAN: The real kooky people probably think you're my handler or something. Because you created podcasting. Because there's that thought that... there's a whole financed and backed right-wing ecosystem that's created these podcasts.... This is just stupidity. This is the problem where when you look at some conspiracies, you think, oh, well that applies to all things.... There's actually some things that are organic for some weird reason.

Notice that the use of "organic" is the same as we saw — in the first post of the day — from the Canada hockey coach. The fighting was, he claimed, "as organic as it gets."

They weren't really saying babies are racist, but they made it easy to say that's what they're saying, and they were taking taxpayer money to propagate something the people don't want.

Funding for racist baby training is canceled https://t.co/M7H1ks4Vbr

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 15, 2025

I assume videos like this are scripted by someone other than the person on camera. Are these not commercials?

pic.twitter.com/4M5uNd6U0l

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2025

I watched the Super Bowl last night because I fell prey to the rumor that Elon Musk had spent $40 million of his own money on several pro-DOGE commercials that would air. That didn't happen, and I spent the evening viewing the actual commercials, which, by the way, were terrible.

They weren't funny. And since any damned thing you can think of — such as the singer Seal as an actual seal — you can make look "real," there's no wow factor in showing anything. And how many times was the narrative arc simply: 1. Wonder what this is an ad for? 2. Oh, yeah, that.

Anyway, propaganda for DOGE, yeah, why not? Let the anti-DOGE folk propagandize back. I'm sure there's some clever way to express the old anti-transparency idea. Maybe a glossy CGI take on the old metaphor of government as a sausage factory. You like the sausage well enough, so don't be looking inside.

"THE LEFT WING 'RAG,' KNOWN AS 'POLITICO,' SEEMS TO HAVE RECEIVED $8,000,000"

Donald Trump is all-caps-ing — at Truth Social — about the biggest scandal of them all:

LOOKS LIKE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS HAVE BEEN STOLLEN AT USAID, AND OTHER AGENCIES, MUCH OF IT GOING TO THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA AS A “PAYOFF” FOR CREATING GOOD STORIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS. THE LEFT WING “RAG,” KNOWN AS “POLITICO,” SEEMS TO HAVE RECEIVED $8,000,000. Did the New York Times receive money??? Who else did??? THIS COULD BE THE BIGGEST SCANDAL OF THEM ALL, PERHAPS THE BIGGEST IN HISTORY! THE DEMOCRATS CAN’T HIDE FROM THIS ONE. TOO BIG, TOO DIRTY!

ADDED: I don't know what's been going on lately, but I blogged this on September 6, 2022: 

"We want to prove that being nonpartisan is actually the more successful positioning."

Said Mathias Döpfner, quoted in "Politico’s new German owner has a ‘contrarian’ plan for American media/Mathias Döpfner has global ambitions for what he calls a more ‘nonpartisan’ kind of journalism — even as his own politics are hard to pin down" (Washington Post).

"Americans are too ornery to fall for TikTok propaganda/Banning TikTok may be legally sound but not really necessary."

Writes Megan McArdle (at WaPo)(free-access link).

I am wary of Chinese control over such an influential app and, potentially, its user data. But the internet is spying on us all the time, and I presume the Chinese already get a hold of a lot of that data. As for the Chinese influence over what we see... the Chinese government will surely slip some subtler nudges in among the makeup tutorials and cat videos.... But if you think that kind of gentle sculpting is so effective, you need to explain why the more overt efforts of countless establishment institutions, including our major social media companies, failed to get the American public to mask up, lock down and repudiate Donald Trump. I suspect the Chinese propagandists will simply discover what Americans already know: We’re too ornery to be controlled by anyone, including an algorithm.

We are affected by speech, and speech is important because it affects us, but the way it affects us is infinitely complicated. It's cute to use the word "ornery," but it doesn't express what we really are, and it's deceptive to refer to "control," because even if we can't be "controlled," we are open and vulnerable to complex influence. I'm "ornery" enough to resist this assurance that speech doesn't matter. I defend freedom of speech because speech does matter. 

And it troubles me to see "makeup tutorials and cat videos." People who talk like that are revealing that they don't use TikTok. They don't know what it is. I could show you thousands of things that are not transitory fluff, but just as an example, let me show you this man:

Transcending conspiracy theory: "We should instead be figuring out what they’re trying to distract us from with all this conspiracy catnip."

From Bret Weinstein, at X:

These attacks are connected to each other through Fort Bragg, and to the NJ drones, which are connected to gravity manipulation, which connects it all to UAPs for the alien inclined. And it’s all happening between the election and inauguration. It’s clearly designed to be irresistible to “conspiracy theorists.” The smart money is on the Deep State and its partners preparing to vacate their offices and switch modes. They want us chasing our tails, and we are obliging them. We should instead be figuring out what they’re trying to distract us from with all this conspiracy catnip.

"'Sexual expression and imagery were common, widespread, legal and quite explicit' in the American colonies...

"... Professor Stone wrote in a 2019 law review article.... 'In the 18th century, bookstores in the American colonies carried an extraordinary array of erotica... and there were no statutes forbidding obscenity during the entire colonial era. To the contrary, throughout this period, the distribution, exhibition and possession of pornographic material was simply not thought to be any of the state’s business.' Indeed, Professor Stone wrote... Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin collected such works...."

From "What Would the Founders Have Thought About TikTok and Online Porn?/The Supreme Court will hear arguments next month in First Amendment challenges to laws banning the app and shielding minors from sexual materials on the internet" (NYT).

How does that connect to the TikTok problem?

"Mr. Trump would not be the first newly elected or re-elected president to assume his victory gave him more political latitude than it really did."

"Bill Clinton tried to turn his 5.6-point win in 1992 into a mandate to completely overhaul the nation’s health care system, a project that blew up in his face and cost his party both houses of Congress in the next midterm elections. George W. Bush likewise thought his 2.4-point win in 2004 would empower him to revise the Social Security system, only to fail and lose Congress two years later. And President Biden interpreted his 4.5-point win over Mr. Trump in 2020 as a mission to push through some of the most expansive social programs since the Great Society, then saw Republicans take control of the House in 2022 and the White House and Senate two years after that."

Writes Peter Baker, in "The 'Landslide' That Wasn’t: Trump and Allies Pump Up His Narrow Victory/The latest vote count shows that Donald J. Trump won the popular vote by one of the smallest margins since the 19th century. But Mr. Trump claims a 'powerful mandate'" (NYT).

Saying it's a landslide is the same thing as saying it's not a landslide: propaganda.

It's just a word.

Let's read WaPo's "note from our owner": "The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media."

I need to force myself to read this — by Jeff Bezos. He kept WaPo from publishing an explicit endorsement of Kamala Harris, who is all too obviously implicitly endorsed by WaPo every day. So I'll live-blog my reading of it. Let's go....

In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.

He's calling it a "profession," so it should have a system of ethical principles that must be followed, even if the polls don't go your way. 

"One celebrated offering is pigeon meat cured in a casing of beeswax and served suspended, like a ham, with the bird’s feathered head intact."

"Another is ice cream made from pig’s blood and filled with a ganache of juniper oil and deer-blood garum. ('Fatty, with a weird umami aftertaste,' in the judgment of a food blogger.) Not all diners appreciate being scolded during their meal. 'I care deeply about climate change, yet I don’t necessarily go to a restaurant to worry about it even more,' Jeff Gordinier wrote in Esquire. 'I go to a restaurant to get away from the awful news for a few hours.' One night, a guest threw the chicken cage across the domed room, declaring that he hadn’t signed up to be lectured by Greenpeace. But that was in itself a satisfying moment of theatre. On only three or four occasions has a diner walked out in disgust."

From "Can Your Stomach Handle a Meal at Alchemist? At the Copenhagen restaurant, diners are served raw jellyfish—and freeze-dried lamb brain served in a fake cranium—while videos about climate change swirl on the ceiling. Is it 'gastronomic opera,' or sensory overload?" (The New Yorker).

Ha ha. It's funny that the climate change propaganda is the most disgusting part.

I had to look up the word "garum," and I found "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Garum/A culinary star in ancient Rome, this fermented fish sauce transforms everything it touches" (Eater)("it has been called the ketchup of the Roman world"). Are we still doing that thing of thinking about Rome all the time?

Arlington Cemetery — "It is not a place for politics.... And I will never politicize them."

I've avoided discussing the topic, because I can see that to talk about it is to violate the principle that the military dead should not be politicized. And yet to follow that principle is to cramp political debate about war, and political debate about war should be central to every presidential campaign. And the assertion that this is no place for politics is itself political debate.

But the main reason I'm going to start talking about this issue is because the Kamala Harris X account put up this long tweet yesterday. I've boldfaced the quotes I used for the post title:

As Vice President, I have had the privilege of visiting Arlington National Cemetery several times. It is a solemn place; a place where we come together to honor American heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice in service of this nation. It is not a place for politics. And yet, as was reported this week, Donald Trump’s team chose to film a video there, resulting in an altercation with cemetery staff. Let me be clear: the former president disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt. This is nothing new from Donald Trump. This is a man who has called our fallen service members “suckers” and “losers” and disparaged Medal of Honor recipients. A man who, during a previous visit to the cemetery, reportedly said of fallen service members, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” This is a man who is unable to comprehend anything other than service to himself. If there is one thing on which we as Americans can all agree, it is that our veterans, military families, and service members should be honored, never disparaged, and treated with nothing less than our highest respect and gratitude. And it is my belief that someone who cannot meet this simple, sacred duty should never again stand behind the seal of the President of the United States of America. I will always honor the service and sacrifice of all of America’s fallen heroes, who made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of our beloved nation and our cherished freedoms. I mourn them and salute them. And I will never politicize them.

Those cannot be words straight from the mind of Kamala Harris. They sound like words written for Joe Biden to read off a teleprompter, replete with his oft-repeated claim that Trump said  “suckers” and “losers” and “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” It's entirely political, including, of course, the assertion that it is not political.

Trump's visit to the cemetery was also political. It was a first move in a political game that Harris ought to have chosen not to play. But she couldn't get all her supporters to refrain from playing, and in the end, she jumped in. She made the obvious move, and it is an awful blunder. You knew it was a blunder — didn't you? (I hope you are at least that savvy) — but you just had to do it. 

If only you'd had the sense and the restraint to delete most of the words. Let me help retrospectively and uselessly:

"The word almost never spoken was the name of Ms. Harris’s actual hometown: Berkeley, Calif."

"That little yellow house sits on Bancroft Way in the university city known, fairly or not, for a hippy-dippy vibe where residents gamely embrace the nickname, 'People’s Republic of Berkeley.' Ms. Harris’s old neighborhood is now called Poets Corner for its preponderance of streets named for writers such as Chaucer and Byron. The neighbors, who tend a community garden and circulate a newsletter, have a theory about why Ms. Harris does not shout out her hometown much these days. 'Oh, people would definitely think Berserkeley!' said Anna Natille, who lives near Ms. Harris’s childhood home and was walking her pug, Figgy, past it last week. 'We have such a reputation for being on the far left, that we’re all a bunch of communists and socialists.' In other words, maybe not a great way to lure the country’s middle-of-the-road voters to the Democratic ticket.... 'Berkeley is viewed as the most liberal city in the United States, and we’re proud of that,' [[T]he mayor of Berkeley said. 'But maybe for some people in the red states, that may freak them out.'"

From "As Kamala Harris Claims Oakland, Berkeley Forgives/The vice president has virtually erased Berkeley, Calif., her hometown, from her campaign biography. The residents of 'the People’s Republic' say they get it" (NYT).

What if deception freaks people out? What if straight talk is a lure?

"You tell me how and why corporate media constantly speaks from the same exact script this way, verbatim. #KamalaIsJOY"

Not even herd animals are this flagrant about it. You tell me how and why corporate media constantly speaks from the same exact script this way, verbatim. #KamalaIsJOY pic.twitter.com/AHSE9Im1GL

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 9, 2024

ADDED: Byron York has "Joy! Irrational exuberance soars to new levels" (Washington Examiner). Excerpt:

"Stanford’s top disinformation research group collapses under pressure/The Stanford Internet Observatory provided real-time analysis..."

"... on viral election falsehoods but has struggled amid attacks from conservative politicians and activists." 

That's the headline at WaPo, and I'm wondering how the 2 parts of the headline relate to each other. Why did the Stanford Internet Observatory collapse? Was it because conservatives attacked it? How much of a struggle is it for a research group that specializes in monitoring disinformation to handle attacks? The word "amid" fudges the causal connection. Did X happen because of Y or did X and Y just happen around the same time?

The word "amid" also appears in the first sentence: "The Stanford Internet Observatory... has shed most of its staff and may shut down amid political and legal attacks that have cast a pall on efforts to study online misinformation."

"Amid" appears again in the 4th paragraph: "Students and scholars affiliated with the program say they have been worn down by online attacks and harassment amid the heated political climate for misinformation research, as legislators threaten to cut federal funding to universities studying propaganda."

Have I ever gone on "amid" alert before? Yes! In October 2013, there was a NYT headline, "Obama’s Uncertain Path Amid Syria Bloodshed." 

"Who is going to buy TikTok?"

Writes Charlie Warzel in "Welcome to the TikTok Meltdown/The ban is a disaster, even if you support it" (The Atlantic)(also noting that courts might find the ban unconstitutional and that China may block selling the algorithm).

At the heart of the government’s case...  is that TikTok is the beating heart of a social-media industrial complex that mines our data and uses them to manipulate our behavior....why, if the government believes this is true, should anyone have access to these tools?... 

One analysis of TikTok’s U.S. market values the app at $100 billion—a sum that rather quickly narrows down the field of buyers.... 

[A]s we’ve seen from Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, putting the fate of a social-media platform into the hands of a few highly motivated individuals can quickly turn into a nightmare.

"I think if work is asked to be accommodating, to be subservient, to be useful to, to be required to, to be subordinated to, then the artist is in trouble."

Said Richard Serra, quoted in "For Richard Serra, Art Was Not Something. It Was Everything. He was known as the Man of Steel. But the sculptor was also an eternal poet, reshaping our perception of space, says our critic" (NYT).

The Times critic Michael Kimmelman begins:

... Richard Serra died yesterday....

 It continues: