{"id":1120,"date":"2026-07-23T14:43:51","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T14:43:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=1120"},"modified":"2026-07-23T14:43:51","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T14:43:51","slug":"republicans-want-a-smithsonian-that-skips-historys-hard-parts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=1120","title":{"rendered":"Republicans want a Smithsonian that skips history\u2019s hard parts"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Your chances of running into a marketer at a neighborhood bar are slim but never zero. Given the remote-capable nature of the work and the continued growth of their economic sector, marketers have spread across the U.S., making the most of their relatively high salaries by moving away from the more expensive coastal centers of industry.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more The FBI\u2019s refusal to investigate ICE makes it a co-conspirator<\/a><\/p>\n

By and large, they\u2019re lovely people. But I live in fear of the moment when the conversation takes that dreaded turn toward the last redoubt of small talk: What do you do? Posed with that question, any halfway enthusiastic marketer is likely to let loose a litany of acronyms and jargon that cause a physiological response in listeners, or at least in me \u2014 a glazing over of the eyes that is instant and unavoidable. As with Microsoft Outlook, the board game CATAN and the rules of hurling, there\u2019s something there I can\u2019t bring myself to grasp, a Lovecraftian boredom that lies just beyond the borders of what I can perceive.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not one of those rubes who thinks a job is unimportant just because I can\u2019t make sense of it. My lack of understanding of aircraft engineering doesn\u2019t make the people who design them any less valuable, and the same goes for marketers. I\u2019m sure these people act on the world and see it changed in ways that bring them fulfillment. Their employers presumably think it\u2019s a fair trade. It might all sound like gibberish to me, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s fake. Sometimes, you just have to accept that you\u2019re talking to an expert who is speaking in terms beyond your ken.<\/span><\/p>\n

But this is not how the modern conservative movement operates. From the \u201cWhat is a woman?\u201d wing of YouTube provocateurs to the snowball-holding, climate change deniers on the floor of Congress, Republicans reject the idea that experts might know more than them. You see it in the pushback against the medical consensus on how to treat trans youth. It\u2019s there in the Trump administration\u2019s constant attacks on institutions of higher learning. To the GOP, any discussion of U.S. history that doesn\u2019t reach the same conclusion as a <\/span>Ram truck ad<\/span> is nothing more than woke nonsense.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s the pretense that brought <\/span>Anthea Hartig, an historian and the director of the Smithsonian Institution\u2019s National Museum of American History, before a House committee on Tuesday. Hartig\u2019s grilling was a chance for Republicans to score points with simple, black-and-white questions about the past that no historian could answer succinctly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, interrogated Hartig over the museum\u2019s assertion that Mickey Mouse drew inspiration from blackface minstrelsy. Reducing the idea to the point of absurdism, Gill asked Hartig if the cartoon character on countless children\u2019s backpacks was \u201cracist.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more MAGA\u2019s social safety net assault could turn away older voters<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s rooted in minstrelsy,\u201d she replied.<\/span><\/p>\n

Any close examination of the design of Walt Disney\u2019s most famous creation makes it obvious. The white gloves are an obvious tell, even before you even get to early film shorts that the House of Mouse would rather you forget or overlook altogether. There\u2019s a direct line between much of American pop culture and the minstrel show, and pointing that out doesn\u2019t mean that the country or the character are irredeemable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hartig pointed this out in her testimony. \u201cWe tell the truth about the times that the country fell short of its own founding ideals,\u201d she said. \u201cTelling 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.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Explaining history is all about context; nothing happens in a vacuum. You could say that the United States lost its mind and elected a game show host in 2016, and that might even be satisfying. An historian would likely recommend a deeper dive into the backlash against former president Barack Obama and the uneven recovery from the global financial crisis that he oversaw. Other historians might place Trump in the context of white rage and anti-immigrant sentiment. Hartig defended that drive to put moments in context because it\u2019s what gets her up in the morning. It\u2019s what she and countless other historians set out to do when they first started studying the past. They want to tell a good story, but with the added benefit of it being the truth. Republicans\u2019 inability to grasp that, like my befuddlement at marketing-speak, doesn\u2019t make what Hartig does any less real.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, the more complicated view of the past advocated by the people who study it for a living will never fly with conservatives. They\u2019re dead-set on excising any shagginess that doesn\u2019t fit their hidebound worldview, attacking textbooks and museums that dare to push beyond a straightforward explanation. They want simple answers to simple questions, which is not what the true study of history \u2014 and America \u2014 offers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more As Iran war escalates, U.S. is fighting from a weakened position<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A face-off between a Smithsonian official and congressional Republicans revealed the battle over America’s meaning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[337,4,5,557,6,1453,221,1454],"class_list":["post-1120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-american-history","tag-commentary","tag-donald-trump","tag-history","tag-maga","tag-national-museum-of-american-history","tag-republicans","tag-smithsonian"],"yoast_head":"\nRepublicans want a Smithsonian that skips history\u2019s hard parts - Relocation Across America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=1120\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Republicans want a Smithsonian that skips history\u2019s hard parts - 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