These exchanges are hard to watch unless you enjoy watching dishonest, woke propagandists being publicly exposed as the disgraces to their professions and the enemies of democracy that they are.
When the White House announced that it was reviewing Smithsonian exhibits for left-wing bias about a year ago, I wrote here (in part):
“There can be little question that the current curators of the Smithsonian museums have used their positions to promote woke agenda items and to manipulate the exhibits to try to indoctrinate museum visitors. Most of what the Federalist flagged as well as the White House’s items are genuinely objectionable…For example, Ibram X. Kendi is a race-hustler, and his presence anywhere in the museums is signature significance.
“Does the Pride Flag have genuine historical significance? I suppose so. But emphasizing Ben Franklin’s early slave-holding stinks of the “1619 Project”: by the time that he was a Founder, Ben had become a vocal foe of slavery.
“I believe that a nation’s museums should err on the side of emphasizing the positive aspect of its history and culture, but that’s easier to say than to execute. Substituting one extreme bias for another is not a solution. But as I wrote in the previous post on this topic, I think finding an ethical balance will be a futile exercise.”
In a previous post, I had written,
Ethics Alarms 
You know, I don’t think she’s all that uncomfortable during that exchange with the Congressman. I think she’s quite comfortable having the Smithsonian propagate all that “anti-racist” “scholarship” without having any compunction whatsoever to stand by any of it. She’s just performing. She doesn’t even read anything her outfit puts out. It’s just all the current thinking so she lets it go out. I think this is a standard issue lefty pose. I’m sure she will gladly pose as an Ibrahem X. Kendi fan at work or at a cocktail party, but I’m pretty sure she’s never read anything he’s written or even cares a whit about anything he’s written. She’s just going with the flow. If she’s read any of this “scholarship,” she’s doubtless just said, “Yeah, sure. Whatever.” I suspect after the hearing, she went out for drinks with her staff and said, “Well that was ridiculous. What is that guy thinking?”
You’re trying to depress me.
“You’re trying to depress me.”
It gets worse; to wit:
When A Black Professor Was Branded A ‘WHITE SUPREMACIST‘, I knew our Universities Had Lost The Plot
MONEY QUOTE: “ ‘WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE‘ no longer referred to neo-Nazis but, in some academic circles, now included traits such as perfectionism, individualism and a belief in objectivity, BECAUSE, SO THE THEORY WENT, THESE WERE ‘WHITE’ VALUES.” (bolds/caps/italics mine)
FTR, my now estranged, Trump deranged Sister has an advanced degree from Evergreen State College.
PWS
Just saw Althouse’s post about the Gill exchange with that dolt. It was interesting, and commented upon, that in 90 comments none of Althouse’s diminishing left-of-center commenters uttered a peep. Of course, I have witnessed this phenomenon on EA many times. Even when I directly ask “please defend this!”…To be fair, I don’t know who the left-of-center commenters are here any more. The few we get seem to be set on trolling and getting banned, like “Jude” and ‘Marissa.” I assume “Here’s Johnny” is self-banned: he isn’t really left-of-center, but was insulted when I told him to “bite me.” I was hoping Jerry would return, but he’s a principled liberal and may have thrown himself into a shredder over the way his party has been behaving.
Althouse: “Hartig’s defense is almost entirely restricted to long silences and diligent note-taking“
Priceless!
“(Here’s Johnny) isn’t really left-of-center, but was insulted when I told him to ‘bite me.’ “
The color of one’s skin will always be subordinate to its thickness.
PWS
It’s complicated. There’s a good chance Walt Disney definitely modeled the early cartoons on, if not black stereotypes, certainly a mockery of poor southerner stereotypes (of which there is a great deal of crossover*). And some of the earlier cartoons I think should leave the objective observer scratching their chin and thinking “oh man, that’s…interesting…”.
However, that “era”, if you want to call it that, was short lived enough to be overshadowed by what Mickey and the gang became. So much so that exactly zero people (outside the American academic bubble and dunderheaded morons it bestows post-graduate degrees upon) will be “racially oppressed” by Mickey Mouse. And because of that, it is stupid for the Smithsonian to highlight what early Mickey Mouse *could have* been.
*Growing up, I’d always heard people talk about “black food” or “soul food” as this unique ethnic cuisine. Eventually, in college, someone “treated” me to Soul Food hoping to reveal to me this unknown aspect of American culture….except that I’d eaten all that food my entire life because it’s just southern cuisine – more specifically it was southern vernacular cuisine affordable to poor folk, which my *white* ancestors across the south all qualified as.
Given the complexities of historic development that we’re all aware of and that white people had far more avenues of material advancement after the civil war that were more denied to black people – “poor person food” which was equally poor white food as much as it was poor black food ultimately became tied more to the black experience in the south.
MW: I put this fake controversy in the same category with NPR calling Good Humor trucks racist because they played “Turkey in the Straw.”
You’re going to enjoy the latest from Rep. Gill. Here is a sample of him questioning the ABA President about transgender representation on the Supreme Court: https://x.com/realBrandonGill/status/2080030805053599899?s=20
Comedy gold!
I would think that the Claudine Gay methodology of just repeating the same evasive answer over and over again would have been discredited by now. Guess not!