Morning Fog

Still Dithering Over The Misquote On The MLK Memorial

Recall the shameful misquote on the Martin Luther King memorial sculpture that was unveiled to much fanfare back in September?  Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has announced that it will definitely be "fixed," and Washington Post reporter Rachel Manteuffel, who broke the story, has written a smarmy self-congratulatory followup with a very rosy tone.  I was pleased, on reading the headline, that the issue was finally being dealt with, as I and many others had called for. 

But on reading further, I found it's not being dealt with properly.  Not at all.  Salazar is only passing along the promise of the memorial's chief architect that the misquote will be replaced by an "alternative wording," by which he seems to mean a more accurate paraphrase of what King actually said (and ergo, another misquote).  The nominal reason is that the full quote could not be fit retroactively on the slab of granite where it now resides without destroying the monument.  

I find that a rather dubious excuse.  First, officials of the Foundation that funded the memorial are even now admitting that the shortening of King's words occurred only because the sculptor (Chinese) and the architect thought a shorter quote looked better aesthetically -- NOT because they didn't think there was room for it.  Second, if you look at the expanse of surface available on the monument, it certainly looks as if there's space enough to put the entire Constitution of the United States.  (Photo below is the Washington Post's)

So once again it appears that we'll settle for a compromise that entirely overlooks the main point:  this is history, and a quote should be exactly that, not a paraphrase.  I think this monument, and therefore the memorial of which it is a part, is destined to be an object of ridicule for a long time to come; not of King, but of our country's cavalier approach to language, education, and history. 

(An interesting sidelight on our teaching of these things is that the Post's writer, explaining the real meaning of the remark, says that it was originally in the "conditional tense" -- another goof, because "conditional" is not grammatically a tense, but a mode, also sometimes referred to as mood.)

It's unfortunate that we find ourselves in this mess, thanks to an architect and a sculptor, neither of whom seemed to have much sense of history.  The quote itself isn't a particularly good one anyway -- it's long and not especially memorable -- so I'd suggest the right solution is not to re-paraphrase it, but to substitute a different one.  Perhaps it would even be one that "looks right." 

 

Memorializing Martin Luther King

The new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was officially opened to the public in Washington DC this week.  It has caused a lot of controversy. 

First there is a certain element that complains that it's unnecessary, or that only "Democrats" (a code word, in this case) wanted it, or that King shouldn't be memorialized because he had foibles (do they mean unlike Jefferson, just down the road?).  This group can be dismissed as small-minded, I think.

Then there are those that complain that the actual statue of King was sculpted by a Chinese sculptor (yes, really!) and it looks like Mao-Tse-Dung.  Actually I agree with this complaint.  Tell me they couldn't find an American sculptor, maybe even an African-American one?  I don't think it much resembles King, and it does have a communistic style to it.  (I was going to put in a photo at this point, but better, have a look at the graphic and video in the Post, which offers a myriad of views from every angle)  However, these decisions were made and publicized years ago; it's too late for complaint on this score; the time to challenge would have been when sketches and renderings were everywhere in the media.

Most recently, there is a kerfuffle about a statement King once made using the term "drum major."  It was a longish quote, and when the planning commission (headed by one Ed Jackson) changed its mind about where to place it, the sculptor said it was too long to fit.  The Commission's decision was to "paraphrase" it, but in doing so, they gave it a completely different nuance.  Maya Angelou, a member of the commission who doesn't seem to have paid much attention to its proceedings, now complains of this fact. 

This latest quote kvetsch has reawakened all the other objections again.  The group described in the second paragraph above, for example, thinks Angelou should be ignored, or blamed for not noticing sooner.  But those plaints are essentially irrelevant to the matter of the quote.   This is a historical monument.  It seems to me you just don't "paraphrase" a quote on a historical monument.  It's antihistorical and wrong.  Nothing against chief architect Ed Jackson, Jr., but the blame must fall on him.  He is an architect but not a historian.  He had two viable choices:  Not to move the quote, or to insist on the full quote.  Paraphrasing was not an option.  Would we tolerate a Lincoln Monument that would have Abe saying "About ninety years ago..."? 

Taken as a whole, the monument is an impressive and worthy memorial.  Now, regardless of who's at fault, the inscription should be corrected.  

The Right To Bear Arms - The Cosmic/Historic View

Yesterday I noted how issues of guns, gun control, and the right to bear arms had become politicized... no surprise there, right?

What is surprising, though, is the extent to which the politicization of the issue over time has completely turned the historical record on its ear.  Adam Winkler, a UCLA professor of Constitutional law, writing recently in The Atlantic ("The Secret History of Guns") makes this clear. 

(Note: the article is based on Winkler's new book, Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, appearing soon.  You can order the book from the right margin.)>>>>>>>>>

Winkler points out that - contrary to what many of us might suppose in the context of the contemporary heated debate - not so long ago, the NRA and Ronald Reagan and the Ku Klux Klan all supported restrictions on gun ownership in varying degree, while the Black Panthers were zealous advocates of the unrestricted possession of loaded weapons.  As the professor also argues, until recently in the U.S. (about 1977), the right to bear arms for self-defense (in addition to service in a "militia") has never been challenged, yet on the other hand, neither has the general understanding that some controls, such as registration, were not only fitting, but necessary. 

To some degree, Winkler may be channeling some of the same thoughts that color Justice Clarence Thomas's approach to the Second Amendment here ... (see the interesting piece in this week's New Yorker regarding Thomas), but at least from this summary piece of Winkler's book, it appears to go deeper and broader than that.

In any case, there is a pendulum effect swinging through the history on this issue, as on others where balance has historically characterized our approach to an issue, and where balance has been lost.  To quote Winkler:

The Fourteenth Amendment illustrates a common dynamic in America’s gun culture: extremism stirs a strong reaction. The aggressive Southern effort to disarm the freedmen prompted a constitutional amendment to better protect their rights. A hundred years later, the Black Panthers’ brazen insistence on the right to bear arms led whites, including conservative Republicans, to support new gun control. Then the pendulum swung back. The gun-control laws of the late 1960s, designed to restrict the use of guns by urban black leftist radicals, fueled the rise of the present-day gun-rights movement—one that, in an ironic reversal, is predominantly white, rural, and politically conservative.

 How times change! 

 

 

They Who Neither Know Nor Care

The political standoff over the U.S. debt ceiling continues.  Though House Speaker Boehner is posing as a problem-solver by jawboning his own party to pass a plan today, the problem is that it's his plan, a Republican plan, which makes no move toward awakening the more addled members of his party to the reality of the moment.  Further, it's only a House plan, which, by virtue of catering to the extremist wing of the Republican Party, stands no chance of passage in the Senate, so it seems unlikely to bring us any closer to a denouement of the current drama.

Some, including Senate majority leader McConnell, have suggested that the main thing separating the two sides from real compromise at this point is the question of extending the debt ceiling long enough to get us past the next elections.  I don't doubt that's close to the truth.  Republicans -- especially those who have so adamantly refused any compromise, but not only those -- have good reason to fear the effects their disinterest in the country's well-being will have on their electoral futures.  They will strive desperately to give themselves a chance to unpaint themselves from the corner they're in before the next elections and therefore (again, please note, with no regard for the state of the nation or its economy) hope to preserve a chance to revisit the debate again.

Rational people may wonder how it's possible to ignore the effects a default would have on the U.S. economy.  Some of the "tea-party" group claim  to know that the effects of a default will not be as dire as predicted.  A fellow named Judson, identfied as the founder of a shadow organization called the Tea Party Nation, attempts to defend tea party politicians' refusal to compromise, but nowhere in his screed will you find an iota of realism concerning politics as the art of the possible, nor a shred of understanding regarding the interdependence of national economies in the modern world.

True, we might conceivably work our way back into the good graces of international creditors over time, but in the meanwhile, how can anyone think the economy in its current state could stand the hit -- to interest rates, employment, business prospects, and many other aspects -- without driving us further into recession?  

The anti-tax gang stems largely from rural jurisdictions; they seem to live in a nineteenth-century bubble in which the health of the American economy is dependent only on what we do ourselves.  The bubble must soon burst but in the meantime, it's hard to care about something you think really doesn't matter, so their ignorance shelters them from the consequences of their dogma, and their weird obeisance to Grover Norquist, who's never been elected to anything.   

The real answer to our current political stalemate is for sensible policymakers on both sides of the aisle to jettison their extreme wings and come to an agreement unburdened by the wackos of either persuasion.  If there aren't some in Congress who can make this happen, we can only hope voters will do it for them in the next election. 

 

 

The South

Ah, the mysterious, brooding, American South, source of so much pain and sorrow, not to mention some of our country's best writers.

Walking not far from my house in Arlington, Virginia recently, I espied the interesting plaque pictured below.  It stands on the street near a largish house, behind which is a small town house or condo development in a forested area.

 
 

Most interesting, in my view, is the last line, which refers to the "War of Northern Aggression."  If you live in Minnesota you might conjecture that this is a reference to the Korean War, but this is Virginia, the state with the capital (Richmond) that still prides itself on having been the capital of the Confederate States of America.  And despite all the modernization, obviously, the South lives on (and may rise again?) here in Arlington, right across the river from Washington, D.C.

So in this case, "The War of Northern Aggression" is a reference to what we in the United States of America usually call the "Civil War."  It is also known in some of our southern states, which aren't so certain yet that they want to be "united," as the "War Between the States."

Also unclear is exactly what the sign is pointing out.  Does it designate a historical site?  Fort Ethan Allen is nearby, though not located exactly here; and if the intent is historical, usually such signs are erected by governments, which we may hope would not use the strange "WoNA" terminology.  The plaque also refers to a sanctuary for "wildlife and not so wildlife."  I suppose this is a reference to the woods and the condos, respectively.  Cute.  But not informative.  

Naturally I wondered about the presence of this strange little inscription, its oddly antihistorical terminology, who placed the sign, and who the property owners may have been.  I've searched high and low on the web for more information about this curious "Sanctuary," so far without success.  If anyone out there can enlighten me, I'd appreciate it; if you want to see it for yourself, it is located near 3830 N. Stafford St., opposite the Madison Community Center (formerly Madison School.)

P.S.  If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say one of those private conservancy outfits is involved somehow...

Incidentally, since we're talking the Civil War and historical misunderstandings related thereto, I recommend the recent piece in the Washington Post's ongoing series "Five Myths about..."  This one is about "why the South seceded."

More On Museums

Shortly after I regretted the concept of a new Latino-American Museum on the Mall in Washington DC, Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post, who wrote the original piece about where such a museum might best be located, published a more thoughtful followup.

In it, he raised some of the thoughts I had voiced, which is nice, but he added a couple of interesting new points as well:

The National Museum of the American Indian, whose layout I also regretted, has experienced a considerable drop in the number of visitors:  2.2 million in its first year (2005) but only 1.4 million last year.  This is a great statistic.  It illustrates my point that the NMAI is a failure that doesn't work as a museum.  Kennicott notes that the problem is, it was designed with "native American communities as its client," rather than museum visitors.  Amen to that! 

Kennicott also notes that the downturn in attendance at the NMAI may signal that the trend of ethnic museums has already run its course.  He points out that shortly after the new Latino museum opens, if it does, minority groups will be a majority in the U.S.  -- an odd time to be building new monuments to the concept of minorities.  This fits logically, too, with the idea that our history ought to be presented as a cohesive whole or, as Kennicott puts it, that "history won't be well-served by an infinite fracturing into sub-narratives, each controlled by a different cultural group."

The Museumall - Stop The Insanity

"The juggernaut of Museum Politics is moving again, straight toward the Mall."

So begins Philip Kennicott's report in the Washington Post. The article notes that there is a move afoot to establish a Museum of the American Latino. 

It's totally predictable that once one museum focused on a single ethnic group was given the green light to build on/near the Mall, others would start lining up.  The National Museum of the American Indian was the first, I guess, and incidentally, it is a colossal failure as a museum); we have the African-American Culture and History Museum coming soon, and now this latest, but I feel certain, not last, entry.

But perhaps I'm wrong about that.  In a way, developments of the past 25 to 40 years on the Mall have been all about assuaging the national conscience for groups that felt "left out" of formal history in some way.  Maybe it all began with the huge Vietnam War memorial (now scheduled to expand even more), which came about largely because of national guilt about the way the people who fought that war were ignored or even actively denigrated.  Yet as a Vietnam veteran myself, sorry, I have to say, I never felt I needed a monument.   

Then came the rush to museums, with much the same justification.  Indians? It's a wonder Native Americans survive at all outside museums but in this age we feel remotely derelict for having sought to eradicate them.  African-Americans? Well, we all know that story, and though things have improved, that group undoubtedly and justifiably still feels it has been omitted from the national story.  Latinos?  Arguably less so, but still, much of today's swelling Latino population in the U.S. feels invisible.  Get a museum, get your legitimacy -- will Latinos be the last group?  Almost certainly not. 

It's not that these groups and cultures aren't an important or interesting part of our country's history, nor that we should ignore that heritage.  But I have several objections to all this museum-building.

First, I realize that Washington is the nation's capital but why can't we seem to build museums elsewhere anymore?  The District of Columbia really doesn't need any more museums.  We have too many!  There's no room for anything else. The city is boring enough to walk through with all those government buildings but filling in the rest of the limited space with wall-to-wall museums (each with its dull cafeteria and multi-acre "gift shop") doesn't improve things a bit.  There is no parking and very little practical public transportation for visitors to these facilities.  Tourism is an important element of the DC economy, but variety might serve tourism development better.  When you've got 50 museums in town, the 51st doesn't add much economic value.  Moreover, if they're on federal land, they won't be taxable so it can be argued that extra museums are a collective economic drag that decreases the tax base. 

Second, the traditional character of the National Mall will be forever altered with each addition.  We need to think about that.  Part of the attraction for museums; I suppose, besides the prestige of a Mall location, is that they all want to be tax-free.  But the available space is extremely limited.  The Mall is far, far from being the jewel of the park-designer's art that Central Park is in New York City.  It looks more like a very large sandlot where neighborhood kids might gather to play ball (as they often do).  Yet most people for generations have found the extended open vista from the Capitol down the Mall to the Lincoln Memorial (since it was built) impressive and inspiring.  The increasing clamor for new museum sites inevitably will obtrude into that space, as the World War II Memorial already has done.  Kennicott's article (above) is mainly focused on the suggestion that there are other, potentially better sites for a Latino museum than directly on the Mall.  But it's clear that suggestion will fall on deaf ears.

Last, and by far most important, is that the proliferation of sectoral museums, particularly here in the nation's capital, skews the real nature of our historical development and makes it more difficult to understand.  As I argued more than a year ago with respect to the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, a far more sensible approach would be an integrated single museum or museum complex that presents the many currents of American society in relationship to one another.  If we may agree that the Smithsonian hasn't succeeded in achieving that up to now, we shouldn't think that a clutch of museums focused on single aspects of a complex story is going to fill the gap.  In fact, their presence will delay any impetus to represent African-American, or Latino-American, history as an integral part of the fabric of our nationhood.