Wallace begins his tirade on Ronald Reagan by blasting him so relentlessly and subjectively, it leaves one to wonder where, if anywhere, he got his facts. This would not be very difficult if he supplied his accusations with evidence. Wallace claims largely that Reagan attempted to rewrite the past by, first of all, replacing a picture of Thomas Jefferson in the White House with another. To Wallace, it was all downhill from here. Subject to the Hollywood that was his environment for so long, Reagan supposedly was so influenced from starring in movies during the era following the Second World War that he used it all as justification for American involvement in foreign affairs and also served to skew his view of the nation in general. While it is certainly plausible to believe that there are many out there who are slanted by movies, it is downright baseless to say that Reagan was such. One really begins to wonder where Wallace's priorities lie, especially in light of the blatantly hurtful words he uses throughout his treatise. This was not just a statement about the supposed bastardization of history by the Great Communicator, this was a borderline verbal attack.
In his second article, Wallace uses the controversy surrounding the Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian NASM as his focus. He investigates the problematic roller coaster that curators went on with trying to best portray the events of August 1945. He discusses the problems museums have in general now of having to deal with opposing views over a given topic and finally, with a blanketed statement, says that museums just should not worry about it so much and should have a variety of viewpoints regardless of potential public backlash. Naturally, this is much easier said than done, especially when funding of museums is already not what it used to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment