Distant Learning  
The Ronald Reagan Library’s swanky new “Air Force One Discovery Center” recreating Reagan’s Island hopping holiday in Grenada has received the super glamorous THEA Award for Learning Experience from industry titans of the Themed Entertainment Association.
 The TEA-ists love how it draws in the youngsters.
“Here each plays a role in responding to a rapidly unfolding crisis that seems all too real. The result is an innovative, involving and highly personal experience of presidential decision making that achieves a highly successful educational experience with the enthusiasm of compelling role playing entertainment. The kids are completely engaged.“
The kids do get some learnin’, but while it “seems all too real” it doesn’t have much to do with reality.
The Reagan Discovery Center takes school children and plunks them down in an Oval Office recreation [steps away from yet another replica Oval Office], Air Force One [right next to an actual plane] , and the command post of the USS Ronald Reagan, which did not exist at the time of the invasion.
Entirely disappeared from the exhibit is the unprecedented military censorship of the invasion, which allowed the Reagan Administration freedom to tell the story first their way. Also missing are the plucky American medical students, whose mythical danger of becoming “hostages” was the lead public explanation for the invasion. Enjoy the show!
Book Him 
The Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize winning arts critic Mark Feeney has solved the Presidential Library/Pharaoh-ization problem: Make Obama go first!
It’s a position our first African-American President has been in many times before, and why not round out Black History Month by renouncing the building of his all but inevitable Presidential Library?
I agree with almost everything Feeney says about these places – the terrible history, bad architecture, and overall waste of these monuments to would-be greatness.
But why start with the new guy? George W. Bush has yet to announce a design, much less break ground – that one could be strangled in its birth. The Carter Library will be is closed most of this year in order to sink another $10 million into the place. And despite Feeney’s claim that the Nixon Library finally got his papers in 2007, they are still building,  
      and the papers are not expected on site until Fall 2009.
The established Presidential Libraries are rotting from within, and could be left to wither. But why does Barack Obama have to be first?
There Were Giants Here Once 
To the Ford Presidential Library, where a fabled small but perfectly formed miniature White House is on display.
Joining the fun are Peter Sharkey’s obsessively detailed model drawings of any and all White House rooms and the exterior grounds.
Just the thing for planning your radio controlled model aircraft attack, or carrier pigeon conspiracy.
Mr. Sharkey also sees to your 
 underground White House laundry room viewing needs.
Your pining for impossible overhead views of the Oval Office is also met, as well as White House pool shots that look vaguely like crime scenes.
Present At The Creation Of Ignorance   
Its a race to the exits.
As the George W. Bush Administration flogs its chosen narrative of pluck, grit & determination, it’s only hours until Bush goes into would-be Truman mode.
Even as they head out, the Bush Administration boldly proceeds as though everything is on the square. A perennial theme going back to his 2000 campaign was a line Bush lifted from a Methodist hymn, “A Charge to Keep.”
 
The song provided Bush’s campaign autobiography title [written with Karen “I’m A Mom” Hughes], and the White House recycles it again in recent talking points distributed to buck up departing cabinet secretaries.
“Above all, George W. Bush promised to uphold the honor and the dignity of his office. And through all the challenges and trials of his time in office, that is a charge that our president has kept.“
While The Getting Is Good    
Bush’s charge keeping has taken the bizarre form of promoting a painting he displays in the Oval Office, which he insists is named “A Charge To Keep” and depicts a Methodist circuit rider. This despite untold articles refuting his claim.
 The White House “Curator” goes along with the story on a very special episode of “Ask The White House,” assuring Meagan of Oro Valley Arizona that…
“President Bush selected for the Oval Office works that depict his native Texas. One special painting he selected as “A Charge to Keep”, a scene of Western riders that inspired a book he wrote. He always talks to guests about this painting that is loaned from a personal friend.”Â
The White House even posted video of Bush talking up his story. 
Now the inevitable Presidential Library Oval Office recreation will promote this stupidity through the ages.
