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 Wouldn’t You Like To Know!   

 

Gawker historian in residence John Cook has fun poking the National Archives for their deference to former greats.

The George W. Bush administration’s papers are squirrelled away, and no, you can’t see them till Bush is done with them.  Bush left office having made a hash of his electronic records, resisting disclosure to the end despite estimates  millions of emails had gone missing.  In retirement only Bush and Ghost Who Walks Cheney have access to the goods until 2014, so Cook has been mischievously asking what our betters have been asking the National Archives for, FOIA-ing the records of their document requests.

The Archives will have none of that nonsense.  They’ve denied his request for what are clearly public records, showing a tender concern for Bush’s privacy not demonstrated by the man himself.

Archives have had a pattern of hiding their dealings with past greats, refusing historian Anthony Clark‘s requests for records on the foundations all the Presidential Libraries run to keep their guy’s image ever shinier.

Deference to greatness reached it’s apogee under the last Archivist of the United States. Bush appointee Alan Weinstein remained mute over the Bush email destruction by deed or sloth, and reacted to Bush’s grabbing censorship rights for ex Presidents and their decendants by inventing the happy club of “presidential families” who he hoped and prayed would do right by history and release the stranglehold on facts Bush granted them.

And then retired.  Good to see the current team is upholding the tradition of cringing deference.

 

…But Happy To Let The States Do It!

 

The Washington Post explores new frontiers of letting presidential candidates make up their own history, giving Rick Santorum an opportunity to fuzz up his campaign against birth control.

Melinda  Henneberger in her fantisy feminist pose She The People spoke to the man himself after the fringe radicals of Salon pointed to his views on sex [against it, unless in the right hands].

Henneberger has Santorum identifying as Catholic, so of course he’s against birth control, before moving on to the Supreme Court’s Griswold ruling which got the states out of your bedroom.

It’s a philosophical question you see; Santorum feels the Supremes overreached.  He’s only for leaving the states alone to do as they please, what could be the harm?

Henneberger then drags in cartoon Fox liberal Alan Colmes, who apparently bungled a reference to Santorum’s fetishising his dead son, to end on a “how dare you” note to those who would attack this good man.

“ I’d feel silly pretending to believe he’s going to be even metaphorically riffling through medicine chests”

She may write, but she isn’t paying attention.

Back in the day, all thoughtful folk knew Ronald Reagan couldn’t possibly be elected with all his right wing baggage.  The road to hell begins in pretending as though the crazies won’t act on their impulses.

Ronald Reagan, Praise Be Upon Him  

Who’s the silent partner, the ghost who walks at Republican presidential debates?

You know where this is going.

Talking Points Memo looks at the numbers, and finds Ronald Reagan way out in front in GOPer presidential debate mentions, with living fossil of the Reagan Era Newt Gingrich in a breathtaking name-dropping lead.

As America marked the 10th anniversary at ground zero with solemn ceremony, and Paul Simon, word comes of an exciting new cashing in on The 9/11 Experience®

Your Barack Obama action figure, standing over the bleeding corpse of Osama Bin Laden.

Make My Presidents Day Â

      Kind of makes Bush’s pistol plaque seem somehow inadequate, doesn’t it?  

Your Presidential Libraries Never Forget 

The world will little remember reaching for the remote, desperate to squelch George Pataki’s insulting reading of the Gettysburg address on the first 9/11 anniversary.

Some feared the vapid inanity of  2002’s commemorations could never be topped, but presidential libraries are doing their part.

Who Am I & Why Am I Here?  

Having apparently run out of things to say about either their nominal subjects or their periods, today’s presidential libraries seek to present themselves as founts of Everyhistory, places to mark any odd occasion with history slapped on.

And try , if possible, to include motorcycles.

At least four presidential libraries will mark the decade since 9/11, each in their own baffling manner.

The Franklin Roosevelt Presidential Library is at least in the same state as one target…but after that the relation gets kind of strained.

They will be displaying a chunk of metal from the World Trade Center wreckage.  

We might have enjoyed a retrospective on our relationship with our gallant Saudi Arabian ally, beginning with FDR’s quiet 1945 interlude with King Saud.

 Bush senior’s Library will also feature World Trade Center metal,

and they’ve rounded up some local rescue workers.

No word if Bandar Bush will show up.

 The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum has subcontracted

to the Boy Scouts, who will be hanging about all day.

And yes, they do have a chunk of the World Trade Center.

The Nixon Library will go all out for the memories. Sixteen tons of World Trade Center steel will arrive in ceremony Monday, and be available for public gawking all week. 

Keeping Up With The Kardashian

Tuesday will feature Angie Kardashian, one of the lesser known Kardashians.   Her claim to fame is post-9/11 firehouse cooking, not self-porning.

Let us pray 9/11 souvenirs don’t become the latest presidential library must have object.  At least until they all get their Berlin Wall chunks squared away.

 

  The Reagan Library will be bursting with 9/11 goodness.  The Library will serve as a start point for Simi Valley’s “Freedom Walk,” Donald Rumsfeld‘s effort to mashup the initially popular Afghanistan war together with Iraq in a delightful Freedom Smoothie.

                                                                                                                 Freedom Handshakes? 

The program will feature a 9/11 emergency worker, and they’ve dug up a prize. Out of all the rescue workers on the scene on 9/11, they’ve chosen the Scientologist.

  His “controversial” church got a reputation at the disaster site of proselytizing and sneaking around barricades, but  New York Fireman John McCole was their man on the inside.  

   

 

With her proven record of cult attraction, did the Scientologists get to Nancy Reagan? 

 The Reagan Library never lets a marketing moment pass, as they demonstrated with their 9/11 commemoration page.

 

 You’ll come to honor the dead,  you’ll stay to purchase souvenir Air Force One replicas.