Liberal Media Cannot Grasp That Smithsonian Flap Is Not About Right-Wing Bigotry

Y’all get a second edition today, because I have an hour to kill in the DC airport, and something has irritated me! Imagine that: Your Working Boy is irritated. Whee!

So, driving my rental car to the airport this morning, I didn’t want to get back into my audiobook, so I listened to NPR’s Morning Edition. I caught an interview segment having to do with Donald Trump’s recent complaints about exhibits at the Smithsonian — specifically, about the way slavery is depicted.

Well, I would like to know more specifically about Trump’s criticism, and whether or not it’s valid. I know a fair bit about the wokeness at museums, but I also don’t know what, in particular, Trump is criticizing. Maybe he’s missed the mark. It wouldn’t be the first time. The best you can say about the phrase in his social media post (see below), in which he complained that the Smithsonian is wrong to focus on “how bad Slavery [sic] was,” was sloppy.

So, iin this morning’s broadcast, host Michel Martin interviewed — guess who! — Nikole Hannah-Jones of the 1619 Project. Here’s the audio link. I guess Ibram X. Kendi wasn’t available.

Naturally there was no discussion about the merit of Trump’s complaints, or the more substantive (I guess) complaints that conservatives have made of the way museums have embraced a highly politicized narrative in the Woke Era. It was simply assumed that Trump Is Wrong And Racist.

Second, of all the critics of Trump you could have on to talk about it, you choose Nikole Hannah-Jones?! She is an entirely ideological figure. Not once did Martin question her about the serious criticism some leading historians have leveled at the 1619 Project for distorting history to serve an ideological narrative. Why not interview a professional historian, instead of an ideological journalist? It seems pretty clear to me that as a matter of journalistic professionalism, Martin ought to have pointed out that Hannah-Jones herself has been credibly accused of doing the same thing she criticizes Trump for doing.

Again, though, none of this seems to have occurred to NPR at all. And they wonder why they were defunded!

Washington journalist Dave Weigel, no conservative he, nailed it here:

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