Dumbing down the tourist video at the Lincoln Memorial

July 1, 2005

If you’re ever in DC, be sure to stop by the Lincoln Memorial to watch an 8-minute video shown to tourists about the groups and movements that have used the landmark over the last few decades. In fact, you better hurry — right-wing activists are desperate to change it.

The video that’s been used for about a decade features footage of historic protests and events at the Lincoln Memorial, beginning with Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. There’s also video from demonstrations in favor of gun control, against the Vietnam War, against Soviet anti-Semitism, favoring abortion rights, gay rights, and women’s rights. Visitors also see footage of presidents who have visited the Lincoln Memorial for historic moments, including shots of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton.

And according to the far right, this needs immediate correction. To make the GOP base happy, the National Park Service has spent $20,000 buying video footage of conservative rallies, Bush speeches, pro-gun demonstrations, and pro-Iraq war rallies, all in the interest of making the tourist video more conservative. In fact, the NPS has even considered cutting footage of Clinton to help squelch the right’s criticism.

“The video gave the impression that Lincoln would have supported abortion and homosexuality,” said the Web site of Rev. Louis Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition. It cited footage showing rallies at the memorial by abortion and gay rights supporters and war opponents but no similar footage from Christian and conservative interests.

“Absent from the video were any Promise Keepers marches or Marches for Jesus rallies at the capital. The video was totally skewed to present only a leftist viewpoint,” the Web site said.

Here’s a classic example of how far conservative thinking has strayed from reality. In order to make the Lincoln Memorial’s tourist video more conservative, the NPS will add video of a 1997 rally held by the Promise Keepers and footage of a well-attended march in Washington after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. What’s wrong with these? Nothing — except they weren’t held at the Lincoln Memorial.

For whatever reason, most of the major events at the memorial, throughout the 20th century, have dealt with progressive caucus (civil rights, opposition to war, gender equality, etc.). In the interest of “balance,” the right is demanding the addition of footage from events that took place elsewhere.

In other words, to make the right happy, we’re supposed to ignore historical reality. Typical.

Should we be surprised that the video actually documents those events that are in fact remembered and of real historical import? Or is the real surprise that the right-wingnuts don’t like movements that expand and preserve individual rights and liberties against governmental intrusion and limitation? What the wingnuts want us to remember were P.R. stunts which had EVERYTHING to do with individual choices of how we worship and how we stay married; they had NOTHING to do with governmental interference with our daily lives and refusal to stop national outrages.

  • I think you missed another significant aspect of the new video. Apparently, stock hagiographic images of George and his father were added, which also had nothing to do with the Lincoln Memorial but are there just to remind everyone who is, in fact, in control.

  • And re-reading the post, I don’t think you make it clear that the original video has already been yanked, that the changes have already been made, and that the new evangelicized version is schedule to debut sometime this summer.

  • Any chance that the original video is being safely stored somewhere so that someday it might return? Any chance that anyone has a digital copy of the video that can be passed around the internet via filesharing software so that those who care about history can have access to it?

  • Isn’t this sort of par for the course? They can:

    Turn everything into a political issue.
    Turn everything into an opportunity to pander to the cultural conservatives.
    Look it as an opportunity to dumb down Americans – a la evolution v. creationism – so they will be too stupid to understand when the government and big business is screwing them.
    Use it to drum up money.

  • What sad, pathetic lives these revisionist righties must lead thinking the whole of the world revolves around them and constantly having to bastardize history to fulfill their fantasies of how they think things should be.

    The article mentioned in the post quotes, “The video gave the impression that Lincoln would have supported abortion and homosexuality, said the Web site of Rev. Louis Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition.”

    Someone needs to send Rev. Sheldon to the Log Cabin Republicans website so he can see that gay and lesbian Republicans very much believe that Honest Abe would have supported the rights of homosexuals.

  • When I was touring through Egypt, I learned that it was typical for the new pharaoh to have statues all over the nation re-carved with his face, so this is nothing new. Still I had hoped we had moved past this kind of thing a couple thousand years ago.

  • Please STOP calling these revisionist, lying bastards “conservatives”. They are *not* conservative! They are radicals! Revising history– and *lying* about it– isn’t “conservative” by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a radical, Trotskyist type of thinking. That’s what these right-wing radicals are up to.

    Just because they lie and call themselves “conservatives” doesn’t mean that we have to lie for them. Please, stop being battered spouses and lying and covering for these morons. They are *not* conservatives. Don’t do their work for them by hiding their radical right-wing agenda.

  • goatchowder: It’s a radical, Trotskyist type of thinking

    Please! It’s a radical, Stalinist type of thinking, of which Trotsky was a literal victim.

    • Comments are closed.