December 27, 2011, - 4:31 pm
Dumbed Down USA: Occupy Wall Street Trash Now Smithsonian Exhibit
Museum exhibits, art, and historical monuments–or what now parades as such–are stark examples of how far our nation has declined. I’ve written about absurd “art shows” featuring illegal alien trash from the Arizona desert and dumb “historical markers” showing the parking structure where “Deep Throat” squealed to journalists about Watergate. But it gets worse. Now, Occupy Wall Street garbage will be an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution. Ludicrous.
More than a half-dozen major museums and organizations from the Smithsonian Institution to the New York Historical Society have been avidly collecting materials produced by the Occupy movement.
Staffers have been sent to occupied parks to rummage for buttons, signs, posters and documents. Websites and tweets have been archived for digital eternity. And museums have approached individual protesters directly to obtain posters and other ephemera.
The Museum of the City of New York is planning an exhibition on Occupy for next month.
“Occupy is sexy,” said Ben Alexander, who is head of special collections and archives at Queens College in New York, which has been collecting Occupy materials. “It sounds hip. A lot of people want to be associated with it.”
Huh? What’s “sexy” about a bunch of dirty losers who need a bath? If that’s sex appeal, no wonder the birthrate in America is declining.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History [sent] staff to Zuccotti Square during the encampment, where they were spotted picking up materials. The museum said it was part of its tradition of documenting how Americans participate in a democracy. It declined to allow staff to be interviewed.
So sad. I remember the days when, as a kid, I saw the Smithsonian exhibits of the first airplanes and items from America’s first steps on the Moon. This was a place that showed us genuine items from real American history.
Now, it’s all about garbage from some spoiled kids who pretended to be homeless for a couple of months and many of whom expressed anti-Semitic Nazi-worthy views. (And you can bet that none of the videos of their anti-Semitic comments will be on display at the exhibit.)
How America has declined. You have to wonder what future American generations will think when they view the Occupy Wall Street exhibit at Smithsonian. Will they think: wow, these people were morons? Or will they be even more dumbed down than we are?
I bet on the latter. The trajectory is already clear.
I just wanna know: will used Occupy Wall Street condoms be part of the Smithsonian exhibit? If not, they should be for, above all other reasons, truth in advertising.
After all, that’s what mostly went on in the Occupy crowd: screwing each other and screwing America.
Tags: Ben Alexander, exhibit, Museum of the City of New York, New York, New York Times, Occupy, Occupy Wall Street, Queens College, Smithsonian, Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian's Naitonal Museum of American History, Zuccotti Square
It is becoming like the Dark Ages, where there were a very very few monasteries and centers of learning that preserved culture. TV and radio are shot, movies are shot, campuses are shot for the most part, libraries are discarding old valuable books and saving the crud, and ordering more and more crud, and museums are abysmal. Real culture, civilization and learning are becoming rarer and rarer.
Little Al on December 27, 2011 at 4:42 pm