The central strategy of media bias is defining your terms. The most obnoxious strategy of liberal journalists is defining the Republicans as ideological extremists engaging in culture wars and weaponizing partisan narratives for political victory.
They pretend Democrats are nothing like this. The epic political battles of our time are between the ultraconservatives and the nonpartisans.
The same exercise happens with federally-funded messaging, from public broadcasting to national museums. When President Trump demands a review of these taxpayer-subsidized narratives, it’s considered some kind of authoritarian crusade against nonpartisan truth-telling. It doesn’t matter how much left-wing propaganda Trump voters have been forced to support. It’s automatically defined as the gold standard of information – because Trump questions it.
One hot topic this week was Trump’s crusade to impose the notion of “American exceptionalism” in taxpayer-funded museums before the nation’s 250th anniversary, and to root out divisive and partisan narratives.
On CNN, Anderson Cooper proclaimed this was “insulting to the memory of people who fought and died for this country. And I'm not just talking about those who fought in wars overseas. I'm talking about, you know, Americans, enslaved people who died in this country, who were lynched, who were chased by mobs.” Cooper struck a dramatic pose, or danced a partisan pirouette, as a spokesman for all dead Americans.
Cooper brought on former NAACP boss Cornell Brooks to share in the outrage. In a similar exchange on Cooper’s show in March, Brooks exemplified the liberal argument: “When I think about an American president charging the vice president with rooting out improper ideology at the Smithsonian, I think about a couple things. It is not the job of an American president to charge the crown jewel of American art and history and culture with having a proper ideology, right?”
When an institution curates history to echo the Left, they are a “crown jewel.” Brooks also declared that “the Smithsonian was created for the diffusion, the spreading, the expansion of knowledge, not engaging in ideology or propaganda or whitewashing our American history.”
CNN needs to explore the website of the Smithsonian’s “Center for Restorative History,” which unmistakably sounds like an ideological crusade: “We spotlight the people and stories that have been excluded from our national narrative using the principles of restorative justice. We do this by partnering with communities across the country that continue to resist these exclusions. Together, with their diverse voices, we make history and imagine a more just and inclusive future.”
Inside this bubble, it’s the divisive spirit of the “1619 Project” of The New York Times. It’s “whitewashing” history if you don’t accept that America today is systematically racist. It echoes the spirit of DEI guru Robin DiAngelo, who argues “a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.”
The Smithsonian reports 62 percent of its funding comes from the federal government. It’s not undemocratic to think that most Americans believe their country should be celebrated for aspiring to the goal of liberty and justice for all. But the Left opposes making anyone recite the Pledge of Allegiance. It’s a “whopper of a lie,” to quote the late PBS star Bill Moyers.
The liberal elites who equate themselves with Democracy don’t want the voters to be able to have a say in what historical narratives go in national museums. They properly worry that President Trump’s review of the contents has majority support as a fine idea.