But I’ve got to say, his manners and diversity of shirt color aside, the man can select a good read. It is criminal how the United States and all of Western Europe raped and plundered Latin America. (I just told Jon [Favreau] to work some of this material into my next apology when I’m down in South America.) Reading the way the U.S. abused the continent, it’s easy to understand why Hugo and Fidel go off at times. And Hugo particularly gets a bad rap. He has instituted some sweeping reforms in Venezuela that make a lot of sense. His initiatives to nationalize energy and take control of his country’s broadcast entities are sound policies. If only I could get Roger Ailes to embrace this approach.
Hell, if Bill O’Reilly worked for the FCC I’d go on the Factor every night. Maybe even broadcast an Obama Factor from the Oval Office—no guests, just me telling the American people what’s wrong with this country and laying out my solutions.
That’s another thing Hugo does right. He’s got his own TV show, and since he controls the stations, he talks as long as he likes. When you’re president, there’s nothing more important than connecting with your followers. No one should obstruct that communication. What we really need is an Obama Network. I’ll show them what the most trusted name in news looks like. Move over, Anderson Cooper. I’m going to get Gibbs working on that right away.
Part of this president’s reluctance to celebrate America can likely be traced to his background. Barack Obama was the son of an African father he barely knew. Raised by a free-spirited mother who carted him off to Indonesia for a number of years, Barry Obama never really fit in. He was a biracial American in the Far East who attended a Catholic school while being raised as a Muslim. The circumstances no doubt confused the boy about the world and his place in it. At ten, he returned to Hawaii, where he lived with his grandparents. This journey would disorient anyone—never mind a child whose friends claim he had abandonment issues and struggled with racial intolerance. If you want to know what the man thinks of his country, find out what the child was taught. This doesn’t only apply to President Obama, but to all of us.
RESHAPING AMERICA IN THE CLASSROOM AND THE CULTURE
Our perceptions of America are not only shaped by our family but also by what we learn in the classroom and in our culture. Increasingly, the views of young Americans are being shaped by teachers and textbooks packing an agenda.
The words of old Abe Lincoln,
Of Jefferson and Paine,
Of Washington and Jackson
And the tasks that still remain;
The little bridge at Concord,
Where Freedom’s fight began,
Our Gettysburg and Midway
And the story of Bataan.
If you asked most Americans to cite the importance of any of the battles recalled in that lyric, you would likely get blank stares. A good deal of the blame rests on the American history textbooks forced upon the young. There was a time when graduates were familiar with figures like John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Frederick Douglass, and Eli Whitney. But imparting the stories of great American lives and celebrating the spirit of this land was not enough for some academics. In time, a revisionist taint seeped into textbooks. And politically correct agendas came to the fore.
Textbooks began to feature the full litany of American sins. Suddenly slavery and the harsh treatment of Native Americans became the centerpiece of U.S. history. The glories of our country’s past—the daring battles, the idealists who fought for their dreams—were soon edged out entirely. Dr. Diane Ravitch described the twisted history created within American public schools as “an adversary culture that emphasized the nation’s warts and diminished its genuine accomplishments.” This is a long-term tragedy—because not only does it perpetuate historical stupidity; it also undermines America herself.
These highly prejudiced textbooks lay waste to our common stories and make America out to be the bad guy. As I mentioned earlier, Americans are not held together by race or blood, but by a shared belief in the founding principles of the republic. By focusing on the grievances of isolated racial or social groups, these books don’t draw us together as Americans, but drive us apart.
Frances Fitzgerald, in her book America Revised, writes: “The message of the texts would be that Americans have no common history, no common culture, and no common values, and that membership in a racial or cultural group constitutes the most fundamental experience of each individual.” They also teach young people that it’s perfectly acceptable to loathe America while taking advantage of all the benefits of living here.
Subversive pop historians are only too happy to add to the confusion. James Loewen, author of the bestselling Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, has managed to convince millions of Americans that what they know about their country is probably wrong. He has made a career of spotlighting how European settlers imported nothing but disease to the New World, and how Americans in the South got their kicks holding community lynchings on weekends. In 2009, he launched a new curriculum for K–12 teachers called Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History. It could have been called: Teaching What I Think Happened: How to Ditch History and Get Students to Hate Their Country. It should be noted that Loewen does, however, feature American exceptionalism in his curriculum. He encourages educators to ask their students to identify “two ways the U.S. is exceptional—one positive, one negative.” He then goes on to offer his own examples:
The U.S. wound up with the smallest proportion of Native people in the Americas (except possibly Uruguay).
The U.S. is the only nation to have fought a Civil War over slavery.
The U.S. remains the only nation ever to have used nuclear weapons on another nation.
These facts, Loewen says, will help students grasp that “exceptional need not always be good.” More deep thoughts from academe.
One of Loewen’s biggest promoters was himself a master of distorting America’s past: Howard Zinn. The Marxist author of A People’s History of the United States, Zinn sought to recast America in deep shades of red. His book became an instant sensation and a must-read for America-haters everywhere.
This is how Zinn describes the founding of the United States of America in his book: “Around 1776, certain important people in the English colonies made a discovery that would prove enormously useful for the next two hundred years. They found that by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits, and political power from the favorites of the British Empire.”
In Zinn’s eyes, all of U.S. history can be reduced to greedy capitalists grabbing money and power from native peoples or the poor. For those seeking America’s finest moments, don’t bother. The D-day invasion is totally ignored, as is George Washington’s farewell address. Though there is a delightful recounting of the My Lai massacre for all you sadists out there.
Shortly before his death in early 2010, Zinn announced a new initiative to corrupt young Americans. He too now had a K–12 curriculum to teach kiddies the number of presidents who owned slaves and the many ways capitalism fuels oppression.
Predictably, it is the millionaire Hollywood set that has embraced Zinn’s catechism of hatred. Matt Damon, Bruce Springsteen, Josh Brolin, Benjamin Bratt, and others (capitalists all) lent their voices to a History Channel documentary based on Zinn’s ramblings called The People Speak. It was narrated by Zinn himself and used the power of celebrity to bring his admittedly “biased account” of American history to the masses. I don’t know about you, but Jasmine Guy reading a commencement address by Marian Wright Edelman is not exactly my idea of bringing American history to life!
And don’t think that the Hollywood elites have ended their march on America there. They clearly delight in creating movies and documentaries to propagate their socialist dogma. (Meanwhile, where is the film about Chairman Mao and his systematic extermination of seventy million people? Or the
exposé of Joseph Stalin, who is responsible for deaths of at least thirty million?) The cinematic flop Green Zone is a perfect example. In this Matt Damon thriller, Zinn’s little prodigy plays a soldier determined to learn the truth about weapons of mass destruction. Hard as he tries, little Mattie just can’t find those WMDs. As expected, everything is blamed on the Bush administration. The movie conveniently ignores the fact that scads of Democrats supported the war (before they began blaming Bush for everything) and that the intelligence agencies of other governments indicated that WMDs were present in Iraq. Forget reality—like a Zinn history come to life, Green Zone casts America as the aggressor and, believe it or not, actually goes out of its way to portray an Iraqi general in a compassionate light. No such kindness is shown to American military leaders, but there sure are lots of explosions.
And, apparently, stupid is as stupid does. While flogging his HBO miniseries The Pacific, Tom Hanks made comments about America that reveal why he should have retired after Splash. Despite his work on behalf of World War II vets, Hanks told Time magazine: “Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”
On MSNBC, Hanks described the Pacific war as a campaign of “racism and terror.” To think that the historian Doug Brinkley had the gall to crown Hanks “American history’s highest-ranking professor.” Funny, I always think of him as the guy in the dress on Bosom Buddies! Dr. Hanks will be exploring the JFK assassination next. God help us.
THE DIARY OF VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN
WASHINGTON, D.C.
January 27, 2010
Man, I am beat. It is exhausting posing behind POTUS during the State of the Union. What a pressure cooker! I thought Justice Lido [sic] was going to jump out of his seat when POTUS took a swipe at SCOTUS (POTUS . . . SCOTUS . . . It rhymes!). Anyway, I have to admit, I started zoning out when Barack went on about “the threat of nuclear weapons.” That old saw?! (I personally do whatever I can to avoid having to pronounce the word proliferation. My trick is that I break it down to pro-lifer and then add the ation part. But then it sounds like an abortion thing. Oh well.) Then just as Barack was prattling on about some Afghan schoolgirl example (z-z-z-z-z-z), an e-mail bulletin from Variety landed in my B-Berry. (This “vibrator” function is amazing!) Anyway, Hollywood is abuzz about the magical new program on the big screen—it’s called Atavan, or something. Looks like it was hijacked by the Blue Man Group. It has apparently overtaken Titanic as the most profitable film ever made. Very cool!
That James Cameron fellow knows his stuff. Gotta get him on the blower this week—why couldn’t the Joe Biden Saga end up on the big screen? Since Cameron seems to like one-word movie titles, we could simply call it Amtrak. I lived the equivalent of three lifetimes on that wondrous Acela going between Wilmington and D.C. The stories I could tell about late nights in the Café Car . . . We live in a great f---ing country. Where else could a movie about a train company make more money than the company made in its entire history?
The top-grossing film of all time, Avatar, was itself a subversive and, might I add, blue Trojan horse that lacerated America. In this digitized 3-D cartoon, vindictive military conquerors (the United States) will stop at nothing to obtain a natural energy resource on the planet Pandora. To get it, they intend to lay waste to the peace-loving, kindhearted (overgrown Smurf) natives of the planet, the Na’vi. In the end, the military imperialists get their comeuppance and the liberal, sci-fi revenge flick draws to a merciful conclusion. Howard Zinn really should have gotten at least a co-writer credit on this monstrosity.
Director James Cameron admitted that his masterpiece was a “comment about the colonial period in North America and South America.” What a surprise. This is from the same James Cameron who suggested in a documentary a few years ago that Jesus’s resurrection never happened and that the Messiah was a married family man whose bones had been discovered in a Middle Eastern tomb. I liked it better when Cameron made movies that clearly telegraphed his core message—remember True Lies?
Oliver Stone, who can always be relied on to bash America, is working on a ten-part documentary series for Showtime called Oliver Stone’s Secret History of America. The man who brought us the kinder, gentler side of Hugo Chavez has now found subjects truly worthy of his talent. Stone’s objective: to rehabilitate the most despicable characters of the twentieth century at the expense of America. The director shared his plan with the Television Critics Association during preproduction. He said, “Stalin, Hitler, Mao . . . these people have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history . . . I’ve been able to walk in Stalin’s shoes and Hitler’s shoes to understand their point of view. We’re going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them. We want to move beyond opinions. . . . Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM.” Only in Stone’s twisted mind can the country that liberated and rebuilt Europe be responsible for the rise of the Third Reich!
Like his fellow comrades, Stone has a method to his madness. He told the television critics that he intends to send his Secret History documentaries to schools so students can consider another take on their history. “It would be a very different counterweight to what they’re learning,” Stone maintains. But after flipping through a few history textbooks, I think it would be a reiteration of what they are already learning.
Each of these destructive revisionists has one goal in mind: to reprogram Americans, young and old. They want to weaken confidence in the historical foundations of the country and wean us off this ideal of America the beautiful.
THE DIARY OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
THE PRIVATE RESIDENCE
March 11, 2010
10:35 p.m. Tom Hanks and Steve Spielberg just left the screening room. They wanted to show me their new miniseries, The Pacific. Personally, I would have liked to finish watching Che with Reggie. (That Benicio del Toro looks just like the great man! If Desiree were still around I’d have del Toro in for a night of revolutionary poetry reading. But Axe says we have to cool it with the showy events, at least until the midterm elections are over.)
Anyway, Hanks and Steve originally wanted to show us four hours of this epic. I wouldn’t sit through four hours of a documentary about me much less some HBO thing about old white guys shooting up my brothers and sisters in the Pacific! So they edited together a preview reel for us. One hour and we were out of there. For appearances, we had to invite all the military brass and some WWII vets. I always get a little squeamish being at the movies with those people. It’s like sitting in the dark with Ted Bundy or Scott Peterson—no telling what they might do, especially if they see something that brings on a flashback.
The highlight of the screening was when Hanks got up for his preamble and said he was amazed at what America did to the Japanese people. He said that he and Steve wanted to dramatically show the true expressions of racism and terrorism unleashed by our soldiers at this moment in our history. I tried not to laugh when I saw the expression on the war vets’ faces. The VFW people and some of the Joint Chiefs looked like they had just been sprayed with napalm.
When it was over, Miche and I were clapping and cheering. The brass didn’t budge. Neither did the vets. So I stood up like Lincoln and thanked Tom and Steve for being “true patriots, unafraid to confront history with honesty and clarity.” Like Miche said as we went upstairs, “If those vets don’t like the truth, let ’em go rent a John Wayne movie.”
A LOVE WORTH FIGHTING FOR
It is not enough to think well of America: we must learn to love her again. When we hear the phrase “love of country,” does it mean to us what it meant to past generations? It should. America was founded through great struggle and bloodshed in order that our citizenry could live in freedom, to pursue ou
r own destinies. Our Founding Fathers did not believe that our national pride and patriotism should depend on how much the government is doing for us. Our system of government was ingeniously devised by men who gave us the opportunity to set the course for the nation. We are supposed to be steering the boat, not just acting like anxious passengers waiting on board to be told what our orders are. Where we end up as a nation depends on whether the American people are willing to continue the battle for liberty. It is not written on some tablet somewhere that America will last forever—she will only endure so long as we are committed to protecting our founding principles.
Our loyalty to our country should be everlasting and immovable. This is not “blind loyalty,” as leftists would aver. In fact, this loyalty and love actually lead us at times to criticize the course our nation is taking. We love our parents and our children unconditionally, but that does not mean that they are beyond reproach regardless of what they do or how they behave. True love means being committed despite the shortcomings of the one we adore. While offering honest, constructive criticism, we train ourselves to focus on the good in the other person. And with America, we should never lose sight of the astounding accomplishments and advances, the rich, noble history, and the many gifts America continues to give the world.
We fight and risk our lives only for those things that we truly love— which is why the epidemic trashing of America is so destructive. It weakens our resolve and our commitment. America remains the world’s best hope and she is worth our sacrifice. This is the deep devotion and love that we must kindle once more in ourselves and in our children.
The Obama Diaries Page 3
