[Dialogue] Bush Library by Hightower

[George Holcombe]

Andrew Weaver sent me this about the Bush Library.

George Holcombe
14900 Yellowleaf Tr.
Austin, TX 78728
Home: 512/252-2756
Mobile 512/294-5952
geowanda at earthlink.net


A LIBRARY FOR BUSH GROUPIES
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Posted by Jim Hightower
LISTEN TO THIS COMMENTARY
“Think tank” is not a concept you would associate with George W – and  
sure enough, there won’t be much thinking done in the Bush library and  
think tank to be built at Southern Methodist University.

The Bushites have cut a deal with SMU executives to locate his  
presidential library on this private campus in one of Dallas’s  
wealthiest neighborhoods. They’ve targeted some Arab oil kingdoms,  
corporate chieftains, and wealthy heiresses to be the “megadonors”  
they need to raise half-a-billion bucks to establish George’s ex- 
presidential palace.

This one is to be markedly different than the usual complex of  
library, museum, and policy institute that other presidents have  
built. First (and unsurprisingly), rather than placing the full  
archive of the administration’s papers in the SMU complex so  
historians and others have access, Bush is to have a heavily-censored,  
anti-academic library. None other that Karl Rove will help with the  
censoring, making sure that historians only peruse documents that cast  
the Bush-Cheney regime in a glowing light.

Second, the policy institutes at other presidential libraries are  
scholarly units of their host universities. The work done in them is  
judged by normal academic standards, deans are chosen by university  
presidents, etc. George W’s think tank, however, is to be academically- 
unattached to SMU and will unabashedly push a partisan, ideological  
agenda. It will hire conservative acolytes and, as an insider told the  
New York Daily News, “give them money to write papers and books  
favorable to the President’s policies.”

Bush Library Courts ‘Wealthy Heiress, Arab Nations, Captains of  
Industry’ To ‘Polish’ History,” www.thinkprogress.org, November 27, 2006

“A library Worthy Of The Bush Legacy,” , February 27, 2008

“SMU’s Deal With Bush,” , February 25, 2008

“SMU trustees give final approval for Bush library,” , February 22, 2008


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20080510/f468fe68/attachment.html