Gary Tischler • July 26, 2011

Legacy, like passion and professional, is an overused word today. Lives lived in full to the end let us see the real meaning of legacies—passion in action and professionalism as a matter of course and duty. Herewith, we celebrate the lives of three men who embodied those qualities.

Sidney Harman

Only last year, Sidney Harman, past ninety, bought the national news magazine Newsweek for a dollar, picking up its considerable debt. Harman, who loved news and newspapers and magazines, was thinking about how he could turn around the venerable and respected magazine in an age where publications of any sort are in decline and at risk.

This is a little like the story about the 100-year-old man who married a young girl and drew up plans for a nursery. Harman, as you may know from his history, was an optimist, a forward-looking-guy with a boundless curiosity about his fellow man.

In the course of a lifetime that was rich in achievement and experience, Harman, who passed away from complications from acute myeloid leukemia at the age of 92, April 12, managed to create a legacy of family and community, as an enterprising and empathic businessman and employer, and a philanthropic citizen with a keen love of culture which benefited and enriched everyone.

Hearing of the death of a 92-year-old man shouldn’t be a shock, but Harman’s death seemed like a surprise. The man exuded energy; he had a look-you-in-the-eye way about him and a pretty strong handshake. There wasn’t much he hadn’t done and there wasn’t much he didn’t know about, and if by chance he was in the dark, it’s certain that he would correct that situation.

Today’s billionaire tycoons might take note of the model Harman presented as a businessman and employer. His company, which specialized in sound systems, was famous for initiating quality of life programs for its employees.

Among many things, he was trustee on many boards, including policy institutes and symphony orchestras. He served as Undersecretary of Commerce under President Jimmy Carter, wrote books, golfed into his 90s, was a higher education leader and left a good chunk of his own money in a way that will outlive him far into the future.

The most visible legacy is Sidney Harman Hall, the downtown state-of-the-art theater, which houses Shakespeare Theatre Company productions, visiting performance arts institutions and the Washington Ballet at times.

“Sidney Harman enjoyed an extraordinary life, characterized by great passion for his wife, for the performing arts, for ideas and for life itself, said Michael Kahn, Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company. “All of us, privileged to know him, enjoyed our own lives more because of him.”

He loved music. He was the co-inventor of the high-fidelity stereo back in the 1950s. He loved the arts and he always looked for new challenges. He was married to Jane Harman, a Democratic Congresswoman from California. He is survived by his wife, six children and ten grandchildren.

Also surviving is his reputation as a modern Renaissance man, a historical description that moves far into the future. He was a man who lived a life in full.

David Broder

The Washington Post, the newspaper for which he worked most of life and won a Pulitzer Prize for, described him in its headline for his obituary and appreciation as the “Dean of Washington Press Corps.”

He was 81. He was a man passionate about politics, the subject he wrote about all of his life. He was a professional in the entirely true sense of the word. He made you proud to be a part of the profession he practiced just by reading his work, because he brought honor to it all of the time, with his judicious care for the truth, with a keen passion to get it right, with a curiosity that died only when he did.

Covering politics, being a part of it that way or any way, isn’t always considered a noble profession. Hackery lives here, as does the indelicate art of brown-nosing, affliction from the kind of pollen that fills the air in the spaces occupied by proximity to power, or worse, the desire for power. Broder more often than not ennobled the profession; he took it seriously enough not to let his biases get in the way of accuracy and completeness.

They say he loved politicians as types perhaps a bit too much, an experience that can be a little like being in love with the girl that you know will always have other boyfriends. He didn’t wear his heart too much on his sleeve, and he took little that politicians or elected officials said for granted. What got into his columns was the process, and he was astute in its observance, and what he got from it came from regular people, who talked to him about the issues they cared about, what mattered in their towns and workplaces. He got that right almost all of the time. The love was in going on the road to see campaigns in action. What got into his columns were such qualities as accurate information, hard-nosed intelligence and insights fed by years and every minute of his experience.

He got it right and gave his readers and his peers respect and the right stuff.

Few like Broder remain.

Sidney Lumet

No one every accused Sidney Lumet of being a fancy-pants artist. This prolific film director, who died at the age of 86, came to the movies by way of the theater and live television from “You Are There” to the estimable Playhouse 90. Faces and words, words and faces were the cornerstone of his work, not fancy, haunting camera work.

Maybe that’s why a good chunk of his movies are classics, along with the words and faces: Picture Peter Finch yelling out the window “I’m Not Going to Take It Anymore” in the classic and prophetic “Network.”

Picture Henry Fonda browbeating bigots Lee J Cobb and Ed Begley in the claustrophobic jury movie “Twelve Angry Men.”

Picture Al Pacino as “Serpico” and Treat Williams as “The Prince of the City,” two classic New York cop movies, and Paul Newman in his best-ever performance as the lawyer-as-drunk in ‘The Verdict.” (For the record, my favorite line is when Newman asked about his adversary James Mason. “Is he any good?” “Good?” says gruff Jack Warden. “He’s the f—–g prince of darkness.”)

He was a pro. He left a huge film legacy underwritten by a social conscience, an eye for urban landscapes and a love of the human species. “Every picture I did was an active, believable, passionate wish,” he said. “Every picture I wanted to do…I’m having a good time.” Plus he spent married time with remarkable women, like the actress Rita Gam, the socialite Gloria Vanderbilt, Lena Horne’s daughter Gail Jones and Mary Gimble, who was with him at the time of his death on April 9 from lymphoma.

Gary Tischler •

Vincent Gray strode toward the microphone in front of the Washington Court Hotel Wednesday with a confident spring in his step, looking fresh and energetic.

“My God, he looks rested,” said one of the dozens of reporters, photographers, and television crewmembers who had gathered here around noon.

Amazingly, Gray looked, talked and acted sharp, like a man with eight hours of sleep under his belt. Which probably wasn’t so. He was giving his first press conference as the winner of the District of Columbia’s Democratic Primary over incumbent Adrian Fenty, getting a surprisingly solid six-point victory with 53% of the vote to Fenty’s 47%. The last count had Gray with 59,285 votes and Fenty with 50,850 votes.

Given that only four years ago Fenty swept every precinct and every ward en route to a stunning win over City Council Chairperson Linda Cropp, becoming the city’s youngest mayor in the short history of home rule, Gray’s victory, which wasn’t really nailed down until the wee hours of the morning, was an astounding and probably historic turn-around.

It was also a clear sign that Gray had been correct early in his campaign when he said that the city was never more divided. “I am humbled by the victory we won,” Gray said. “And I am thankful for all the people across the city that made this possible with their votes. But I realize that there were also many people who did not vote for me, and I want to reach out to them. I want to unite this city once again.

The victory was achieved – it’s safe to say – along racial and economic lines, with many black voters favoring Gray over Fenny. Fenty lost because many voters felt excluded from the changes that were occurring under Fenty, especially in school reform. It was a battle over style and voters apparently preferred Gray’s evident style of consensus-making, thoughtfulness and inclusion. Fenty had plenty of warning that this personality, style, and character issue was important to many people. First revealed in a Washington Pots poll in January, it was cited as the main cause for Gray’s double-digit lead in a Post poll several weeks ago.

“Now is the time to move forward,” Gray said at the press conference. “[Let] now be the time for the city to unite.”

Now was a time many reporters were prodding Gray to say what was coming next, which is to say that they found ways to ask the questions about the fate of the often-controversial school chancellor Michelle Rhee. During the campaign Gray was asked at every turn whether he would fire Rhee. He never did say. He wasn’t saying now either. “I put in a call to her,” he said. “We will be sitting down and talking. I haven’t heard back yet. I imagine she’s busy. She’s running our schools, after all.”

Other than announcing that there would be a transition team, Gray in fact would not deal with names and faces. “I’m not talking about personnel decisions right now,” he said. “There will be time enough for that. We are still facing serious problems right now, especially on budget matters. I’m still the Chairman of the City Council.”

He was asked who would head the transition team or who would be part of it. “It’s a process,” he said.

“Yes,” Tom Sherwood of NBC 4 said, “but will it move quickly?”

“I talked with Mayor Fenty today,” Gray said. “We had a great conversation. I know that he loves this city, and wants nothing but the best for the city. He assured he would do everything he could to help with the transition.”

Gray said he got no indication that Fenty might be considering a run in the general election as an independent. “I didn’t get any sense of that,” Gray said.

“I meant everything I said about transparency in my administration,” he said. “This is going to be an open government. I want people to feel empowered, not disenfranchised. My door will be open. And for the press, I’ll be having regular press conferences.”

“The onus is obviously on me now,” Gray said. “I expect to be held accountable.”
Winning the democratic primary meant that Gray is all but assured of winning the general election in November and will become Washington’s oldest elected mayor. Although, as was noted, he sure didn’t look it or act it.

Election night, in fact, was full of confusion and uncertainty until well past midnight. At the hotel where Gray held a gathering for his followers, a strange atmosphere prevailed early in the night, and lasted well until midnight. Nobody knew anything. For an event full of politicos and campaign workers, the silence was nerve-wracking. Nary a rumor or piece of gossip managed to surface. All people knew was that there were no results forthcoming from the Board of Elections, where a major case of the slows and computer glitches were occurring.

Fenty did not concede until, “…we have official results from the Board of Elections.” The delays from the Board of Elections were heavily criticized by followers of both candidates and frustrated news reporters from all media. Even the bloggers and internet world couldn’t come up with a single voting result.

Gray, it’s now clear, will also be joined by Kwame Brown, who fended off challenger Vincent Orange to win the Democratic Primary for the City Council Chairman position, Gray’s old job. “I look forward to working with Kwame, who ran a fine campaign, and with whom I’ve already had a great working relationship…” said Gray.

In the other city-wide election, Phil Mendelson at last overcame the great Michael D. Brown confusion, handily winning over the shadow senator, a late entry in the race whom polls showed was leading , mostly because voters confused him with Michael A. Brown, a current member of the city council who was not running.

Gary Tischler •

That small room in the National Portrait Gallery housing “One Life”, the series of exhibitions begun since the completed renovation of the Reynolds Center, may be one of the biggest rooms in the whole building. “One Life”, after all, attempts to squeeze into a small, square room a summation of an entire American life with a minimum of artifacts, paintings and photographs. Not an easy task when you’re dealing with the previous tenants.

There was Walt Whitman, the outsized poet of the outsized American experience; Thomas Paine, the inspiring, iconoclastic political pamphleteer of inspiration for the American revolution; there was most recently Elvis Presley, king of rock and roll, an entire American cultural invention unto himself.
There was Abraham Lincoln. No one sentence would suffice.

There was the first Katharine, the grand dame and Dame of American movies, Katharine Hepburn, or Katharine the Great.

And there is today the other Katharine, Katharine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, who made the Post one of the truly great newspapers of the world in what may arguably have been the last golden age, the Indian summer of the newspaper business.

Probably no previous subject of the “One Life” series means quite so much to the current residents of this city as this one – even Lincoln or Elvis. Katharine Graham, as a prominent figure, as a publisher of a national newspaper, as a deeply powerful and influential national and international figure, rose to real prominence in 1963 when she became the publisher of the Washington Post after the shocking and tragic suicide of her husband Phil Graham. At sea in a role she never anticipated, even though she grew up in the world of the Post her father had bought in the 1930s, she learned quickly and adapted, overcame painful shyness, and in a unique partnership with Managing Editor Ben Bradlee, guided the paper in short order through the risky and courageous business of printing the Pentagon Papers (though the New York Times fell into the same category), exploding Watergate onto the front pages of a major newspaper, and afterwards, surviving an almost ruinous printers’ strike in the 1970s.

She was, as it turned out, tough.

That’s certainly the impression you get from the first photograph you see upon entering the exhibition – the famous, iconic, dramatic, almost forbidding black and white portrait taken by Richard Avedon in March of 1976.

She stares at the camera sternly, challengingly, even quizzically. Her arms are folded. Her mind appears made up about something. She has, for want of a better word, a certain gravitas there, earned honestly and with great difficulty in a world completely dominated by men, even in the ‘70s.

It’s not an entirely inviting image to an exhibition, but it takes care of summing up Graham as, by that time and certainly for the rest of her life, one of the most powerful women—people—in the world.

“It’s not something you could leave out,” says Curator Amy Henderson, who normally organizes exhibitions on popular culture icons like…say, the other Katharine, Katharine Hepburn. “The image
is iconic, and it shows that toughness, that courage which let her accomplish what she did. It’s a way in. But we wanted to do a lot more. We wanted to show a little bit of what made Katharine Graham the woman and person she became.”

The “We” Henderson refers to was a notable duo of consultants who knew Graham intimately. Pie Friendly, a researcher at the National Portrait Gallery, knew Graham socially through her husband
and father-in-law, journalist and writer Alfred Friendly Jr., and former Post Managing Editor Al Friendly, respectively. Liz Hylton, Graham’s personal assistant, provided access to photos and memorabilia and anecdotal material. “It was just us three ladies,” Henderson said. “The Washington Post and the Graham family were tremendously helpful.”

“We all knew each other,” Friendly said. “You would always cross paths through the paper, schools, parties and social occasions. I respected and admired her tremendously. She was a woman in a man’s world, truly. She was straight forward, honest. You cannot imagine what it must have been like for her, but she did more than persevere. She made the Post a great newspaper. It was just tremendous fun working on this, it really was. And mind you, she fired my father-in-law and replaced him with Ben Bradlee.”

Henderson was obviously limited in terms of space, so there’s a lot more that could have found its way into a larger exhibition. But what resides tells her story, fleshes her out, and portrays Graham
in full.

“It’s interesting going through these photographs—of which there were a lot,” Henderson said. “You get a sense of a woman, a girl, who was raised in a privileged world, was raised in her father’s newspaper business [working as a reporter]…who met and married a man she absolutely adored, and wanted nothing more than to be a wife, a mother, raise her children and do good deeds, and perhaps be a social leader. She never expected to be what she became. It required reinvention of the most difficult sort.”

When Henderson talks about Graham—whom she never met, she will tell you—certain words recur with regularity, as they do when you talk with Pie Friendly: “forthrightness, honesty, integrity, courage, resilience.” These are, of course, all qualities that elicit great admiration, without necessarily revealin a human being so much as a statue.

The pictures and artifacts, carefully selected by the trio of women, accomplish that job, even if the two videos (for the NPG’s Living History series by former director Mark Pachter) in which Graham talks about Watergate and the Pentagon Papers don’t entirely do so. There are many pictures, for instance, in which some form of the Graham sternness of the Avedon image are repeated: Graham with her editors, Graham at a meeting of the Associated Press National Board, Graham unsmiling in lots of photos.

But there are also a lot of portraits of Graham smiling, laughing with her head thrown back, and the smile and laugh show a woman transformed: a fun loving person in the moment. It’s a pretty dazzling smile she’s got there. And not one easy to acquire given the charismatic but self-absorbed nature of the dazzling Agnes Ernst Meyer, her mother, shown in a haunting photograph taken by no less a photographer than Edward Steichen. Her father, Eugene Meyer, while he encouraged and obviously loved his daughter, was rarely accessible and often distant. And there was the kinetic, hypnotic Phil Graham, who became publisher of the Post and absolutely swept Katharine away, until his instability began to overtake him.

What did she achieve? Take a look at the AP meeting portrait: a semi-circular made up entirely
of men who look somewhat like the cast of “Mad Men” in late middle age, minus cocktail
and cigarettes. And there is Graham, alone as a woman, but uncommonly self-assured. In her memoir, she wrote that she accepted life in a man’s world but then ended up leading a change in that world.

Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, and the Post’s growing reputation as a writer and reporter’s paper under Graham’s leadership, steered the paper into a stratosphere occupied by few publications.

Both the Pentagon Paper publication and, even more so Watergate, were dangerous times for the Post, but also thrilling and memorable times. In a way, the Post helped bring down a president, and the movie version of the Woodward-Bernstein saga “All The President’s Men” did not change that perception. Graham herself began to become an influential social lioness, and you can see her light up like a Christmas tree with Jacqueline Kennedy in New York, and at the black and white ball thrown by Truman Capote in her honor.

The infamous—therefore treasured—showdown with then-Attorney General John Mitchell, in which he blustered that Kate had gotten her tit in a wringer, resulted in a gift of a miniature wringer and small jeweled replicas of a wringer and a breast, which she wore proudly and with grand humor. They are among the artifacts on view, which also include the first hand-written page of her Pulitzer Prize-winning
memoir and the mask she wore to Truman Capote’s black and white ball.

The strike was difficult for Graham and in squashing the union she acquired, unfairly said a Post reporter, a reputation for ruthlessness. “Not so, not so,” said Robert Kaiser, who wrote the official story on the strike for the Post, “without any interference from her.”

“That was undeserved. She was the ideal publisher if you were a reporter.”

For most of us who were not Posties, the paper nevertheless was a daily presence in its headiest period, and Graham, for Georgetowners, living in her mansion, was an uncrowned queen. When she passed away, the funeral at the National Cathedral and subsequent wake at her home seemed like one last gathering for which she had called upon the world to come. And the world came.

The exhibition, which gets all the right things in that small room, seems particularly poignant in a time when the idea of great newspapers seems more memory, and a memory without a future at that. You feel almost glad that she’s not here to see the confusion and decline and predicted disappearance of newspapers in the 21st Century.

On the other hand, she might have found a way to prevent all that, to persevere. That Avedon picture, that look, those crossed arms seem to indicate that she just might have done it. [gallery ids="99247,104180,104159,104176,104172,104168,104164" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

I came to Washington in the mid 1970s, after living ten years in the San Francisco Bay Area, during a turbulent, heady period working on two different daily newspapers. I’ve never quite been able to satisfactorily explain to myself, or people who know me, why I came. Usually, I make a joke about it.

During the late 1970s — post Watergate, post Gerald Ford even, Carter in mid-malaise — I lived on Capitol Hill, where a group of friends once held an alley-stoop neighborhood party. A young go-getting politician and school board member named Marion Barry found his way to the party. He whizzed by in a frenzied, hand-shaking Afro blur but made an impression. People there, mostly white, talked about him. He was running for mayor, taking on the venerable Walter Washington, the city’s first mayor under Home Rule.

By around 1980, I started writing for The Georgetowner, and the first story I ever wrote for this publication was a detailed from-afar look at Ted Kennedy’s disaster of a challenge against President Carter, a disaster redeemed in part by a defiant, eloquent convention speech. The very next story that I recall was an interview-profile of the legendary stripper, Blaze Starr, backstage at the notorious Silver Slipper Burlesque House, in the New York Avenue area. Starr was futilely enamored of politicians — she had affairs with Earl Long, the Governor of Louisiana (captured nicely in a movie called “Blaze”), and the mayor of Philadelphia, Mr. Rizzo. It’s thirty years and hundreds and hundreds of stories later, and some things have changed…

Gary Tischler •

Baseball will always be the same, no matter how much it isn’t the same.

You can dress it up all you want with mascot races, raffle drawings, over-priced hot dogs, home-run explosions and astronomical salaries, but there will always be small boys down by the dugout, staring longingly at the kid pitcher, seeing their someday selves. There will always be older people sitting in the shady seats under bleachers, taking it all in, remembering. There will always be guys in T-shirts, sons and fathers with matching mitts, suburban college kids basking in beer, guys posing with the portraits of legends like DiMaggio, Mantle and Cobb.

There will always be phenoms.

That’s what the Washington Nationals have right now: an out-and-out, genuine, dyed-in-the-fastball phenom and All-American young guy with a beard stubble and a hundred-mile-an-hour whiffer.

That would be Stephen Strasburg, the rookie sensation pitcher who, in four starts since coming up from the minors like a savior, has won two, lost one, and struck out a ton. He’s young, unassuming, professional, married and throws a ball that sinks like the Titanic on its last breath.

That’s what a group of seniors from the Georgetown Senior Center, still game in their own way, and still reeling with memories from the loss of founder Virginia Allen, got to see for a trip to the ballpark led by Jorge Bernardo, driving the van and leading the way.

They ate hot dogs, stayed out of the sun, they cheered as grandmother and grandson (Marta Mejia and Sebastian Carazo), aunt and nephew (Helen Adams and Gerard Duckett) and mother and daughter (Janice Rahimi and Jamila), or as themselves, like Gloria Jiminez, Jane Markovic, Betty Snowden, Betty Hoppel and volunteer Mary Meyer.

Some cheered as old diehard Chicago baseball fans, like Vivian Lee, who, as the presidential mascot race came up, remembered the ways of White Sox owner Bill Veeck, Jr., who was the first great baseball promoter. “People thought he was a little bit crazy,” she said. “In Chicago, you were back in the 1950s and probably now a White Sox Fan or a Cubs fan. I was a White Sox fan. We lived in Hyde Park.”

We reminisced, rattled off old names: Early Wynn, Chico Carresquel, Minnie Minoso, Rocky Colavito, Nellie Fox and so on.

Baseball lives on like that, in the reciting of names.

Down by the field, before the game, Strasburg was warming up: raised leg, follow through, intense concentration, red uniform on green field. Cameras were clicking in the sun.

The game was like a slow, teasing dance. Strasburg struck out nine, but gave up nine hits, most of them, strangely, on two-strike counts. It may be that the kid doesn’t know how to throw a bad pitch on purpose, which is a learned thing with time.

In front of us, a young man was yelling and screaming, drowning out the occasional “yikes” from our group. He could have been Strasburg — except for the tattoos, the nose piercing, the fanatic eyes. But he did sport a wobbly chin beard and he bounced up, hand held high, before I realized he was high-fiving. He ran down the row of the Georgetown ladies and high-fived them all after another Strasburg strike out.

That’s the game, folks.

It ended 1-0 for the Kansas City Royals, on dinkers and dubious hits and on nothing much for us.

But everyone will remember the afternoon, the silence on the field, the shadows, the stillness until the windup and the pitch.

That was baseball, the day the folks from the Georgetown Senior Center came to watch.

Gary Tischler •

Contentious, abrasive, thorough, skeptical, dogged, courageous, trustworthy. High praise, indeed.

All of those words are job requirements and descriptions for what today is an endangered species in the field of journalism: the investigative reporter.

All of those words pretty much fit Daniel Schorr, one of the last of the great television and radio reporters who passed away at the age of 93 last week.

Today’s luminaries in the news may have more memorable faces, more dramatic delivery, and they’re certainly better looking, but they can’t hold a candle to the likes of Schorr, who managed to tick off just about every president, elected official and government official he came in contact with, including Nikita Khrushchev, Eisenhower, JFK, CIA directors, senate committee chairs and, most fondly and importantly to him, President Richard Nixon.

Schorr, who died while still working for National Public Radio, came from the Edward R. Murrow informal school of journalism, full of tough, in-your-face, questioning reporters and anchors. That school included Walter Cronkite, once the anchor for the nation on CBS, a network for which Schorr worked until becoming embroiled in intelligence committee findings he discovered, reported and then leaked IN TOTO during the presidency of Gerald R. Ford.

Schorr was discovered by Murrow and became a member of his team, though in his own idiosyncratic way. He was a CBS reporter in Moscow until a KGB reporter refused to let him return. He managed to anger both Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson, but most of all he made Nixon, who didn’t like the media to begin with, turn green and paranoid.

Schorr managed to win Emmy for his Watergate reporting on CBS, for “outstanding achievement within a regularly scheduled program.”

His reporting landed Schorr on Nixon’s infamous “enemies” list a large and eclectic rundown of political foes which also included the likes of Broadway star Carol Channing and New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath. Schorr, like many members of the list, was inordinately proud of his presence there.

In the 1970s, a House Committee investigating the intelligence community, especially the CIA, decided to dub its finding secret. Schorr leaked the findings to the Village Voice after CBS refused to run the story. He was subsequently fired, leading to questions about his integrity, a reporter’s most valuable asset. Schorr, in the end, was vindicated, and you can find an echo of the incident in the recent leaking of classified information about the Afghan war by a watchdog Web site.

Schorr’s passing, like that of Cronkite, is a reminder of the huge changes in the media. They’ve never been replaced.

Gary Tischler •

Ever feel that the times are even stranger than you imagined, full of confusion and peril?

In other words, you don’t know whether to laugh, cry or move to a cave?

Let’s take the recent 10-5 vote by the Texas Board of Education to do a little attitude readjustment when it comes to school textbooks. Apparently fearing that these books, which are often taken up by nationwide textbooks, have gotten way too liberal of late, they’ve trimmed, cut and added to have kids learn more in line with their way of thinking.

Some historical topics that were bandied about: Jefferson Davis’ inauguration speech — the one where he assumed the presidency of the Confederacy — should have equal standing with that of Abraham Lincoln’s. Or that capitalism should be referred to in books as free enterprise — a cause already espoused by most conservatives who see the very same free enterprise under attack from the Obama administration.

Wait, there’s a little bit more: the new textbooks will downgrade Thomas Jefferson’s standing as a philosophical founding father, will refer to the United States as a constitutional republic, not a democracy, suggest that the founding fathers actually did not believe in the separation of church and state, would refer to the slave trade as more of an economic, world transaction, elevate the historical significance of Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schaffly, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association, and make a martyred hero out of Joe McCarthy.

It’s one thing to add things and subtract things, to move this one up and this one out. But it’s quite another to rewrite history altogether, with little basis in fact. To put, for instance, Lincoln and Davis on an equal footing is to misunderstand the Civil War altogether. To downgrade Thomas Jefferson to the point of near invisibility is to skew the founding of our country wildly.

And yet, the vote and the ideas behind this could reflect the political white noise that’s heard all around the country these days, a lot of it stemming from a populist rage that’s sick of politics as usual and afraid of big government all at the same time. There’s genuine anger here, but also irrational fear of what lies ahead.

It’s true, of course, that before the advent of Reagan, a certain revisionist tone crept into national history and social studies textbooks. But talking about and studying the plight of Native Americans as they faced the America’s westward push, or studying slavery or the Civil Rights movement, or labor movements or women’s fight for equality were issues that were not about ideology, but about invisible or neglected historical facts. It may be a fact that there were Communist spies in the United States, but McCarthy’s ruthless and self-serving use of his committee’s investigative powers was decidedly unheroic, and created a country-wide atmosphere of fear.

Many of our early settlers here came to escape religious persecution than proceeded often to persecute their co-religionists, including Catholics. There was a good reason that the idea of separation of church and state made up part of the thinking of founding fathers.

The Texas school board members who voted for the textbook changes don’t just want to fill gaps or add missing information. They want to rewrite history or expunge parts of it. Instead of burning books, they want to turn them into conservative fairy tales.