Lee and I happened to be on the summit of Mount Washington on one of the rare days when winds were calm at 2 mph and there was warm sunshine. The observatory recorded a high temperature of 64 degrees, but we thought felt more like 70. It also was a rare day when there were 100-mile vistas at the summit, rather than the more common 30 feet of visibility. The weather on Mount Washington is clear only 33 percent of the time, and visibility of this extent is even rarer. (Earlier this month, the weather was very different, with the observatory recording 8.3 inches of snow.)
By coincidence, the same day that we took the Cog Railway to the summit, the Mount Washington Commission was meeting to discuss changing the mountain’s name. Easton resident Kris Pastoriza has been seeking to rename of the 6,288-foot-high mountain Agiocochook, as it was known by the indigenous people of the area. He argues that the current name is inappropriate because President George Washington owned slaves.
One could support using the Native American name on the grounds that it was the original one — like Denali for Mount McKinley in Alaska — but this trend of disparaging historical figures for not being perfect is troubling. In Washington’s case, the objection ignores the fact that, in his 1799 will, Washington freed all of his slaves at a time when many people were still keeping them.
Holding dead people accountable for not conforming to today’s standards is a dangerous signal that some are unwilling to recognize that people are a product of their times, and that enlightenment takes time. Sarah Stewart, the commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, suggested that including information about the history of the man for whom the mountain was named could better satisfy the concerns about an imperfect man.
That holds true for all historical figures and is one of the reasons I object to people holding someone up as a role model. Very few people are without flaws of some kind, but that does not make them evil, and excelling in one area does not mean that the person does not fail in other areas.
Rather than destroying statues or renaming mountains, military bases, or buildings that commemorate those who have achieved fame at some level, as if they never existed, humanity is better-served by learning about the accomplishments as well as the weaknesses of those whose lives were commemorated, and using that information to build a better society. Build upon the past, rather than ignoring it.
Diana Butler Bass made that point in a lecture at First Baptist Church in Columbia, Missouri, on June 17. Using the example of the the massive monument to General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, she showed photographs of its removal, resulting in an empty pedestal and then a simple patch of grass after the pedestal’s dismantling. “The facts aren’t in dispute,” she said, “but what’s in dispute is how we interpret that, and how as [a] community we put physical reminders around those interpretations, which allow us to find meaning and purpose for our own lives today. And that’s what interpreting history is always about. History is always about the people who inherit the stories, people who inherit the facts finding a sense of themselves and their own vision for the future in those facts, and how we choose to write the narrative about those facts.”
Getting the facts in the first place is the difficult task of biographers and journalists. People want authorized biographies that present them in the kindest light, and a biographer or ghostwriter who works with the subject aims to craft that kind of image. A good example of the practice is J. R. Moehringer’s account of ghostwriting for Prince Harry, in which he describes a shouting match with the prince as Moehringer insisted on excluding something Harry was insisting on including but would not have been complimentary to him. Journalists and biographers who want the real facts do the opposite, coaxing out details that may be damaging but which present a fuller and more accurate picture.
Many journalists today have become “access journalists” who are willing to stick to the official story in order to cultivate favor and make sure they continue to have a ringside seat in the halls of power. Some journalists simply regurgitate what they are told by authorities without checking into the facts. That is not the traditional role of journalists, which is to ferret out the truth, whatever the consequences.
The U.S. Supreme Court recognized that role when it heard the prior restraint case against the New York Times when it considered publishing the Pentagon Papers, the 7,000-page secret government study detailing U.S. involvement in Vietnam, from Harry Truman’s presidency to Lyndon Johnson’s, in which successive presidents had lied to the American people, promising victory even as they expanded the war, knowing that the chances of victory were slim. Daniel Ellsberg, who died on June 16, had copied the document and offered it to the newspaper, which agreed to publish it as important news, even though it exposed government deceit. Leaking classified documents is a legal gray area, but the Supreme Court refused to intervene in the publication, affirming the right of the free press to print even news that is unfavorable to the government.
Julian Assange and WikiLeaks serve as today’s Daniel Ellsberg. The exposure of information the government wants to keep secret falls within the First Amendment. As Matt Taibbi wrote, “My government wants to put Julian Assange in jail for 175 years for practicing journalism. The government of this country, the U.K., is going to allow it to happen. … If you’re okay with this happening to one Julian Assange, you’d better be okay with it happening to many others. That’s why this moment is so important. If Assange is successfully extradited and convicted, it will take about ten minutes for it to happen again. From there this will become a common occurrence. There will be no demonstrations in parks, no more news stories. This will become a normal part of our lives.”
Taibbi himself has been ridiculed for his journalism, exposing the government’s efforts to censor inconvenient truths by persuading social media platforms such as Twitter that, even if the information people are sharing is true, it should be blocked if it could cause any hesitation in accepting the official story. By poring over thousands of communications in the so-called Twitter Files, Taibbi exposed how the company changed its algorithms to dampen or block “misinformation” and “malinformation” while promoting what the government was dishing out.
“We’re building a global mass culture that sees everything in black and white, fears difference, and abhors memory. It’s why people can’t read books anymore,” Taibbi said.
He is right. Activists across the political spectrum have been trying to restrict some forms of literature, the vast majority of them from conservative-leaning groups that claim sexual content and even pornography are being peddled to young readers. There also have been liberal efforts to restrict books in the name of anti-racism or progressive ideals.
It is dangerous to see things only in black and white when, in fact, life exists on a continuum, and people should be enjoying the broad spectrum of beliefs, experiences, and ideas. It is what leads us forward to a better tomorrow.
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