Liz Lemon defends Philly and Franklin

That is, the fictional character Liz Lemon on last week's episode of 30 Rock. As soon as I heard that Comcast was buying NBC, I wondered what this would do for the plot of 30 Rock--which revolves in part around a GE executive's control of a division of NBC. Well, the Philly-bashing began when fictional executive Jack Donaghy announced NBC's acquisition by Kabletown, headquartered in (said with distaste) Philadelphia. Perhaps the best quote of the night revolved around Philadelphia's favorite historic citizen, Ben Franklin.

Jack Donaghy on his hometown of Boston: "Boston tea party, Boston cream pie...birthplace of Benjamin Franklin."
Liz Lemon: "Yeah, then he looked around, realized it sucked, and moved to Philadelphia!"

Franklin's own version of that story in his autobiography: "I was rather inclined to leave Boston when I reflected that I had already made myself a little obnoxious to the governing party, and from the arbitrary proceedings of the Assembly in my brother's case, it was likely I might, if I stayed, soon bring myself into scrapes, and farther, that my indiscreet disputations about religion began to make me pointed at with horror by good people as an infidel or atheist."

Franklin then headed for New York before getting a tip about a job in Philadelphia, where he finally made his home. I visited the site of his house with a friend; all that remains is a modern outline of the house on the place where it would have stood. Franklin might or might not be delighted to know that below the site of his house is an underground museum with comically outdated technology and cheesy exhibitions, which another blogger has perfectly captured here. It would be the perfect scene for a 30 Rock episode when the cast has to come to town for a meeting with Kabletown/Comcast....

Texas is SO 1990's

Actually, it's not a joking matter. Texas's Board of Education has hearkened back to the culture wars of the early 1990s, particularly the fight over national history standards, with their new changes to the state curriculum. But there is something notably more partisan about the Texas story than the fight in the '90s. When the standards written in 1994 were attacked by Lynne Cheney, then head of the National Endowment for Humanities, the debate was more about conservatives' wanting to see more about white leaders and national triumphs, and less about minorities and conflict. The Texas Board of Ed would agree with that, but they've gone farther: they want to emphasize Republican tenets and accomplishments. The changes include:

• removing Jefferson from the discussion of people who influenced the Age of Revolutions because he supported separation of church and state
• Christianizing the founders and the basis of American government
  
• emphasizing the success of the "free-enterprise" rather than "capitalist" system
• praising Nixon and Reagan's "leadership"
• adding discussion of Phyllis Schlafly, the NRA, the Contract with America, and the Heritage Foundation

Newspaper coverage of these changes has emphasized the importance of Texas's standards because the state is a large market for textbooks. But what I can't fathom is what reputable historian--because, let's remember, textbooks are written by historians and not politicians--would agree to tailor a text to such overtly partisan ends. Yes, there is money involved, and that is probably going to overrule some underpaid historian's ethical objections. It's too touchy to have professional codes violating this sort of politically-motivated historical work, because the line is a tough one to draw.

That said, historians are experts in history, and the dentist who heads Texas's Board of Ed is certainly not. The fact that conservatives have been able to marginalize the expertise of historians by arguing that all academics are liberally-biased is perhaps the Right's biggest triumph in the culture wars. To argue for complexity and nuance is now considered liberal. Perhaps that's now actually true: the chairman of the GOP doesn't even know the meaning of the word "nuance."

I think that Texas Board of Ed member Mavis Knight, an African-American Democrat from Dallas, captured the problems of the Right's approach in the culture wars best:

We are painting this false picture of America. We are not unified, even now. We're struggling to be, but you would have us think that we're in some kind of utopia that does not exist, and so until we mature more, we're going to look at where we have been and what obstacles we have overcome so that we won't continue to repeat some of the bad habits that we had in the past.

If only this smoothing over of struggles was the only problem with Texas's new standards.