{"id":1172,"date":"2026-07-26T07:09:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T07:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1172"},"modified":"2026-07-26T07:09:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T07:09:12","slug":"odysseus-visits-the-smithsonian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1172","title":{"rendered":"Odysseus Visits the Smithsonian"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

It seems that everyone is talking about two things these days: The Odyssey<\/em>\u00a0(or, to be more strictly accurate,\u00a0The Odyssey\u00a0<\/em>as reimagined by Christopher Nolan) and the Smithsonian Institution, specifically the National Museum of American History (NMAH), one of the roughly 20 museums that huddle under the taxpayer-funded umbrella of the Smithsonian.<\/p>\n

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I have not seen the film version of Homer\u2019s epic. But I feel confident in reporting that, for sheer entertainment, the televised cross-examination of NMAH\u2019s longtime director, Anthea Hartig, easily beat out the cinematic version of The Odyssey.\u00a0<\/em>How can I say this, not having seen Matt Damon emoting around in his beard and shiny armor? Well, Sydney Smith (1771\u20131845) said that he never read a book before reviewing it because he found that the exercise prejudiced him. So it is with me. I shall endeavor to escape prejudice, bias, both intentional and the other kind, as well as\u00a0parti pris\u00a0<\/em>altogether, by boldly commenting on some aspects of the Nolanized version of the story without having seen it. And seeing it is work<\/em>, dear reader. A look at the screening schedule tells me that it runs nearly three hours, 172\u2013173 minutes by the clock, though no one has been able to tell me why, in this homogenizing age of atomic clocks, we can\u2019t get a more precise reckoning of the time.<\/p>\n

By all accounts, Nolan\u2019s Odysseus, unlike Odysseus in Homer\u2019s telling, is a troubled, guilt-ridden specimen, forever agonizing over his aggressive behavior and mistreatment of others. He has, not to put too fine a point on it, anger issues, unlike Homer\u2019s Odysseus, who experienced anger but no anger issues. In Homer\u2019s version, Odysseus is a hero. He is clever, yes, both cunning (\u201c\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03cd\u03bc\u03b7\u03c4\u03b9\u03c2\u201d) \u00a0and complicated (\u201c\u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03cd\u03c4\u03c1\u03bf\u03c0\u03bf\u03c2\u201d). But even more often than Achilles, Odysseus is described as \u03c0\u03c4\u03bf\u03bb\u03b9\u03c0\u03cc\u03c1\u03b8\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2, \u201csacker of cities.\u201d He was a warrior. He didn\u2019t anguish about those to whom he caused anguish. It was part of who he was. He gloried in it.<\/p>\n

Given the length of the movie and the many liberties taken with the script, I am surprised that no one suggested having Matt Damon pay a visit to the Smithsonian or at least the congressional hearing about the Smithsonian. We know that Anthea Hartig is keen on beginning meetings with a \u201cland acknowledgment.\u201d It\u2019s all a little masquerade, of course, a rancid bit of virtue signaling that costs its performer exactly nothing. But I suspect that behind the theater\u2014by which I mean the hypocrisy\u2014is a timid bid for expiation or absolution. There is a lot of unearned guilt sloshing around the National Museum of American History these days, and the ritual of land acknowledgment, though ever so specious, might be seen as a moral or existential hedge, drawn from the same sort of calculation Pascal conjured with in his famous wager\u00a0about how individuals ought to think about the odds when it came to the existence of God.<\/p>\n

What I want to know, however, is what Odysseus, the Homeric hero, not the movie mannequin, would have thought about the practice of land acknowledgments. Let me put cards on the table and say that I believe he would have treated the people insisting on them as he treated the Cyclops Polyphemus or, come to that, the suitors pestering the patient Penelope, his wife.<\/p>\n

I said that the best entertainment I enjoyed last week was the cross-examination\u2014not to say the thorough exposure and humiliation\u2014of Anthea Hartig. And the best of the best, I thought, was the brilliant surgical evisceration conducted by freshman representative Brandon Gill (R-TX). In under 5 minutes, he performed an elegant posterior sagittal anorectoplasty on Hartig\u2019s long tenure at the National Museum of American History. And he did it by the simple, revelatory expedient of confronting her with the Smithsonian\u2019s own public educational materials. \u201cAre you a white supremacist?\u201d he asked. \u201cOh no, no,\u201d replied Hartig, smiling weakly. \u201cDo you think we all have implicit biases?\u201d asked Gill. \u201cIf so, what are yours?\u201d Oh dear. \u201cDo you think it is important to be polite?\u201d Gill wondered. \u201cOh yes,\u201d quoth Hartig, perhaps thinking that if she said she approved of politeness, Gill would be polite to her. No such luck.<\/p>\n

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Politeness, you see, is one of the many bourgeois virtues that literature distributed by the Smithsonian has identified as a symptom of white supremacy. Other behaviors and attitudes that raise the alarm about lurking white supremacist tendencies are hard work, rational thinking, respect for private property, delayed gratification, and rugged individualism.<\/p>\n

You think that I am making this up, but I am not. It\u2019s all there in an official NMAH brochure called \u201cAspects and Assumptions of Whiteness and White Culture in the United States.\u201d File it under \u201cThings are always worse than you think.\u201d Here\u2019s a thought experiment: What if these habits and behaviors really were signs of \u201cwhiteness\u201d or \u201cwhite supremacy\u201d? What then? Or to put it another way, how much of a racist would you have to be to promulgate a brochure like \u201cAspects and Assumptions of Whiteness and White Culture in the United States\u201d? (It would be interesting to know whether most of the authors of that odious document were themselves white. I\u2019d wager most of them were liberal white women.)<\/p>\n

The point is this: the Smithsonian Institution was\u00a0created\u00a0to preserve\u00a0and celebrate\u00a0<\/em>the American heritage. By the same process of moral entropy that has undermined American educational institutions, transforming them from unapologetic repositories of our storied past into tenebrous havens for those \u201cmen without chests\u201d that C. S. Lewis delineated, the Smithsonian Institution has abandoned its original mandate. No longer is it about celebrating America\u2019s past, whereby \u201ccelebrate\u201d I do not mean \u201cexonerate\u201d past evils and failures, the sort of deficiencies that are part of every nation, no matter how great. The Smithsonian should not be about covering up America\u2019s failings. It should be about putting those failings in the more capacious context of America\u2019s stupendous achievements. This the Smithsonian under its current leadership has conspicuously failed to do.<\/p>\n

Some observers are puzzled that President Trump should lavish so much attention on what is, after all, merely a cultural institution. He does so, I believe, because he understands that the ulterior motive of the Smithsonian Institution in its current incarnation is to rob us of our heroes. As I have put it elsewhere, Trump\u2019s attention to institutions like the Smithsonian is part of his ambition\u00a0to give America back its heroes. That is why he has overseen such meticulous criticism of the Smithsonian. Admonition, Montaigne observed, is one of the highest offices of friendship. Criticism takes time and effort to formulate and dispense. If he didn\u2019t care, President Trump could, like presidents before him, just pass by cultural institutions like the Smithsonian and our educational apparat. But he does care, which is why he devotes serious attention\u00a0to improving them.<\/p>\n

Above all,\u00a0The Odyssey\u00a0<\/em>is a story about \u03bd\u03cc\u03c3\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2, homecoming. The National Museum of American History, like so many aspects of the Smithsonian, has strayed far from its original purpose. It is wandering amongst monsters, enchanted by Sirens, lost in its fatuous, puerile disillusionment. It is time to bring it home. Perhaps Donald Trump is the Athena-like guide who can pull it off.<\/p>\n

Read more \u2018Meet the New Boss, Worse Than the Old Boss\u2019: Welcome to Ortega-Murillo\u2019s Nicaragua<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems that everyone is talking about two things these days: The Odyssey (or, to be more strictly accurate, The Odyssey as reimagined by Christopher Nolan)\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture-wars"],"yoast_head":"\nOdysseus Visits the Smithsonian - Urban Economy news<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1172\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Odysseus Visits the Smithsonian - Urban Economy news\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It seems that everyone is talking about two things these days: The Odyssey (or, to be more strictly accurate, The Odyssey as reimagined by Christopher Nolan)\u2026\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1172\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Urban Economy news\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-26T07:09:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1172#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1172\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/be7753cb687f443815cc81e8407f68ad\"},\"headline\":\"Odysseus Visits the Smithsonian\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-26T07:09:12+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1172\"},\"wordCount\":1266,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1172#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/9a93d595647fe83c45faada0a8ae401c.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Culture Wars\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1172#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1172\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1172\",\"name\":\"Odysseus Visits the Smithsonian - 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