librarypunk - 024 - Dead Presidents

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

We’re talking presidential libraries. What are they, what are they for, how do Twitter?  Visit Presidential Libraries and Museums | National Archives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_library#List_of_presidential_libraries  This American Life 424: Kid Politics Welcome to the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum | Harry S. Truman What's That Building? The Warehouse Storing Papers For Barack Obama's Presidential Library Sears’ Headquarters Was Supposed to Turn a Sleepy Suburb Into a Boomtown. It Never Happened.  Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas

Are you feeling exceptionally American? Let's talk American exceptionalism. It's library funk. I'm Justin. I am not the throat goat, and my pronouns are he, him. I'm Sadie, and I have no idea how to follow up to that. My pronouns are she and they. I'm Jay?

I think. My pronouns are he. I'm Carrie. My pronouns are she, her. Jay was glisling some mini-corn dogs, so I was trying to get like a glossy glisler throat-goat thing going, but it was all I got. I don't know what throat goat means. I do. I'm not sure I want to.

It's a real water gate. Since we're talking about presidents, it's a real watergate theme. Oh, is it like deep throat? Nailed it. When you're the head of the brain trust. Gotcha. Mm-hmm. Palacio champion, as they say.

So little presidential factoid. I am a geek about presidential history and presidential libraries in particular. For some reasons you'll find out soon in this episode, because we're trying to talk about presidential libraries. But first, discourse. I always love the discourse. Just picture of Ben Affleck smoking. I should have put on my horse mask. That's how I feel about this particular discourse.

Discoursing. Take a selfie with it on and then we can use that as a cover as the picture for the pot. Holding up like a CD so you're a disc horse. Oh, I've got a... Okay, yeah, I can definitely make that happen. Yeah. I can do that right now. I'm waiting for some racehorse to be named Discourse.

That's too get on. Like stupid racehorse names? Too short. Wow. It would be fun to see what came out of that, though. Like, you know how they combine names of the parents together? Is that how they do it? I think sometimes, yeah.

Like Mason Dixon. That was like a thing in Spanish. Paperclip, you know, Tuesday night and something. So breaking discourse. We're talking about weeding. So library Twitter has just been really annoying for the last two, three days, talking about just yelling at idiots about weeding. And every single type of guy I showed up, which was also kind of fun.

I can't wait for the story to break through to like the non-library world. And like one of my other podcasts. Which has multiple times. Yeah, this is such a repeat. It was, yeah, it was a real book Twitter repeat. and like even Internet Archive showed up. Mm-hmm. We got to see all the classics.

This exact thing happened to a library in Urbana, like before I was in grad school, like either right before or a few years before or something. It was like a dumpster full of books. The same thing happened where I work now a few years ago, apparently, dumpster full of books. And like the students found out and wrote about it in the paper and everything. Like this happens, like a cycle all the time. it's almost as if people don't actually know what librarians do for a for a living and that's being annoying about it on Twitter isn't helping yeah no not really yeah so I just like quit

caring I don't know like books are for dumpsters the only thing I said about it because there's only so many times we can go that's just a regular part of being a library because that just gives people an excuse not to fund libraries it's like they already don't like the fact we're doing this us going well this is just a regular part of a collector man. That's not helping. I just pointed out that like the equivalency to book burning, I'm like, y'all realize what the Nazis were burning. Right.

Which I know that also doesn't help, but I feel like people just going, well, this is what librarians do. Was like missing the point. Yeah. Acquating it with censorship is a false equivalent. Yeah. It's like, do you all know what the Nazis were burning and why? Like, yeah. And then I said Fahrenheit 4-51 is not a very good book.

So surprise people to get mad at me for that. Yeah, but he's from Waukegan. Yeah. I read Bradbury's from Waukegan. That's fun. Which is just north of Chicago. The thing I didn't understand about the Internet Archives tweet, because I, you know, I will defend Internet Archive for a lot of things,

but in this, like, more recent- For porn, number one. Yeah. But that like, because they do a, you know, very important service and I don't want them to get sued out of existence by publishers. And one of the things they've been doing lately is being like, no, we are a library. And they are. Because you had all the authors being like, well, real libraries. And so this tweet that was like, you know, well, we take the books.

Libraries send them to us. It felt like they were distancing themselves from libraries a little bit. instead of just having a different collection management policy and process, which is fine, you know, that is their job to just, like, digitize an archive and preserve because they're doing it, like, digitally and, you know, they have a different mission and stuff. That's fine. It was just an annoying tweet. You don't need five copies to digitize. Yeah, exactly. Like, then what are they going to do to throw them out? You can look at the picture and see, like, it's all duplicates. Yeah, and apparently it was like all, old. old paperbacks and stuff. Yeah. Well, someone

really summed it up as like amazing how after all this time internet archive guy still doesn't know what a library or archive do. Big yikes. Not my words, but I endorse them. At Hungry Ghost.

Good take. That's a good username too. Yeah. That's a thing in Buddhism. Hungry Ghost. Ghosts. One fact. I thought that was just a thing in Mario.

Well, the hungry ghost concept is a thing in all Buddhism, but in Japanese Buddhism, both Zen and otherwise, it gets kind of put into the more like Yokai folklore as well. so it's more in like spooky ghost stories and stuff than like other Buddhist culture. So it's almost separate from, I mean, it's still a Buddhist concept, but it's used outside of that context in Japan a lot. And so Mario being made in Japan, that makes sense. Adds up. Yep. This is what I expect from this podcast. Thank you, the voice of Matthew.

Catch phrase. We gave him one against his will. Matthew will live on forever. I can almost hear his voice. Jobless. Yeah, so the books were all weeded and, you know, they were. Were they wed? Yeah, they were bewedded.

And it turns out like they had like they have like an annual book drive where they get rid of shit that they weed. But no one cares. So anyway, my university just resubscribe to Better World Books because we weren't doing any weeding for a while. So now we are with Better World Books. And I actually wanted to look up how much we have to pay them because it's not cheap if you're a big library. If you're a small library, it's kind of affordable. Yeah, it's actually pretty worth it if you're a small library. You can turn some cash on that, especially if you do a massive weed.

You can make some cash on Better World Books. I didn't know they've paid it back to the libraries. Well, really. And then they work with Internet Archive a lot, right? Probably. Better World Books? I mean, it would make sense because if people request books from Better World Books, it's less stuff that they have to recycle.

and that costs money. True. If someone is just like send it to us. Yeah, I think they even do like Google book stuff because a lot of the scans that I see in an archive also have the Google Books thing. So there's got to be some sort of consortial. Yeah, there's got to be some sort of consortial.

This gets scanned and give given to these people kind of agreement going on. Well, if they're scanned by Google, they're destroyed because they cut the spines off. Then they go in the dumpster. I don't see people yelling at Google about that. It's just about to say. You make it sound like an abortion.

Cut their spines out. Which is also a good thing. You sound like a pro-life person who's like, they make it, you cut their spines off and throw it in a dumpster. I loved that like the mix of outrage tweets when someone posted that they cut Infinite Just and half to read it. And of course you got other people that were like, who Infinite Just sucks. And if you read it, you suck. I'm like, okay, whatever. But the people outrages it.

Someone cut a thousand people. page book in half to make it easier to read and carry it around. I'm like, it's like a, like, you can't, I don't know anyone who's ever read, like, read that and like hardcover before. It's meant to be like bent and, oh yeah. Yeah, the first time I read it was hardcover. Yeah. Oh, God, that was heavy as shit. It sure was. I couldn't carry it in my normal book bag. Yeah. I had to upgrade my book bag that summer. But yeah, like one Q84 for instance. If you buy it all as one book is like 900 pages.

But they can also buy us three volumes. You see I did the three volumes one. I have the one volume. It's clumsy, especially because it has a tissue paper cover. Oh yeah. Yes. I wonder if there's something to be said in like a Marxist,

like the fetishizing of books, but like talking about that as like a commodity fetishism maybe in a way, like from a Marxist lens of like the book as object. Yeah, the inconvenience of like the object. Like there's, I went through like a really, I guess, inconvenient book phase when I was like in my early 20s. And like I don't read books anymore. So that should tell you a lot.

So I've read all the inconveniently sized books for better or worse. Like 2666, et cetera. And I'm like, you know, like I love them. They're great. worth it. Fuck yeah. But also like, holy shit, like, I don't want to even be seen carrying something like that around, like, because it's just an invitation to bullshit. Yeah. On some level, too. Like, oh, I don't want to talk to anybody about this or like. Yeah. Or just like, in general, like the people

who hold the print form of the book as sacred. And I know like commodity. Commodity fetishism, the word fetish in that is not the way that it's used in like a sexual context. I know it's more like it's a symbol. It's more like the consumption. It's more like the sensuousness of the item. And it's like separated from the value that like the labor that produced it stands in for something else. It's the aesthetic. It's the experience.

It's the, to some extent, it's the capital wealth luxury. of an item in some extent to some extent. Philosophy Tube has actually a video that is not about commodity fetishism but talks about it and I really liked her. Like I hadn't really understood it until she explained it and it was really good. But yeah, because I was thinking like, you know, I'm not a print purest book person by any means, but I'm also a closet formalist and structuralists. Like don't tell all the other cool like queer academics that.

that I'm really into structuralism. Yeah, I know. And so I love books where, like, I couldn't imagine them as e-books or adapted in any way. Like, Infinite Jest, I think it's really convenient as an e-book, actually, because of all the footnotes. But House of Leaves, like, I don't even understand how they made a screenplay of it because it was going to be adapted to a TV show. Or books where, like, the process of, like, holding it and reading it is as integral, you know, medium in the message is that all bullshit, which I'm into you right now.

Well, I mean, there was ways in which, so there's a Faulkner book that was intended to be published. I love Faulkner. I think it was Sound of the Theory. Oh, God, I love Sound of Fury. It was originally intended to be published in multiple colors. Yes. And there's even like a digital humanities project that does that to help people. Yeah.

Yeah. So like pre-digital human. I took an American novels course where we talked about where that was like part of the we talked about the or I took an yeah I took like some sort of course I don't know where like I have an English degree and we took a course where we were looking at the textuality of we were reading House of Leaves and we were talking about the experience of textual and he talked about how they were they were just now printing the sound and the fury as it was meant. to be read essentially and it's just like and things like William Blake was another example who and like all of those like a lot of the poets who are also printmakers and things like that um I think caslan was another so a lot of those guys like were working in their own anyway sorry I am hugely digressing from the main point which is presidential libraries I could talk about the book and as art object and textual objects all day long.

Yeah, because I was just being like I understand the people who have such a deep connection to the print book as a sacred thing. I don't. Yeah, like I get what people are upset about seeing a dumpster full of books, but also it's like, you know, it's not a big deal. Because like if you claim, if you had an iota of the critical thinking skills that you claim to have, you would realize there's probably a fucking reason why

there's a bunch of fucking books in a fucking dumpster. It's very much like an emotional, personal reaction that doesn't have things to do with materiality despite, you know, that's not yeah. But anyway, presidential libraries. Yeah, that's a whole other

episode, guys. I'm upset by regular dumpsters. Just like, oh, plastic. God. Damn. You shouldn't have made that our little segment because that's just a whole episode. Yes, I do have Sam lined up to do an episode about it. Because he just wrote that article where he talked about the turfs who are the edge lords, the intellectual freedom edge lords, which is a new phrase I'm going to be using a lot. That's a really good way.

What about edge ladies or edge lassies? Probably. Edge milady. They are edge biological females. Edge women, but it's spelled womb in. But yeah, he wrote a really good piece. I'll go ahead and link it in the show notes since it just came down. So, presidential libraries, I was looking at the wiki for presidential libraries because

I wasn't sure when they started. And it's very interesting where they all kind of ended up because, like, the Quincy, like, the Adamses are both like at the Adams Historical Park. And then like William Henry Harrison is just like Berkeley. It's just like kind of wherever their papers ended up for quite a lot of them. Or like their house. It's like Franklin Pierce's homestead, Millip Fillmore House, James Pugan House. And there's a reason for that.

What's the reason? In 1955, Harry Truman established the Presidential Libraries Act. And he established his own Presidential Library in Independence Missouri, which is where I'm from. This is what I expect from this podcast. Wait, that was a wrong one. The buttons are so tiny. Yeah. I want to get a physical soundboard so I can be like,

Bha, Bha! Independence isn't where the Mormon thing happened, is it? Yes, it is. That is? Okay. That's why it sounds familiar. Yeah.

It's also Oregon Trail. There's a lot to in fact. You may recognize it from these other historical events. And me. So Harry Truman Presidential Library is also where I'm from. So I've been there a lot. And as a result, I have become quite fascinated with the existence of presidential libraries and some of the legislation around them. So they, because of this, like Harry Truman, like, set up his office at his library where he continued to work until his death in 1974.

and his office is exactly how he left it when he died and he is buried at his library Ben I was going to be like and he's still there yeah and he's still there literally like not too far from his office actually yeah it's one of those experiences where you can go and have a museum experience and then have a library experience and then they also have like educational programming and things like that we also used to do our National History Day competitions there. Very exciting things. So there are certain traits of different presidential libraries. One of them is if you've never done this, the White House Decision Center is a very interesting experience, which is an educational experience designed for middle school and high

school students where you take out, you role play as members of a White House cabinet in a crisis situation. What kind of model you in shit is this? Yeah, that sounds exactly like what you want to put middle schoolers through. Yeah, so I was in, I was a junior and a senior in high school the both times I did it. The first time I think I was the Secretary of State for invading North Korea. Good old colonialism. Yeah. So that was exciting. Really, you know, and they really like try to ed They give you a lot of documents to consider and things like that. And like, you're supposed to figure it out in, in like, you know, three hours. That sounds about right.

Yeah. And then you eat your sack lunch that you have to bring yourself. And then you carry the trauma of invading Korea with you for life. Exactly. And then the next time, I think, like, we got to do the Berlin airlift. So a little more feel good on that one. So both of them were Truman related? Yes, because it was the Harry Truman Presidential Library.

Is the decision center at the Truman Library? There's a decision center at every presidential library, I believe. So it's sort of like Groundhog Day. Or at least... Some formal model you in kid must have done that. Or at least like, there are several of them because this American Life did a program about one. and I think either the Reagan or the Nixon Library. The Nixon Library's got to be a trip.

Reagan would fucking have one. Asshole. It's all about where the jelly beans are. There's hungry ghosts. Where are my jelly beans? Remember, kids, Reagan's grave is a gender-neutral bathroom. He showed up in that documentary I saw. I went to go see on Friday, and I almost like growled in my seat

because it made me so mad just to see him. So let's see. The conceit of presidential libraries, so I kind of wanted to go. But let's just do the history a little bit. So there's 15 official presidential libraries managed by the National Archives, and I think those start after Truman? No, so they start actually with Hoover because Hoover was a lot. Hoover died in 1964.

So his is in Iowa, and I bet that's fascinating because the economy tanked when he was president. Black Monday. also great person to have a damn named after also a vill Hooverville yeah so Hoover's is in Iowa and I've driven past it a few times but not a lot but they've digitized some really cool footage recently of Hoover's home movies because he was the first president to have a video camera fun fact um so again I'm obsessed with this stuff so Hoover's the first one and then FDR, Truman, Eisenhower's is in Kansas.

I haven't been to his, but also easily accessible to me if I wanted to go there. I did have someone asking if I wanted to go there on a date one time, but things didn't ever precipitate. And then, let's see here, Eisenhower, who's, Kennedy's is managed by the NARA. Johnson's is a little weird He is not buried at his museum He's buried at his ranch And actually Kennedy's buried at Arlington too

So they're not buried at their museum Is that like standard? Is that like written into the legislature? Like you should be buried with your books Like some of them is like fairly common practice That like they want to be buried at their museum Because it's like something Harry Truman started Or like some of them started doing

Yeah, anyway We should just make a big pet The presidential pit. The presidential pit. Let's open up this pit. Fucking cavity. Open up this pit. Once again, I am asking you to open up this pit.

That was like my favorite meme to come out of that one. And also I am once again asking you to live deliciously. Johnson's is at Austin, Texas with UT Austin. I was trying to figure out how many were if Texas had a large amount. A library and then some of them keep their papers separately. So, like, I think Johnson's papers are at UC Austin, but he has a separate library or like a separate museum somewhere. I scrolled this list and I think the closest one to me is in like California. It's probably Nixon.

Yeah. So not something it was on my radar, really. Reagan's in Simi Valley, California. Whichever one is more north. Yeah, I got a bunch really close to me. Mood West. Present. You would be close to Franklin Pierce.

Jay. Am I? Let me look. Oh, yeah. And John Adams, because Quincy, Massachusetts. Mm-hmm. Oh, who's from Maine? Is there someone in Maine? Oh, yeah, so Franklin Pierce is here and New Hampshire.

Yeah. The men without a chin. Oh. So musical. Teddy has some stuff at Harvard. That's it. Mm-hmm. He's got stuff everywhere.

Yeah. Calvin Coolidge has some stuff in Northampton. Massachusetts. And then some other stuff in Vermont. Right. JFK has some stuff in Boston. Boston. Boston.

Pocky-Kha. JFK announced recently that his daughter taught him to stop saying the F-sler. No, that's why they shot him. God. Oh, wow. That was a joyous few days on Twitter. Arthur's like staring at me. My favorite one to come out of that was, I'm going to do it.

I'm going to blame Martin Scorsese. for making that name and say the F slu. Even though he's only been one for a Sezi movie just one. He's just been the depadded.

Which I haven't seen so I don't know if he's dropping F bombs all over the place in that one. But it doesn't matter. I don't know if that movie's in English.

I've seen that movie a lot and I don't think so. I mean he says allegedly go fuck yourself. I saw one that was like you're only allowed to say this if you're from the culture and then it was like

South Boston Irish Catholic or something. Highly specific. Yeah. Okay, so what is a presidential library? Yeah. Yeah, so a presidential library. So there's usually like a presidential library and a presidential museum.

Sometimes they are co-managed. Sometimes they are separately managed. A presidential library is typically a research center that houses presidential papers and artifacts. A presidential museum is like a public place for people to go learn about. about a presidency. It's the propaganda center at the 9-11 museum. Yeah. It's where you put pictures of troops.

Yeah. Oh, do you think I can get like a dildo with the Lyndon B. Johnson one? Do you think it when made like... I would hope so. No, but you can get a puppet. How many puppets do you have, Gary? Um, with me. In storage.

On your person right now. Yes. Just bring one up. Uh, no. I mean, I can make sock puppets really easily. And then sell them at the presidential library. Yeah, sure. I mean, like, I don't have a lot of room for puppets in my life right now.

It's very emotionally taxing. Count Chocolat can come, or not Count Chocolat, Jesus Christ. The Count can come hang out with me then. Yeah, I just, like, don't have emotional or physical room for puppetry in my life. Not anymore. Not since the accident. The incident. So summer run by the National Park Service, state governments, colleges, universities, yeah, I think I was looking, U.T. Austin has one, Texas A&M has one, Southern Methodist has one, which I don't even know if Southern Methodist is that big of a school.

It's maybe. It's probably rich. Yeah, they're well in doubt. Well, it's the, they're in Dallas. I never hear anything about them. It's the George W. Bush. My brother designed a really good mock-up of that one when they were accepting designs for it.

And it was a bunch of FEMA trailers. Yep. And it didn't get chosen? No. It's very conceptual. You know, he's going for like a Stephen Hall kind of thing. Tragic. That was an architecture joke.

Yeah, so, like, you know, some of them are, like, affiliated with college campuses and stuff like that. So, like, there are certain ways that they get managed, but, like, most of them, basically from Hoover on to basically, through George W. Bush, have been managed entirely by NARA. You know, there's been a little bit of, like, co-coordination. but for the most part, let me get to that. Yeah, like I was wondering, like, you know, if some of them are affiliated at all in any way with universities, are there any of that do anything with public libraries? I think very few. However, the new Obama Presidential Center will have a branch of the Chicago Public Library in it.

Oh, that's fun. According to new plans. But it will not have anything to do with NAR. Right. So the Barack Obama presidential library, which is digital only, is controlled by NARA, which is basically just like the stuff legally they have to keep probably. And then his papers, did you put this in the notes or just mention it? Like his papers are... They're currently in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, which is basically a kind of busted Sears Company Town north of Chicago. And they're all still classified. Yeah. So I guess that means they haven't processed them and taken out the classified stuff.

Correct. And they're working under a really tight deadline, too. What's the deadline? You know, like the digitization deadline, right? I think they've got like some kind of deadline for digitizations, right? So it was originally scheduled to open in 2021, but Boya Act requests won't be accepted until next year. So it's not until five years after Obama's term is upped. And some records will be off limit for seven more years under the law that governs presidential records.

Which, thinking of it, that's probably one of the few cases where archival records have, the protection of law is for government organizations. Yeah. And they will have some. Okay, so it looks like they will have some artifacts in there. So, like, it's going to be paper and objects. So however, they don't know for sure. it'll have to be like from presidential stuff.

But I imagine it'll be really minimal stuff. What if instead of a branch of the Chicago Public Library was a Chicago Police Department, they just put a station right in the presidential center? I mean, knowing Lori, is it Lori Lightfoot? It's just a Lori Lightfoot clone army. Yeah. Yeah.

So like Hoffman Estates is this kind of really weird suburb, north of Chicago that was like a Sears company town. Oh, like with all like the Sears catalog houses and stuff? No. Oh. Weirder. Basically, what's going on is that like it was supposed to be like their headquarters for Sears. And it was like supposed to be the Sears corporate headquarters where everyone would

live who worked at Sears corporate. So it wasn't going to be like factory workers. It was going to be like where the corporate workers worked. But obviously like Sears, everything worked out great for Sears, you know. They finished the last house in 2019. Things were looking up. Yeah. So like, and that happened.

That deal happened in 1989. So like, anyway, yeah, things didn't work out so well. So like, if you ever drive through Hoffman, Estates, Illinois, it's really. it's kind of an odd spot to drive through because it's like really open on the side of the road. And then like you see these like really kind of postmodern glass buildings on the side of the road and stuff. It's it's pretty bonkers. I enjoy driving through it. Anyway, so that's where his papers are right now.

However, they're working on building his presidential center down in Jackson Park, which is south of Chicago, down by University of Chicago. and it's driving up home prices right now. So cool job gentrification. I mean, that's already Hyde Park, isn't it? Oh, yeah. Yeah, so that's already. Right. I know.

So it's like, oh, yeah, we're going to do it in the Chicago Southside, and it's like, no, you sure about that? So it's like, it was already on being up, like, a nice part, but it's already just like, you know. And it's also compounding. by a multi-million dollar Tiger Woods golf course being built at the same time. And then Elon Musk says he was going to mine cryptocurrency there. And then Amazon said they were going to build a warehouse there.

And so it's just what everyone. Everyone's housing prices are going to get fucked up eventually by some fucking despot moving into their neighborhood. So yeah, it says a posh but, what is it? Jackson Park Highlands, posh but tiny 16 square block neighborhood of elegant regal homes. It's still a secret to most outside. the South Side, which I guess they asked a resident and businesswoman. So yeah, that's, that's, yeah, that's a real estate agent talking.

I've been reading the book recently, Winners Take All, which is about how rich people will use nonprofits to, like, insert themselves into social issues. Jane Mayer? Who did write it? I'll put it in the show notes. Anand Giridharadas. So I'm about halfway through that book. Part of the book, they're talking...

about how young people get seduced into going into business, because if you go into business, and then businesses now are socially conscious, and if you want to get something done, you need the capital to do it, right? And so they are all, you know, all of these, like, ghoulish companies that do consulting for, like, the World Bank and shit like that. Like, the unofficial arms of the American Empire. So this person who was working there, this younger woman was like having all of these was completely in the culture of it and was like, I don't know if I actually believe all this stuff. But she's also like a full lib. So that was kind of the point of this book is just like, this is a very liberal project of just thinking that like make more money

and you can do more good in some way. And so then while she's working at McKenzie, they get hired by the Obama Foundation to try and, like, solve democracy. And I've got some stuff highlighted here. Were the business elites chipping in or were they taking over the work of changing the world? Whoever treats the disease recasts it with their own diagnosis, prescription, and prognosis. They were supposed to make democracy more vital and effective for ordinary people, but preferably without challenging their fellow winners too much. Like the cult of the winner is a big thing.

here. Like, anyone who's not, like, wealthy is just seen as like a loser. They were to grow the public's trust in institutions without digging too far into why the people leading those institutions were mistrusted. So it's something I've been thinking a lot about recently because, like, you know, Elon Musk is moving into my area and people keep posting at Adam and they're like, can't wait to get run over by your Tesla, sir. And got to keep those boots shiny. I was helping like local organizers come up with stuff for like why Musk's donations to like the city and the local K-12 education were bad because then you just buy influence and it's also not sustainable. So you just do like a very quick restructuring of everything in the school board and then that's all the money's gone. Like the money can only be used in these very like stupid ways, not to build like infrastructure or something useful.

So I feel like I was trying to get to like, what is it that presidential libraries do and will do in the future? Like what is their purpose of being created? I think Truman kind of like exemplifies it because he just wants everyone to think that he's a really cool dude. Seems to be like his life's work. Yeah, I mean, like he was just kind of a weird, like he got to where he was essentially by just being kind of a likable guy anyway. So that was just kind of a schick. So it's kind of in line with his personality. Yeah.

So he's just like, yeah, I'll do this. Oddly enough, like, Nara's planning a presidential library for Trump in Florida. So there has been no interference on his own parts as of yet. Do you know anything about like what's going on there? I have no idea. I did not really prepare that part. But I just thought it was interesting that it said on the presidential libraries wiki that, you know, there's going to be a Donald J. Trump presidential library.

You know, NARA launched a website on January 20, 2021. There aren't any plans yet, but NARA is going to be managing the records. Yeah. Well, like we said with Obama, they kind of have to keep some of this stuff. And it's funny that it's got to be in Florida because no one in New York likes him. Oh, absolutely not. Yeah, where's he going to put it? Yeah.

I feel like there's a way that something really interesting could come out of it, like with like context in curation and framing, but that's probably not what's going to happen. Like I feel like with all these, like there's like an opportunity here. But I don't know, because I've never been to one. I don't know if it's just like, oh, here's some stuff about this president and like boring documents or. The museum parts are very like,

they vary depending on the president like the Lincoln one is like Disney Lincoln I mean like there is a holographic theater but it is managed by the state of Illinois but it's like a major tourism situation for them and they have invested in it as such and it is a wild experience so like the Lincoln Museum is definitely like that's an experience the library side is definitely like a research center. And that's how a lot of them are. So there's like a like there's like a museum museum where like you go do the presidential thing. The Truman one is more of like a school field trip kind of place. Um, is how I would describe it. But it's also kind of like a fun, weird place to go with your friends sometimes. Like I always like to go there like with my adult friends and be like, hey, let's go learn about Harry Truman. Because you can kind of take in as much of it or as like little of it as you want. And there's like kind of some. cool shit that you can do in there too.

Like, you can make your own campaign buttons. And, like, they used to have, like, dress up as Harry and Best stations. That's cute. Like that. Yeah. That's hilarious. Oh, yeah. Like, because he was, like, kind of a stylish guy.

And, like, you could, like, listen to audio and things like that where you would, like, listen to him, like, talk about different, like, global figures. And he would talk about Stalin. He'd be like, that's a stubborn son of a bitch. Like, and, like, you would hear him, like, talk about different. like all these like fucking dictators on live audio or like or listen to him like tell stories about like being in World War I or like you would like just like pick up these little audio phones and like here live audio of things and they were actually like very fair about him because

like you would go through sections because like towards the end of his presidency he had a very low approval rating because of Korea and everything and it's just like oh no everyone hated him by the end of his presidency see. Yeah, so, like, that's interesting. Yeah, because it's like, oh, yeah, he integrated the military and, like, you know, he got a lot of flack for that. And then, you know, he, like, with Korea and how everything went with that, like, because that got really nasty. It didn't go well. That was, like, you know, especially after World War II with the victory. And, you know, how, oh, we just, like, with bamboo, you know, we didn't even need to drop a bomb, but we did anyway.

Thanks, White House Decision Center. Um, because of that, like, you know, all the nuclear development and stuff like that, it was like, you learn about all this stuff and like he was not well liked at the end of his presidency. And they like very clearly communicate that throughout the museum. They're like, oh yeah, like, things didn't go well for him towards the end of his presidency. And like he really just like hated being in Washington. He just like, like, just like hanging out on his house. I like that it's not just like a straight up just like propaganda machine. Yeah. It's not entirely. Like if you're in. I'm sure some of that. Oh, yeah. If you're a kid it is, if you're an adult, there's more to it kind of a thing. It was really interesting to do it as an adult after having seen it as a kid. Oh, yeah, I bet. Yeah, because I've gone there like four or five times in my life.

Yeah. I feel like there's a lot of value in that, actually. There's also a really beautiful Thomas Hart Benton mural there. Oh, there you go. Yeah. When I was a kid, we went on a field trip to Taco Bell. got to see the walk-in freezer got to make churros

it whipped our student council took a field trip to the Lincoln whatever but we our bus was running late and we were also going to a little theme park

outside of Springfield and so we never actually went inside we just drove around the Lincoln stuff and then went to the little like go-kart theme park so that's my experience with anything Abraham Lincoln was just driving past it waving

and then going go-karting I had like one of the best I had one of the best presidential, I had one of the best historic tours ever at the Lincoln Historic District, like, especially specifically at the Lincoln House.

Yeah, yeah. Shout out to my tour guide, Kyle, who was great. Shout out to Kyle. Shout out to Kyle. And then we had this, like, couple in front of us who was just, like, giving each other shit back and forth, like, very playfully. That's cute.

And, like, they were adorable, and they were so much fun. and it was like me and my brother and his friend Sean, like John Murphy from Boston, um, who loves Abraham Lincoln. Shout out Sean Murphy from Boston. Yeah.

And so like we all went and did Lincoln shit all day long. And it was just like we had the best time, like the best time you could have in Springfield, Illinois in the middle of summer. Lincoln's one of our gay presidents. Fun fact. Oh, definitely. Band Buren, duh.

Very big. very gay. Yeah. Fillmore. Was it Buchanan who was the one? Yeah. Yeah. Buchanan's the really, really gay one.

Yeah. And JFK had like a gay best friend and they would sleep in the same bed a lot but I don't think JFK like reciprocated. It's not gay if I'm on top. Nothing bad ever happens to the Kennedys. Why do you think his back was always blown out? The Kennedy, I'm not accustomed to tragedy.

It was a really good Impressation, Justin. I told you I wanted to be a voice actor when I was a kid. I told my mom I wanted to be a Thespian and she said that was a sin. That's only half a joke. I think that same joke is made

in the animated masterpiece Rango. Oh, that is a good movie. It's a good-ass movie, right? I was pleasantly surprised. My aunt B. I start in theaters. R-I-P-M-B. R-P-A-B.

and a solemn hand morn well no that's just taps oh yeah that's exactly the kind of joke she would have loved good I'm glad you know this was originally a funeral march it was a gladiator march actually

oh am I well actuallying a joke Sorry. Jokes are funnier. Hey, Jay, are you thirsty? Should you get a drink from a well? Well, actually. Yeah. What's your favorite presidential library?

Carrie, is it the Truman one or have you been to other ones that you like more? Yeah, let's see. For whatever reason. Or ones that you really want to go to or, yeah. Yeah, I actually really do want to go to the Nixon Library. My brother's been, and he said it was really good. Yeah. Yeah, I really want to go to the Nixon Library.

Does it have, like, espina shit in it? No, I'm just obsessed with Richard Nixon. I mean, that's valid. Was your favorite, like, actor with a bad prosthetic nose version of Nixon? Oh. Yeah, I got to go with, was it Mac? Was it the guy who played him in Frost Nixon? Langella?

Frank Langela? I think so. Yeah, that name sounds familiar. because I haven't seen that, but I think Lindsay Ellis has a video on on like depictions of presidents, or I think Nixon in movies. So I quite like in Point Break. Oh, yeah. And that's not a real one, but.

It was Frank Langela. I was correct. Woo-hoo. Can't believe I pulled that one out. Yeah, not a real representation adaptation, but just like the dead presidents in Point Break. You know, yeah. I thought that was a point break. Masterpiece.

If you like the first Fast and the Furious movie. Never seen a movie. Point Break's the same thing, but with surfing. Never seen either of those movies. Yeah, Point Break, Catherine Bigelow. I'm familiar with her filmography. Keanu Reeves, P. Swayze. Yeah, the Sways.

The Sways. Lori Petty is a heterosexual woman in it? I mean, she was ostensibly heter... Well, no, she was not even passively hetero in a league of their own, was she? No, and like, Tank Girl, it's like, kangaroos, so I don't know how that counts. Yeah. How did she pull that one off?

I don't know. I pulled up the Wikipedia for the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library, because I just Googled it, and there is like a Donald J.Trump Library.com. Is there a cheesecake factory attached? I don't know. Oh, well, no, it's just online, because it's just the part that's run by NARA. And I just love this in the Wikipedia. So the NARA Libraries established by Presidential Records Act,

independent of possible plans for physical building under the Presidential Libraries Act. So two separate acts. All current content has been previously available to the public, including websites such as Melania Trump's Be Best Photographs and social media accounts, including Potus and Flotus, though Trump's personal permanently suspended Twitter account at Real Donald Trump is not immediately available, Which is the only thing you would go there to see. Like, that's an interesting thing about digital curation is, like, the fact that, like, tweets,

especially because that Twitter handle is transferred, right? So that's an interesting, like, the way those tweets are archived. I would, like, love to read about how, like, when do they start archiving? How do they do it? What happens if a tweet gets deleted? It started with Obama, and there was. Yeah. And it's like that.

the, because like Twitter is just like an arm of the CIA at this point. I mean, yeah. So they just like transfer everything over for the presidents whenever the transfer power happens. It's like, it's like a quasi governmental thing, even though there's like no law about it. But it's just like you have to give up the POTUS account. So I've read a little bit more in the Wikipedia and it's like people are worried about like him building a propaganda center. I'm like, I'm not. I think it'll be completely underwhelming.

I think he just has no interest in it. Yeah, yeah, like, it's very clear that it is not on his radar at all. Like, like, basically someone was just like, he's in Florida. And that's where they took the shit. Like, yeah, there's, I thought maybe that the Wikipedia for the presidential libraries was out of date. That's why he Googled it. And it's like, no, there's just no plans still. Like, so you mentioned that like just his personal account, that that's not

accessible. Were those tweets archived at all either in general? Because I know Library of Congress archives tweets as well. Yeah, I'm sure it must be on Library of Congress. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I don't know if there's another entity that archives tweets. There are. Especially for public figures. Yeah, this is the thing about digital archiving is, like we talked about with Mitchell's Mell. When it comes to social media, there's like no one doing it. It's no one's real official job. officially, you know, take all these Twitch streams or take Twitter or take, you know, 4Cham. Because if it's not a government thing, it's kind of hard to convince libraries to do it. So then you get the internet archive just being like, yeah, we'll do it.

But the Wayback machine kind of just like runs on its own now and kind of just generates profit by selling instances of archive it. And you can also request that things be taking out of the Wayback machine, like, and just not have URLs be accessible. through it. I know that the original Masters of the Universe, like 50 Shades of Grey, fan fictions. El James had all of those removed from the Internet Archive. I don't know who did it,

but the original I identified as an attack helicopter science fiction short story has been removed from the way back machine. I think that's probably censorship and weeding and people should get mad of the Internet Archive for doing that.

I know she was the one who requested that oh oh you're making another joke is jay's turn not to get the jokes no yeah well because like she was the one who requested the story be taken down in the first place from the website so i'm wondering if it was her or the magazine on behalf of her who requested that from the internet archive but that does put an interesting thing because if the internet archive is a library legally it can just archive whatever it wants because it has like broad exceptions it doesn't have to comply with takedown know this is unless it wants to. So I actually, I wonder what their policy is. Yeah, I wrote up, so I'm taking like the digital curation certificate series of Library Juice Academy courses right now.

And in one of them, I had to do like a little write-up of like a digital curation story in the news. And so I wrote about the Isabel Fall story. And that's how I learned that like things could be taken out from the internet archive, like the way back machine in general, because I'm surprised that I couldn't just go to there and put in the original URL and find a captured version of it. But that also brings up that like in a lot of articles about other things, screenshots of tweets are often put in there or like embedded Instagram posts. But so sometimes those screenshots of the tweet are the only existing record of the tweet that exists anymore unless like you have access to the Library of Congress. I don't know if they

unilaterally archive tweets or only specific accounts. I've never been sure on that. I think they tried to do the whole website. That's what I thought too. But I also think they're having trouble justifying it. Last time I read about it, it was something like, yeah, we're doing it, but we're not, like, we don't have a good plan for how to, like, scale this forever. Yeah.

But yeah, so that was like a, you know, to bring it back to presidential libraries, presidents interacting with the country via social media, even if it's not in the deranged way that Trump did it, like that's a whole other level of curation and policy that has to happen. So I'm just curious as to how that will be presented in the libraries, like Facebook posts or... Yeah, so there's actually... I don't know if that's covered. I don't know if you looked at the presidential archivalry. Act of 2008, but that covers...

I haven't framed in my wall, but I haven't looked at it in a while. I haven't memorized, man. There's a quiz. That covers some of the digital... So it prioritizes digital archiving in some ways. So basically it gives a lot more priority to digital archiving and things like that. And I think that includes, I don't know if that would include Twitter or not, because I think that's too early. Yeah, I also wonder if retroactively that can be used to include things like memes. Because like, you know, Obama even did the thanks Obama little short video.

He did the whole thing with Kegan Michael Key as like his like anger translator. Yeah, yeah. There's all of the Q&on like right wing memeery about Trump. People turn that video of Kamala, like calling Joe, being like, we did it Joe, like into a meme. So I'm wondering if like beyond just what the presidents themselves produce, if there's any sort of effort to archive the social stuff around their presidency. I think you get into. Yeah, that's a big bandwidth issue. It is.

Yeah. I think you could open up like a donation policy essentially, which is what I. I think presidential libraries did in the past, which is having donation policies, where people could, you know, essentially digitally donate things like memes and stuff. Oh, that's cool. I don't do things like that, but that's potentially an avenue for digital archiving is, you know, meme donations because it is people's intellectual property. They could work with the know-your-meam website. Yeah. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. Presidential know-year-meme. Yeah. Somebody should do that. Yeah, because like it's seriously, I mean, even Tumblr was like, you know, how do you know someone else is from Tumblr? You say, hey, I like your shoot laces. And they respond, thanks, I got them from the president.

And that's when Obama was still president. And then there was a little giff of Obama going, it is law in the post. And that's, you know, early OG Tumblr post. You're giving me more flashbacks, Jay. Yeah. But, yeah, no, like, it's such a. an integral part of like internet culture, I think, that I hadn't realized until now of like memory involving presidents. Yeah, those are probably all done by individual researchers.

No, that's a whole different thing of researchers keeping their own digital archives and like, what do they do with them? Because there's no good answer to it. There's like not really good software for preserving stuff. And even if you go through all the trouble of like, cataloging all of it or describing all of it in a database, like it's really only useful to you as one historian. There was something that American Historical Association tried to do when I was in graduate school, which was like getting PhD graduate students to like crowd share their digitizations of stuff. Oh, yeah, I remember that. Yeah. And it didn't work because obviously it wouldn't work. Because the main thing I see is like places that you can like upload your like research data to, but most of the time to people that means data sets. And I'm like, but no, like images and stuff can also be research data.

Exactly. Yeah. So I don't know why the data as numbers as like a data set of statistical analysis or. Well, because even like in scientific research, you can have images. And that's also a research data. So I don't know. Now we're just getting into like groaning about digital curation practices. Yeah.

Anything can be a data set. Anything can be a data collection. Most of the stuff you see in like fig share and stuff like that is mediated by librarians of those. So it's actually like usable most of the time. And you've got to go through like DMP practices, digital management projects. Yeah. Like I just did a little write-up of dryad for an LJA assignment.

and they have like curators who go in and review your data before it's like to make sure it's like usable and they give you a DOI and all that stuff to be honest Carrie I'm like was kind of surprised you were so into this it was just like not something I expected of like yeah Carrie's really into presidential history and presidential libraries yeah I found that kind of surprising too yeah I'm a straight up historicist though like that's you got to know all this stuff, especially like 20th century presidential history. I'm really into it. And I would love to hear your thoughts on like the, because you said they were like in their houses or other things sometimes, but like the relationship between the library and the architecture of it. Yeah. So like yeah, the Truman Library is actually really cool architecturally. Yeah. Another reason why I really like it too. Yeah. I once got to hang out in a park with a hawk across the street from the Truman Library while I was reading a book.

I was eating lunch and reading a book and I was hanging out in the park across the street from the Truman Library and a hawk. This sounds transcendental. Eating a squirrel, about six feet away from me. Just nipping away at it. Transcendantily eating a squirrel.

Yeah. And like this family came over and asked me if it was my pet. And I was like, no. I was like, no. It's just, you know. He's free reign. No, I was like, no, I didn't know I gave off falcon revives, apparently. If you really love him, you'll let him go, and he will always come back to you. I mean, like, why are you assuming this gender?

Maybe it's like a woman hunting squirrel for her babies. Or for her own damn self, maybe she's an independent provider. Girl boss hawk. Maybe she's a girl boss hawk. Just like me. Yes. I want that on a t-shirt now, girl boss hawk. So anyway, yeah, I like had this amazing experience, like becoming one with nature watching a hawk eat a squirrel while I ate a peanut butter sandwich.

Truly the circle of life. Across the street from the Truman Library one time. Oh, Arthur is just lost in the sauce on my couch right now. What did you feed him? Just his regular sensitive boy food. Oh, sensie boy. He's just being a seepy kitty. Do you know the names of the U.S. residents

who then became the presidents and got her view from the White House, Lou of Pennsylvania Avenue. George Washington was the first you see. He once chopped down a cherry tree. President number two would be John Adams in, then number three. Tom Jefferson stayed up to write a declaration late at night. So he and his wife had a great big fight, and she made him sleep on the couch all night. James Madison never had a son, and he fought the o'er of 1812.

Days when Rose's colossal nose was bigger than Pinocchio. John Quincy Adams was number six, and it's Andrew Jackson's, but he kicks, so Jackson learns to play politics next time he's the one that the country picks. Martin Van Buren number eight for a one-term shot as Chief of State. William Harrison, how do you praise? That guy was dead in 30 days. John Tyler, he liked country folk. And after him came president folk. Zachary Taylor liked to smoke his breath killed friends whenever he spoke

1850 really nifty miller Philmos in Young and fierce was Franklin Pierce the man without a chin Follows next a period spending four long years with James Buchanan Then the South starts shooting cannon And we've got a civil war A war a war down south of Dixie Up to bat comes old day blinking There's a god who's really thinking

Kept the United States from shrinking Save the ship of state from sinking Congress siege would impeach, and so the country now elects. Ulysses Simpson Grant, who would scream and rave and rave in. While drinking whiskey, oh the risky cause he'd spill it on his pants. It's 1877 and the Democrats would gloat, but they're all amazed when Rutherford Hayes wins by just one vote. James Garfield, someone really hated because he was assassinated.

Chester Arthur gets instated four years later he was traded. For Grover, Cleveland really fat, he elected twice as a Democrat, Then Benjamin Harrison, after that is William McKinley up the bat. Eddie Roosevelt charged up San Juan Hill, and President Taft he got the bill. In 1913 Woodrowell Sun takes us into World War I. Fallen Harding next in line. It's Calvin Coolidge, he does fine. And then in 1920, the market crashes and we fight.

It's Herbert Hoover's big debut, he gets the blame and loses too. Franklin Roosevelt, President who helped us win in World War II. Harry Truman, weird little human, serves two terms in when he's done. It's Eisenhower who's got the power from 53 to 61. Dun Kennedy had Camelot, then Lyndon Johnson took his spot. Richard Nixon, he gets caught, and Gerald Ford fell down a lot. Jimmy Carter like campaign trips.

And Ronald Reagan's speeches scripts all came from famous movie clips, and President Bush said, read my lips. Now in Washington, D.C., there's Democrats and the GOP. But the ones in charge are plain to see. The Clinton's Bill and Hillary. The next president to lead the way. Well, it just might be yourself one day. Then the press will distort everything you say.

So jumpling your plane and fly away. I forgot how much animaniacs didn't fuck around. Oh, no. They never did. Fingerprints. I don't think so. I didn't know if you never heard that before because you were going on a face journey. I don't think I've ever heard that all the way through. I definitely have. Anyway, good night.