We are informed that Donald Trump has attacked America’s museums in general and the Smithsonian in particular. “Will Museums Fight Back Against Trump?” (New York Times, August 22, 2025):
The president’s attacks on the Smithsonian Institution and other museums have become an effort to redefine why such places exist.
President Trump has sought to govern with an iron grip the federal bureaucracy, the economy and even the finer details of White House architecture.
He wants to put his stamp on the culture of the nation, too.
The president, once a fixture of tabloids and reality television, is waging a war on the rarefied cultural spaces he says have become too “woke.”
We took our boys (10 and 12) to the de-woked Smithsonian National Museum of American History on October 4, 2025. Just inside the front door, the boys learned that they “belong” in girls’ sports just as soon as they raise their hands and say “we identify as girls”. It’s not a matter up for debate, but simply “fair play” when “transgender, nonbinary, and cisgender female athletes demand equality”. The Smithsonian certainly doesn’t mention that there are any dissenters (“haters”) from this dogma, though, as we would find throughout the museum every sign is translated into Spanish (but not Arabic, Chinese, Somali, Swahili, Dari, Pashto, Urdu, or any of the other languages of migrants who make America great).
There’s a lot of explanation for the womanly skateboarder at right:
Our primary objective was to see the lowrider show (see also Lowriders in Fort Worth for these machines in their native increasingly-Islamic element). Spanish 101: the word for “lowriding” is “El lowriding”.
The de-woked curators remind us that American Hispanics claim victimhood going back at least 75 years:
(The discrimination was so bad that an additional 50 million Latinx migrated to the U.S. during the ensuing years? See also “Inhuman treatment” of immigrants in the U.S.)
If I can get our Honda Odyssey’s batteries to stop failing (the most recent 4-year AGM battery survived for about 1.5 years) it would be awesome to find the paint shop that did this one:
The depth of color isn’t achievable with a wrap, I don’t think.
Father of the Year Daniel Tovar made a lowrider for his daughter:
One hundred percent of the people described and depicted in the exhibit as actually building lowriders of significance had traditional male names and appeared to identify as men (moustaches, male attire, etc.):
(the dapper gentlemen is Sonny Madrid, who founded Lowrider magazine in 1977)
The gift shop, on the other hand, explains that it is actually Latinas who are responsible for lowriders:
To be continued…
I saw the show a week ago. Great paint work, many layers of lacquer. Did you check out the signs in front of the building. No men; tattooed Latinx “More than chrome… it’s familia.” I actually knew some of these people. Getting cars to hop took seriously powerful hydraulics. Back in my wilder NYC late 1970 days the $800 cylinders were usually liberated from delivery truck tailgate lifts. The only safe thing to do was keep the trucks backed up against a wall. Many of the guys earned the money for the cars- which they truly loved- welding VIN numbers from wrecks into stolen cars. Most to the kids eventually headed to the suburbs but they spent the college summers pounding-out fenders in dad’s body shop not being waiters on Martha’s Vineyard. Too bad the Smithsonian limited it to Hispanics. What about the Asian mica flecked rice-burners with florescent tubes under the sides? The rednecks with glow in the dark pickups? The Blacks with Caddies with hub spinners that stick out 14 inches? The semi-rigs with the spray painted Jesus? Car love is truly multiethnic. If you want to see great car art go to the Houston Art Car Parade in early April. Bring fold-up bikes. You will laugh for days. PS The festival of Evil White Men was on the other side of the building..
DinA: I didn’t notice the signs in the front of the building. I was so happy to have found a parking spot for our rental car after dropping off the family that I rushed in. What was the Evil White Men festival? We never made it to the mall side!
> Car love is truly multiethnic.
Car love is truly alt-weird, but apparently someone in the Smithsonian agrees:
https://music.si.edu/story/lowriders-and-hip-hop-culture
> The cars and lowriding culture resonated across regional and racial lines. Though lowriders were first crafted in barrios across the Southwest and southern California as unique symbols of personalized creativity and Latino cultural identity, African American car enthusiasts began developing lowriders of their own. The image of lowriders coasting down L.A.’s Crenshaw Boulevard and bouncing in rhythmic unison to the bass-driven music of gangsta rap would become synonymous with the stylized presentation of west coast, urban hip hop culture.
I love the “.edu” in their web address, LOL yo. Hittin’ the switches with Snoop & Dre (Damn I love me some old school Dre, too. The crazy thing is that I had to watch an ad from Autodesk saying that you can make anything, as long as you are a black woman with a gym bod. Damn, I’ll make it for her if she want.):
https://youtu.be/8GliyDgAGQI?t=56