Roosevelt Ramblings

Don't get us wrong; here at True Archives we love Theodore Roosevelt. The 26th President of the United States was a prime example of a man who was born rich and yet rose above it. Roosevelt was a native New Yorker, a trait he shares with the current idiot who occupies the Oval Office, but instead of the drooling illiteracy displayed by the Orange Orangutan, Teddy was an intellectual who devoured books and wrote dozens himself.

Perhaps this is what pains us as we point out the current lunacy regarding a planned "Theodore Roosevelt Library" by boosters in the Badlands of North Dakota. At a cost of over 85 million dollars, the people are pushing to build a "library" which will HAVE NO BOOKS AND NO ARCHIVES!!!!! Teddy's papers are already held by Harvard and several other institutions that have real libraries (you know, the kind with books) and the North Dakota promoters seem to feel that having computer kiosks with scanned documents from those repositories will constitute a legitimate claim to be a "library."

A museum with interactive computer exhibits dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt is a fine idea, but we say call it what it is: a MUSEUM! Make no mistake, every attempt to label a bookless institution a "library" cheapens the institution and increases the power of the biblioposers who want a society of mushy-brained cell phone addicts. Teddy himself would call not "Bully" on such a place, but probably would use another term that begins with the same four letters.

The Sweet Taste of Validation

Remember the last time you won an argument with your spouse and achieved validation with those elusive words “You were right”?

Of course you don’t! NO one wins those domestic arguments with such an emphathic conclusion! (I speak here as a 44 year veteran of domestic bliss.) However, we are delighted to report a published validation for our never-ending tirades against Information Scientists as they destroy libraries, books, and deep reading in these benighted times.

The latest issue of the New Left Review contains this insightful article by Rebecca Lossin exposing the biblioposers for their situational (yet superficial) embrace of the printed word only when it suits their purpose. Lossin points out precisely how “e-books” are not books at all, and how deep reading habits disappear in a world where print is rendered into zeros and ones. The author presents her argument in a reasoned, academic essay that, in comparison to our own sarcastic postings on this blog, is like the quality of Chateaubriand to a hotdog.

Here at True Archives we might smugly point to such a scholarly treatise to say “I told you so,” but we are above such self-congratulatory posturing. After all, a rare taste of validation is one to be savored more than slathered.