Would YOU turn down a $500 Million Presidential library?

or, barring that, free dongs?

God bless em for their straight talk and spine.

Although presidential libraries are associated with NARA (National Archives and Records Admin.), I'm pretty sure they're privately funded, so we can all sleep a little easier knowing our tax dollars aren't funding this.

PP/Sunny, have you been there?

http://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/about/history.html

I remember learning about this, but the details, as per usual are a bit fuzzy.

/end confusion

A few professors != SMU.

Bleah, ain't worth it. Like with the Real World, there's some shit that even rent-free digs won't justify.

Hmm. Of course, B&M would turn it into "The Real World: Dubya House!" which would surprisingly have the same amount of on-screen cockfarmer that that regular series features.

this, i like.

oops, NOT surprisingly, rather

Exactly. And the Library of Congress has made some major funding cutbacks (in cataloging, for example) which just ends up hurting the entire library world.

HOOVER (West Branch, IA): Lots of those generic white mannequins filling grain orders in exhibits of Hoover's childhood. Hoover would later do the same in WWI to combat hunger in Europe. About three-fourths of library is pre-presidency and the Great Depression is kind of noted as "Hey, it coulda happened to anyone!" Nice white mannequin of Hoover fly-fishing, complete with mirrored plastic water and bird sounds as you walk out toward the gift shop. Hoover and Mrs. Hoover are buried underneath a McDonald's sign.

TRUMAN (Independence, MO): Paintings of Truman in Masonic apron. Very interesting panorama showing before/after photographs of Hiroshoma with strobe light that segues the transition to "after". APPARENTLY, there is this VERY FAMOUS photograph of the president holding a newspaper that ERRONEOUSLY predicted a win for the president's opponent. It was a very HUMOROUS and ICONIC image that you can now buy on a coffee cup in the gift shop for $12.95.

JOHNSON (Austin, TX): Sam, you really ought to go. One of the better ones I've been to. They've got Johnson's limo, all pimped and tricked out. They've got his Oval Office replica with the three RCA televisions, so that he could watch ALL THREE NETWORKS at once. As I remember, they were also pretty frank about Vietnam, saying how it ruined his presidency. It's hard to remember. I was there for SxSW and was coming off a bad hangover. I ran through it and met one of my buddies at a nearby Denny's soon after.

CARTER (Atlanta, GA): Lots of burnt orange carpeting with blue stripes here and there. Entire rooms and galleries dedicated to the improbable and successful 1976 election. They even got the Playboy magazine interview opened up inside one of the glass cabinets. Lots of campaign commercials playing on monitors, all of them looking a lot like "Schoolhouse Rock" cartoons. Some attention paid to the Begin/Sadat summit, the 55 MPH speed limit, and then the Iran Hostage Crisis. Then it's all over, and you're back in the gift shop. Ronald Reagan's name isn't mentioned once.

CLINTON (Little Rock, AR): Savvy and interactive. Spend an afternoon electronically browsing through correspondence between the president and the likes of Whoopi Goldberg and Danny DeVito. Kinda weird to see a museum dedicated to the 90's already, but there you go. Funny video presentations of all the skits the president made for the press dinners including a completely bizarre segment where Hillary plays a Forrest Gump character, complete with retarded accent, and the president tries to eat all of her chocolates. The ushers will completely try to force you into the little theater to see the Harry Thomason intro movie, but you don't have to go in there if you don't want to. Although, a darkened theater would be just the place for some quick oral sex, if you're into some sort of perverse bragging.

BUSH II(Location yet to be decided): I assume that you'll walk through an archway of jagged steel from a destroyed skyscraper. The library will be divided into two sections: The International side will be perpetually under construction with no one sure who's in charge, and the Domestic side will be three feet under water. However, not only will there be no admission charge, but the museum will pay YOU $200, just as long as you give them a blood sample and surrender your stem cells at the door.

I thought you were on record as having peed on the side of the Clinton library.

Without question, there is only one suitable place for this institution: Iraq.

For shame indeed! It's one of Austin's hidden treasures, up there with the Ransom Center. From one of the articles:

Ironically, the LBJ library has probably done more to advance the reputation of its subject more than any other presidential library--not by design, but simply by releasing his telephone tapes into the public sphere. That's the way history is supposed to work.

and from the comments:

Here, here on the LBJ Library and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Great institutions, both of them. At the end of the day, LBJ didn't have much to be ashamed of. He was never personally in favor of the Vietnam War. His generals wanted it, his advisors recommended it, but he had serious reservations about it (all well documented, as you note). But he didn't want to be the first president to lose a war and he didn't want to go against his military advisers... Bush and Iraq is another story altogether.

Robert McNamara bears a lot of that out in the Errol Morris documentary, and he has no reason to lie. Johnson was, near as I can tell, a good man who had the dual curse of being caught in the middle of Vietnam and having a talent for looking like a hayseed.

All that said, The LBJ Library is the ugliest building in Austin. Maybe worldwide. It's horrible, windowless, monolithic, squatty, like some kind of ironic monument to the worst of 60's architecture.

http://www.utexas.edu/maps/main/images/img/img0071.gif

Don't let that stop you, though.

make that, decent president. He also had a reputation for being politically corrupt as all hellfire.

-- without you i'm nothing (jb...), December 20th, 2006. (later)

i have it, too.

http://justinsomnia.org/images/little_rock_clinton_library.jpg