In a day and age when the unlikely likes of a Michael Bloomberg would spend $75.5 million to make himself mayor of New York, it probably isn’t altogether shocking to learn that $85 million is being spent to refurbish the image of a Virginia soldier and politician.
The shock comes in learning that the retired soldier and politician is deceased and named George Washington, bearer of probably the most furbished image in American history.
But the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, the quaintly named outfit that owns and operates George’s historic home and plantation here, feels strongly that the nation’s principal founding pop is receding into the mists of time like any mere mortal–especially as concerns the paltry knowledge of him possessed by supposedly educated young people.
So last week they unveiled an $85 million “public awareness campaign to restore the standing of the first president.”
The campaign will include the erection on Mt. Vernon’s sacred grounds of three new buildings–a “state of the art” orientation center, education center and museum–plus an actual Steven Spielberg movie about George that will show him as “the action hero of his times.”
G.I. George
Also in the works is “a more youthful, vital representation of Washington using the combined skills of a forensic scientist, plastic surgeon, portrait expert and the latest age-regression techniques.”
As Mt. Vernon Executive Director Jim Rees put it: “While scholars continue to acknowledge that George Washington’s character and leadership were the best the nation has even known, many contemporary Americans, unlike previous generations, have lost touch with the real Washington.”
He cited studies that found that 37 percent of college seniors surveyed thought Ulysses Grant won the Battle of Yorktown, and that 7 out of 10 4th-graders thought Illinois was one of the original colonies.
Many of course are appalled. “Goodbye Elder Statesman; Hello G.I. George,” lamented Washington Post columnist Jonathan Yardley.
Indeed. The term “state of the art” has come to mean flashing lights, plastic and noise. The new museum will even have “lifelike holograms.” We’ll have 50,000 square feet worth of new buildings cluttering the once pristine Mt. Vernon landscape. And one of the structures will be named, not for George, but for Donald Reynolds, a Las Vegas zillionaire who is contributing $15 million to the campaign.
What about the teeth?
I’m not sure how much they’re going to be able to make young “action hero” George resemble “the Rock” and still be authentic. While a prodigious athlete and extraordinary horseman, young Washington had outsized hands, feet and head, as well as dreadful teeth and smallpox scars on his face.
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And if Spielberg’s Washington movie is as authentic as his “Saving Private Ryan,” they might as well cast Arnold Schwarzenegger.
To be sure, I have long wished there was more museum and less gift shop to Mt. Vernon. And, as the author of a book about Washington, I’ve been an enormous admirer of the General, far more so than of that scheming, hypocritical faux aristocrat Thomas Jefferson.
But it’s as a real man, a complicated and flawed human being, that George is so admirable — not as something out of a Saturday morning TV program.
Also, I don’t think this is going to work. In this day and age, you can’t buy pop with mere holograms.
If they really want to get George into People Magazine, I suggest they try some themes more appropriate to our times:
Sex: George was very fond of Martha, but married her in large part for her money. For much of his life, he was passionately in love with his best friend’s wife, Sally Fairfax, and their relationship was intimate enough for her to nurse him through weeks of dysentery — without chaperone. Also, Ann Gist, daughter of Washington’s chief frontier scout in the French Indian War, claimed Washington was in love with her and was going to marry her. He never did, but when hostilities broke out, he sent Ann back to the Fairfaxes to be cared for.
Murder: In ignorance, George did mistakenly once sign surrender terms written in French that proclaimed him as the murderer of a French diplomat — “Moi, George Washington, l’assassin de Jumonville.”
But those of us who’ve read the reports on both sides and visited Pennsylvania’s Jumonville Glen know very well that young Washington led an ambush in which Frenchmen were shot down in their bedding.
Real estate: Young George the action hero was a big-time investor in the Ohio Company, a real estate speculation syndicate that acquired Indian lands across the Appalachian mountains to subdivide into pioneer settlements.
It was the impetus behind 1) George’s actually starting the French Indian War and 2) his backing of what eventually became the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.
When he died, he was one of the richest landowners in America.
Nowadays, that’s what they call action.