"Balancing" history at Lincoln Memorial

I wish I were making this up, because it is one of those "too bad to be true" items. But I'm not.

When you think of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, what's the first image that comes to mind? In all likelihood, it is Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a dream' speech with hundreds of thousands of civil rights supporters gathered on the mall.

Demonstrations for gay rights and reproductive rights, and anti-war rallies also have filled the mall. Some of those events are included in brief clips in an educational eight-minute video that has been shown at the memorial since 1994.

The Bush administration has taken steps to "balance" the coverage. The National Park Service has bought footage of President George W. Bush, his father, pro-Iraq War demonstrations and anti-gun control rallies from news organizations for inclusion in a revised video -- which will certainly be missing some of that left-wing rally footage.

People for the American Way and a public employee group filed FOIA requests in October 2003 after being alerted that Park Service officials planned to develop a “more balanced” version of the videotape to satisfy the objections of right wing organizations. The right wing organizations reportedly complained that brief segments of footage showing gay rights, reproductive rights, and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations implied that “Lincoln would have supported homosexual and abortion ‘rights’ as well as feminism.”

Here's more from Environmental Media Services.