Tea at Trianon: ‘National Geographic’ Reclaims Its Legacy

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

‘National Geographic’ Reclaims Its Legacy

From Mark Judge at Chronicles:

On June 1, the National Geographic Society is opening a new, stunning, multimillion dollar museum. According to its promotional material, the 2026 debut of NatGeo’s “Museum of Exploration,” will feature

a state-of-the-art pavilion entrance, auditorium, iconic photo gallery, exhibition space, immersive walk-through attraction, retail, food and beverage, education center, archives, tours, and exciting new event space. The capstone of the renovation is a one-of-a-kind nighttime experience in the courtyard.

The new museum opens just as the National Geographic Society appears to be reclaiming the grand legacy it lost over several decades in the jungle of wokeness. The spiral has been particularly difficult for me to watch because my father was a writer and editor at National Geographic for the better part of 30 years, from the early 1960s to 1990. This storied organization that was so much a part of my early life and education devolved into a habit of promoting pseudoscience, anti-white racism, and transgenderism. If the new museum, and some recent issues of the magazine, are any indication, National Geographic may be on the path to getting its mojo back.

First, however, a quick journey through NatGeo’s descent into liberal madness. In 2017, the magazine ran a special issue on “The Gender Revolution,” which became the basis for a documentary hosted by left-wing dingbat and TV personality Katie Couric. The magazine issue itself featured a “girl” on the cover—that is to say, a confused and exploited boy—and the section titled “Helping Families Talk about Gender” offered this: “Understand that gender identity and sexual orientation cannot be changed, but the way people identify their gender identity and sexual orientation may change over time as they discover more about themselves.”

As Andrew T. Walker and Denny Burke wrote of it in Public Discourse,

the first half of this sentence asserts the immutability of gender identity, but the second half of the sentence claims that people’s self-awareness of such things can change over time. But is there not a contradiction here once we define our terms? Gender identity is not an objective category but a subjective one. It is how one perceives his or her own sense of maleness or femaleness….If that perception is fixed and immutable (as the first half of the sentence asserts), then it is incoherent to say that one’s self-perception can change over time (as the second half of the sentence asserts).

Another article offers a full-page picture of a shirtless 17-year-old girl who recently underwent a double mastectomy in order to “transition” to being a boy. Walker and Burke ask this probing question that gets to the heart of the matter: “Why do transgender ideologues consider it harmful to attempt to change such a child’s mind but consider it progress to display her bare, mutilated chest for a cover story?”

National Geographic received significant blowback for the issue, prompting a defense from Editor Susan Goldberg. A key paragraph:

We realized several years ago that beliefs about gender were shifting rapidly and radically. For almost 130 years, National Geographic has explored the world through science, exploration, and storytelling. Gender permeates every part of what it means to be human, and reporting on the changing understandings of a biological and social concept is, put simply, what we do. Our coverage doesn’t come with a political or partisan agenda. We created the gender issue—as we do every issue—with the intent to research, understand, and explain.

So gender is not a reality but “a biological and social concept.” Goldberg also equivocated about hormone blockers, which have since been proven to be dangerous.

As part of the magazine’s April 2018 edition, “The Race Issue,” Goldberg offered this headline: “For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It.”

Goldberg hired John Edwin Mason, a scholar at the University of Virginia, to dig through the archives to find evidence of white supremacy. Interviewed by Vox, Mason announced that National Geographic “was born at the height of so-called ‘scientific’ racism and imperialism—including American imperialism. This culture of white supremacy shaped the outlook of the magazine’s editors, writers, and photographers, who were always white and almost always men.” Responding to a 2018 cover featuring a cowboy on horseback, Mason argued that “the image of the white cowboy reproduces and romanticizes the mythic iconography of settler colonialism and white supremacy.” (Read more.)