WTW3: Ok I'll Bite Why Is It Named After James Webb Anyway?
It's part 2 of when the woke came for James Webb. Featuring Lydia Smith! If NASA higher ups are willing to defend the status quo tooth and nail, you'd think there must be a good reason for that status quo, right? It's not just something incredibly dumb that they inherited? Something that may have even violated their own policy? It couldn't be that, right? Then Lydia comes on and takes us through some other NASA projects and how they were named. She also uncovered a bombshell or two!
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
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Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke.
This is episode three, our second in the series on NASA's James Webb Telescope, the naming controversy and the anti-woke activist coverage of it in the New York Times.
But there's so much more to this story.
So it's not me harping on the daily episode for another hour and 45 minutes.
Don't worry.
This episode is definitely criticism by implication, merely by going into the full nooks and crannies of this story.
I mean, if you're going to waste ink and podcast bits or whatever on just reporting one side of a Twitter feud, I mean, that's pretty much always going to be terrible.
But if when you did that, all that was happening around the story was just some tumbleweeds blowing over an empty highway, all right, maybe you could be slightly forgiven.
Not much going on.
So that's the story you told.
But there is so much happening to this story that could have been reported on by the New York Times and could have made a very, very interesting story.
This clash between people who wanted to make things a little more inclusive and people who defended a status quo that they had no reason to care about, really, defended that tooth and nail.
They were so desperate to cling on to the status quo without even a single good reason why.
And so an intrepid, fair reporter might ask, how did we get that status quo?
Where did that status quo come from?
In other words, why in the world is the telescope named after James Webb?
After all, if people are going to go through hell, really, to defend that status quo, and we'll see more of that in the future, if they're going to go through hell to defend it, I wonder how we got it.
And if the reason we have it is incredibly stupid, then perhaps that would lend further context To how unfair, silly, unserious, there's a lot of adjectives I could think of for NASA's defense and digging in of their heels over the name of the James Webb Telescope.
It's the progressive, the woke side always gets portrayed as the yelling, angry, children, screaming, whiny, whatevers.
But why don't we get to see people properly criticize, maybe even mock, the whiny oversensitivity of the status quo defenders, who are such children they can't let go of the beloved thing that they don't even know why they have.
They literally didn't know why the telescope was named what it was, and yet they defended the ever-loving shit out of it.
So in this episode, I'm gonna tell you why it was named what it was, what that process was, and furthermore, surprise, surprise, special guest, Lydia Smith is gonna come on, my wife Lydia, to talk about the naming process for some other NASA things and drop some bombshells on us, I'm telling you.
She's got some really good stuff, actually stuff that I think even the other journalists didn't find.
Can't wait for that, so that's coming up later on.
But before we get to that, a little housekeeping.
So if you listen to Serious Inquiries Only, And you heard the last episode.
I mentioned that I am never missing a deadline again.
And the due date for Where There's Woke is going to be minimum once a week.
It's a deep research show.
So it's not going to be, you know, no guarantee of more than one episode a week, but baseline minimum of one a week.
And that will come out Tuesday a.m.
So first thing on Tuesday.
But there is so much.
And in fact, it's kind of heartbreaking.
Like I've just read hours and hours and hours.
I've prepared so much.
And I only get to talk about just a mere fraction of that.
And that seems to be kind of the norm for doing this kind of research.
And you know, that is what it is.
I know you can't, I would love to talk your ears off about everything, like every single thing I found, but you know, people won't listen to that much stuff.
So that's okay.
But it means that there is so much stuff to do bonus content on, like so much.
If you go to patreon.com slash where there's woke and please do, please support the show.
You'll notice the second tier and above have access to the patron bonus episodes.
But this show is going to have so much.
I'm thinking we'll guarantee one bonus episode for second tier patrons and above for sure.
But I bet there might be more.
And if there's more, I'll go ahead and make those available to all patrons.
So that means first tier patrons, everybody.
Cause if you look first tier patrons, mainly the benefit is the ad free show, which Totally cool.
Go get that ad free show.
That's the best.
So there's the potential for a lot of additional content here.
I already have a million ideas, stuff I want to talk about, and I'm very excited.
So just so many reasons to join Patreon.com slash where there's woke, including a poll that I'm going to tell you about at the end of this episode to help decide something about the show.
Oh, and each month, Lydia and I are going to do a special YouTube hangout.
And don't worry, it's not just us hanging out.
I mean, maybe some of you would be into that, but I want to make sure we're delivering.
So those hangouts will feature some of the unused research for the month.
And so we can chat, we can talk, we can interact.
And that is available for the third tier of patrons and up.
So make sure you check out those tiers, check out what they have to offer and choose wisely.
Because that hangout is going to be super duper duper fun.
And like I said, will be fascinating with a bunch of, you know, rabbit holes we didn't get a chance to go down on the show.
So it's like bonus deep dives for you.
And then while I'm on the topic, there's even yet another tier of support that I don't know if anyone's going to do.
But just in case I put it out there for fun, the next tier of support gets to hang out with us after that little private hang, maybe play some, I don't know, some code names or something.
Who knows?
Could be lots of fun.
All kinds of possibilities.
I think the Patreon for this show is really well situated already because there's just so much bonus stuff that I'm not even going to be able to use.
And we can talk about it.
We can hang out.
We can chat.
Can't wait.
We're building something super cool here.
So thanks so much for being on this ride.
And with that said, why don't we get back into the discussion of the day.
So I know it's a theme I come back to a lot again and again, but it's the theme of this episode mainly, which is context.
Again, proper context.
That's real reporting.
Apologies for being a broken record, but that is everything.
The proper context with this kind of coverage is the difference between the world thinking there's a screaming leftist idiot problem Canceling everything in sight, or there's some very reasonable people making very reasonable requests and a bunch of babies who are in control of everything, clinging on desperately to a status quo they know nothing about until like yesterday, but now they're defending with their life.
Context is the difference there.
And so before I bring Lydia on, which not only you're dying for, I'm dying for too, can't wait.
But just before that, I want to tell a little bit of another story that adds some more context to this thing.
So in my Stranger Things Mirror Universe version of this news story, which really shouldn't be called that since I think it's just a fair way to do it.
It's a normal... What the hell?
He's the Mirror Universe being.
Why should I be Mirror Universe?
He's the one who sucks.
I would start with something that happened around March 2022.
This is just yet another event that is...
Painting a picture of some of the anti-woke forces within NASA.
An anonymous Reddit post led to attention on the fact that more than 100 employees at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center were surprised when a test project allowing them to add their pronouns to their agency identifiers was abruptly cancelled.
I'll read to you from some of this Scientific American article by Nadia Drake, which features a great write-up of it.
I know that's a bit of a confusing headline, so I'll explain it.
Quoting from the Scientific American, organized by a handful of management officials within GSFC, the Pronoun Inclusive effort was a tech demo, a pre-pilot program, a Goddard employee says.
That was a first step toward addressing concerns that included issues with removing dead names from the agency's IT system.
In searching for solutions, the GSFC team spoke with NASA headquarters, as well as legal departments and employee resource groups at the agency.
In other words, quote, this wasn't a bunch of people going rogue, unquote, says a scientist at GSFC.
During that process, the GSFC team identified an option that would let employees add their pronouns to their display names, which are used in electronic communications, including email, contact lists, instant messaging platforms, and Microsoft Teams environments.
Usually, those identifiers include last name, first name, and NASA Center XXX, where XXX would be replaced by a three-digit organizational code.
But by filling in an optional field that is typically used for nicknames, employees could add pronouns after their names.
It was an efficient and inexpensive way to make a necessary change, employees say, and did not require any additional coding or IT investments.
Quote, having the ability to display pronouns particularly in visible, prominent places, not tucked away at the bottom of an email signature, removes significant burdens for trans and gender non-conforming people, Wachowicz says.
Like all people, trans and gender non-conforming scientists don't want to be constantly self-advocating in order to be themselves in peace.
We would actually much prefer to have our pronouns where you can see them, so we can all get on with our lives and do some science." To summarize, this was a little test thing, and often this is a good thing in government, if you can find a solution to something that doesn't involve Um, money.
And it's not just money, it's also things have to go through official processes and, you know, people have to authorize it and it's got to go through a million things.
It looks like some people found a way to easily use something that already existed to have a good system in place to use pronouns.
By the way, this was not mandatory.
This was nothing anyone was made to do.
This was just something some people voluntarily took part in.
Skipping down a little bit, on February 28th, NASA leaders terminated the program.
Skipping a bit, during the hour-long meeting, Melroy and others made it clear that the test program was over, that the decision was final, although they said that they were hoping NASA could formally implement a similar long-term policy.
Yet employees said the presenter offered no satisfactory explanation for the timing of the termination or the rationale behind it.
Among the various reasons discussed were concerns about the pronoun field being used for inappropriate identifiers, including nationalities and sports team affiliations, that the program had been implemented without approval by proper personnel, and that this was not what IT systems were designed for.
Now in the Reddit post, that's still up, that anonymous person, and by the way, the details were verified, a lot of the details and people were interviewed by Scientific American, so this is not just some rando, this is like an authenticated anonymous posting.
They said that the basis was the display of pronouns made other employees uncomfortable and equated our displaying of pronouns to that of sports team pride.
They also tried to make the justification that the agency couldn't spare any resources for this initiative.
This doesn't cost anything.
They did this all through a meeting, which they refused to let anybody record and refused to put a rationale for the decision in writing, end quote.
And they gave a line of bullshit, you know, cleaning, in my opinion, trying to clean up their mess.
Saying, well, we were ending it because the, you know, the experiment was over.
It yielded successful results.
It showed that they could, you know, use this.
And we don't want to just do something for one organization within NASA.
We want to do something across the entire agency.
So that's essentially why we ended this experiment, which to me just reeks of bullshit.
I mean, that, that absolutely, there is no reason you would need to stop it while you're working to maybe implement a new thing.
And their excuse was, well, you can still put the pronouns in the email Signature.
Block.
Below, after, everything.
Now again, this isn't the end of the world, but it's just another little thing that signifies where higher-ups within NASA might be.
Hard to know who, hard to know how many, but this, to me, reads as though somebody complained about seeing pronouns, and they didn't want to, and made it stink, and for some reason, higher-ups listened.
Rather than just saying, what are you talking about?
Who cares?
It's pronouns.
They get to have their pronouns in a place where they want them.
It's not hurting anybody.
You don't have to do it.
Why do you give a shit about this?
Literally, why do you give?
You're suspended.
I'm firing you.
Rather than having that very, what I think would be a reasonable reaction, they seem to have actually called a meeting and stopped over a hundred people from getting to put their pronouns in this place for the comfort of who knows, I don't know, whoever complained, I guess, as though seeing pronouns is somehow anything to complain about.
So that would be a little anecdote to start the story with, maybe seat the wider story within that context.
And next, I think important context would be to talk about how the James Webb Space Telescope was even named in the first place, because that is something I haven't seen anywhere in the New York Times coverage.
And holy smokes, It's the least satisfying possible answer that you can imagine.
It was named in 2002 by one guy, the former NASA administrator under George W. Bush, because he just felt like it.
It was, quote, a unilateral decision that took many by surprise.
He just did it himself.
And it took many by surprise because NASA's telescopes are typically named after scientists.
Webb, who died in 1992, was a bureaucrat who held several administrative roles in the US government.
So this one guy just chose it.
Dr. Heidi B. Hamill tweeted, I can confirm that we scientists were blindsided by the name change in 2002.
Then youngsters like me were like, who?
Another responded, I remember having this reaction as a reporter as well.
I was thinking, Uhuru, Einstein, Hubble, James Webb?
The name felt very parochial, even without knowing the other issues.
This is documented further in an Atlantic article from 2021.
It says, quote, in 1999, Karen Nierman picked up a free mug at her first big astronomy conference just before she started grad school.
It bore the logo of an ambitious observatory designed to peer at the most distant galaxies in the universe.
NGST, short for Next Generation Space Telescope.
The mug was on Neirman's desk in 2002 when NASA made a surprise announcement.
NGST was going to become JWST after James Webb.
Neirman sipped from her suddenly out-of-date mug and wondered, who?
That was the prevailing reaction among scientists at the time.
So that all strikes me as very haphazard and not important in any way.
But this is the crux, this is, I would say this is the main point of this episode, of this part.
Because it's so key and it's such a theme of these conflicts.
So people at NASA have inherited a status quo that is, you could almost call it accidental.
Not very compelling.
I don't know, there's a lot of adjectives you could use.
The person who named the telescope did so just On a whim, I suppose.
Unilaterally.
With not very good reasons.
By the way, out of pattern?
Like, naming it after an administrator for the first time ever instead of scientists?
As the rest had been, as the previous examples had been.
This is something that will be used worldwide.
Hubble, for example, I mean, that's referenced, that's in textbooks, that's in everything.
You see that a lot in this coverage.
So many people saying, yeah, the name will be everywhere.
It will be everywhere.
There will be grants based on it.
There will be worldwide observatories using this name.
And we're gonna go with James Webb?
An administrator, a bureaucrat?
It's weak.
It's incredibly weak.
So this weak-ass status quo has been inherited, and the crux of my New York Times article, were I to write one, would be watch how these status quo warriors, these anti-woke activists, whatever you want to call them, cling desperately to this status quo for no reason, for absolutely no good reason, when you have every reason to change it.
So I think one thing that would be very relevant in accurate coverage of this entire issue and event would be telling us about what's happened in the past.
What are other things named after?
What are other telescopes named after?
How did that go?
Has NASA ever had to change a name of something?
What's that history?
What's that process?
All those questions are things that I didn't see even broached in Michael Powell's article, but much less anywhere.
I don't really see it anywhere else.
So I brought in where there's woke correspondent.
And just overall hottie, my wife Lydia Smith.
How's it going, Lydia?
Hi!
Great!
What have you found in your research on these very questions?
What can you tell us?
Oh, a lot of really, really interesting stuff.
The broad approach NASA has taken overall, kind of their tradition, is that they don't give something a name until after it's launched because in case it doesn't work out.
Yeah, might be able to figure out why if something explodes.
You wouldn't want to be like, everybody, hands joined for the Martin Luther King Jr.
telescope.
Everybody, cameras are on it, and then it just completely explodes, and then you're like, that wasn't great.
Yep, yep.
Not the way you'd want to honor an individual, for sure.
So a lot of times when NASA is putting together their various missions and projects, they'll have a general name that describes, you know, maybe what it's going to do, what kind of project it is, and then they'll rename it to give it something maybe more specific, maybe honor somebody in that regard.
So, I really wanted to tackle the James Webb Space Telescope and what it's considered in the category of mission within NASA and how NASA approached the other missions within that same category.
So, James Webb Space Telescope is considered the successor to the Great Observatories projects, which started with the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990.
That was named after Edwin Hubble, an astronomer, in 1983.
1990 was when it was launched.
Oh, so they did name it before launch, though.
Before launch for that one, yes.
Okay.
Edwin Hubble, if I recall, not an administrator.
No, no.
Unless an administrator was able to confirm that the universe is expanding.
Just an astronomer.
I mean, maybe it should be.
No, I don't know.
That is two different jobs.
I don't really fault administrators for not being scientists.
That's actually completely fine.
Yeah, that's fair.
Different job.
Let's see.
In 1991, we had the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.
It was originally referred to as the Gamma Ray Observatory, and then it was renamed the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory after Arthur Compton, an American physicist, and he received a Nobel Prize for his work involved with gamma ray physics.
So someone very, you know, in tune with what this project was going to be studying.
I don't know that one.
Doesn't get a lot of press, that one, I don't think.
Yeah, it's still working.
I wonder if this is like the unsung hero of observatories that no one knows about or is it just like kind of sucked.
It'd be funny if they put one up there and they're like, this one, it was a bad idea.
This one just looks at the stars through like a paper towel roll like my kids do.
It doesn't, I don't know why we did that.
It was a waste of space.
Gamma rays, schmamma rays.
It's named after, yet again, a scientist of some kind.
Okay.
Then we have the Chandra X-ray Observatory in 1999.
This was originally called the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility, but it was renamed after the Nobel Prize winning Indian American astrophysicist Subramanian Chandrasekhar.
And just to clarify, when you said renamed, all the things you're talking about now are the, let's not name it until we know it's not going to blow up kind of renaming?
Or was it a renaming for some other reason?
Like, let's think of a better one.
It's interesting because I imagine manned missions, they really delay putting an official name on that.
But I was also seeing in NASA's official policy, and I scoured all of that information too, That they do have a pressure to name things for budgetary reasons.
So, a lot of times they'll give something a placeholder name, but they are working to try and figure out what's its final name going to be because the federal budget does want to know what they're putting money towards officially.
Yeah, but the name matters for that?
They can't just, like, describe what the thing is?
Apparently, yeah, it's in their policy that they work to identify the name of the mission specifically for the Office of the Budget.
Okay, so another scientist.
And that one was especially cool because that was determined from a contest that NASA held.
They sought submissions worldwide.
They had over 6,000 submissions.
And a bunch of them were just like, satellite, McSatellite face, you know?
Yeah, exactly.
Ignore all those.
And the winners were a high school teacher and student who proposed this and pitched it and said why they felt this would be a good name in terms of honoring this particular individual.
The next, closing out our great observatories of the original four, is the Spitzer Space Telescope from 2003.
It was actually originally called… Originally called the Space Infrared Telescope Facility.
They also held a contest for this one, too.
And the public determined that they felt this space telescope should be named after Lyman Spitzer, an astronomer.
He was actually the first person that we can tell anyway that proposed large space telescopes.
Proposed it back in 1946.
Yeah.
That's big.
Cause back then they thought like people lived on Mars.
Popular media back before we put anything in space was like alarmingly silly about space.
Like it was like, do people live on the moon?
Maybe there's a little man on there.
Like there's a lot of stuff that you're like, I can't believe they thought that, but you know, so anyway, cool.
And this was actually one that was named, in quotes, in keeping with NASA tradition, the telescope was renamed after its successful demonstration of operation.
So, potentially maybe not launched into space, but at least, you know, on Earth that everything was working.
Well, that's another good point because I'm sure everybody knows the Hubble history, you know, like they launched it and it was messed up.
So that's pretty tough.
Yeah, that's another reason to maybe delay.
It's interesting to hear about this budgetary reason.
I don't really know why that would be other than just politics.
Maybe it's more appealing to like have a name to it, I guess.
Yeah, that's a fair, you know, interpretation of that.
That makes sense to me.
Otherwise, it's like you want to make sure it works because if you, again, are trying to honor someone and then it's like, Well, we turned it on and it sucks.
Somebody forgot.
Somebody left their keys in it and now it's like, their keychain's in the middle of the mirror system.
Yeah, battery died.
Yeah.
Like the Hubble, some mirror was put on backwards or something like that.
Something messed up.
And it was amazing that we could get up there and fix it.
And I remember that with the James Webb Space Telescope, or with the Jelliscope, Wellscope Space Telescope, That one, if it didn't work, we're fucked, because it's way out in deep space.
Correct.
There were no plans to service or maintain it after it had launched.
Correct.
It would just be a very expensive, I don't even know what that would be, a space weight.
It's holding down the space up there.
Space garbage.
Yeah, exactly.
And so, yeah, so Lyman Spitzer proposed, you know, large space telescopes back in 1946.
And when I saw this, I thought it was interesting because in the kind of press circuit when they wanted to name the Just Wonderful Space Telescope after James Webb, they said, as early as 1965, Webb also had written that a major space telescope, then known as the Large Space Telescope, should become a major NASA effort.
So, like, really pushing, you know, he really believed in large space telescopes.
Trying to up his resume a bit.
Yeah.
Plus he volunteered after school.
He was varsity basketball as well.
So lots of... Yeah.
Well, as early as 1965.
He's late to the game, in my opinion, at that point.
Spitzer back in 1946.
And then actually another major satellite that is planned for the future and who it's being named after, Nancy Grace Roman, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
So not the Nancy Grace.
No, no.
No, Nancy Roman is first and last name.
Grace is the middle name.
I thought you were doing a bit like it's going to be like, oh yeah, the Donald Trump Jr.
space.
It's just going to get worse and worse.
So she will have something named after her as well.
She was a former NASA chief of astronomy, the first female executive at NASA.
And she was very responsible for bringing the large space telescope efforts to fruition.
She traveled the country presenting to universities, trying to partner with them, trying to get the public excited about exploring space in this way.
And she proposed the technique that was similar to what they ended up using for Hubble in 1959.
She worked on Hubble.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, she's incredible reading through all of her stuff.
So I have zero problems with her at this point having something named after her.
She has a Lego made after her. - Ooh. - With Sally Ride. - Let's launch that bad boy into space, damn it.
Yeah.
Put that Lego into orbit.
She said this was like, it was probably the most fun honor that she's received in her life when Lego made.
Plus, what about that lady with a stack of papers?
There's so many people to name stuff after.
I know, I know.
Yeah, that lady that was like the programmer that you see the picture of all the time.
I just looked up Margaret Hamilton.
I just searched NASA programmer.
Stack of papers.
Yeah, that'll do it.
She's amazing.
There's no shortage of really cool people to name stuff after.
Anyway.
Right.
So, you know, Great Observatories, we kind of knocked all those out, and I was thinking, okay, well, NASA's had so many missions, so many different projects that they've done.
Let me go up the next level and look at the Earth satellites, heliocentric satellites, and see, you know, were any of those things named after individuals?
And only a handful of them were.
You know, NASA tends to do, like, mythology-based names, right?
But there are some.
So, the Einstein Observatory.
What did he ever do?
Yeah.
No, that's fair.
I think Einstein deserves it, sure.
Let's see, the Van Allen probes.
They were named after the radiation belt they were studying, which was named after a space scientist, James Van Allen, who's credited with their discovery.
The Kepler Space Telescope, named after astronomer Johannes Kepler.
And then the Reuven Ramady High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager.
This one's an interesting one.
So this is, originally it was named the High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager.
There was no name attached to it, but it was renamed after Reuven Ramady after his death, which was about the year that it was launched.
He was a Hungarian astrophysicist who worked at NASA, and it's the first time they've named something after a NASA scientist.
Oh, wow!
That was literally the first time.
Yeah, 2002.
Wow.
Nothing else really created huge controversy or anything like that, and I was curious what their process was for picking names.
You know, we talked about they like to pick a more specific name closer to launch.
They want to make sure that the Project is successful and it works.
We talked a little bit about the contests that were held in some respects, focusing on scientists.
And so I found their naming policy that's just straight on their website.
The current policy, the effective date is December 20th, 2022.
So pretty soon after the James Webb controversy, they did a major update with their policy directive.
And so I pulled up the Wayback Machine and I wanted to see what it looked like before and kind of compare.
So going back, going way back, the policy directive that I could find kind of earliest on their website was effective February 14th, 2000 with an expiration date February 14th, 2015.
There was something in the middle there between this point in time and current where they did A slight addendum, but nothing super substantial, that extended the effective date for this policy through 2025.
And then they did a major overhaul a couple years early, December 20th, 2022.
So in the original policy directive that I found, again from 2000, it's very simple.
It's short, a couple pages long.
And specifically, I wanted to talk about the section that's referred to as responsibility.
Within this policy.
You had a Wayback Machine that found an entry from the year 2000?
I found an entry from 2010, March 2010, and the effective date on the policy is February 14th, 2000.
Okay, so we don't know what's before that.
I wasn't sure if it was like, oh, 2000 was when they put it online and this policy dates back forever or... No.
Okay, gotcha.
Yeah, this is just what was in effect at that time and it was drafted in 2000.
Okay.
So this says the official in charge of a headquarters office is responsible for identifying projects in which names are required.
They are responsible for assembling a special committee to recommend names.
They should serve or designate a chair of that committee, and they appoint committee members.
Really?
Yeah.
And every special project name committee is composed of one member from each of the following offices.
The office of the official in charge for which a project name is under consideration, so Office of Space Science, for example.
Any other NASA headquarters that's participating in a significant element of the project or is majorly involved.
A lot of times the public affairs officer will be involved as part of this.
Because it's public facing and there's an optics element to this, right?
And that the special committee then, as a group, solicits suggestions, particularly from the responsible NASA centers and contractors.
They submit specific recommendations in order of preference to the Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs.
And then the Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs reviews the recommendations, makes a selection, and submits it to the Administrator for final approval.
The Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs is also responsible to make the public announcement of the approved name, and they make sure that all subsequent news releases use the official name as well.
So this is great.
I feel like this isn't maybe well known.
So you're for sure confirming that this policy was in effect in 2002 when some asshole was just like, I don't know, James Webb.
Correct.
And so I do not know if a committee at all existed, but Sean O'Keefe certainly was not the person that should have been making that announcement.
Everything I'm seeing is just like this one guy was like, eh, yeah, James Webb.
I can't say for 100% certain that there wasn't like a committee form, but I'm not seeing anything.
I mean, everything seems to be, yeah, this guy just decided it was going to be named after James Webb.
Are you seeing anything different?
No, I'm not seeing anything different at all.
And I think that if that were the story, NASA would have used that in their response to the controversy.
You would think!
That's a very good point, star researcher Lydia Smith.
Hottie extraordinaire.
Good point.
So from the best we can tell, and again, allowing for some margin of error here, but the best we can tell They had a policy in place for naming stuff.
Yep.
They did not follow it whatsoever.
Like, it sounds like not even close.
I mean, you're making a committee, you're suggesting alternates, you know, like, oh, here's our order of preferences, you know, from what you read in that policy.
And they just didn't do that.
And yet when called on it, when challenged about naming the space telescope after James Webb, they dig in anyway.
Like, why, like, How about just go back and look at the history and be like, oh, you know what?
And you could even take us kind of a slimy way out for all I care.
Like, just go back and be like, hey, you know, in reviewing it, we look back, the policy wasn't followed at all.
Tell you what, why don't we redo it?
And you don't even have to fucking acknowledge the whatever.
If you're apparently so scared of acknowledging that a past historical figure might've been problematic, dodge all that and just say, hey, yeah, let's redo this, but properly.
Cause it looks like procedure wasn't followed.
Yep.
How hard is that?
I know.
You can even dump it on the guy from 2002.
He doesn't work there anymore.
Blame the guy who quit the job.
That's classic, classic bureaucracy.
Blame the guy who is gone and be like, yeah, he fucked it all up.
Idiot.
All right.
Let's try this again.
Yeah, and I think NASA realizes also how much they messed up because, like I said, their current policy came into effect before the previous one was set to expire.
Very interesting.
They did like a mini-amendment in the middle, right?
But then this one, effective December 20th, 2022, is far more comprehensive.
And specifically in that responsibility section, which is what we just looked at from the 2000 policy, now it says more specifically who needs to be involved in the ad hoc name selection team.
At least one member of Gen Z.
Yeah.
So, you know, obviously the office that the project is coming from needs to be part of it.
At least one member representing every other NASA headquarters participating, which was from the other one as well.
But now they're including an office of communication historian that they need to be either officially part of the naming team or included early in any consideration of the process.
They have to do an entire review of any individual whose name is being considered.
And that is going to help inform name selection.
They also specifically say, where possible, limit the practice of naming projects, missions, instruments, etc.
after individuals.
So like, just don't do this anymore.
Well, yeah, I mean, that feels like an overreaction.
I don't know why that would be.
That strikes me as another like, well, I guess we can't name anything after anybody.
It's like, no, just fucking Jesus.
You have to overreact every time.
Can't you just take the loss that's not even a loss because it's just you saying some guy in 2002 didn't follow any procedure.
Maybe he jumped the gun.
That's all it is.
Yeah, but I do think that this is like a major recognition of, you know, at least internally, like, we really screwed up and let's fix this policy and hopefully they actually follow it this time.
They also say that the historical analysis from the historian needs to include a human capital review to ensure diversity, unity, inclusion, and inspiration are considered as part of the naming process.
So you've acknowledged with a giant policy change that seems pretty geared and timed along with this controversy.
The evidence seems overwhelming that not even this policy, but the policy that was in effect in 2002 was not followed.
Right.
But you have to cling on to like, you can't dare let the woke win.
That's what it is.
There's certain people I think high enough up, and the emails bear this out, that just can't stomach letting somebody who is quote unquote woke, who's upset about something, Win.
I really think that's my personal opinion as to why you would do this.
Because otherwise, what are you mad that, like, if you take it away from James Webb, he's going to come out of his grave and, like, hunt you?
Who cares?
He's a dead guy.
He died in 1992.
Maybe he has some family that'll be upset, but okay, is that one family member or two family, whoever that is, is that really more important than everybody telling you, like, hey, this is kind of fucked up what's happening right now?
It just really strikes me as this Clinging to the status quo, defending it to the death, even though you inherited it, and there wasn't good reason for it anyway.
And it's because they can't stand the woke mob, quote-unquote, ever winning anything.
That's my opinion.
But you know, there is another federal entity that doesn't mind renaming things, and that's the Army, surprisingly.
So the Army's been going through and officially renaming a handful of military bases that were originally named after Confederate leaders.
Well, to be fair, these are probably way the fuck worse than James Webb.
Oh yeah, of course.
I'm not trying to equate the two at all.
No, I'm just saying like that, I mean, yeah, like it could account, it might not necessarily be like the army's super woke.
It's like, oh, fuck.
All right.
Yeah.
No, even us, even the army, we better.
Yeah.
It was from, you know, the George Floyd protests and everything.
They had a committee, of course, it's the government, everything's a committee.
And they evaluated, you know, all of the bases that they had, who were they named after, and they identified nine that needed to be renamed.
And they wanted to rename them from Confederate leaders to people of color who made significant contributions with their service in whatever effort they were fighting in.
Even just not Confederate leaders is already enough of a step in the right direction.
Right, right.
Unbelievable.
Confederate leaders.
We have bases, I think to this day, right?
Or did they fix all of them?
Because I'm pretty sure we have bases, or at least very recently, named after people who fought against our government.
I don't know that we would do that with any other country.
I mean, I could be wrong.
I don't think we name anything else in our army after people who fought against our army.
That's a You know, that's sportsmanship.
I don't think we're at that level.
But for some reason, when it's, you know, people who fought tooth and nail to keep fucking human slavery, then we were like, well, naturally, we have to name our army base after the people who tried to take out our fucking army in the name of That's a good use of our honoring.
Yeah, and so the most recent one that I've seen, I think it's an effort they're still working on, the most recent rename was June 13th of this year.
Jesus, that's yesterday.
Yeah, so they renamed Fort Polk.
to Fort Johnson.
Fort Polk was Confederate commander, Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk, and it was renamed to honor Sergeant William Henry Johnson.
He was a black U.S.
soldier during World War I who fought off two dozen Germans alone and killed at least four.
He enlisted two months after the U.S.
became involved in the war.
He was in a segregated New York regiment out of Harlem.
And while he was fighting, his rifle ran out of rounds.
He was out in France, deployed there.
So he used the butt of his rifle, grenades, his fists, and a knife, saved another soldier.
As part of this, he had 21 wounds and wasn't able to return to his job after the war.
Wow.
And the army, obviously, they were like, this is a hero.
You know, we're going to send him on speaking engagements.
And then he started speaking out publicly about the racism that black soldiers were experiencing during World War I on the front lines.
Ah, never mind.
Not a hero.
Let's not.
Never mind.
Yep.
And the army canceled all of his speaking engagements to punish him.
Wow.
Yep.
I mean, thus proving, obviously, there's no racism involved.
Right.
God.
So they're trying to fix that now.
You know how many heroes obviously there are?
Tell you what, there's enough black war heroes who then often, by the way, were lynched when they came home.
There's enough people like that who suffered the ultimate injustice.
I can't think of anything more unjust than that, like conceivable for our country, for the country to do to somebody.
There's enough of them.
NASA can borrow some of them.
Fuck it.
I think the Army has so many, why don't we name some space stuff after them too?
Because this is ridiculous.
Let's contrast that with Leonidas Polk, who at first when he said that, I thought it was going to be James Polk.
I thought it was going to be the president.
And I have a weird memory.
I don't think you'll know this, but Richard Spencer cited James Polk as his favorite president.
Do you remember that?
Oh, that sounds familiar.
Yeah, yeah.
And everyone was like, what?
Random.
But anyway, point is, we already know this is a Confederate general.
Yeah.
Is this going to be somebody who was a traitor to the Confederacy?
Was he a spy?
Did he actually save lives of the actual Americans fighting, not the Confederate pro-slavery assholes?
Like, what's the story here?
I mean, everything I'm seeing is that he was just really popular with all of his Confederate troops.
Wow.
Wow.
So he's just like really good racist.
They're just like, ah, should we honor this person who served our country, uh, happened to be black and because they were black died in poverty after being a complete war hero, like amazing, unbelievable war hero.
Or, uh, my buddy knows a guy who knows a racist.
Oh yeah, let's go with that one.
Cool.
Yeah.
There's nothing.
I'm looking in his Wikipedia at least.
I mean, I haven't done an Ola Che style performing an internet search of everything that Colt did.
Everything that NASA has on.
Yeah.
And again, it's apples and oranges.
I'm not saying that Webb is anywhere near this.
It's not that situation.
But this is part of the context I referenced in the first episode.
This is context.
The context is, wow, look at all these things until literally fucking as of recording, what, three weeks ago?
Not last month, 1923, 2023, last month, we had an army base named after a Confederate soldier general who just was a, that's it, that's his accomplishment.
He fought against our country in the name of protecting slavery.
To set this up as, look at the woke, constantly just no tolerance for the old white men we've named stuff after.
It's like, no, how about this is the fucking context you set up.
You know how many black people probably have served at that army base?
And they're like, cool, man.
Awesome.
Great.
We're honoring some asshole racist who did nothing.
Unbelievable.
Yeah, I mean, and he's being honored.
I just saw a little bit, too, that he actually, per this military historian, Stephen E. Woodworth, he was actually really incompetent.
All right, if we are ironically honoring him, I will accept that, actually.
Okay, yeah, that's true.
If it's the Confederates who tried to shoot an actual American, but it was pointed the wrong way and he just shot himself... I mean, it seems like it's pretty bad.
It says, Polk's incompetence and willful disobedience had consistently hamstrung Confederate operations west of the Appalachians, while his special relationship with the president made him untouchable.
You know what?
I rescind all my criticism of this.
Yeah.
Again, it's not directly NASA, but this original article, this daily episode, is presented as this sweeping pattern of the woke left just being intolerant of And it really, really could have badly used the context of, no, even, by the way, as that podcast episode went up, this army base was still named after a fucking racist Confederate general.
And so that's better context, perhaps.
Yeah, and then, I mean, just even including, contrary to policy, at the time, they decided to name the telescope after James Webb.
It's remarkable, those blind spots.
And, you know, yeah, I'm doing some digging to find this stuff.
I'm not a journalist by trade.
I'm not a researcher necessarily by trade.
So this stuff is available.
You can find it and figure out exactly what's going on here, but then it doesn't match potentially your agenda and what you're trying to accomplish with your article.
All right, hon, well, thanks for outdoing a New York Times reporter as not your job in like the, I don't know, fucking 30 minutes you probably spent on this, easily out researching a New York Times fucking job.
By the way, New York Times, hire my wife.
Sounds like she's fit for, to print, as they say.
So if you're listening, Russia, if you're listening, hire my wife to the New York Times.
All right.
Thanks so much, Lydia Smith.
And I'm sure we'll be hearing more of you very soon on the Where There's Woke feed, maybe the Patreon as well.
So thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me again.
So that's our show for today.
And I'm trying to do these teasers at the end, but you'll notice I already messed up a little because I thought this was going to be the email episode.
The NASA's damned emails.
But that is turning into a two hour long monstrosity that I need to keep working on.
But it's because there's so much.
I know I keep saying it.
So much.
It's really good stuff.
Lots of surprises.
Lots of seriously smoking guns in these emails that were FOIA'd.
And not an ounce of coverage on that Michael Powell article.
But I want to ask you folks something.
I can't tease the next episode because I think I'm going to leave it up to patrons.
Here's the thing.
I, as you can no doubt tell, am endlessly interested in this topic.
Everything about it.
The bad coverage, NASA, telescopes, space, history.
Oh, there's so much.
There's so much.
I'm super into it.
But I just want to, you know, stop here and maybe gauge.
Would you prefer, and I'm going to put up a Patreon poll, so that's where I want my answers.
Don't email me or anything else.
Would you prefer if I finish this James Webb Series out, or should I do a one-off?
Because we already have a great one-off recorded, really more of a fun one.
And I mean, it's still batshit crazy because it's anti-woke stuff, but it's a batshit crazy fun, funny episode.
Would you rather have that and kind of break up the series a little or will that bother you?
Like it will kind of bother me.
I feel like I don't necessarily want to break up the series, but I also think that doing two, three, four parts of something is a lot to expect from people.
I don't know if you're all as into it as I am necessarily.
I could do 20 parts on this.
I love it.
I can't stop thinking about it all day.
So that's the poll.
Again, that's for patrons.
That's on patreon.com slash where there's woke.
I don't want to see any answers anywhere else.
Sorry.
But that will be the poll I'll put up.
Do you want next week's episode to be a fun one off and then carry back on with the NASA James Webb New York Times stuff?
Or should we finish that out?
I could go either way.
I've got honestly, I've got a lot recorded for either of those options, so I could go either way.
Thought I'd put it up to you folks.
Since this is still a very new show, we're still figuring things out.
Calibrating.
And it's fun to do that together.
So please check out that poll and vote.
I'll go with the... I think I'll pretty much...
Yeah, I'm so 50-50, I'll go with whatever the patrons decide.
So that's the show.
So the preview for next week is either the woke are coming for our pizza ovens, or the trove of FOIA'd NASA emails that shows that Olashile is full of shit, and so much more.
I don't even know how to summarize it.
So much more.
It's really good.
Let me know.
I'll see you then.
Yeah, I kind of hate that it rewrites everything as Johnson.
Like, I almost, like, I know you don't want to deadname an old army base, but like, it's kind of useful to know when it was, own your racism.
