Abstract

Hard to Muzzle. The Return of Lynne Cheney

Lynne Cheney started as chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1986 with slender qualifications, a PhD in literature from the University of Wisconsin and a three-year stint as an editor of Washingtonian magazine. Her main qualification seems to have been as wife of a leading Congressional conservative and former Ford Administration Chief of Staff. At the NEH, Cheney, now 59, perfected a method of attack that depends more on hyperbole than accuracy. One of her first campaigns was aimed at a PBS series, The Africans, that she called propaganda because it described Africa's historic problems as a consequence of European exploitation. She insisted on removing the NEH's name from the credits and refused to approve endowment publicity funding for the series-actions she termed a defense of free speech.