More from OpinionJournal.com, the editorial-opinion website of the Wall Street Journal, proposing a complete overhaul of Smithsonian funding:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110009863

People who are being coddled so well are not giving-they are buying-some are buying status, some respect and some are buying YOU. The ultrawealthy got that way buy carefully valuing their expenditures-that realism, not cynicism.

In the long run, its better to have a product that an interested group of enthusiastics will pay for as well as the casual visitor, rather than hoping for big scores.

Its also not the first time the Smihsonian forgot its very sensitive public perception-remember the Enola Gay incident where somebody was going to make the cases that the A-Bomb was dropped on Japan primarily due to racism?

If it means scaling back ambitions to kep things squeaky clean, do it. I doubt any railroad museum has the public goodwill or financial werewithall to withstand a "scandal" of this nature. What will no doubt be mere stretch of rough track for the SI would be a haz-mat derailment for most RR museums. You aren't taking a stand for the fallen, if you follow them.

But we don't "follow" them, do we?

[remembers Smithsonian partnership of a certain rail museum in downtown Baltimore]

Errr......... ahhhh......... hmmmm.......

On the narrow question of if this will have any impact on the railroad museum sector, when the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis used the name "National Museum of Transport" we often did have people assume we were funded by the federal government. Any museum that uses the word "National" can expect the same confusion. I doubt this situation will have any impact, but the confusion continues as the old name is still on the highway signs and will be there for a long time.