Artifacts from Buzz Aldrin’s personal collection are going up for auction
Plus: All the advance work in the world can’t help with a visual gaffe like this
Hello, in this issue we’ll look at…
All the advance work in the world can’t help with a visual gaffe like this
Artifacts from Buzz Aldrin’s personal collection are going up for auction, including what has got to be the most expensive pen ever
This traveling gun violence installation made of school buses is one mile long
All the advance work in the world can’t help with a visual gaffe like this
Presidential foreign trips are an exercise in high-level advance work. Advance teams put together picturesque events to portray the president positively on the world stage, but as President Joe Biden’s recent trip to Israel, the West Bank, and Saudi Arabia shows, one visual gaffe can be all that people see.
Biden’s fist bump greeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, set off outrage across the political spectrum. On the right, outlets like Fox News characterized the greeting as “America last,” but bro, you spent four years not worrying about former President Donald Trump’s attempts to befriend dictators from North Korea to Russia, so I don’t care what you think.
What was more surprising was the blowback Biden received from the left. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) tweeted, “If we ever needed a visual reminder of the continuing grip oil-rich autocrats have on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, we got it today. One fist bump is worth a thousand words.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) didn’t think Biden should have made the trip at all.
“I don’t think that type of government should be rewarded with a visit by the president of the United States,” Sanders said Sunday on ABC News “This Week.” “You’ve got a family that is worth $100 billion, which crushes democracy, which treats women as third-class citizens, which murders and imprisons its opponents. And if this country believes in anything, we believe in human rights, we believe in democracy, and I just don’t believe we should be maintaining a warm relationship with a dictatorship like that.”
Biden downplayed the fist bump, telling a journalist who asked about it “Why don’t you guys talk about something that matters? I’m happy to answer a question that matters.” Handshakes were supposed to be off-limits on the trip anyways due to COVID-19, the White House had said earlier, though Biden did shake some hands.
Biden said he brought up Saudi human rights violations and the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the top of his meeting with MBS.
“I made my view crystal clear,” Biden said during a press conference. “I said very straightforwardly, for an American president to be silent on an issue of human rights is inconsistent with who we are and who I am. I’ll always stand up for our values.”
The chumminess associated with a fist bump is what rubbed some the wrong way. Fred Ryan, publisher of the Washington Post, called the fist bump “worse than a handshake” because it projected "a level of intimacy and comfort that delivers to MBS unwarranted redemption he has been desperately seeking.”
Artifacts from Buzz Aldrin’s personal collection are going up for auction, including what has got to be the most expensive pen ever
They’re calling it “the most important space exploration collection to come to market.”
Sotheby’s announced it’s auctioning artifacts from Buzz Aldrin’s personal collection, including items from Apollo 11, the first manned mission to the moon. The coverall jacket Aldrin wore on the mission is expected to fetch between $1 million and $2 million.
“There is no other garment worn on this mission that can be owned privately,” Sotheby’s executive Cassandra Hatton said in a video announcing the sale. “The spacesuits that Neil [Armstrong] and Buzz used to walk on the moon are at the Smithsonian. Mike’s [Collins] spacesuit that he wore in the command module are in the Smithsonian. So this is the only Apollo 11 mission-used piece of clothing that can be owned.”
Also up for auction will be what has to be the most expensive pen ever. During the Apollo 11 mission, a circuit breaker switch used to ignite the lunar module engine was broken off after being hit by one of the bulky backpacks that crew members wore, but Aldrin used a felt tip pen to complete the circuit.
The pen “saved the entire crew of Apollo 11 and the future of the entire space program,” Hatton said, and it’s being auctioned along with the broken circuit breaker switch and estimated to go for between $1 million and $2 million.
Other items in the auction include mission-flown Apollo 11 documents, a “Go Army, Beat Navy” banner Aldrin brought to root for his alma mater in the cosmos, and the “Original Moonman” statue he was given by the MTV Video Music Award (fun fact: the statue was modeled after his likeness). Bidding for Buzz Aldrin: American Icon opens July 26.
This traveling gun violence installation made of school buses is one mile long
To remember the more than 4,300 children who have been killed by gun violence since 2020, the gun safety reform group Change the Ref opened a mobile, pop-up installation in Texas made up of more than 50 school buses.
Named the NRA Children’s Museum as a dig against the National Rifle Association, the buses have empty seats to represent children who have been killed by gun violence. The buses have the locations and dates of shootings written on their roofs, and the actual museum was located in the lead bus. It included photos of some of the children who have been killed and personal items like shoes, backpacks, jerseys, and awards.
The mile-long installation drove to Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) house in Houston where Change the Ref co-founder Manuel Oliver delivered a 2013 letter his son Joaquin wrote as a school assignment asking gun owners why they opposed background checks before he was killed in the 2018 Parkland shooting.
Manuel Oliver said the group plans to take the buses to other politicians who take NRA money.
“This is only the beginning,” he said in a statement. “To every politician who has stood by, taken NRA money, and refused to listen to the people they represent: the museum is on the way to honor you next.”
Oliver has used art and culture jamming to speak out against gun violence since his son’s murder, including climbing a 150-foot crane near the White House to hang a banner in February.
Earlier this month, he attended the White House ceremony marking the passage of the bipartisan gun safety reform legislation and he interrupted Biden’s remarks, shouting, “You have to do more.”
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