Does anyone watch the nightly MSN-NBC show called Countdown with Keith Oberman?  It is a sort of hip liberal news show where the top ten news stories of the day are counted down.  
   
  He has a segment on the show called the "worst person in the world" where he picks three people to be the bad to worst people in the world. It is usually people who have done some awful thing against fellow humans or human kind, for personal or political gain, or out of sheer stupidity, or someone he has a beef against (like Bill O'Reilly of the rival Fox New cable network). 
   
  So last night I am watching it like I usually do--I am making dinner and only paying cursory attention when I hear the evil organ music that is the prompt for the segment to begin.  I did not even hear who the first and second runners up were but I started listening when I heard Keith start talking about how NASA seems to have lost the tapes of the historic landing on the moon--you know the ones that show Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon--yeah those tapes and how now NASA is searching all over for them.  And then he intones NASA ARCHIVISTS--tonight's worst people in the world!!
   
  Isn't it funny how people will always be happy to point out what you have done wrong?  
   
  I am not sure how to react to this.  On the one hand I think the archivists involved may have played some role in the tapes gone missing but on the other I am sure they can not be blamed entirely for the whole debacle.  On the one hand this is the kind of publicity our profession can do without but on the other it sort of points out how important it is to have archives and archivists in the first place.  
   
  Andrea Matlak
  Archivist
  Ameircan Dental Association
  Chicago, IL

 		
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Next-gen email? Have it all with the  all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta.

A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List sponsored by the Society of American Archivists, www.archivists.org.
For the terms of participation, please refer to http://www.archivists.org/listservs/arch_listserv_terms.asp.

To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to [log in to unmask]
      In body of message:  SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname
                    *or*:  UNSUB ARCHIVES
To post a message, send e-mail to [log in to unmask]

Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html

Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>