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the cliffs of Trafalgar, and walked the decks of the HMS Victory. I'm not a New Age type, but many feel a particular energy when standing on the same spot where something dramatic happened. Go to The Little Big Horn and stand on the hill where Custer's Last Stand occurred and tell me you don't feel something.

+1. How do you feel about historical conspiracy theories?

They are entertaining, but only occasionally true. Before The DaVinci Code, I read the non-fiction work it was in part based on, Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Fun gonzo history, but based upon an unworkable concept - namely that human beings can keep a secret for so long. The record proves secrets rarely last one lifetime, much less centuries.

Still, there is much that still needs to comes out. When John Lennon said in 1972 that the FBI was bugging his phone, we thought he was paranoid from too many drugs. Thirty years later it turns out he was (bugged). And I love the observation by Italian scholar Umberto Eco about American History. " In Europe, whenever there is a high profile assassination we immediately look for the extent of the conspiracy. You're asking me to believe, that every important American who was ever killed, in your entire nation's history, Lincoln, Garfield, Kennedy, were ALL killed by a single lunatic acting alone..?

+2. Napoleon said, "History is a lie agreed upon." How far off the mark were our history lessons in school?

Yeah, that is pretty true. When I was young the great reality in all our lives was the Cold War standoff between America and the Soviet Union. We were taught that Communism was a monolithic conspiracy bent on uniting the world under tyranny. Now that the Communist bloc is gone, we found out that it was a pretty weak alliance. Stalin and Mao Zse Tung couldn't stand one another. When North Korea attacked South Korea in 1950 they were as surprised as we were. No matter how bad the Vietnam War was going, Ho Chi Minh refused any Red Chinese help. He said " Better to smell American shit for ten years than Chinese shit for 100 years!" Nations like Egypt, Pakistan and Mozambique changed sides as their national interests suited them, ideology notwithstanding.

We now know in detail how many narcotics were in Elvis Presley's system, while he was being appointed by President Nixon the nation's honorary chairman on the War on Drugs. But at the time he was considered the king of right wing rockers who rejected the hippy drug counter-culture.

Someday we'll find out just how bad Ronald Reagan's Alzheimers was in the last years of his presidency, and just how much Vice President Dick Cheney is influencing policy in the current G.W. Bush White House. Why else are they so obsessed with sealing records and gaining immunity?

Media has a definite effect on what is studied and what is considered relevant history. When I was growing up in the sixties, we were taught the most famous people who ever lived included Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Helen Keller, Njomo Kenyatta, Jan Christian Smuts, Conrad Adenauer, Dag Hammarskjöld and Eleanor Roosevelt. Ask any school kid today who they are!

Just recently I saw a TV documentary about America in 1968, a time I lived through. I soon found myself thundering at the TV- "Wha..? Bull%^$! That didn't happen that way!" But if it's on television, it must be true.

Venezuela has been a U.S. friend since Simon Bolivar in 1826. Now they voted in a hostile government. Why doesn't anybody ask why?

Recently political revisionists bloviate on the talk shows about how the Founding Fathers of America were deeply religious men who wanted God to guide their national politics. My reading tells me nothing could be further from the truth. Washington, Franklin, Jefferson and Madison were men of the Age of Enlightenment, who saw organized religion as superstition responsible for ignorance and bigotry. They would have been horrified to see the extent to which a Jerry Fallwell or Pat Robertson wield influence in modern politics.

George Washington wanted no priests at the dedication of the White House or US Capitol and refused Last Rites while dying. Historians note that in all his writings and speeches, Washington never mentions Christ or any passage of the Bible, but at most a vague reference to a "Divine Will." He went to Church on Sundays, but more as a matter of proper form, than genuine religious zeal. James Madison said the separation of Church and State was one of the primary pillars of American Democracy. Jefferson and Franklin, if they believed in anything, thought of an overreaching Supreme Deity, but not in any one Church. Even Abe Lincoln was criticized in his time for never being seen attending Sunday services. Yet people today are publishing books about how deeply pious these same men were. So facts are neutral, the Titanic did sink, Joan of Arc did burn at the stake. It depends on how we choose to interpret the details.

We used to watch movies like Gunga Din as exciting tales of heroic Brits putting down crazed natives and spreading civilization. Now we see these natives are in their own country and who asked these guys in the white helmets and guns to come despoil their temples in the first place?

Tom Sito is the author of Drawing the Line a history of organized labor in American animation. He is currently working on two books: a complete history of CGI, and a book about Hollywood animation directors.