History: Who Needs It?

     Not little girls, apparently.    The doll company American Girl -- started by a history teacher, bought up by toy giant Mattel, looks to be undergoing a slow, SWPL-friendly makeover.

     While the original article comes at this from the left, bemoaning the dolls aren't radical any more and ends by musing that what the girls of this world really need is an Occupy Wall Street doll* and the original doll line tends to look at history through a very contemporary filter, it is at least, dammit, to some degree historical, with time-period appropriate clothing and fact-based information, not some horribly bland point on the curve of stereotyping that runs from Honey Boo Boo to Marilyn Monroe and ends with kids that have a head fulla inoffensive, ahistoric, vanilla mush.

     Come to that, I'druther see 'em tryin' to Occupy Wall Street, too.  At least they'd stand for something, even if it was addled.  Kid gets interested in a little history, even slanted, they'll likely read further and start to build up a more accurate picture; but they've got to know it's there to be found, first.

     (Many of the remaining historical dolls are PC-ethnic, which you'd think would make The Atlantic happy as clams.  Dropped dolls include ones from the Revolutionary War and Westward Expansion  --They've got a Bobbi and Tam set, too, or close enough.)
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* Great, give children one more excuse for not taking a bath?  #WRONG.