Roundup: Talking About History
This is where we excerpt articles about history that appear in the media. Among the subjects included on this page are: anniversaries of historical events, legacies of presidents, cutting-edge research, and historical disputes.
SOURCE: National Review (9-28-07)
Sometimes, books create paradigm shifts in how we view history. The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression , by Amity Shlaes, is just such a book. An absorbing journey through that era, it sets the record straight on both the causes of the Great Depression and how the New Deal policies failed.
Conventional wisdom holds that the Great Depression was sparked by the 1929 stock market crash; that capitalism had to be saved from itself; that Hoover failed to do so; and that Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped us through the period with his New Deal policies.
But this narrative, as Shlaes makes clear, fails to recognize how the economy actually works since it reflexively champions government as a savior for the common man. In reality, reckless government intervention can make a bad economic situation much worse. The New Deal, in fact, is what put the "Great" in the Great Depression.
The Forgotten Man dispels many of the core myths...
Conventional wisdom holds that the Great Depression was sparked by the 1929 stock market crash; that capitalism had to be saved from itself; that Hoover failed to do so; and that Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped us through the period with his New Deal policies.
But this narrative, as Shlaes makes clear, fails to recognize how the economy actually works since it reflexively champions government as a savior for the common man. In reality, reckless government intervention can make a bad economic situation much worse. The New Deal, in fact, is what put the "Great" in the Great Depression.
The Forgotten Man dispels many of the core myths...
Sunday, September 30, 2007 - 18:47
Comments
SOURCE: FrontpageMag.com (9-28-07)
In his speeches, most especially the one at Columbia University, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeats two myths about the Holocaust. The first every reasonable person knows is a total lie: namely that the Holocaust did not occur. The second myth, however, is one that escapes critical attention for the most part, because many people are not aware of its falsity. The myth is that the Palestinian people and their leadership had absolutely nothing to do with the Holocaust. The conclusion that is supposed to follow from this “fact” is that the establishment of Israel in the wake of the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people was unfair to the Palestinians. This is the way Ahmadinejad put it in his Columbia talk.
“…[G]iven this historical event [the Holocaust], if it is a reality, we need to question whether the Palestinian people should be paying for it… “The Palestinian people didn’t commit any crime. They had no role to play in World War II.”
These statements about the role of the...
These statements about the role of the...
Friday, September 28, 2007 - 16:01
SOURCE: Times (UK) (9-22-07)
[Ben Macintyre is a Times correspondent.]
... Numerous attempts have been made to stamp out the trade in stolen artefacts, and a number of prominent curators and dealers have recently been prosecuted for handling stolen goods. But still the market for looted antiquities expands, fed by a growing demand from the Middle East, Japan and China. Where once a rich man might adorn his palace with tiger skins and the heads of rare rhino, collectors now bag shards of Sumerian pottery and Buddhist carvings, trophy art to demonstrate wealth and sophistication.
The comparison between big game hunting and the hunt for smuggled artefacts is apt, for archaeologists are turning to the lessons of wildlife conservation in their efforts to protect the world’s most threatened sites. The answer to the plague of looting may lie with the endangered elephant.
Looters of ancient sites are operating in precisely the same way as poachers hunting elephant, rhino or apes:...
... Numerous attempts have been made to stamp out the trade in stolen artefacts, and a number of prominent curators and dealers have recently been prosecuted for handling stolen goods. But still the market for looted antiquities expands, fed by a growing demand from the Middle East, Japan and China. Where once a rich man might adorn his palace with tiger skins and the heads of rare rhino, collectors now bag shards of Sumerian pottery and Buddhist carvings, trophy art to demonstrate wealth and sophistication.
The comparison between big game hunting and the hunt for smuggled artefacts is apt, for archaeologists are turning to the lessons of wildlife conservation in their efforts to protect the world’s most threatened sites. The answer to the plague of looting may lie with the endangered elephant.
Looters of ancient sites are operating in precisely the same way as poachers hunting elephant, rhino or apes:...
Thursday, September 27, 2007 - 22:30
SOURCE: Counterpunch (9-15-07)
[Vicente Navarro is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the Pompeu Fabra University, Spain, and The Johns Hopkins University, USA. In 2002 he was awarded the Anagrama Prize (Spain's equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize in the USA) for his denunciation of the way in which the transition from dictatorship to democracy has been engineered, in his book Bienestar Insuficiente Democracia Incompleta, De lo que no se hable en nuestro pais (Insufficient Welfare, Incomplete Democracy; a book about what is being silenced in Spain). He can be reached at vnavarro@jhsph.edu]
According to conventional wisdom in Spain and in the U.S., in Spain’s transition from the Franco dictatorship to democracy, it was King Juan Carlos, with the assistance of the U.S. government (first the Ford administration, then the Carter administration), who brought democracy to Spain. In this interpretation of events taking place from 1975, when the dictator...
According to conventional wisdom in Spain and in the U.S., in Spain’s transition from the Franco dictatorship to democracy, it was King Juan Carlos, with the assistance of the U.S. government (first the Ford administration, then the Carter administration), who brought democracy to Spain. In this interpretation of events taking place from 1975, when the dictator...
Tuesday, September 25, 2007 - 21:38
SOURCE: Financial Times (9-25-07)
[Mr. Rachman is a journalist.]
... There are few more damaging taunts than to be compared to the British prime minister who tried and failed to appease Hitler at the Munich summit of 1938. In the US, in particular, the ghost of Chamberlain is regularly brought out to frighten those who are deemed insufficiently resolute in confronting the enemy of the moment. In the run-up to the Iraq war, the lessons of Munich were invoked by President George W. Bush and any number of neo-conservative commentators
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican, was at it again during this month's congressional hearings on Iraq. She reminded her audience that: "Neville Chamberlain genuinely believed that he had brought 'peace in our time' by washing his hands of what he believed to be an isolated dispute in 'a far away country between people of whom we know nothing'. That country was Czechoslovakia and Chamberlain's well-intentioned efforts . . . only ensured that an immensely larger threat...
... There are few more damaging taunts than to be compared to the British prime minister who tried and failed to appease Hitler at the Munich summit of 1938. In the US, in particular, the ghost of Chamberlain is regularly brought out to frighten those who are deemed insufficiently resolute in confronting the enemy of the moment. In the run-up to the Iraq war, the lessons of Munich were invoked by President George W. Bush and any number of neo-conservative commentators
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican, was at it again during this month's congressional hearings on Iraq. She reminded her audience that: "Neville Chamberlain genuinely believed that he had brought 'peace in our time' by washing his hands of what he believed to be an isolated dispute in 'a far away country between people of whom we know nothing'. That country was Czechoslovakia and Chamberlain's well-intentioned efforts . . . only ensured that an immensely larger threat...
Tuesday, September 25, 2007 - 20:29
SOURCE: New Republic (9-24-07)
[Alan Taylor is a professor of American history at the University of California at Davis and the author, most recently, of The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (Knopf). ]
Nothing succeeds like success in America, especially in the writing of popular history. Readers long to know how the United States became the world's grandest nation and who should get the glory as our founding heroes. In recent years, publishers have thrived off peddling the so-called Founding Fathers, the leaders of the American Revolution who created the United States with a republican government. But this year's celebration of a quadricentennial invites attention to an earlier spate of founders: the English colonists of Jamestown in Virginia, first settled in 1607. The queen of England and the usually reclusive American vice president have attended the festivities at Jamestown's ruins. A recent Hollywood epic gave us Colin Farrell as Captain...
Nothing succeeds like success in America, especially in the writing of popular history. Readers long to know how the United States became the world's grandest nation and who should get the glory as our founding heroes. In recent years, publishers have thrived off peddling the so-called Founding Fathers, the leaders of the American Revolution who created the United States with a republican government. But this year's celebration of a quadricentennial invites attention to an earlier spate of founders: the English colonists of Jamestown in Virginia, first settled in 1607. The queen of England and the usually reclusive American vice president have attended the festivities at Jamestown's ruins. A recent Hollywood epic gave us Colin Farrell as Captain...
Tuesday, September 25, 2007 - 16:21
SOURCE: WSJ (9-25-07)
[Mr. Steele, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, is the author of "White Guilt" (HarperCollins, 2006).]
... On this 50th anniversary of Eisenhower's troop deployment, the significance of the Little Rock crisis--its place in history--is much clearer. I believe it was the beginning of a profoundly different America.
For one thing, it foreshadowed the end of white supremacy as a legitimate authority. The Little Rock crisis was a conflict between two ideas of authority that had always been in tension in American life. The authority behind the Little Rock Nine came from that constellation of principles that define the American democracy--the idea of individual rights, equality under the law and so on. But in America another authority had always been in play--the atavistic authority of white supremacy, the idea that no less a power than God had chosen the white race to be ascendant over all other races. This was the authority behind the white...
... On this 50th anniversary of Eisenhower's troop deployment, the significance of the Little Rock crisis--its place in history--is much clearer. I believe it was the beginning of a profoundly different America.
For one thing, it foreshadowed the end of white supremacy as a legitimate authority. The Little Rock crisis was a conflict between two ideas of authority that had always been in tension in American life. The authority behind the Little Rock Nine came from that constellation of principles that define the American democracy--the idea of individual rights, equality under the law and so on. But in America another authority had always been in play--the atavistic authority of white supremacy, the idea that no less a power than God had chosen the white race to be ascendant over all other races. This was the authority behind the white...
Tuesday, September 25, 2007 - 15:51
[Humberto Fontova is the author of Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him.]
The A&E Network recently produced a Biography show on Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Years back they produced one on Senator "Tail-Gunner Joe" McCarthy. The depictions contrast sharply.
The second mentioned of these historical figures was a freely-elected official who campaigned to remove Stalinist agents that had infiltrated the government of a representative republic. Joe McCarthy launched his congressional inquiry into Communist penetration of the U.S. government at a time when Stalin's regime had already murdered more people, conquered more nations, and enslaved more of their citizens than Hitler's regime had managed at its...
The A&E Network recently produced a Biography show on Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Years back they produced one on Senator "Tail-Gunner Joe" McCarthy. The depictions contrast sharply.
The second mentioned of these historical figures was a freely-elected official who campaigned to remove Stalinist agents that had infiltrated the government of a representative republic. Joe McCarthy launched his congressional inquiry into Communist penetration of the U.S. government at a time when Stalin's regime had already murdered more people, conquered more nations, and enslaved more of their citizens than Hitler's regime had managed at its...
Tuesday, September 25, 2007 - 14:28
SOURCE: NYT (9-24-07)
... How fresh-faced and playful the SS women look in the 116 photographs that, 62 years after the liberation of the Nazi camp, have found their way by a circuitous route to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It is not easy to imagine these young ladies moving on from a picnic to administer death wholesale.
In thinking about the Holocaust, we have grown accustomed to images of the Nazis’ victims: shadowy naked figures on the edge of ditches about to be dispatched by the SS-Einsatzgruppen; huddled wide-eyed children; skeletal human simulacra; piles of bones. Getting the perpetrators in focus is harder.
But here, revealed by these newly discovered photographs, are the German murderers in all their dumb humanity, flirting and joking and lighting Christmas trees, as if what awaited them after the frolicking were just the bus to some dull job in a dental office rather than the supervision of Auschwitz’s industrialized killing machine....
I wish...
In thinking about the Holocaust, we have grown accustomed to images of the Nazis’ victims: shadowy naked figures on the edge of ditches about to be dispatched by the SS-Einsatzgruppen; huddled wide-eyed children; skeletal human simulacra; piles of bones. Getting the perpetrators in focus is harder.
But here, revealed by these newly discovered photographs, are the German murderers in all their dumb humanity, flirting and joking and lighting Christmas trees, as if what awaited them after the frolicking were just the bus to some dull job in a dental office rather than the supervision of Auschwitz’s industrialized killing machine....
I wish...
Monday, September 24, 2007 - 13:47
SOURCE: Jerusalem Post (9-20-07)
[Daniel Pipes is the founder of Campus Watch and director of its parent organization, the Middle East Forum.]
What has Campus Watch, a project to critique and improve Middle East studies in the United States and Canada, achieved since it opened its doors this week in 2002?
Along with like-minded organizations – the National Association of Scholars, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, National Review, and the Manhattan Institute – it assesses what professors are saying and doing, thereby helping to challenge academia's status quo.
Critiquing professors is more revolutionary than it may sound, for academics have long been spared public criticism such as that directed toward politicians, business leaders, actors, and athletes. Who would judge them? Students suppress their views to protect their careers; peers are ...
Monday, September 24, 2007 - 02:54
SOURCE: NYT (9-22-07)
Daisy Bates had to march with the wives.
When the nation observes the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock school desegregation on Monday, there will undoubtedly be a great deal said about Bates, who was head of the city’s N.A.A.C.P. chapter. She helped recruit nine black teenagers and escorted them through irate mobs of white adults and into their first classes. As a result, she and her husband, Lucius, lost their business. She was jailed, threatened and the Ku Klux Klan burned an 8-foot cross on her lawn.
Bates was invited, of course, to the famous March on Washington in 1963, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. Rosa Parks was invited, too, and Pauli Murray, the lawyer and feminist who had staged the first sit-in at a Washington restaurant during World War II.
When they got there, they were all assigned to walk with the wives of the male civil rights leaders, far away from the cameras. “Not a single woman was invited...
When the nation observes the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock school desegregation on Monday, there will undoubtedly be a great deal said about Bates, who was head of the city’s N.A.A.C.P. chapter. She helped recruit nine black teenagers and escorted them through irate mobs of white adults and into their first classes. As a result, she and her husband, Lucius, lost their business. She was jailed, threatened and the Ku Klux Klan burned an 8-foot cross on her lawn.
Bates was invited, of course, to the famous March on Washington in 1963, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. Rosa Parks was invited, too, and Pauli Murray, the lawyer and feminist who had staged the first sit-in at a Washington restaurant during World War II.
When they got there, they were all assigned to walk with the wives of the male civil rights leaders, far away from the cameras. “Not a single woman was invited...
Saturday, September 22, 2007 - 19:04
SOURCE: EdNews.org (9-21-07)
[Mr. Fitzhugh is founder of the Concord Review.]
I have been involved in only three Teaching American History grant programs in three states so far, as a presenter or an evaluator, but I am wondering how many of the hundreds of other funded programs, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, resemble the history vacations for teachers that I have seen.
History teachers are paid to attend summer programs where they hear lectures by college professors of history, and go on interesting field trips. All their expenses for class, travel, food, and books are paid by the grant, and they receive a stipend.
They are not required to write any papers, it seems, nor are they tested either before or after these three-year programs to discover if their knowledge and understanding of traditional United States History are greater or not.
While the goal of these programs is to increase the historical knowledge of teachers, the assumption is made...
I have been involved in only three Teaching American History grant programs in three states so far, as a presenter or an evaluator, but I am wondering how many of the hundreds of other funded programs, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, resemble the history vacations for teachers that I have seen.
History teachers are paid to attend summer programs where they hear lectures by college professors of history, and go on interesting field trips. All their expenses for class, travel, food, and books are paid by the grant, and they receive a stipend.
They are not required to write any papers, it seems, nor are they tested either before or after these three-year programs to discover if their knowledge and understanding of traditional United States History are greater or not.
While the goal of these programs is to increase the historical knowledge of teachers, the assumption is made...
Friday, September 21, 2007 - 08:58
SOURCE: Salon (9-20-07)
There has never been a moment when we were not winning in Iraq. Victory has followed victory, from "Mission Accomplished" to the purple fingers of the Iraqi election to, most recently, President Bush's meeting at Camp Cupcake in Anbar province with Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, the Sunni leader of the group Anbar Awakening (who was assassinated a week later). Turning point has followed turning point, from Bush's proclamation two years ago of his "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" to his announcement last week of his "Return on Success." "We're kicking ass," he briefed the Australian deputy prime minister on Sept. 6 about his latest visit to Iraq. In his quasi-farewell address to the nation on Sept. 13, Bush assigned any possible shortcomings to Gen. David Petraeus and bequeathed his policy "beyond my presidency" to his successor.
After Bush pretended to deliberate over whether he would agree to his own policy as presented by...
After Bush pretended to deliberate over whether he would agree to his own policy as presented by...
Friday, September 21, 2007 - 00:32
SOURCE: New York Jewish Week (9-20-07)
[Peter Balakian is professor of the humanities at Colgate University and the author of The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response, which won the Raphael Lemkin Prize. Deborah Lipstadt is professor of Holocaust studies at Emory University and author of History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving, which won the National Jewish Book Award.]
Turkey’s ambassador to Israel, Namik Tan, told The Jerusalem Post (Aug. 27) that Israel must force the ADL to retract its acknowledgement of the Armenian genocide, that failure to do this would be a stab in the heart of the Turkish people and that the Turkish people do not distinguish between Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jews on this issue. Tan also said that recognizing the Armenian genocide will mean that “my ancestors have done something inconceivable,” and it will set off “a campaign against Turkey and the Turkish people.” Though he subsequently tempered his language, this was a very harsh attack with...
Turkey’s ambassador to Israel, Namik Tan, told The Jerusalem Post (Aug. 27) that Israel must force the ADL to retract its acknowledgement of the Armenian genocide, that failure to do this would be a stab in the heart of the Turkish people and that the Turkish people do not distinguish between Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jews on this issue. Tan also said that recognizing the Armenian genocide will mean that “my ancestors have done something inconceivable,” and it will set off “a campaign against Turkey and the Turkish people.” Though he subsequently tempered his language, this was a very harsh attack with...
Friday, September 21, 2007 - 00:31
SOURCE: Slate Explainer (9-14-07)
[Tim Harford is a columnist for the Financial Times. His latest book is The Undercover Economist.]
I am writing this column in one of my favorite London haunts—the Great Court of the British Museum. I've just been to see one of the museum's most famous and controversial exhibits, the Parthenon Sculptures—also known as the Elgin Marbles <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles>; . These carvings were removed from the Acropolis in Athens more than 200 years ago by the Earl of Elgin. But while there's a predictably long-running argument over where the carvings rightfully belong, the trade in antiquities is very much alive today.
This trade is almost inevitable. In a poor country, such as Mali or Cambodia, foreigners are likely to be willing to pay more for artifacts than the locals would. The logic of the market would pull the choicest objects into foreign collections and foreign museums. Many...
I am writing this column in one of my favorite London haunts—the Great Court of the British Museum. I've just been to see one of the museum's most famous and controversial exhibits, the Parthenon Sculptures—also known as the Elgin Marbles <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles>; . These carvings were removed from the Acropolis in Athens more than 200 years ago by the Earl of Elgin. But while there's a predictably long-running argument over where the carvings rightfully belong, the trade in antiquities is very much alive today.
This trade is almost inevitable. In a poor country, such as Mali or Cambodia, foreigners are likely to be willing to pay more for artifacts than the locals would. The logic of the market would pull the choicest objects into foreign collections and foreign museums. Many...
Thursday, September 20, 2007 - 18:11
SOURCE: Gilder Lehrman Institute--History Now (9-1-07)
[Mr. Cornell is Professor of History, The Ohio State University.]
... The changing historical view of Antifederalism has itself become a remarkable historical litmus test for the political mood of the nation. Throughout American history, Antifederalist ideas have been resurrected by groups eager to challenge the power of the central government. Historians have not been exempt from the tendency to see Antifederalism through a political lens. Over the course of the twentieth century historians continuously reinterpreted the meaning of Antifederalism. These different interpretations tell us as much about the hopes and fears of the different generations of scholars who wrote about the opposition to the Constitution as it does about the Antifederalists themselves.
At the end of the nineteenth century, populists cast the Antifederalists as rural democrats who paved the way for Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy.3 This interpretation was challenged by counter...
... The changing historical view of Antifederalism has itself become a remarkable historical litmus test for the political mood of the nation. Throughout American history, Antifederalist ideas have been resurrected by groups eager to challenge the power of the central government. Historians have not been exempt from the tendency to see Antifederalism through a political lens. Over the course of the twentieth century historians continuously reinterpreted the meaning of Antifederalism. These different interpretations tell us as much about the hopes and fears of the different generations of scholars who wrote about the opposition to the Constitution as it does about the Antifederalists themselves.
At the end of the nineteenth century, populists cast the Antifederalists as rural democrats who paved the way for Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy.3 This interpretation was challenged by counter...
Thursday, September 20, 2007 - 18:11
SOURCE: Slate Explainer (9-7-07)
The 3.2-million-year-old fossilized remains of Lucy, the most intact human ancestor ever discovered, began a six-year tour of U.S. museums last Friday. The scientific community has expressed concern about shipping and exhibiting such a precious and delicate specimen, and several prominent American museums have refused to display her. Given that many museums around the world have nearly identical plaster casts of Lucy, how important is the original fossil?
Very important. Although fossil replicas can be so similar to the original that even paleontologists have trouble telling them apart, such copies are of limited use for research. That's because casts replicate only the outside structure of a fossil. Other information lies within the fossilized bones, and can be accessed via high-resolution CT (computed tomography). These scans can examine the inside of a fossil to determine, for example, how stress was imposed on the spongy internal structure of Lucy's femur during her...
Very important. Although fossil replicas can be so similar to the original that even paleontologists have trouble telling them apart, such copies are of limited use for research. That's because casts replicate only the outside structure of a fossil. Other information lies within the fossilized bones, and can be accessed via high-resolution CT (computed tomography). These scans can examine the inside of a fossil to determine, for example, how stress was imposed on the spongy internal structure of Lucy's femur during her...
Thursday, September 20, 2007 - 12:34
SOURCE: Lipstadt Blog (9-17-07)
[Ms. Lipstadt is Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University and author of History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving.]
AP reports that Iranian TV has been broadcasting a mini-series on the Holocaust. It does NOT deny it. The show tells the story of an Iranian diplomat who, while based in Paris, helps Jews escape the Holocaust.
This would be noteworthy in and of itself given President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's energetic Holocaust denial.
What makes it even more mind boggling is that the government produced the series and it is airing it on state-run television.
According to the AP reporter the
series titled"Zero Degree Turn" is clearly sympathetic to the Jews' plight during World War II. It...
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 - 08:21
SOURCE: Times (UK) (9-14-07)
[Gerard Baker is United States Editor and an Assistant Editor of The Times. He joined in 2004 from the Financial Times, where he had spent over ten years as Tokyo correspondent and Washington Bureau Chief. ]
The US is indeed in the middle of another gloomy ride around the “America as Rome” theme park of half-understood history lessons. The pessimists, equipped with their Fodor’s guidebooks, their summer school diplomas, and their DVD collection of Cecil B. DeMille movies, are convinced it’s all up for the people who march today under the standard of the eagle, just as it was for their predecessors. They see military defeat abroad and political decay at home; they watch as far-flung peoples chafe at the dictates of imperial rule and as the plebs at home grow metaphorically hungry from misgovernment. The only real uncertainty in their minds is who will play the Vandals and lay waste to Washington?
It’s a familiar and very tired analogy, of course. From the moment...
The US is indeed in the middle of another gloomy ride around the “America as Rome” theme park of half-understood history lessons. The pessimists, equipped with their Fodor’s guidebooks, their summer school diplomas, and their DVD collection of Cecil B. DeMille movies, are convinced it’s all up for the people who march today under the standard of the eagle, just as it was for their predecessors. They see military defeat abroad and political decay at home; they watch as far-flung peoples chafe at the dictates of imperial rule and as the plebs at home grow metaphorically hungry from misgovernment. The only real uncertainty in their minds is who will play the Vandals and lay waste to Washington?
It’s a familiar and very tired analogy, of course. From the moment...
Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - 23:57
SOURCE: MSNBC (9-18-07)
Humorist Dave Barry discontinued his column writing in 2004, but still examines current events in his popular Year in Review pieces. The one's he wrote between 2000 and 2006 are collected in "Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far)." Read an excerpt:
Foreword
As Abraham Lincoln once said, “Journalism is the first rough draft of history.”
Or possibly it was Thomas Edison who said that. I’m pretty sure somebody said it, because you often hear journalists quote it in an effort to explain how come they get everything wrong.
We see this all the time. Journalists, rushing to get a story out under deadline pressure, will report— based on preliminary information— that a ship sank, and 127 people, many of them elderly, perished. Then, upon further investigation, it turns out that nobody, in fact, perished, although one elderly person was slightly injured by a set of dentures hurled by another el derly person in an effort to get the...
Foreword
As Abraham Lincoln once said, “Journalism is the first rough draft of history.”
Or possibly it was Thomas Edison who said that. I’m pretty sure somebody said it, because you often hear journalists quote it in an effort to explain how come they get everything wrong.
We see this all the time. Journalists, rushing to get a story out under deadline pressure, will report— based on preliminary information— that a ship sank, and 127 people, many of them elderly, perished. Then, upon further investigation, it turns out that nobody, in fact, perished, although one elderly person was slightly injured by a set of dentures hurled by another el derly person in an effort to get the...
Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - 23:42
