Culture Watch

Deep Indifference to Deep Throat

by Stanley Kutler

Current opinion polls reveal that two-thirds of Americans do not know enough about Watergate to discuss it. Based on the tenor of the recent 30th-anniversary observance, it's not surprising. Once again, we have been subjected to an orgy of media fascination with Deep Throat. Deep Throat has become a convenient means of journalistic self-congratulation, a way the media reminds us of its place at the center of the Watergate constellation. Only the vigilant diligence of our intrepid r

Books: Meron Benvenisti's Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948

by Ilan Pappe

Israeli Zionist intellectuals who are located on the most leftist pole of the political spectrum continue to produce bizarre books navigating carefully between self-criticism and justifications. This is an intriguing genre, characterized by careful deconstruction of the Zionist past and present, which was recently exposed to its widest audience in the treatment of history in the Israeli television series"Tekumma"--yet another intellectual exercise of self-criticism without violating the b

Media Watch: Does the Media Have a Double Standard on Nuclear Weapons?

by Norman Solomon

American media outlets roused themselves from outright denial early this month, spurred by belated warnings from top U.S. officials that a nuclear war between India and Pakistan would kill millions of people. The tone of news coverage shifted toward alarm. Meanwhile, atomic history remained largely sanitized."Even one military move by either of these nuclear-armed neighbors," USA Today's front page reported in big type," could set off an unstoppable chain reaction that cou

One Can’t Go Home Again, But One Can Drive By

by George Beres

There is a kind of history that transcends what one finds in books. It's an awareness that accompanies passing years. Part of it is a reminder from a modern bard-- that one can't"go home" again. I found that out during a trip of memory back to the Illinois town that nurtured me through boyhood. It's chancy to retrace one's steps back into the past while sentiment lingers. So I learned when once again I trod the still familiar streets, and felt drawn to the house that had been m

The Smithsonian Scandal that Wasn't

by Patricia Nelson Limerick

The capacity to arrive at unexpected agreement is one of humanity's greatest charms. In recent times, sadly, charm has not made much of an appearance in debates over the interpretation of American history. The fires of the" culture wars" often ignited in disagreements over history. The political squabbles over the Enola Gay and"The West as America" exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution, the debates over national history standards for the public schools, the controversies over the na

Profiles in Pragmatism

by Edward J. Renehan Jr.

With Caroline Kennedy's new Profiles in Courage for Our Time commanding much attention, it will perhaps prove worthwhile to take a moment, revisit her father's book, and consider how the assumptions and subtle deceits from the first volume of Profiles have influenced what we have before us now.Of course, as documented long ago by Herbert Parmet, John Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning tome came from the hands of several literary elves, among them Theodore Sorenson. To thi

The West: Farming in the Great West (Part 2): Thresher's Coming, Putting Hay in the Loft

by Keith Miller

From roughly 1790 through about 1920 farming in the United States was transformed. And the farmer (usually a man, but sometimes a woman) took on a greater and greater importance, as he or she became the major provider of the foodstuffs for a rapidly growing population, which by 1920 was 50 percent urban. That contrasts sharply with the situation in 1790, when only some 10 percent of America's people could by any stretch of the imagination be considered as urban in character.But, from t

Anniversary: Thomas E. Dewey, the Man Who Saved New York

by Kendall Wingrove

Thomas Dewey is chiefly remembered as the man who didn't defeat Harry Truman in the 1948 presidential election. Although he failed to win the nation's top post, Dewey was enormously successful in fighting domestic terrorism during the 1930s.As we mark the 100th anniversary of his birth in Owosso, Michigan, Dewey's techniques offer valuable insights to those developing America's homeland security. As we struggle against foreign and domestic enemies, it's worth studying how Dewey's tea

Sports: Move Over Babe and Ty, Here Come Rickey and Barry

by Jules Tygiel

Two thousand and one was not a good year for the two men generally acknowledged as the foremost icons of early twentieth century baseball. When Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth retired (in 1928 and 1935, respectively) the pair dominated the offensive record book. Ruth held the records for home runs in a career and a season; highest slugging percentage in a career and a season; most walks in a career and a season, and lifetime runs batted in. Cobb held career marks for batting average, hits, runs, and

Books: Don Fehrenbacher's The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government's Relations to Slavery, ed. by Ward M McAfee

by Michael Les Benedict

Editor's Note: The following review first appeared March 5 on H-Review, a scholarly website hosted by Michigan State and run by the scholarly society, H-Net.There was a time when most American historians believed that the Civil War had been a needless conflict, brought by an exaggeration of the issues on the part of a"blundering generation" that exaggerated the sectional differences in a"paranoid style" of rhetoric and reasoning

Hollywood: Mission Impossible?

by HNN Staff

STUDENT POP QUIZ On June 20, 1927 the International Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (aka: the group that sponsors the Academy Awards) published its mission statement. The mission statement is published below. Compare the Academy's goals with recent media accounts of this year's Oscars. Has the Academy met its goals? Does Hollywood define harmony differently from the dictionary? Why do organizations publ

Hollywood: We Were Soldiers Once -- But in Which War?

by Maurice Isserman

We were soldiers once . . . . but Hollywood isn't sure in which war.Last Saturday night I went to see a showing of the just-released Vietnam War epic, We Were Soldiers. The film, starring action hero Mel Gibson, and directed and written by"Pearl Harbor" screenwriter Randall Wallace, tells the story of the battle of the Ia Drang Valley, the first significant encounter between American and North Vietnamese soldiers in the Vietnam War. In 48 hours of nearly continuous combat in

The West: "The Lion of Idaho" ... William E. Borah, More Than a "Little American"

by Keith Miller

Roughly six miles northeast of Fairfield, Illinois, in Jasper Township of Wayne County, a child was born, who would serve with distinction for 33 years (1907-1940) in the U. S. Senate under the administrations of 7 presidents (and, where in the Capitol, not far from the entrance to the Senate chamber, would one day stand a full-length, bronze statue of the man, honored as only very few Americans ever could be). Though this Senator guided but few major pieces of legislation through the

Media Watch: The Paranoid Style of the New York Times

by Ronald Radosh

ONE EXPECTS TO FIND SOME LEFT-LIBERAL CLICHÉS in the New York Times, but usually not all in one article. But a recent lead article in The Week in Review managed not to disappoint us. Written by Robert F. Worth, the paper of record gave us what purports to be an assessment of how our country defines itself in the war against terrorism. It is, to put it bluntly, what one might expect to read in the Nation, or if we were back in the 1950s, in the fellow-traveler’s newspaper, the

Anniversary: We Didn’t Always Celebrate the Alamo

by Derek Alger

The names of Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Travis and Santa Anna are forever linked to the final storming of the Alamo in the predawn hours of March 6, 1836 when the Mexican forces wiped out the garrison of hopelessly outnumbered defenders to a man. But how did the legend of the Alamo, the mythic visions of romanticized glory, pass down from one generation to the next? How did the cry of"Remember the Alamo" a month later at the Battle of San Jacinto when Sam Houston's forces defeated

The West: Farming in the Great West (Part 1): Taking "Things by the Smooth Handle"

by Keith Miller

"Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country." Thus did William Jennings Bryan voice so well the sentiments of many delegates at the Democratic National Convention in 1896 with his"Cross of Gold" speech. Shades of Thomas Jefferson, who had argued about 1800 for the source of the Republic's strength and democratic ideals in the yeoman farmer. Thoug

The Color Line: Is Virginia Ignoring Part of Its History?

by James Loewen

The following is an excerpt from Mr. Loewen's newest book, Lies Across America (Simon and Schuster), which has just been released in paperback. On April 4, 1865, Abraham Lincoln with his young son Tad came up the James River to visit the former capital of the Confederacy. The idea was risky, for his army had entered Richmond only the previous morning, but Lincoln wanted the personal satisfaction of seeing the city that had eluded Union capture for so long. His trip is one

The Color Line: The Other Robinson

by George Beres

It's fitting that Black History Month be observed in February-- the heart of the basketball season-- because Blacks of today have become the dominant, best-paid performers in a sport where their participation was not allowed at one major conference university in the North as late as 1959. Though the struggle of Black athletes continues, their opportunities have expanded well beyond the limitations they faced less then half a century ago. But in the years of segregation in the North, as

Sports: Gold Medals, Double Standards, and the Russians

by David S. Foglesong

The heated controversy that erupted this month over the judging of Olympic figure skating highlights the persistence of a historic tendency in the West to think the worst of the Russians. When a Russian figure skating pair was awarded the gold medal over a Canadian pair who skated a cleaner long program, commentators leaped to the conclusion that the appealing young Canadians had been robbed by a sinister Eastern conspiracy. Ignoring the fact that Poland is now a member of NATO, Americ

Books: Should American Kids Be Reading Houghton Mifflin's Textbook on the History of Islam and the West?

by Daniel Pipes

Note: Houghton Mifflin has released a response to this article. Click here to read it.Could it be that an important textbook is proselytizing American 12-year-olds to convert to Islam?The book in question is Across the Centuries (Houghton Mifflin, 2nd edition, 1999), a 558-page history that covers the millennium and a half between the fall of Rome and the French Revolution. In the multicultural spirit, about half of its eight sections are d