“Bush stopped short of accusing Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill of outright perfidy, but his words recalled those of hardcore FDR- and Truman-haters circa 1945…Bush’s cavalier invocations of history for political purposes are not surprising. But for an American president to dredge up ugly old canards about Yalta stretches the boundaries of decency and should draw reprimands (and not only from Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.)” Slate‘s David Greenberg outlines Dubya’s recent mischaracterization of the Yalta conference. Well, Dubya doesn’t even seem to understand diplomacy now, so why would he understand it then?
Tag: David Greenberg
History for Dummies.
“It was only a matter of time before this kind of thinking spread to history. Politics has always colored the ways that people interpret the past, but The Politically Incorrect Guide politicizes history in a new way, reducing all scholarly inquiry to a mere stance in the culture wars.“
Slate‘s resident historian David Greenberg tears apart Thomas Woods’ enormously popular conservative hatchet-job of US history, and pins the blame for its ilk on a Faustian bargain made by right-wing intellectuals: “Conservatives who believe in open intellectual pursuit understandably blanch at the popularity of a book like this. The problem, however, isn’t a lone piece of agitprop but a cynical alliance that conservative intellectuals forged with those who hold their ideals of scholarship in contempt. It’s not surprising that the anti-intellectual currents they’ve aligned themselves with are proving too powerful for them to control.”
All the President’s Men.
Journalism then and now: As Slate writer and Nixon historian David Greenberg reports in from the opening of the Watergate papers, Salon‘s Eric Boehlert surveys the strange case of “Jeff Gannon”, a.k.a. James Guckert, fake newsman for Dubya.
So Help Me God.
As the Bushies warm up the teleprompter, the Washington Post attempts to explain why most inaugural addresses are boring, Chris Suellentrop surveys some of the lousier efforts over the years (with help from this Library of Congress exhibit), and David Greenberg looks back at the last great one (Kennedy, 1961). Somehow, I have a sneaking suspicion that Dubya’s evocation tomorrow of “The Ownership Society” isn’t going to make the A-list.
Kinsey on Lincoln.
Schindler, Rob Roy, Darkman, Qui-Gon, Kinsey…why not Honest Abe? Liam Neeson is apparently in talks to play Lincoln in a Spielberg-directed biopic, to be based on Doris Kearns Goodwin‘s forthcoming book, The Uniter. Ok, that’s not bad…but hopefully this project turns out better than Amistad.
Also in loosely related Lincoln-by-way-of-Kinsey news, Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir casts a troubled eye at C.A. Tripp’s Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. As he ably points out (as does George Chauncey in the excellent Gay New York), “the difficulty with assessing Lincoln’s private life (or that of anyone else who lived before the 20th century) is that the nature of private life has changed dramatically from his time to ours, and the distance between us distorts the view…Whether [Lincoln and Joshua Speed’s, with whom Lincoln shared a bed] relationship had a sexual component or not, it belongs to a vanished world of intimate male friendships of a kind almost unrecognizable to us.” In other words, sexual orientation is an historically dynamic idea. Homosociality does not necessarily imply homosexuality, and one cannot simply read 19th century sources and infer a 20th century mindset. You have to delve a little deeper. Update: Columbia’s David Greenberg also weighs in for Slate.
Worst-Case Scenario.
In the new Washington Monthly, David Greenberg, E.J. Dionne, Paul Begala, and several others ponder the troubling question, “What if Bush wins?” The short answer? Head for the hills.
Fire in the Hole.
Slate‘s David Greenberg (a Columbia PhD recently hired at Rutgers…congrats) examines the use and misuse of Iraq-Vietnam analogies.
Defending Camelot.
In his most recent “History Lesson,” Slate‘s David Greenberg explodes the conservative myth of JFK as the original supply-sider.
Ghost in the Machine.
Historian David Greenberg and the Washington Post examines Dubya’s stylistic debts to Richard Nixon.
The Fall of Camelot.
With the forty-year anniversary of JFK’s assassination tomorrow, former White House correspondent Tom Wicker assesses Kennedy’s place in history, Sean Wilentz examines his civil rights record, and David Greenberg refutes the Dallas-Watergate connection.