Posted on 02/05/2010 11:55:53 AM PST by neverdem
Last week, The New York Times' somnolent columnist Bob Herbert complained that we live in a "nit-wit era," a time when it is "fashionable to bad-mouth labor unions and feminists even as workers throughout the land are treated like so much trash and the culture is so riddled with sexism that most people don’t even notice it."
One person who did notice, says Herbert, was Boston University academic and radical historian Howard Zinn, who died last week at the age of 87, though not before bequeathing to America a series of books hostile to sexism and rather friendly to labor unions. "That he was considered radical," writes Herbert, "says way more about this society than it does about him."
But as the effusive encomiums from his peers and cheerleaders in both the media and academia suggest, "society" did look upon Zinn with admiration. Even the Associated Press rhapsodized that "Zinn himself was an impressive-looking man, tall and rugged with wavy hair. An experienced public speaker, he was modest and engaging in person, more interested in persuasion than in confrontation." The novelist Dave Eggers similarly praised Zinn in The New Yorker, arguing that "his effect on how we see and teach history is immeasurable."
Eggers is right about that. I'm sorry to sound a discordant note about this "great" man (The Guardian), this historian and activist of "limitless depth" (RT, who ceded hours of its coverage to the "American mahatma"). But while Zinn might have been an effective activist and a man of great modesty, he was an exceptionally bad historian.
It's a mystery how A People's History of the United States, which has sold over a million copies and currently sits at number fourteen on the Amazon bestseller list, has become so popular with students, Hollywood types, and academics. It...
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
The best way to avoid this is to make the economy so strong that workers are in short supply and employers have to beg to find and keep them. Democrats never get that.
We would not celebrate the life of an avowed anti-Semite, even after death — why should we celebrate the life of an avowed anti-American?
SnakeDoc
Who's doing any celebrating? Zinn's being denounced for pretending to be a historian and for being a malicious influence.
What has always puzzled me is that men such as Howard Zinn, and others like him, would be among the very first people killed by those he so admired.
How are the Howard Zinns faring these days in Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Yemen, Venezuala, China, and dozens of other “progressive” countries around the world.
I can hear the answer.....BANG!!
Good point!
very good.
Hey, Bob! You’re the nitwit!
It must be pretty bad if even a leftist like Sean Wilentz was critical of his treatment of American history.
Thanks neverdem.
Not really. People who are unable to DO always like to tear down those who DID.
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