[ConservativeMan55]

They won't know who Churchill is.
I was recently having a debate with someone about Clinton.
This other person claimed that he liked Clinton because of all he had done for education.
I asked him what exactly Clinton had done, and he couldn't tell me.
I then asked him if he even knew how the electoral voting system works, and he couldn't tell me that either.
He is a recent High School Graduate.
So much for education......

[RLK]

a zealously patriotic media

-------------------------

If that were to exist in my time, the shock would kill me.

[genefromjersey]

Fascinating bunch of folks at State University of NY-Stony Brook Campus ! Barbara Rosenberg (The Great Anthrax Authority ) was from there too.

I would guess the dominant brand of politics there is slightly to the left of...the late Mao Tse Tung.

[Criminal Number 18F]

Great post... where do these frauds come from?

But... it's worth noting that nothing really happens to academic phonies, frauds and plagiarists, if they are politically dependable. Consider:

1. Mike Barnicle, who embarrassed the Boston Globe with his "interviews" with figments of his imagination, and his drinking problem are a feature on local TV.
2. Doris Kearns Goodwin, who copied almost an entire book into her The Kennedys and the Fitzgeralds without a word of attribution, is essentially unscathed. IIRC she is still on the History Pulitzer committee, which is like having Jeff Dahmer chair your potluck supper.
3. Michael(?) Bellesiles, whose Arming America has been exposed as the most celebrated academic fraud since Piltdown Man, is still being sheltered by Emory University, which continues to vility the guys and gals that have caught Bellesiles!
4. Pop historian Stephen Ambrose, was caught copying wholesale elements of less-famous books without attribution, and beaten up about a number of lesser violations, whereupon he announced he was croaking of cancer. Now, anyone that points out the McGovern hagiographer's failings is "insensitive." Well, too bad. While all saints must by definition be dead, dying isn't going to make this pretentious old fraud a saint.

So you see, you can get away with anything, in what passes for the academy in 2002, as long as your Party card is still valid. If Ambrose had written of Barry Goldwater's aerial adventures, if Goodwin had written a biography of the Taft or the Bush family, or if Bellesiles had fabricated evidence opposite of what he did, these people would have been thrown to the wolves by their friends in the press and the academy. That they have not been so handled reinforces what every alert child can see-- that political conformity is more important than honesty in those places.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Hobsonphile]

Bump for later ping.

[Hobsonphile]

Leftism on Campus ping!

If you would like to be added to the Leftism on Campus ping list, please notify me via FReep-mail.

Regards...