Worm Hole - Crypt
So Many Historical Inaccuracies
Historian Sean Wilentz (on January 26, 2008) wrote: "In recent weeks, some of
the presidential candidates and their surrogates have been evoking history more
insistently than ever. Not surprisingly, those evocations often have been
flimsy and faulty."
"The latest maiming of the historical record and elementary historical logic
has come over Martin Luther King, Jr., Lyndon B. Johnson - and the presidential
primaries of 2008. The media echo chamber is now booming with charges that
Senator Hillary Clinton has disparaged Dr. King, praised President Johnson in
his stead, and thereby distorted the history of the civil rights movement. It
is the latest evidence, say the talking heads, that Clinton is running a subtly
racist campaign - or, as the theology and African-American studies professor
Michael Eric Dyson worded it on MSNBC, that she is carrying a message with an
"an implicit racial subtext." (Sean Wilentz - from an essay in the New Republic
- http://www.tnr.com)
"Ben Smith of Politico was among the first to stir things up, charging that
remarks by Clinton on MLK and LBJ offered "an odd example for the argument
between rhetoric and action" that Clinton has been making in her contest with
Senator Barack Obama." (ibid)
By the time the charge reached Maureen Dowd's column in The New York Times on
Wednesday, it had morphed into a false claim that Clinton actually compared
herself to Johnson - a comparison Dowd claimed she never thought "any living
Democrat" would do in trying to win the New Hampshire primary. (Dowd had 1968
and Vietnam on her mind, which, unfortunately, was not the matter in dispute:
civil rights.)" (ibid)
"Now, Representative James E. Clyburn, the most prominent African-American
elected official from South Carolina, has picked up the ever-changing story and
implicitly accused Senator Clinton of denigrating Dr. King and the civil rights
movement. "We have to be very, very careful about how we speak about that era
in American politics," Clyburn told The New York Times." (ibid)
So - let us very, very carefully look at that historical record. In a pair of
television interviews earlier this week, Clinton made the uncontroversial
historical observation that Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement
put their lives on the line for racial equality, and that President Johnson
enacted civil rights legislation. Her point was simple: Although great social
changes require social movements that create hope and force crises, elected
officials, presidents above all, are also required in order to turn those hopes
into laws. It was, plainly, a rejoinder to the accusations by Obama that
Clinton has sneered at "hope." Clinton was also rebutting Obama's simplistic
assertions about "hope" and the American Revolution, the abolition of slavery,
and the end of Jim Crow." (ibid)
The historical record is crystal clear about this, and no responsible historian
seriously contests it. Without Frederick Douglass and the abolitionists, black
and white (not to mention restive slaves), there would have been no agitation
to end slavery, even after the Civil War began. But without Douglass's ally in
the White House, the sympathetic, deeply anti-slavery but highly pragmatic
Abraham Lincoln, there could not have been an Emancipation Proclamation or a
Thirteenth Amendment. Likewise, without King and his movement, there would have
been no civil rights revolution. But without the Texas liberal and
wheeler-dealer Lyndon Johnson, and his predecessor John F. Kennedy, there would
have been no Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Voting Rights Act of 1965." (ibid)
"Hope, in other words, is necessary to bring about change - but it is never
enough. Change also requires effective leadership inside government. It's not a
matter of either/or (that is, either King or Johnson), but a matter of
both/and." (ibid)
"Behind this argument over Clinton's comments lies a false, mythic view of the
1960s in which the civil rights movement supposedly pushed Johnson and the
Democrats to support civil rights against their own will. In fact, the movement
and the elected officials were distinct but complementary elements in the civil
rights politics that changed America." (ibid)
Civil rights protests mounted gradually after 1945. By the spring of 1963, amid
the protests in Birmingham, Alabama, a civil rights revolution was plainly
underway, undertaken by ordinary black Americans who had outrun their own
leadership (including Dr. King), let alone the federal government. President
Kennedy, who had to work with a conservative Congress dominated by Southern
senators, had initially been cool to civil rights legislation, lest it doom his
entire presidency. But he finally embraced the cause in a momentous speech to
the nation on June 11, 1963, which became a prelude for a major civil rights
act to come." (ibid)
Kennedy's speechwriter, Theodore Sorensen, describes the June 11 address as a
turning point in the history of civil rights politics as well as in JFK's
presidency. Kennedy knew well, Sorensen observes, "that it would make other
legislation impossible ... and he knew how much was riding on it, politically
and historically. He knew all of that." Lyndon Johnson, perhaps as much as any
politician of the time, understood the political and historical stakes just as
well. As Senate Majority Leader, he had pushed through the Congress, in 1957,
the first piece of civil rights legislation since the Reconstruction era."
(ibid)
"Picking up the murdered Kennedy's mantle, Johnson used his mastery of
congressional politics to push through the momentous Civil Rights Act in 1964.
A year later, Johnson responded to the movement's battles in Selma, Alabama, by
proposing and shepherding through to enactment the equally momentous Voting
Rights Bill of 1965. And in June of that year, Johnson's famous commencement
speech at Howard University launched what he called "the more profound stage of
the battle for civil rights," which laid the foundation for affirmative action
in hiring." (ibid)
In all of these instances, Johnson responded with political courage as well as
sincere conviction about racial equality, but, like Kennedy (and, for that
matter, Lincoln) before him, he also needed events to create a climate when his
political skills could be applied. Johnson's relations with Martin Luther King
were often tense, and the two men parted ways in 1967 over King's opposition to
the Vietnam War. On the fundamental issues of civil rights reform, though,
Johnson and King were in close contact and worked together as allies. And when
Johnson, in his speech to Congress on voting rights in 1965, quoted and
embraced the civil rights battle cry - "We Shall Overcome" - Dr. King openly
wept. He called Johnson at the White House. "It is ironic, Mr. President," said
King, "that after a century, a southern white President would help lead the way
toward the salvation of the Negro."" (ibid)
"Martin Luther King led the movement; Lyndon B. Johnson supported that
movement, played the politics, guided the legislation, and signed it into law.
Both were indispensable to the civil rights successes of the 1960s. To
acknowledge both denigrates neither man. Describing such an acknowledgement as
a denigration of Dr. King is, at best, bad history. At worst, it is a
manipulative and inflammatory racial appeal concerning a crucial era in
American history - an era that needs very, very careful consideration indeed.
Either way, the current heated rhetoric demonstrates that the utopia of
post-racial politics has hardly arrived." (Sean Wilentz)
American Idol
Professor Wilentz says the misuse of history has been largely the facts about
the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the GOP contest has at times looked like an
"American Idol"-style competition over who can deliver the most convincing
imitation of Reagan." He tells us the GOP debate on Jan 5 Reagan's name was
mentioned 34 times but what was said was thin on historical accuracy.
But he also says, "[T]he more grievous grievous abuses of history, though, have
come from the Democrats, and particularly from the Barack Obama side, including
his many avid supporters in the media and the academy."
He said the comparisons between Obama and past presidents by the Obama campaign
and his supporters, including some Republicans including New York Times
columnist Nicholas Kristof who made the comparison with Lincoln saying he
served only one term in the House before he was elected president in 1860.
"These comparisons distort the past beyond recognition. By the time he ran for
president, JFK had served three terms in the House and twice won election to
the Senate, where he was an active member of the Foreign Relations Committee.
In total, he had held elective office in Washington for 14 years. Before that,
he was, of course, a decorated veteran of World War II, having fought with
valor in the South Pacific. Kennedy, the son of a U.S. ambassador to Britain,
had closely studied foreign affairs, which led to his first book, "Why England
Slept," as well as to a postwar stint in journalism." (Wilentz)
"This record is not comparable to Obama's eight years in the Illinois
Legislature, his work as a community organizer and his single election to the
Senate in 2004 -- an election he won against a late entrant, right-wing
Republican Alan Keyes, in a state where the GOP was in severe disarray." (ibid)
"The Lincoln comparison is equally tortured. Yes, Lincoln spent only two years
in the House after winning election in 1846. Yet his deep involvement in state
and national politics began in 1832, the same year he was elected a captain in
the Illinois militia -- and 28 years before he ran for president. He then
served as leader of the Illinois Whig Party and served his
far-from-undistinguished term in Congress courageously leading opposition to
the Mexican War." (ibid)
"After returning home, he became one of the leading railroad lawyers in the
country, emerged as an outspoken antislavery leader of Illinois' Republican
Party -- and then, in 1858, ran unsuccessfully for the Senate and engaged with
Stephen A. Douglas in the nation's most important debates over slavery before
the Civil War. It behooves the champions of any candidate to think carefully
when citing similarities to Lincoln's record. In this case, the comparison is
absurd." (Wilentz)
Obama is no JFK
Not all the Kennedy's support Obama. Bobby Kennedy's children, Kathleen Kennedy
Townsend, Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Kerry Kennedy all declared their support for
Hillary Clinton. They said, "Like our father, Hillary has devoted her life to
embracing and including those on the bottom rung of society's ladder."
Ted Kennedy said Obama is like JFK. How could Ted Kennedy be so wrong about
history? Maybe he is just too old or maybe he has much he would like to forget?
Sean Wilentz Princeton professor Sean Wilentz and author of The Rise of
American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, said, Obama is no JFK: "By the time
he ran for president, JFK had served three terms in the House and twice won
election to the Senate...Before that, he was, of course, a decorated veteran of
World War II, having fought with valor in the South Pacific."
Hillary Clinton has challenged Barack Obama to a debate a week. She wants to
debate him one to one, so that everyone can really see the differences and make
their judgment on facts, not speculation or false allegations from the Obama
campaign. Obama has so far refused.
Fantasy Based Reporting and History
"Spreading bad history is no way to make history." (Sean Wilentz,
professor of history at Princeton University author of "The Rise of American
Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln," among other books)
In war, truth is the first casualty - but in politics, it appears that the
first victim is history. (Wilentz)
"Every now and then in American politics, normally balanced people get swept up
by delusions of greatness about a presidential candidate, based on an emotional
attachment to the candidate's oratory or image. The youthful William Jennings
Bryan brought down the house and swept up the nomination with his famous "Cross
of Gold" speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1896--only to be
crushed by the dreary William McKinley in November." (Sean Wilentz, The New
Republic - "The Delusional Style in American Punditry" - Dec 19, 2007)
(Sean Wilentz is also a contributing editor at The New Republic, and the author
of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (Norton))
"Political journalists have never been immune to the delusional style. But
editorialists and pundits are supposed to be skeptical experts..." (Wilentz)
Unfortunately that hasn't been the case. Who can miss it? Watching the way this
election is covered is so revealing about the nature of political punditry.
There is very little neutrality and the way the campaign is being covered is
harmful to democracy. They don't even try to hide their partiality. Hatred for
the Clinton's has been obvious, most especially in on cable, CNN, MSNBC and
even DemocracyNow. Even the outspoken Keith Obermann has been laudatory toward
Barack Obama. Their "enthusiasm" for change has clouded their judgment. They
have even been complicit in the cover-up of what some investigations have
exposed in Obama's background and his connection to the Islamists in Kenya.
Wilentz writes that this kind of reporting is not discerning, but it is,
"in fact nothing more than enthusiasm, based on feelings and projections that
are unattached to verifiable rational explanation or the public record." (ibid)
We are reminded that the same style was demonstrated by the media in the lead
up to the last presidency, with George W. Bush, and criticized by progressives
later. The same intuitive style devoid of facts was to no small degree
responsible for the favorability of George W. Bush in 2000.
"Bush had a thin record on domestic matters as governor of Texas, no record
whatsoever on foreign policy, and things to hide about his past, none of it
mattered. As president, he has asked the American people to trust him because
of his faith in himself and his God-given instincts--what he calls his "gut."
For years, the Washington press corps was bowled over by such self-assurance.
Having decided that the wonkish, reasonable Al Gore was boring and inauthentic,
reporters covered Bush as a centered man with superb intuition." (ibid)
And that all sounds familiar for what is happening now. Obama has a thin record
and no foreign policy experience. He has never traveled in Europe. He tells
everyone who wants change to vote for him but change is still a nebulous idea
with him and when he does explain his plans they are wanting, flawed and
extremely conservative as he has been as a freshman in the senate. And it
doesn't hurt the Democrats that he is a Black man.
Professor Wilentz points out the delusional style of the Boston Globe which
endorsed Obama "because he is biracial and grew up in "multi-ethnic
cultures"--adequate substitutes, by the editorial's lights, for serious
background and expertise in foreign affairs. Obama, according to the Globe, has
engaged in "a search for identity" and taken "a roots pilgrimage to Kenya," all
of which supposedly displays a "level of introspection, honesty, and maturity"
that the newspaper longs for in a president. "Obama's story is America's
story," the Globe intoned--a sentence that comes as close as any distinguished
newspaper ever has to perfect emptiness." (Sean Wilentz)
"The pundits have vaunted good vibes and gut-thinking as the crucial
qualifications for the nation's highest office. They have turned the delusional
style into a rallying cry--in support, at least for the moment, of the
candidacy of Barack Obama and his allegedly superior intuition." (Sean Wilentz)
"There are many possible explanations for this latest outbreak of the
delusional style. An ever-intensifying cult of celebrity personality-worship,
the more sentimental the better, may finally have overwhelmed precincts of
political commentary. (Obama's sidekick, Oprah Winfrey, is, after all, the
reigning master of that cult.) Democrats may simply be so battered after what
the Globe calls "seven desolating years" that they are looking for a man on a
white horse to deliver them from despair--and so they have invented one."
(ibid)
Baract Obama made the assertion applauding a Republican partisan accounting of
the Reagan and post-Reagan years which are at odds with history. Obama declared
the Republicans has been the "party of ideas" since the Reagan presidency.
As Wilentz writes in his article in The New Republic, Obama was wrong to hold
the Republicans up as an example of transformation which historically has been
discredited, that he was in fact presenting as political gospel "the old (and
long discredited) right-wing bromides repackaged as the "Contract with America"
in 1994, the Republican attack on Medicare that led to the government shutdown
a year later, the endless recycling of supply-side economics (especially
ironic, given the current meltdown), and the other ideological agendas pushed
by Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, have made the GOP
the party of intellectual daring and innovation." (ibid)
Sean Wilentz states, "Historians cannot expect all politicians and their
supporters to know as much about American history as, say, John F. Kennedy, who
won the Pulitzer Prize for a work of history. But it is reasonable to expect
respect for the basic facts -- and not contribute to cheapening the historical
currency." (ibid)
We are also being told to "forget experience" and rely on Obama's instincts.
Where was his instincts with his friend of 17 years, Tony Rezko, who is now in
jail - and the low cost housing unions his friend left in such disaray he had
to walk away from them and people were left without heat during the winter and
Obama never noticed - or the extra lot for his $1.6 million mansion which Rezko
sold to Obama hundreds of thousands of dollars below cost. And what did Rezko
get for it? He got something. You can depend on it. Did Obama look the other
way on purpose? Whatever is ultimately revealed it demonstrates a lack of good
judgment at the very least and at the worst it implicates Obama in Rezko's
illegalities.
Hank Roth
Links
More at http://www.tnr.com
Also see the Crypt
http://inyourface.info/crypt/
And The Worm Hole
http://pnews.org.
Permalink: http://pnews.org/ArT/ZuLu/BadH.shtml
Today is Sunday February 10, 2008
G 0 l e m D e s i g n s
On the Internet since 1982
(I have been doing it longer - and I do it better)
Worm Hole (Links/NaWikis) - The Crypt (Views and News) - Hank Roth (Bio)
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Hank Roth
HANK ROTH, LL.B (Bachelor of Laws Degree) - Veteran: served in the White House
(WHACA) for the President of the U.S. and in the War Room for the Chiefs of
Staff at the Pentagon (JCS) and alternate (AJCS) in Md, at alternate White
House at Camp Crystal (Mt Weather) and Camp David, COMZREAR in Orleans, France
and as a Voice Security Cryptologist - (Vietnam and Yom Kipper) - and DI at Ft.
Jackson. Also Past Commander Jewish War Veterans (Post 780) and social justice
peace/activist over 40 years - (87) member of Veterans for Peace - American
Legion - SE Disarmament Representative of the New Jewish Agenda -- Army MARS
(AA4LV-K4EVY) - U.S. Peace Council - Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice -
(charter member) Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) - On the interNUT since
1982 - (student member) Association Computing Machinery (ACM) - War Resisters
League (WRL) - ACLU - CP - SANE - ZOA - Hashomer Hatzair - Pax Christi - Pledge
of Resistance - Reporter (also typesetter/proof reader) - founder Chavarim
Peace Network on ham radio (from late 60s) - founder of pnews-l {"Progressive
News/Views" since 1982} - Writer/Reviewer: National Jewish Spectator -
Playwright: Raleigh Ensemble Players - Editor/Publisher of Am Yisrael - Real
Estate Dev/Broker (Fl and NC - 70-80s) - Bookseller NC and Fl (80s and 90s) -
Real Estate Broker (90s) - Asst. Area Mgr for 1990 Census (Eastern NC) -
Delegate to Rainbow Coalition Convention for Jessie Jackson. And, I supported
Ralph Nader in 2000.
---BIO: http://pnews.org/bio/
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