More than we would like, our texts are based on warmed-over tales of the nineteenth century such as Patrick Henry’s “Liberty or Death” speech (written by William Wirt in 1817, forty-two years after the fact) and Paul Revere’s Ride (popularized in 1861 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who distorted every detail of the event to make his story better). Although many historians know better, these stories work so well that they must still be included, regardless of authenticity or merit. More of the myths are perpetuated in elementary and middle school texts than in AP high school texts, but this raises a troubling question: why are we telling children stories that we know to be false? Worse yet: why do we give these tales our stamp of approval and call them “history”?
(I am asking for more info, because I have never even heard this claim before... for the record, I remember that I had issues with the Loewen book, Lies My Teacher Told me, praised by the author linked to above.)
Posted by Timothy,
7:40 PM
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Thursday, September 23, 2004 Is it really healthy to have a Secretary of Defense who so easily confuses Bin Laden and Saddam? In case you missed this, here is Rumsfeld confusing Saddam Hussein with Bin Laden in a speech before the National Press Club:
But if you think about it, that’s not the way the world really was before September 11th. Consider the world of September 10th and before. Two Americans and six others stood on trial by the Taliban in Afghanistan for the crime of preaching their religion. The leader of the opposition Northern Alliance, Massoud, lay dead, his murder ordered by Saddam Hussein – by Osama bin Laden, Taliban’s co- conspirator.
He corrected himself immediately, so no big deal, right? Later on in the same speech, Rumsfeld again confused the two men, this time without noticing it:
Saddam Hussein (sic), if he’s alive, is spending a whale of a lot of time trying to not get caught. And we’ve not seen him on a video since 2001. Now he’s got to be busy. Why is he busy? It’s because of the pressure that’s being put on him.
Newsweek is now reporting that CBS and 60 Minutes, in order to make room for their now-infamous report on alleged documents from George Bush's National Guard Service, dropped their originally planned piece for that evening's show... about the Bush administration being misled on erroneous documents pertaining to the alleged Iraqi purchases of uranium from Niger.
Posted by Timothy,
1:33 AM
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Faith-Based Foreign Policy
Q Right here, Mr. President, thank you. Why do you think the CIA's assessment of conditions in Iraq are so much at odds with the optimism that you and Prime Minister Allawi are expressing at the moment?
PRESIDENT BUSH: The CIA laid out a -- several scenarios that said, life could be lousy, like could be okay, life could be better. And they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like. The Iraqi citizens are defying the pessimistic predictions. The Iraqi citizens are headed toward free elections. This government has been in place for a little over two months, and the Iraqi citizens are seeing a determined effort by responsible citizens to lead to a more hopeful tomorrow. And I am optimistic we'll succeed. (link via Mark Kleiman, who comments on this wishful thinking.)
Posted by Timothy,
1:28 AM
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Norquist: The Greatest Generation is Anti-American "Two million people who fought in World War II and lived through the Great Depression die every year. That generation has been an exception in US history, because it has defended anti-American policies. They voted for the creation of the welfare state and for obligatory military service. They are the Democratic base, and they are dying." GOP Super-Activist Grover Norquist. I can't believe there are such powerful conservatives that spew this bile. (via Sullivan)
Posted by Timothy,
1:20 AM
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Medical workers, terrorists, Same Difference to Right-wing media chains(NYT link)
A neocon friend just sent me this as an example of everything that's wrong with Reuters... except I mistaked it for an example of everything that's right with Reuters. As a policy, Reuters avoids "emotive" words? Sounds like a whitewash on the surface, but then again, maybe it's better to let the actions describe, rather than letting labels describe. "A terrorist attack bombed a night club", "A militant bombed a nightclub". Is there a significant different between these two statements that Neo-Cons have reason to get so huffy about? I'd argue that blanket labelling all such actions "terrorist" distracts the reader from the degradations of evil among the actions. For instance, the word "terrorist" pulls a reader away from the significant difference between an attack on a nightclub or schoolbus, and an attack on a settlement or military checkpoint.
I know that if I were a Reuters journalist in Iraq, I'd be upset if I found out some office bozo in Canada was find & replacing all of my reference to "militants" with references to "terrorists", and still attributing the work to me.
The policy has caused Mr. Anderson's paper to issue two corrections recently as the result of changes it made to articles provided by The Associated Press. On Thursday, The Citizen changed an A.P. dispatch to describe 6 of 10 Palestinians killed in the West Bank by Israeli troops as "terrorists," a description attributed to "Palestinian medical officials." The Associated Press had called those people "fugitives." The Citizen published a correction on Friday declaring it to be it an editing error and describing the six dead as "militants." A week earlier, the newspaper inserted the word terrorist seven times into an A.P. article about the fighting between Iraqis and United States forces in the city of Falluja. Mr. Anderson called the two episodes "silly errors."
