Zinn, Inc.
by David J. BobbIn a classic episode of the Sopranos, Tony tries to excite his two children about their Italian-American ancestry and the upcoming Columbus Day parade. Tony’s son A.J., eager to show up his fuddy-duddy dad, invokes Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States as proof that Christopher Columbus was bad. “My teacher told us that. It must be true,” he says. “You finally read a book,” Tony fires back, “and it’s all [baloney].” Only he didn’t say “baloney.”
What Tony Soprano knows the History Channel doesn’t. Howard Zinn isn’t a great historian. He’s not even a good one.
How, then, to explain his widespread popularity, and the History Channel’s willingness this weekend to give Zinn an even larger megaphone? After having visited scores of K-12 schools and working with thousands of history and social studies teachers in national civic education programs, one of which I direct for Hillsdale College, I have concluded that Zinn is popular because he tells a great story. The only problem is that his story is not true. This inconvenience has not stopped school administrators from commending Zinn to their teachers.
Several years ago, in a meeting of the Ann Arbor public school system, home to Michigan’s largest high school, the superintendent, distressed at his district’s lack of progress in closing the racial “achievement gap,” held up a copy of A People’s History. “Have you heard of Howard Zinn?” he asked the throng of thousands of district teachers and employees, gathered for a large “in-service” assembly. In fact, they had, and many teachers already taught from the text the administrator prescribed as the cure for what ailed the district. Instead of helping, many teachers told me, the book had contributed to the malady, for Zinn’s basic message is one of division, not unity.
“Guns and greed”—that’s how Zinn characterizes America’s story. “The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history,” he writes in his magnum opus, A People’s History of the United States. America’s founders were not fighting for liberty or justice; rather, they overthrew the British so that they could aggrandize themselves, empower later elites, and set the new nation on a path to empire that continues to this day.
With a much-hyped Zinn-inspired film, “The People Speak,” slated to air tonight, the History Channel will give voice to self-described “radical” historian whose “scholarly” outpouring over the last half century amounts to a sustained denunciation of America. Zinn himself describes his work as “history as a political act” with the purpose of starting a “quiet revolution.”
Already considered a living legend by many Progressives, Comrade Zinn, as he was called by the Eugene V. Debs Foundation, has been credited by his ideological twin, Noam Chomsky, for changing the “consciousness of a generation.”
In reality, Zinn’s enormous impact upon American students and citizens now spans several generations. His considerable presence is felt well beyond anarchist bookstores and anti-war rallies. What once was radical now is mainstream.
A People’s History, first published in 1980, continues to grow in popularity and influence. Every year since 1981 the anti-American tome has increased its sales. In 2003 cumulative sales for the book topped the one million mark. Zinn has added to that moutainous sales figure a steady stream of curriculum add-ons, companion volumes, and multimedia spin-offs. A two-volume “young people’s” history was published in 2007 (sample paragraph: “Many Americans have seen the Constitution as a work of genius, put together by wise men who created a legal framework for democracy and equality. But there is another way to look at it.”) In 2008 a graphic novel version, titled A People’s History of American Empire, was added to the Zinn oevre. If you’re a teacher and want a wall chart depicting history, Howard-style, you can even find one for sale, a bargain at $19.99.
Especially popular in Advanced Placement courses at private prep academies and wealthy suburban public schools, A People’s History also is found frequently in inner-city classrooms, where Zinn’s narratives of oppression appeal to ideologically-driven administrators and teachers.
Teaching history should not be confused with fomenting revolution. Dissatisfied with the American Revolution, Zinn wants to inspire his own, Marxist version. Still, in the process of condemning capitalism he’s built Zinn, Inc. Sadly, its product is propaganda, not sound history. Its end result is a bankrupt ideology. Kind of fitting, isn’t it, that the History Channel is partly owned by NBC?
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126 Comments
I would trust Tony Soprano over Zinn, any day.
Well, I know what I won't be watching tonight. Maybe it's time we turned off the TV and talked to our kids so as to avoid this junk.
One thing to keep in mind, The Revisionist History Channel makes NO mention of Zinn in its promo. It's just hyped as a show about history from the perspective of the common man. All kinds of cuddly celebrities telling you that's what it is.
So THC knows what they are doing and knows if they tell the truth about it, people will know it's bs, so they even lie about that.
Is there nothing on THC that is really true?
As a teacher, I have firsthand experience in the top down pressure from some administrators to toe the (communist) party line. One of the saddest (and unsettling) sights is all of the new, young teachers who do so without question.
'The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory." Thomas Jefferson
What an odd choice of TV characters to lend merit to your point. You know that Tony Soprano's character is made heroic by his struggles with his 'old fashioned' mentality, don't you Mr. Bobb? He's surrounded by misogyny and racism and blind nationalism, and often practices it himself. He's heroic for questioning it occasionally, in contrast to his circle of "friends," who do not. Clearly, the show's creators were on AJ's side in this exchange. … Hey, maybe there are some good Archie Bunker quotes you can include in your next piece.
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History is actively being re-written and the subject of that revision has been the school children for the past twenty years or so. I wonder what the average age of the people who not only question this revision but know it is fabricated is? I have had dealings with many young people through the years and thier understanding of U.S. History or even Western History is not only lacking but everything they parrot as knowledge has a pure political component which says capitalism bad and socialism good. They are not even aware that they have been programmed with these thoughts. Maybe we need to go back to a more sterile names and dates form of history to protect future generations.
My daughter was assigned that book, in her college freshman history class, and didn't get much more than the first chapter before noticing … well, that it had a definite bias. She herself wasn't all that interested in history, but a lot of my own intense interest, and the fact that I dragged her around to a lot of historical sites in Europe and in the American West probably rubbed off on her. (Also that I actually write very carefully researched historical novels set on the American frontier, she probably can't help knowing quite a lot, inadvertently.) When she mentioned this to her history prof on the first or second day of class, he said, essentially "Oh, don't bother with reading it." He taught the course with his own lecture material, and assigned a lot of original documents and readings, as well as an original history research project. Zinn's textbook was ignored. Apparently, it was "the assigned textbook" for Freshman History, but in practice it was ignored.
Hope there are a lot more history profs like that out there.
This is a cult, no different than the Branch Dividians, Scientology, Heaven’s Gate, Order of the Solar Temple, Raelian Church, Aum Shinrikyo, Church of Bible Understanding or the Manson Family.
I say again, this is all good, the left is fully exposed. In America a place leftist don’t like to be, much easier to defeat. With all these “stars” getting behind this dribble, my wife and I are saving so much money, …thanks Hollywood.
Speaking as a Canadian, I am sadly forced to conclude that your country is finished.
"It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilisation. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs."
– Lord Kenneth Clark
"Modern day warrior mean mean stride today's Tom Sawyer mean mean pride"
Keep attacking America boyz. Keep attacking. The Mother of All Payback shall smother this ideology for generations.
I remember that episode of the Sopranos, that line was great. I first heard of Zinn in Good Will Hunting. The reference in the movie just slipped by me, not knowing anything about Zinn. But ironic that an exceptional person, Will, as portrayed in the movie, would refer to a Marxist revisionist. Everything is about class division to Zinn, one group of people, and populist opinion (as long as it dovetails with Zinn's pacifism) has merit, but the motivation of the wealthy is more power and more money, therefore has no merit. According to Zinn.
I'm more inclined to base merit off the actual ideas, than a person's social economic status. Interestingly, people are more likely to be enslaved by the government, than by capitalism. If you follow Zinn's path to democratic socialism, it has the greater potential to lead to state run slavery, ie communism, than the path towards a Constitutional Republic based on classical liberal (small l, not "Liberal" statism) economic freedom.
But then populist opinion is held in such high regard by government officials in countries with socialism.////sarc
I believe we still have one chance left, 2010.
The "History" Channel is a joke, anyway. What do pawn shops and ice-road truckers have to do with history? Oh, once in a while they will show the history of shoestrings or mousetraps. Sometimes at 2am, they might throw in an old WWII documentary narrated by Richard Burton. On the whole, however, the programming on this bogus channel reeks.
Ted Turner is a leftist buffoon, but he is still a capitalist at heart. We need a Turner Classic History channel ASAP!
Actually, there are a lot of history profs like that out there at the smaller universities and colleges, but they just don't get the recognition like the Ivy Leaguers do. I live in a mid-size southern town and we have a smaller university here with an excellent history department. Some are lefties, but they don't stifle any students' free speech or opinions.
May I suggest if there are any Neilson viewers out there not to watch this program.
Why reward this type of programing with strong ratings. At some point the economics
have to enter in to the decision of what programing to carry. If you have to watch it
go a relative or someone not connected to a ratings service.
The show should be called "We the Leftists". That is what is is all about. It has nothing to do with describing the views of the average American and everything to do with pushing the Leftist cause.
This is a true battle. As the article points out, these books are popular in the inner city classrooms where they do the most damage.
How to fight back? I know boycotts rarely work. But they do make sponsors sit up and take notice. Who is sponsoring the program on the History Channel and who is sponsoring the Zinn Education Project? I know the latter has two big retailers on board and they are: Target and Staples. A simple e-mail to let them know you'll be seeking alternatives forEVER might get them to realize what they're supporting. Same with the retailers running commercials during THC's event. And then do find alternatives. If you don't have any brick and mortar stores in your area then you can order things from competitors online.
We've been complacent for too long. It's very difficult to stop a virus once it's truly taken hold.
What I would like to hear from a Conservative/Republican/Libertarian politician is our #1 priority is education reform. This was far more important than health care reform.
The same playbook used for health care reform can be applied to education reform.
Bring out the horrible stats from big cities.
Demonize the unions (not teachers as a whole) and their ill effect on education.
Talk about costs (higher spending does not automatically equate with better educated).
There is so much material to work with that if this issue was strongly put forth and prioritized as a fundamental platform issue, I believe real headway could be made in reforming our education system. Besides a better functioning system, the inherent liberal bias and its ill effects would be minimized.
The Funny thing about Comrade Zinn and his starry-eyed apostles, if in fact you want to call it funny, is that they wouldn't be tolerated for long in the Shangri-la that they envision. They'd find themselves in a gulag or becoming part of the environment dissolving in unmarked graves along with the rest of the I Told You So's.
I say it's better to confront it, tell your children what is wrong with it. Cause if you don't tell them what is wrong with Mr. Zinn, their teachers will tell them what is right with Mr. Zinn.
Thank you for the suggestion. I am going to do just that.
Only problem is, I don't think I can stomach the entire thing.
Please somebody post a list of the sponsors tomorrow in case I don't make it.
Guess this makes me a zinnfidel. This guy has surfaced on this site, and I had no idea of his thinkspeak nor his popularity in moonbat cricles. His comparison of Columbus to Bush was outright lunacy. Now his screed is getting exposure thanks to Matt Daaamon and those fair and balanced asshats at the History Channel.
Team America – we need you now more than ever!
I suspect that Breitbart's Big Education site will do just this kind of thing.
Has 'The History Channel' learned nothing from the quick decent into ratings hell suffered by other cable outfits like MSNBC, CNN, and the other leftist leaning ~networks~?
Are they trying to become even more irrelevant?
I know I eagerly tune into History channel for programs about history and Yeti, UFO's, Hitler and his UFO ties, Yeti – Sasquatch and their illicite love er, child – pawn shops and Yeti, Sasquatch and UFO's – what did they know – and when did they know it…
Yeah, I can't picture Matt Daaaaamon toiling in the potato fields with the rest of "The People" come Zinn's egalitarian utopia, either. I guess he expects to either be one of the folks cracking the whips, or working in a high level position at the Ministry of Propaganda.
Tonight at 6 o'clock there's a show on the History channel, I believe its a mystery, called "The White House: Behind Closed Door's" It may not be safe for young viewers………….so beware.
More like toiling at Ministry of Poopaganda.
Zinfandel a fine robust grape and wine. Zinnfidel a fine true blue robust American. I appreciate and enjoy the play on words Brother. Well Done.
Somewhat ironic that THC is also the primary active ingredient in wacky tabacy.
History is baked.
Matt Damon was Zinn's next door neighbor
[...] via Big Hollywood » Blog Archive » Zinn, Inc.. [...]
"The only problem is that his story is not true. "
Strange how the author of this article states the above and then provides no examples of where any part of Zinn's books is not true. Please can you provide some examples of where he has lied Mr Bobb rather than just call him a "Marxist."
Incidentally, he's a "Marxist" that fought for the USA in World War 2. Unlike George Bush.
Communists, such as Mr. Zinn, need useful idiots.
Mr. Damon is a very useful man.
Also, Communists see and paint History as a grand Class Struggle, and other folks use struggles of various types as the main theme in their analysis of History.
I see History as much more of a mix of struggle and co-operation, where co-operation strongly overwhelms struggle. Even in our mostly Capitalist culture our competition is more a form of co-operation than struggle.
We could not have all that we have, our cities, infrastructure, knowledge, science, technology if the struggle model of History is correct.
The struggle model is wrong and it helps the cause of tyranny.
At least with Tony Soprano you *know* he's a crook.
Howard Zinn is a historian the same way Al Gore is a scientist.
another fringe website. must be nice to stroke each other's ego without actually serving a purpose other than to gather together as a bunch of brownshirts. BTW the history channel is owned by conservative corporations, not fundamentalist like Fox, but definitely conservative.
George Bush was,at the time, the youngest Naval Aviator in history. During the war his plane was damaged in an attack and he manage to complete his attack before having to bail out over open water. He is a hero by anybody's definition.
Fuck you commie pinko!
Also go eat shit and die you america hating socialist loving terrorist sympathizer!
I remember seeing the images of him being rescued at sea. George Bush can definitely be called a war hero.
There are many examples. There's a 'primer' with links to all the articles Big Hollywood has featured over the past week, with tons of information. It's right there at the top of the page, bright and shiny.
Sadly, I'm not surprised that a Zinn supporter can't even do his own research when it's conveniently shoved in his face.
What conservative corporation owns the History Channel?
The only thing that is good about the current political situation, and exposing Zinn and his claque, is that names and faces are revealed of those who want to bring our country to its knees. Now I can identify them so that I won't unwittingly support them ,or their causes, with bucks or ballots.
Thanks. I just wrote to them expressing my disgust.
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That Rush album was one of my favorites!
Maybe the kids like this guy cause he looks like Bob Barker, They voted for obama cause he looked like Will Smith or was it Curious George I dont know they all have big ears.
Me too. These lies must be combated.
Absoltely, pressure must be brought to bear on the ~sponsors~ of this tripe, this pack of Marxist lies.
This is the major flaw with Marxism. It states that people must band together and follow a party line to ensure their freedom. However if they do that they then become enslaved to the party line and the "greed" of those that take leadership roles will place them as their masters.
Freedom only comes when the Individual has the power to get it for himself. Government must exist to maximize the individual freedom of people to choose and take care of themselves and the first is to take the least it possibly can in the form of taxes and mandates on time. This is free market individualism what we mislable as Capitalism. Capitism is the ism the isn't. It is not a set of principles formed into an ideology to follow. Rather it is a model to explain economic forces the same way Physics is a model to describe physical reality. Applying Marxism can not stop the forces of capitalism any more than a team winning a football game can replace the field of ground the game is played on.
the history channel used to be worth watching, when it was the "hitler channel" (basically non stop ww2 documentaries)
mail call is also still a great show but that's up on hulu anyway, and I haven't watched the history channel for several years
It's great to see you writing for Big Hollywood, David! It's a long way from "The Collegian"
I'm impressed with Big Hollywood's big focus on Howard Zinn lately.
As a liberal, NPR-listening, PBS-watching type of guy, I've definitely heard of Zinn before. Having said that, I certainly haven't really familiarized myself with his works.
Thank-you Big Hollywood for calling attention to this man's discussion-worthy point of view.
'What most people don't seem to realize is that there is just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding of one."
Quoth Rhett Butler never more…
Everyday of the week and twice on Sundays!!
Thank God I still have the vinyl, as my buddy's ex stole the CD.
Leftists do not do any research, that is too much like work. They rely on bromides, banalities, and bumper sticker sloganeering.
Well said, I concur!!!
The History Channel is owned by a joint venture between Hearst, Disney/ABC, and NBC.
Some have referred to it as The Revisionist History Channel.
Well, Gary, perhaps you would be so kind as to point out a "white-hat" character on any television drama who holds the opinion expressed by Tony Soprano. I gave up watching television myself decades ago, but I'm willing to bet good money you won't find a single one. Why? Because the good guy–the guy we're supposed to emulate–is invariably a lockstep leftie.
On the other hand, maybe I'm misunderstanding your point. Are you saying that Soprano's comment is intended as an indictment of traditional, accurate history-writing because his character is a symbol of archaic, bourgeois thinking? If so, it hardly obviates the point to suggest that Soprano is, in fact, right, no matter what the screenwriter's intent.
The more I see or read about films and Tv shows that bash and attack the USA it proves to me that we have a Fifth Column working successfully to destroy America from within. It's not only their political agendas that underline shows across the TV spectrum,. movies that drip with anti-American poison but the low life muck in magazines, the degeneracy of pornography, the drug culture and the moral vacuum in so many lives that is destroying us.. Now I realise that , back in the 1950s, all those congressional hearings about UnAmerican activities in Hollywood were probably right on the money. There were people who wanted to undermine this country through popular entertainment and under the camouflage of being fair minded, progressive thinkers and all for justice, truth and the American way. They needed to be put under the spotlight and revealed as to what they are and what they were doing. Obviously their political heirs are back with a bang and controlling the agenda by the use of the media in a way that would have made Goebbels and Soviet Propagandists proud.
That's what I thought. I knew there wasn't a conservative amongst the owners. But, of course, that's been the theme for so long and it's never been true. News is owned by big business and big business is always conservative. No. It's. Not.
You left out the Democratic Party.
I take no joy in saying this, but StlDan is wrong. The fat lady sang years ago. Most people seem to persist in the notion that an election, or even a series of elections, can change the course of this country. Not so. It can slow down certain trends, but it cannot stop or reverse them.
There are deeply rooted, structural reasons for this. Fundamental changes in jurisprudential principle dating back to the so-called Civil War, and in certain cases nearly to the Founding, prevent it. Short of wholesale Constitutional pruning and the repeal of the bulk of Federal Law, there is no way to save this ship.
It's a bitter pill to swallow, but the sooner people do it, the sooner they can begin to engage in activities that might actually lessen or protect them from the coming darkness.
does a thick neck imply an improved blood supply to the brain, or merely a hippo-sized limbic system? the Sopranos captured more than just bored Americans .. the world got to see what makes Americans tick, and how successfully they have managed to preserve eighteenth century souls while leading everyone else in twenty-first century technology….
The last hope I have is that states like Texas will go through with a civil secession if the Federal Government decides to punish us for having a carbon based economy & a will to be prosperous.
The difference between the two is that one is a shifty dishonest man and the other is Tony Soprano!
The fat lady hasn't sung yet. StlDan is right. We'll know more after 2010 and 2012.
It's always fun to call someone a liar without any evidence.
I read Zinn's book It was boring! ZZZZZZ. It isn't good quality leftest propaganda. Do yourself a favor and watch a porn flic instead.
Here is the History Channel feed back form. Write them!
http://www.history.com/global/feedback/contact.js...
Hey, what do you all expect? You let them throw out God, the pledge, and turned over the decision on what to teach to a union and socialist/Marxists. Quit complaining, roll up your sleves, and starting in 2010, clean house…and take back America. And, for starters, we need Tom Delay in the RNC…right now!
I am delighted to see the shout-out to my home town, the People's Republic of Ann Arbor. and I'm not surprised to hear that our high school teachers use that book. this is the home of the SDS, you know–and also, speaking of lefty historians, home of Kenny Burns, with whom I went to high school.
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once and a while. The fact that a TV character's life doesn't lend itself well to the point doesn't make the point invalid.
And the Global Warmers!
Not that you'll bother to read it (I find Zinn supporters to be willfully incurious even as they attack others for not knowing anything) but here's a nice take-down of your hero's Big Book of Hate.
http://hnn.us/articles/4370.htmlv
It has some big words and some actual history is included so you might want to run it past your mom or dad first.
And, that he is an ACTOR , acting like a crook! Not doing any real damage!!
I just sent them a scathing e-mail! Thanks!!
I used to like the History Channel. What a disappointment.
[...] backlash in the USA against the documentary. The History Channel’s official forum and right-wing entertainment websites are outraged that this work of Satan has been turned into a documentary. Some examples include: [...]
Don't forget the Nation of Islam. They're from space, too!
The funny thing about liberalism/socialism is that, bottom line, it is survival of the elitist….and everyone else is simply the underclass. And in this "elitism", the poverty-stricken blacks are eliminated. The black population have aborted themselves out of any future growth. And this same black population continues to embrace a socialistic government simply to see what they can get from it for "free"…just like animals. I would certainly say that Zinn's liberalism/socialism is working as he/they expected…..like a charm.
Go away.
Odds are you're a lefty trying to smear this site, but even if you're not — GO AWAY.
I agree. Trying to smear the site by giving leftist sites a comment to cherry pick.
This blog post spends alot of time disparaging Howard Zinn and his book, which has a simple focus of showing history from the perspective of ordinary people. It is said that this book is anti-American, but I don't see any examples of untruths from the book. I consider myself patriotic. I spent 4 years as an officer in the Air Force serving my country. I believe in freedom, so it pains me when I see people like many who post here who say that they believe in American values, but then go on and spew hatred at an American scholar who has spent his life doing painstaking research to shed light on our past, warts and all. A great country doesn't have to hide from its past. America is made up of human beings, the same human beings who live in the rest of the world. What makes our country better is that we do a better job of learning from our mistakes than most. History does not have to be a fairy tale to keep a country united and strong. We have confidence in our ability to pursue truth whereever it takes us. Justice and freedom inevitably grow from this pursuit.
Zinn is trying to tell us our history is nothing BUT warts. He presents a single narrative – conflict between haves and have-nots – that explains everything that's happened in America from 1492 onward. I can't believe anyone is stupid enough to believe that if the facts of a story are correct, then the narrative must also be correct.
Also, the facts that Zinn presents are available to anyone with an interest in history. They have not been carefully hidden by the evil capitalist cabal that runs our country. They have not been painstakingly unearthed by the great Zinn at enormous personal risk. The antidote to Zinn-worship is to read more than one history book. Despite what he tells you, there ARE more than two competing versions of American history. Only ignorant people believe otherwise.
And P.S. – "people's movements" are not the same as "ordinary people." Only a communist would believe otherwise.
Zinn was one of my profs many moons ago. He was a self righteous, mincing little synchophant then, and I am sure that with time he has developed a patina of arrogance. I hated his class. When the facts didn't agree with his world perspective, he simply made up new ones. Many historians and academicians disagree with many of his conclusions. They just have not created a cottage industry around hating America. His ideal nation is Mao's red china. A pity for us all he never chose to go teach there.
PS. Matt Damon is such a silly little zinncompoop. I wish someone would start an effective boycott of these marxist Hollywood celebrities would insist on cramming their unwanted opinions into everyone's face.
I feel like I'm constantly posting this link but I have to answer to the delusion that Zinn is a 'scholar' of any actual standing outside of pop-ed.
http://hnn.us/articles/4370.htmlv
I can pull quotes from history, too. And I can make the Air Force look like a bunch of crazed lunatics who deliberately bombed villages that had schoolhouses because it seemed like fun. But I would never do that because I respect the truth. Zinn, on the other hand, makes a charge, takes a snippet of a quote out of its original context and then puts them together and "voila!" — historical wart. I believe in freedom, too, and the freedom to learn the truth is near sacred to me. Correcting Zinn's agenda-driven, non-scholarship is a constitutional right that Big Hollywood has chosen to exercise. That it doesn't meet with the approval of Zinn-bots with a one-message mindset is to be expected.
Alex P. Keaton? Just kidding. … I think you're right – there probably isn't one. But that isn't my point, really. And surely two people can argue about which Anthony Soprano (Jr. or Sr.) is "right" in the scene Bobb uses in his article, but that isn't my point, really, either.
I like this website because it spotlights the uncomfortable intersection between art and conservative politics. Ultimately, it doesn't matter how anti-Hollywood or anti-rock-and-roll someone is. People tend to get moved by some kind of art every once in a while, and it's a bad feeling to discover that the artist who made it hates you. (Not you necessarily, mind you, Night Fighter.) It's just some kind of irony, I think, to read the comments of a hard-line conservative named after a character from Coen brothers' movies or hearing Hannity use Bruce Hornsby every day or the legions of people who had to pretend they never liked Springsteen because they didn't understand him until about 2003, when he got a little more explicit. Or a libertarian who thinks Fight Club supports their point of view. … Or David J. Bobb, who apparently thinks that Tony Soprano is supposed to make his ideology look good. Tony Soprano isn't supposed to do that, I'm afraid, but I think it's interesting that a columnist at "Andrew Breitbart Presents Big Hollywood" thinks that he is, that's all.
While I was watching it and goofing on it last night on the live blog, I kept thinking, "this is like it's made for kids, any adult would know better", then I realized OOPS it IS made for kids. The only kind of funny thing is the live performances. Do they believe that the kids of today will care about Eddie Vedder of the skinny guy from The Black Crowes? The performances were so bad as to be laughable.
Hopefully it was all so badly done that even the children, locked in their classrooms, unable to leave, forced to watch it by their "progressive" teachers will know better.
Parents please stay on top of this. Now you know what's going on.
I just hope The History Channel sticks with Pawn Stars, Nostradamus, and Ice Road Truckers from now on and stays away from the haunted building they found the ghost Zinn within.
Amen.
indeed, Damon's been humpin Zinn's leg for years.
Please site a single instance of Zinn being a "bad historian" – please indicate which page of his book contains an incorrect fact or an event that did not happen.
You offer zero, *zero*, factual basis for a single claim in your article re: his scholarship. Its very hard to take this as any more than a rant by people threatened by the truth and who only want the god,guns and white man version of history perpetuated.
Every thing Zinn writes about actually happened, whether you like it or not.
I don't know why this man (howard zinn) has so much faith in the "people". One visit to this site would prove to him the "people" are scum and not worth saving.
History is always being rewritten, because it is always distorted, because new facts are always coming to light, and because someone is always proposing some new distortions to fit their own updated psyche. It should be some comfort to know that Howard Zinn is beyond boring to most inner city school children. Somehow, the working class never really connects to a scholarly grandfather trying to lecture them on how their great-grandparents missed the boat. There is plenty of good, bad and ugly about the American Revolution. There is plenty of good, bad and ugly about the United States Constitution. The problem with the text books I had in 8th and 11th grade is that they played up, and sometimes made up, an inspiring march of freedom and justice, which was part of the story, but not exactly enlightening by itself. The problem with Howard Zinn is he wants to present "another way of looking at it" instead of "another layer of a very complex truth." Almost every inspiring event in history had venal motives, and associated atrocities on the way to some sort of progress. Some of the militia that turned out to save the union in Colorado and North Carolina were among the most viciously anti-Indian thugs around. The Buffalo Soldiers, widely vaunted during Black History Month, were also agents of genocide against Native Americans. Kenneth Roberts's historical novels provide plenty on the ugly underside of the American Revolution, and even tell the Tory side of the story, but not at the expense of what motivated people to fight for independence, no matter how badly Congress and most of the general officers led them.
Zinn isn't fabricated, its just grossly incomplete, like most history text books that inspired him to start writing his own equally biased version. There are enough facts out there to support what Zinn says, but there are a whole lot of other facts that are equally true, important, part of the complete story, which he leaves out. That is because it is much more work to be really comprehensive, and almost every author has an ax to grind.
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