|
 |
|
|
During the year-end telecast of the McLaughlin Group, pundit Pat Buchanan pronounced Thomas E. Woods, Jr., author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, the "Most Original Thinker of 2004."
This Sunday morning I turned to the New York Times Book Review and reached for a defibrillator: The PIG (as it's affectionately referred to within) was #8 on the paperback non-fiction bestseller list. With a bullet.
What scares the shit out of me is that this book will jump from red states into the homes of the historically undecided, like those folks in the Dover school districts of Pennsylvania, where Intelligent Design (a.k.a. creationism) is being deployed as a scientific alternative to evolution.
But the PIG isn't just the same old, same old. It comes courtesy of Regnery Publishing, Inc., the neo-conservative press that introduced the undecideds to the Swift Vets by rubberstamping Unfit for Command. Concerned that "liberal professors have misinformed our children for generations," Regnery Executive Editor Harry Crocker III commissioned Woods — a Harvard B.A. and Columbia Ph.D. who is inexplicably an assistant professor at Suffolk Community College — to speak their brand of truth.
By insidiously distorting the basic tenets of our democracy, Woods' so-called scholarship threatens to have far greater impact than the on-camera clout of a Rush Limbaugh or a Sean Hannity. Woods' stealth contribution will be seen at the grassroots level — quoted in direct-mail pleas, oft-repeated on Talk Radio, and weaponized in school curriculums by local P.T.A.
In mapping the Colonial through Clinton eras, Professor Woods' overall strategy is to take on the Liberal Gods, rehabilitate the fallen, and smear, smear, smear along the way. Among his "revelations" from the last three-hundred-and-fifty years of American history: there was no genocide of Native Americans, the Federal government was meant to be subordinate to the will of the states, and the civil-rights movement — starting with Brown vs. Board of Education — was a bust.
Woods does a disservice to our pluralistic past by eliminating not only the Minority Report but all trace of nuance and complexity. In trying to blunt the abolition movement as "radical," Woods marks himself not as a conservative but as a reactionary eager to restore the luster of the Confederacy. He reduces his precis of the labor movement to a cold calculus where rights are subservient to profits, simultaneously omitting the women's movement and any discussion of gay rights.
Cultural landmarks notwithstanding, it's telling what personages Woods saves his darts for and those he chooses to redeem. Woods has no love for FDR, the Kennedy clan, or Clinton. But he touts the record of Ronald Reagan, a man who was unable to say the word AIDS, much less fund research and prevention.
The professor specializes in half-truths and innuendo, often portraying exceptions as the rule. While this strategy has been employed with success by many of Regnery's authors, from Ann Coulter (High Crimes & Misdemeanors) to Michelle Malkin (In Defense of Internment), it's the first time I've seen our nation's entire history retrofitted to serve a simplistic textbook thesis: government bad, free market infallible.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History is not the impulse purchase of Jon Stewart's America — which turned out to have more than just a spine — but its inverse. In its preface, the text "aims to set the record straight." But what it does is obfuscate and introduce a willful neglect of facts and experience. While Woods can't fathom that the personal is political, he's all about rewriting history to suit a political agenda. n°
©2005 Jerry Weinstein and hooksexup.com
|
|
|
|
buzzbox
|
|
|
| partner links |
 Crunch
No Judgments.
|
|
Fark.com
Buzzfeed