300th Post

I'll have to do this at length later on, but here's a quick tip for reading A People's History of the United States: Go outside and pick up a rock. Hit yourself--no, no, actually that should say "bash yourself"--in the head with it. Now read A Peoples' History of the United States. Only someone with a gushing head wound could appreciate Howard Zinn.

People like Zinn do the left no favors when they dredge up the history of liberalism in this country because, mainly, they present it as goo-goo spoon ammo that we need to open up for and obediently swallow. There, now, wasn't that just nummy-nummy? Yes, it was! (pat on the head).

History is about one thing at present (and yeah, I think we ought to be looking real short-term on this question, 'cause we might not have much time left): politics. If you aren't doing politics with your scholarship then you're wasting everybody's time. Zinn and his cohort (or is it an entourage now? Let's see, it is completely shameless, so let's go with entourage...) are trying to be political, in the sense that they're trying to make us all feel good about our situation, but they are just so fucking bad at it that it's worse than useless. For that reason--and because soft-headed lefties can't separate the emotional/personal from the powerful/empirical--we may as well declare, if Zinn and his ilk are to be our avatars (and they are hogging the role, so to appoint someone else would be futile) then we may as well say that left politics as we angry, normal, serious liberals conceive of it is sui generis. Fuck history, in that sense. Fuck Eric Foner. If I want somebody to jerk me off to a leftist fairytale, I'll have a hooker from Gary read me "The Wizard of Oz."

We have a real problem with our past. Namely, it doesn't help us much with respect to certain problems in our present. Labor history? Worse than useless. Identity studies? Look in a mirror, write down what you see on some tissue paper, and give it to me so I can wipe my ass with it. Reclaiming queers, feminists, revolutionaries, etc., ad nauseum? Hold still so I can drive this hammer, claw-end first, into your forehead, you ethically stunted, slow-witted, lazy fucktard.

Anyway, back to Zinn. He was pilloried by Michael Kazin in the journal Dissent last year for his misguided opus, and has fought back (this according to In These Times magazine out of Chicago; another soft-headed left rag but a bad habit I can't seem to shake).

How? you ask. Did Zinn come out, both barrels blazin', with a rock-solid volume of analysis of the foundations of American liberalism, proving better than anyone yet that its compassion, economic foresight, and political sensibility are the inheritance of our nation and need revisiting now more than ever?

Um, in a word, no. No, he just recycled the same horseshit he has been shovelling all this time and took it one big step closer to irrelevancy while at the same time dumbing it down even further so as to give it even less impact than it already would have had. You see, he has put together a document reader to accompany the People's History. A 600 page document reader, to be exact. Hooray, as faggy liberals from Oregon to California say.

Is there anything more useless than oral history? I would say no, but then I saw this document collection and hallelujah! I've changed my mind! Who wants to know what Columbus' diary said? Well, since I can't think of how it could possibly be relevant to anything going on in America today, I guess I do! The book is filled with, to quote the ITT reviewer (who reviewed less and fawned more, embarrassingly--and shockingly!--enough), "heartbreaking and uplifting stories of American history." Oh, gee, I guess now we ought to ask students if they had a good time in class, too? I wonder if I've just been missing out on that personal connection all these years and that's why I'm pissed? Should I care, I mean, really care, what one person said about one day in one life in one group in one town in one state in one country on earth? Where the fuck is the POINT, Howard?!

How about a horrible and horribly graphic section on slavery that scrapes the scab so (so, so) many have worried at before? Done! Gee, you'd think someone like Zinn, our living God of History, would be going somewhere with this, but no, he just wants to remind you that, like, hey man, slavery was terrible. If you aren't emotionally affected by the selection then, godammit, you're a fucking monster--even though you've read dozens and dozens of other document readers just like it. The point, you ask? Beats me. Beats Zinn, too, since he gives minimal introduction to each selection and is just putting it out there, after all. You, the reader, can take what you want and puzzle it through--kind of like being given a box of mechanical parts without tools or directions and being told that it should all fit together to make a chair. Or maybe a ceiling fan. Or is it a carbeurator? Hmmmmm...

And, finally, as lefties we must say a word about the obligatory section on labor, done in the same cheesy, touchy-feely-sucky-sucky way. Can't you just see their faces, hear their voices, feel their anguish, boys and girls? I know I can. Shhh! Listen! There...faint, but I can just make it out...they're saying..."holy shit did we fuck up! And look what you shitheads have done with our legacy! Change to Win? Are you fucking kidding me?!?" Really, in the present situation, where we are watching the total disintegration of American labor, what the Christ is Howard Zinn doing pointing to union labor as a viable ideal for the left? Is he drunk?

If I had to guess, I'd wager that no, he isn't drunk. Like so many academics, he's just stupid.

Stock. stone. stupid.

Now where's that rock...?