Letters to the Editor
James Levy
Published Letters: 115 Editor's Choice: 18
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A weird sense of objectivity
[Read the article: Do national journalists agree with Gary Kamiya?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The problem here may be the odd definition of objectivity that these journalists stick to like survivors of a sinking ship stick to anything that will float. They seem to think that if they write down correctly the words that some important person utters, then run over to another person of similar social standing and scribble down their words, then put them both in the story verbatim, they have acted "objectively' and therefore have no other obligations. Finding out the truth would mean calling one of these pillars of the community a liar, and that would be just nasty, brutish, bad behaviour. Nobody can get mad at you, not your local politicos, not your editor, nobody, if you just transcribe the words of the powerful and leave it at that. Since, to these postmodern reporters, all utterances are simply plays for power and money, and everyone will by definition lie to get what they want (and it's all about getting what you want, isn't it?) why bother to worry about how well statements conform to reality (whatever that is). To dig for the truth is either futile or it will get you into trouble, for the truth may force you to say that X is lying while Y is telling the truth, thereby breeching your sacrosanct "objectivity" and coming down on one side or another. If that side is mom, apple pie, and America's right to push around lesser peoples and kill them if they fail to "do the right thing", they will come down that way, if not, they would rather just shut up and keep transcibing.
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Confusion about what Historians do
[Read the article: History and Hindu nationalism: A call to arms]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This article points out at least two issues about what historians can do, and do do. As a professional historian, I have no truck with people who try to dismiss the whole project of historical recreation as ideology writ large. Sorry folks, but Waterloo happened. Napoleon lost. Why he lost, though, is controversial, can be interpreted in different ways, and its overall significance may be greater or less than one historian or another maintains. We can trace an idea or a symbol, and say some important things about how that idea or symbol changed its meaning over time. This is useful. Just so long as you separate things you can verify from specualtion or inference--which Laine may or may not have done, as I have not read his book. In another context, you can get pissed off at someone who says that we have no peice of paper on which Hitler orders the extermination of the Jews. But it is true. What is bullshit is to infer from this first statement that he had nothing to do with it, or worse, that it didn't happen, which it clearly did. There, you need to look at the wealth of information we have about Hitler, the way he ran his government, other documentary and physical evidence, and Hitler's personal ideology and utterances. Taken together, they seal the deal--the Holocaust happened, and Hitler was in direct, even micromanaging, control of the state that perpetrated the outrage. If Historians and those who write or speak about them were more clear about what is being put forward as demonstrable, and what is, one hopes, informed speculation, then less of this nonsense (althoug not willful attempts at rabble-rousing like this) would take place.
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Cloud Cockoo Land
[Read the article: The dark legacy of Carlos Castaneda]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In a post here, I read the following:
George Bush's ability to carry out the Iraq war was based partly on a deep American belief, our story, that we are the "good guys" and that they are the "bad" guys". When a story wins, it is called "history".
Total crap. George Bush lied through his teeth. Irawi weapons of mass destruction are not lost in some postmodern never-neverland of indeterminacy--they were not there. Iraq was no threat to the US. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. These are old fashioned FACTS. Columbus sailed across the Atlantic, banged into the West Indies, and killed a huge number of people directly through murder and torture, indirectly through the spread of diseases he didn't understand. The Holocaust Happened. People were herded into gas chambers and massacred. That's not a "story." It's all too bloody real. If the Nazis had won and pretended it didn't happen, IT STILL WOULD HAVE HAPPENED. No story could ever hav e changed that. Historians can and do every day debunk dopey stories and see through cant and propoganda. If the also sometimes spread it, well, they are human and fallible. But the job can be done, and is. If it wasn't, we'd still have human slaves and pretend the Earth was flat.
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Big ideas versus policy statements
[Read the article: Anatomy of Beltway conventional wisdom]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The problem here is, I think, that abstractions play, not only because people (and more to the point, the TV news) can swallow them whole and easy, but because we have such intrenched interests that any substantive proposal for action is bound to get some organized group with a bullhorn pissed off. Once you piss a few of the right groups off you become "divisive" and "controversial," and thereby unelectable. So politicians stick to making vague pronouncements that people want to hear. What the media want above all things is for everyone to play by the rules as the media percieve them (in which Republicans are assumed to be nasty and aggressive, so when they talk trash it doesn't ruffle feathers, but when a Democrat does they are pissing in the finger bowl). Stick to conventional wisdom, don't say anything (like Nader or Chomsky) that needs to be explained, flatter the customers/voters/rubes and remember, it's all a (lucrative)game.