historycrapwatch: the beginning

Just as both truly religious people and apostles of Reason (who may agree on nothing else) abhor idolatry, so, too, historians (whether conservative or radical, traditional or populist) despise sloppy history. It's not that we're pretentious. Rather, it's that we take our job seriously and worry when we see the public being fed half-truths and half-digested ideas.

The origins of the problem lie to some extent with us, as we read at the beginning of our historiography class this term. The classic historians were both learned and popular. Gibbon and Macaulay were bestsellers. In recent generations, professional historians have given up or scorned the attempt to communicate with the general reader. As the distance between academics and the public has widened, bad popular history has flooded in to fill the gap.

On the one hand, it is wonderful that American public interest in history is high, as reflected in a variety of measures, from military re-enactments to museum visits and book purchases to the popularity of historical television programs and films. On the other hand, it is worrisome that much of the history remains oversimplified. Bad history is second only to bad science as a threat to the national intelligence and character.

(Evidently the White House and its minions have fallen prey to both: no evolution, no global warming; the war against terrorism is like World War II , &c. &c. Historians look for patterns. Maybe the operative theory for this administration is that nothing changes. Ever. Okay. Wouldn't get an "A" in my class, but then, he was a "C" student at Yale, so what can one expect? Honesty, maybe?!)

One of the missions of this blog (picking up where the rest of the web site leaves off) is therefore to call attention to historical error, oversimplification, grandstanding, puffery, and plain old bullshit.

It is, as the military are wont to say, in their inimitable way, a "target-rich environment." Let us, as befits the season, begin with a confession: I both love and hate to watch this stuff on television. (It's a bit like driving by the scene of a car accident. One wants to avert one's eyes but cannot help watching.)

On the one hand, I just want to see what is covered, and I am interested in some topics even though (or precisely because) they are popular and get mangled. I even find it hard to resist all those supposedly serious programs about aliens, monsters, and conspiracy theories. It can be hard to know what to make of those that earnestly present themselves as "speculation." Usually, it is just an utterly disingenuous declaration that, yes, we know there are standards (and now that we've said that, we feel free to ignore them). Such hypocrisy or disingenuousness is unappetizing. That is why the prostitute is in most ways more admirable than the adulterer.

Ironically, it is the supposedly more "serious" programs that are the most egregious offenders: They do not purvey stupidity and superstition as truth, but they magnify their petty truths (and hosts) beyond all belief.


Some potential targets:

"History Detectives" on PBS: architect, art historian, sociologist, and antiques appraiser. I know people in those fields. These folks wouldn't last five minutes here in this town, much less, with my sharp students. Now I could set PBS up with a real team of interesting people, but they'd have to call and ask...

"Digging for the Truth" on the History Channel. Come on. It's not history, it's not archaeology. It's just a guy who can afford an 800-dollar hat but evidently not a decent razor. If headgear were de rigueur for historians, the old line about the dude cowboy would be even more approriate: all hat and no cattle.

Stay tuned for scandals and breaking news.