The NY Times is our most accomplished "liberal" paper of empire --- ever ready to support the unilateral right of the U.S. to conquer and destroy so long as it doesn't cost too much and is in "our" best interest --- and it's really fascinating to compare the NY Times obituary (granted, apparently penned by someone from the Associated Press) with that published on boston.com. I'll gloss a few things I found interesting in the NY Times piece, but suffice it to say the boston.com piece by Mark Feeney and Bryan Marquard is much better (which is funny because the Globe is a wholly owned subsidiary of the NY Times empire).
To begin with, the A.P. labels him in the first sentence as "an author, teacher and political activist" instead of "historian" (though the title given to the piece, probably put in by the NY Times editors, is "Howard Zinn, Historian, Dies at 87"). His masterpiece A People's History of the United States is said to be "an openly left-wing story" that was so extreme that "Even liberal historians were uneasy with Professor Zinn". I mean, "Even"! Liberal historians are as bad as it gets, what with their sappy bleeding heart concern over the costs of empire, but Zinn was so extreme he *even* made them queasy! Dragged forth from the grave is Arthur Schlesinger Jr., more properly called a propagandist for empire rather than historian, who dismisses Zinn as "a polemicist, not a historian." Then there's the whole trouble with "objective history" which Zinn "acknowledged that he was not trying to write". In fact his writings were much more objective than anything responsible historians like Schlesinger could ever dream of writing. At least they called him "an impressive-looking man, tall and rugged with wavy hair." Nice, but again implies he was a romantic figure, with "fans", instead of a serious historian, which he undoubtedly was. By chance I had bought a new copy of A People's History for my son (who is 11) and gave it to him for Christmas and told him if he at least made a good effort to read some of it that I would buy him something "cool". We'll see if my crude reward system works... And, we have the G.I. Bill to thank for him, apparently. Nothing like giving the unwashed masses access to higher education. We all owe a debt to Zinn for helping to civilize our society that small extra bit. Bill _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
