Comments on: Inside the Division of Historical Defense

By: Barry

Barry — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 13:31:42 +0000

Good point.

By: bianca steele

bianca steele — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 20:31:52 +0000

Barry:
No, men would be writing those articles. (If only Betty Friedan had given some thought to the plight of women who want to write for women’s magazines!) Maybe they’d let Parker have a by-line for a ghostwritten column, make the ladies feel they’re understood.

By: JRHulls

JRHulls — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:19:14 +0000

Back in 2009, I had proposed that we create a Historical Protection Agency, similar to the EPA in piece entitled, “Assume a Cabinet Position” http://somewhatlogically.com/?p=21
One of the functions of the agency would be to make it clear which historical precedent was being ignored or distorted. Unfortunately, Obama created no such position, which is the only secretarial post that would have interested me.
Here’s an exerpt from the piece….

“Take the most pressing current example: Wall Street and Washington denizens who claim that the current financial crisis is unprecedented and requires unimagined rape of the taxpayers purse to avoid fiscal Armageddon. In such cases the Secretary of History would issue a press release containing a historical quote such as the following with the underlined words having been changed to make sure that the reader knows which supposedly unprecedented current situation has already happened:

“The Congress presiding over the dying months of the Bush administration will, we hope, end the fatuous secrecy staining the record of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. In very act of its birth the TARP was struck dumb by the President. For five months it dispensed hundreds of billions of dollars of public money to banks and Wall Street without giving, either to the public or even to Congress itself, a grain of information about the identity of the objects of its bounty.”

It is easy to see how HPA would revitalize the press, nourish academia and, eventually, improve the quality of government. For instance, reporters will know that finding actual versions of the underlined words will put current actions of Congress into historical perspective. (You’ll have to go to the linked article to get the underlining) More sensible members of the media will consult their local university’s history department, raising the academic’s stock in trade. The media will understand why, when Hoover threw money at banks and financiers, it failed to halt the economic slide which followed the Crash of 29.”

By: Barry

Barry — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 15:42:59 +0000

It never ceases to tick me off; barring the feminist revolution, Parker would at most be writing a column on ‘How to please your husband’ in a “woman’s” magazine, for pocket change (or ‘mad money’ as those crazy ladies called it back then!). She could emphasize things like cooking good meals, and making sure that your husband was, ah – ‘well fed at home so he doesn’t need to satisfy his hunger elsewhere’ (like with his secretary).

By: Matt Regan

Matt Regan — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:42:14 +0000

With that declaration, Marie Antoinette helped create a nation led by, of all people, cakeless Frenchmen.

By: rf

rf — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:04:19 +0000

“Refinements and expropriations are welcome.”

With that declaration, Jefferson helped create a nation led by, of all people, unhappy Americans.

By: rf

rf — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 12:43:57 +0000

Na, John P Hale

By: rea

rea — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 12:36:41 +0000

“only one other hypothetical Presidency as highly rated, which also involves one man overcoming the system, stopping a war and preventing a financial crisis“

That would be Bizarro-world G. W. Bush, right?

By: Harald Korneliussen

Harald Korneliussen — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 09:02:42 +0000

Long set-ups like these are a good predictor of preaching to the choir and little actual argument. I see it a lot more on right-wing blogs than on Crooked Timber.

By: ponce

ponce — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 08:22:42 +0000

Maybe the “Dad” Parker is talking about is Gawd.

By: rf

rf — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 02:00:03 +0000

“Kennedy isn’t overrated?”

Well there’s only one other hypothetical Presidency as highly rated, which also involves one man overcoming the system, stopping a war and preventing a financial crisis

By: Salient

Salient — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 01:30:05 +0000

One feels silly even writing such a comment, but devolutions have to start somewhere.

By: Salient

Salient — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 01:21:59 +0000

I got as far as “With that book, Friedan helped propel a revolution led by, of all people, unhappy housewives. One feels silly even writing such a sentence” before my brain would physically not let me continue.

Hmm. Wow. But I guess it gives us a template to work with:

With that book, Stowe helped propel a revolution led by, of all people, unhappy farmhands.

That sort of thing.

(It was hard to find a way to end that sentence that was as wrong as what Parker gave us, and wrong in the right ways, whatever that means. Refinements and expropriations are welcome.)

By: bianca steele

bianca steele — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:53:36 +0000

Shorter Parker: If only Betty Friedan had had some familiarity with psychoanalytic theory.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:52:29 +0000

The card isn’t original with the room; it was put up after the government turned HALDAR over to the AHA to run in 1971.