Carnival of Bad History, Winter 2005 edition

Number four of Carnival of Bad History is up over at Neural Gourmet. This is the biggest and baddest Bad History yet. It has Nazis (how can you do bad history on the internet without Nazis?). It has current events. It has Ninjas. It has woolly mammoths (okay, I sent that one). It even has annoying e-mail from your in-laws. I'm still reading my way through the choice offerings, but I haven't found a bad post yet. Go visit the Neural Gourmet and check out the bad holiday smorgasborg.

Bad History Number Four is on the Way

We have a host for the next Carnival of Bad History. As we were rapidly approaching to the date for the winter CoBH and still lacked a host I was debating whether to give up on the whole carnival idea or resign myself to permanent hosthood. I was actually in the process of writing a post on the subject when I got a note from Coturnix saying that he had located a host volunteer. The Neural Gourmet has stepped up to the plate to, uh, punt a basket, or whatever it is you do at the plate--I never was very good at the sports metaphor thing. The next CoBH will be held on December 22. That means you have lots of time to write a post, post a post, and submit said post to The Neural Gourmet for inclusion. Have a myth you want to bust? Heard someone say something astonishingly ahistorical? Discovered a great conspiracy theory? Just want to review a bad movie? If it has anything to do with history, this is your chance.

A new record

Sadly No! discovered this gem while digging through the comments on Lucianne.com.

An earlier post said that New Orleans is 400+ years old. If our country is 229 years old, how is this possible? The Indians had a city here?

For once, my sarcasm fails me.

Bad History? Yes, Bad History!

The Carnival of Bad History # 3 is here. Horatio at Dodecahedron has the latest edition for your reading pleasure. He's made it a very special Michael Jackson edition. Michael Jackson? Yes Michael Jackson! Horatio has something for everyone. He has Nazis. He has terrorists. He has Intelligent design. He has Paul Harvey. Paul Harvey? Yes, Paul Harvey! History isn't just that highschool class taught by coaches (badly), history is everything. Culture, politics, movies, the good, the bad, and, yes, the ugly. Bad history is mostly the ugly. Go, read up, get inspired, and track down your own bad history for the next carnival.

Prepare for bad history

We're just three weeks away from the next Carnival of Bad History. Horatio at Dodecahedron has volunteered to be the host. We have some submissions, but we can always use more. Want to review a bad historical movie? Know of a nonsensical conspiracy that needs debunking? Heard a politician or pudit make a really silly analogy? This is your chance to set the record straight. Send your submissions to John at archy, or to CoBH, or to Horatio at Dodecahedron.

Help Wanted

We've been collecting submissions for the next Carnival of Bad History due the first of September. We will have plenty of content, but we're still looking for a host. If you want to break into the big world of carnivals, this is your chance. Drop us a line.

Time for bad history

The second full-fledged issue of the Carnival of Bad History is up over at Science and Politics. It's bigger and badder than ever before. Coturnix has gathered fourteen posts from twelve writers. What are you waiting for? Go. Read. Comment. Get inspired and write a contribution to the next carnival.

P.S. - We're looking for a host to publish issue three at the end of August. If you are interested in hosting, drop us a line at the Bad History mailbox.

Call for bad history

Coturnix at Science and Politics will be hosting the next Carnival of Bad History. It's been a while since the last one and I was on the verge of giving it up whaen Coturnix volunteered to start it back up and give me the benefit of his vast experience hosting carnivals.

Have you seen lately an egregious example of misunderstanding or misuse of history? Was history botched in a movie or TV show you just saw? Was a book or article trying to rewrite history for artistic or political purposes? Does watching History Channel drive you crazy? If so, write about it on your blog, and send me the permalink by late May 30th (midnight EST) to be included in the carnival. You may also want to recommend someone else's blog post.

Based on Coturnix's advice, we'll try running Carnival of Bad History on a quaterly basis. That means anything you've written since early March is fair game for inclusion. Send your links to Coturnix at his place, to me here, or to archy.

Women's History Month

March is Women's History Month. I'm sure some enterprising bloggers out there can find something to say about that. There must be some myth about women in history that you think needs to be debunked, some well-known woman who has gotten undeserved bad press, or someone unjustly overlooked. This is your chance to set the record straight and gain for yourself the prestige (and traffic) of a major carnival appearance.

Carnival Number One

The Carnival of Bad History number one is now available for your reading pleasure over at archy. Though the selection is samll it covers the spectrun of bad history from Holocaust denial to popular myths to the silly things our leaders tell us. Go and read them all.

If you are inspired to write something or remember an old post that you think fits, send it to us. It's never too soon to plan the next issue. Carnival number two will also be hosted at archy, but this time Alan gets to write it. The date is March 15.

A Carnival of Carnivals

It was inevitable that eventually someone would do this. It was also inevitable that that someone would be Coturnix. If you want to better understand the carnival phenomenon, if you just want to find something good to read, or if you are looking for the right venue for your writing, this is the post to check out. Coturnix has managed to round up four dozen carnivals and link to their most current issue. This kind of labor deserves a reward.

Call for Bad History

I'll be posting the first Carnival of Bad History over at archy next Tuesday. We still have plenty of room for contributions and I'll be accepting till about noon on Monday.

Since this is the first Carnival, I'm very fluid on how old the contributions can be. If you've written anything you think might be relevant since the first of the year or so, send it in.

Also, since this is the first carnival, we're still fine-tuning the concept. Anything even remotely related is acceptable. If you want to correct a bad historical parallel that some talking head pulls out to support their position, send it in. If you have a pet peeve about historical movies, send it in. If you've been doing battle with holocaust deniers, internment apologists, or slavery romanticizers, definately send it in. If you want to debunk a favorite conspiracy theory, send it in. If you just want to bash on The DaVinci Code, send that in too.

Lastly, we need volunteers to be future hosts. The whole point of a carnival is to share the glory.

Send your article links and hosting volunteerances (or whatever you call that) to archy or to Bad History.

PS - Over the next day or so I'll be sending reminders to everyone who contributed, so you'll know you're in.

Bad History in the Social Security Debate

I think we can expect a lot more of this in the coming months.

In an attempt to promote President Bush's plan to partially privatize Social Security, nationally syndicated radio host and former Reagan administration official William J. Bennett and FOX News managing editor and anchor Brit Hume falsely claimed that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt advocated replacing Social Security with private accounts. In fact, while Roosevelt advocated "voluntary contributory annuities" to supplement guaranteed Social Security benefits, he never proposed replacing those benefits with private accounts.

[...]

Former Social Security associate commissioner James Roosevelt Jr., Roosevelt's grandson, noted in a January 31 Boston Globe op-ed piece: "The implication that FDR would support privatization of America's greatest national program is an attempt to deceive the American people and an outrage."

As a debate tactic, what Bennett and Hume are attempting is as old as written language and probably older. They are attempting to make their ideas unassailable by claiming that they spring from ancient revered authorities. This argument is especially effective with conservative audiences, so it's no wonder that conservative pundits would use it to push forward the agenda of an ultra-conservative president.

As history, Bennett and Hume are committing two sins. The first is misrepresentation or just plain lying. The second is trying to draw an ahistorical parallel. This is the act of pulling historical examples and saying they are relevant to present day issues because of some similarity. There is nothing wrong with using historical examples in debate, but the issues have to match.

In this case, the real problem is the misrepresentation. If the Roosevelt program had been what Bennett and Hume claimed it was, then they would have had a valid parallel. But it wasn't, so they don't. This then undermines the debate tactic. They appealed to a revered authority for support and the authority didn't support them. They lose this round.

Cross posted at archy.

Bad History Rudely Noticed

The Rude Pundit noticed some faulty memory at work in the state of the union address and in some people's coverage of the audience reaction.

Let's get one thing straight right here, right now, for every right-wing fuck doll in the media who gets up in arms about how "rude" the Democrats were for shouting "No" when Bush stood up last night and said, "Fuck your Social Security. I piss on your retirement": From the Buffalo News on Bill Clinton's 1995 State of the Union speech: "At one point, Republicans even booed. About 20 of them left before Clinton finished talking." What did the Republicans boo for? Because Clinton dared to say that there were some things that government must do.

[...]

Bush ended "his" speech with a quote from Franklin Roosevelt's 1937 Inaugural Address, where Roosevelt included the famous words of poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy, "Each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth." Of course, the Republicans are desperately trying to co-opt FDR to justify their destruction of his works. But one wonders if Bush has read the entirety of Roosevelt's Second Inaugural. See, because in the rest of it, Roosevelt said, "We of the Republic sensed the truth that democratic government has innate capacity to protect its people against disasters once considered inevitable, to solve problems once considered unsolvable. We would not admit that we could not find a way to master economic epidemics just as, after centuries of fatalistic suffering, we had found a way to master epidemics of disease. We refused to leave the problems of our common welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster." Huh. Just the thing that the Republicans booed when Clinton invoked such ideas in 1995.

It's Black History Month

There has to be some good material inherent in that. Off the top of my head, I think this might be a good time to look at some of the recent Neo-Confederate revisionist literature on master-slave relations in the Old South. Neither Alan nor I specialized in American history, so we aren't the best candidates to write the posts on that. However, I bet someone out there could take care of it.

They like us! They really like us!

We'd like to thank everyone who's linked or written to us during our first day of business. The response has been amazing. It seems everybody has a favorite historical urban legend or conspiracy theory that they would like to see debunked.

I've already received three contributions for the first issue. Being fairly cautious, I had announced the date of the first issue (over at archy) as March 1 with subsequent issues on a monthly basis. If this level of interest keeps up, we will probably move the date forward.

Beyond the carnival itself, Alan and I are still working out how we will be using this site. We will be occassionally posting on bad history in in the news. If you want to contribute to the carnival, but can't decide on a topic, ckeck back here for suggestions.

Once again, thanks for dropping by.

We're Live

I'm sending out the announcements that we're up and accepting posts.

We'll work on making the template pretty later.