Carnival of Bad History #14: Backlog Edition

Welcome to the "Post-Grading Letdown" edition of The Carnival of Bad History.

epppie at Progressive Historians presents a short history of the "sucker born every minute" line, and a drawing in honor of the opening of the new Creation Museum this coming Monday (that's the bad history part). PZ Myers is gathering posts for a mini-carnival in honor of the biblically literal, anti-evolution extravaganza. When you're done reading John McKay's take-down, you can also check out his rant about "the African language".

Joerg Wolf presents Historical Comparisons: Fritz Stern Publishes "Five Germanys I Have Known", which includes some lovely examples of former SecDef Rumsfeld's argumentum ad nazium.

Jon Swift presents Conservapedia which "gives Christianity its due for being so supportive of the work of Galileo and Copernicus." The scary thing about that is that I've heard versions of that argument elsewhere: that Christianity is at the heart of the scientific revolution....

Speaking of satirists, Mark A. Rayner presents Grandfig: Flying Nun: Mark I posted at the skwib. Heh!

Tim Abbott presents "Jumping" Jack Flashman "Massacres" the Historic Record posted at Walking the Berkshires. It's on the internet, it must be true....

Speaking of error propogation, David Parker presents Willie Lynch: The Making of a Slave posted at another history blog. Follow the links, folks: it's worth it. If you teach US history and haven't come across it before, you will soon.

Sergey Romanov does what he does best -- present real evidence and reasonable interpretation for stuff certain people would rather distort or forget -- this time taking on the well-known pro-Stalinist Grover Furr at Holocaust Controversies. In addition to the historical questions, there's an interesting ethical discussion about posting email exchanges.

The Tour Marm presents The Baptism of Pocahontas: Capitol Offense - Get it Right! posted at The Educational Tour Marm. Wonderful discussion of teaching, internet and public history issues, all spiced with righteous outrage.

Henry Midgley presents Bernard Lewis at the AEI posted at Westminster Wisdom. Midgley was not the only person to note Lewis' historical laziness, but he's the only one who submitted!

CapeTownDissentator presents Mission Accomplished: Now Let's Write Us Some History, a discussion of the relationship between servile narratives and political apathy.

That concludes the submitted material. To avoid derision and confusion in the future, submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of bad history using our carnival submission form. Past posts can be found on our Sidebar.

Now, a few supplemental items from my files:

Will the public domain stay public? Konrad Lawson notes some brazen attempts to copyright public domain documents. Ralph Luker and Tim Burke note other problems with copyright and permissions.

Brett Holman, when he's not revising our very weak understanding of Guernica, is swooning over bad historical fantasies that never got made into movies. Or, you can see the Giant Nazi Robots over at Orac's place.

Sepoy says that Richard Gabriel's military history of Islam's founder "has, on average, a mistake per sentence." I could identify about one per paragraph without trying too hard.... Speaking of Sepoy, he's tweaking the nose of the AHA, but they're good-humored enough about it that they've approved our panel -- token and all -- anyway.

Tim Burke takes on a Weekly Standard piece on Africa on both facts and interpretations. Oh, and he smacks down VD Hanson and 300 in one blow! (for more 300 fun, start here)

In the "Daily Dose of Insanity" category, This Day in Mythstory provides just what it says: anniversaries with a theme and a twist! If you can't tell when he's kidding, that's a good sign that you need more, not less, history in your life.

Another entry in the "one generation's sarcasm is another generation's Protocols of the Elders of [your hobgoblin here]" category: Anti-Grover Cleveland screed turned into pro-Hawaiian Independence "evidence."

Eric Muller got a surprise this Passover: a Confederate Jew on his Matzo Box. I got one of those, too.

One of the most efficient reminders of what the late Jerry Falwell stood for in his heyday (and beyond) came from this 26-point "Don'ts for Students". It's in favor of history (though the rest of the list suggests limits on that), but not family history, or any creative thinking or social speculation.

Chris Bray's been reading some Frederick Kagan, for kicks: the preface is a hoot.

The Conceptual Guerilla takes on Harvey Mansfield on the unitary executive.

Rob MacDougall posits a dystopian future for historically conscious appliances. But at least our modern appliances let us eat better than we used to.

I've got to end on a positive note: These reconstructed photographs are amazing. For real!

OK, now the bad news: Bad History Needs Hosts even more than it needs submissions. We've got a trickle of submissions, but No Hosts lined up for the future. I'm taking volunteers, and then I'm just gonna start assigning months to people who seem capable, whether they're bloggers, historians or just cranky.

Call for Hosts!

It's ironic, but the Carnival of Bad History is run by a procrastinator.... Anyway, we need hosts for future editions. Any of them: pick a month. We usually run the carnival late in the month, but the exact date is flexible. Historians, debunkers, lovers of truth or haters of lies, all are welcome!

The Return of CoBH

The Carnival of Bad History decided to play snowbird and flew off to warmer climes for the month of January. Now it's back, tanned and rested, and ready to do that funky, bad history thing. This month Rob MacDougall does the honors at Old is the New New. Rob serves up a healthy plate-full of debunked quotes, urban legends, jaywalking historians, bat-men on the moon, and holocaust denial, with a nice tall glass of Kool-Aid to wash it down. You won't want to miss this one.

Carnival #12 Supplement

Welcome to the supplement to the 12th carnival of bad history. Apparently there was some mixup with Blogcarnival.com and their submissions, David Noon ended up doing a lot of work on his own. Here's the blogcarnival submissions, though (with a few unsuitable ones removed):

Tony Blair Pulls a Clinton posted at The Dugout, in which the British apology for slavery falls short of a real historical commemoration.

Pearl Harbor and the longue duree posted at Frog In A Well: Japan, in which I tackle some really sloppy historical causation.

A Machiavellian Perspective on the Middle East Conflict posted at Samson BLinded, is a disturbingly positive comparison between 1917 Russian Bolsheviks and contemporary Israeli right-wingers.

The Armstrong Tautologies posted at Avant News, is a charming satire of the recent technical recovery of Neil Armstrong's lost preposition.

An Occidental-Muslim's Criticism of Empires and Orthodoxies posted at Wa Salaam takes on one of the regular Bad Historians, Bernard a scholar I've never heard of, John Lewis.

The Little Professor had two pieces nominated: My year in books (with a special appendix on Victorian anti-Catholic sermons), a reminder that inarticulate intolerance is nothing new...."; and Department of ironic similarities, in which the pitfalls of making up words to describe your antagonists turn out to be well-established.

The Source of the National Debt, Why It Will NEVER Be Paid, and Why the Federal Reserve Should Be Liquidated, Part 1 of 2 posted at Bill Losapio is a fascinating example of the profligate use of "cabal" and "shady", not to mention basic misunderstandings of economic theory and practice. I never thought, when I first came on board this carnival, that people would self-nominate their own worst work....

Conrad Black: "Let them eat cake" posted at Sox First, in which mega-rich Black compares himself to a French nobleman during the Revolution.

Roy Moore on Keith Ellison posted at another history blog, dismantles, though it's an easy target, blatherings about the "Pilgrim roots" of the US.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of bad history using our carnival submission form.
Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.
Technorati tags: carnival of bad history, blog carnival.

Bad History Time, Part 12

The twelfth installment of the Carnival of Bad History is up at The Axis of Evel Knievel. This month we learn how how many battleships were really sunk at Pearl Harbor, get a nomination for the worst ever portrayal of JFK in a movie, discuss the proper name for the unpleasantness in Iraq, and get a big heapin' helpin' of Pinochet.

What's a Henge?

Natalie Bennett has done a lovely job with The Eleventh Carnival of Bad History. Seems to be a high Stonehenge ratio this month.... Thanks!

The next edition -- Get your Bad Christmas History stories in early! -- will be at Axis of Evel Knievel, which recently hosted the History Carnival. We have a host for January, but it's not too soon to start thinking about hosting next year -- heck, three guys have already started running for president in 2008!

CoBH # 10

The Carnival of Bad History number 10 is now up for your reading pleasure at Archy.

Wouldn't be Bad if...

...I could keep to a schedule. Yes, I'm an historian who can't keep track of dates. I didn't note Miland Brown's bravura hosting of our September carnival, nor did I note the fact that our brave founder, John McKay, aka archy will be hosting our next edition in a little over a week.

It's a Bad history carnival, not a neat, tidy chronology carnival, right?

Carnival #8: Liberty and Power

David Beito of Liberty and Power has Carnival #8 up!

Carnival of Bad History #7

The seventh installment of this now-monthly event is up at Hiram Hover's. Go on over, have a good bad history time!