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Cliopatria

  • Jan 25, 2005

    David Nyhan, RIP

    by Cliopatria

    David Nyhan, the longtime Boston Globe columnist, has passed away. Growing up in New England, and reading the Globe, I thought of Nyhan as a Mike Royko, Jack Germond, or David Broder type. Actually, I’m lying, and in so doing, giving my younger self far too much credit. Long before I knew about most other columnists, I knew about David Nyhan. He was the quintessential New England pundit – smart, savvy, no-nonsense, and incredibly erudite. He knew politics from his soul. He retired
  • Jan 24, 2005

    Forget the Speech, What About the Parade?

    by Cliopatria

    History will little note or long remember President Bush's inaugural parade. It was neither short nor long enough to be memorable and nothing that happened was particularly noteworthy. B-36 Bombers did not feign an attack on the White House as they did at Truman's 1949 parade. A cowboy did not lasso the president as one did Ike in 1953 (to his great irritation, apparently, his smile notwithstanding). George and Laura did not walk hand-hand down the length of Pennsylvania Avenue as Jimmy and R
  • Jan 24, 2005

    The prof stumbles on the air

    by Cliopatria

    As I've posted over at my own blog, I was a guest on Glenn Sacks radio program yesterday.  I don't know if any of my fellow Cliopatriarchs or their loyal readers have been guests on radio programs, but it's a most unsatisfying experience.   

    Most of us who have spent much time in the classroom are adept at timing our lectures.  For exam

  • Jan 24, 2005

    Just sayin' is all . . .

    by Cliopatria

    To interrupt the heated debate over L'Affaire Reeves:

    Patriots 41 Steelers 27.

    As the Thunderstick just wrote to me in an email:"As they noted on ESPN Radio this morning, two weekends ago we held the best offense in football to 3 points. This week, we rang up 41 on the best defense. Talk about completely humiliating a team's stregths."

    We have the Super Bowl coming up, and I'll admit that the Eagles will scare the heck out of me by then if they do not know, just because that's

  • Jan 24, 2005

    Kikuyu Revisionism

    by Cliopatria

    It's not often that a history dissertation makes national news, but a book which came out of a Ph.D. thesis was featured on Weekend All Things Considered yesterday. Caroline Elkins, assistant professor at my alma mater department (which has hired and even tenured some fantastic female historians in the last few years), did her

  • Jan 23, 2005

    Conservatives on Bush's Inaugural ...

    by Cliopatria

    On Richard Jensen's Conservativenet, there's been considerable comment about Bush's inaugural address and reactions to it. Matthew Richter, a graduate student in comparative literature and intellectual history at Columbia, was most critical."Given that his 1st Inaugural was so good," said Richer,"I was surprised that this speech was so bad, even occasionally inscrutable. Its religiosity lacked any sense of modesty. It was messia
  • Jan 23, 2005

    Blogging: Community and Consciousness ...

    by Cliopatria

    I'm obviously intrigued by the virtual community and communities created in the blogosphere. I think that I found one here. For others, it appears to offer the opportunity to extend real community into a virtual future. Two small examples of blogs that seem to serve that function are Big Tent and Outside Report. In both cases, a group of friends near the end of their time together in school
  • Jan 22, 2005

    For your convenience

    by Cliopatria

    Cliopatria's History Blogroll has now been divided into categories. Roughly. This means that I have now read, at least once, every blog on our blogroll. Comments, suggestions (and we're always looking for new blogs), complaints and compliments may be registered here. They may be ignored.

    A thought, after cataloging: I was struck, actually, by the very large number of"academic lives" (which is, I grant you, a catch-all category),"

  • Jan 22, 2005

    Lon Hamby, the Inauguration and the Rebunk Ethos

    by Cliopatria

    Rebunk has been quiet on the inauguration front. I can only speak for myself, but I can guess why. What is there for us to say? Those of us (yours truly) who do not like the President but who do not loathe him thought it a pretty pedestrian and banal speech. Those of us (the other guys) who like but do not love the President I’ll guess thought it was fine but not great. I doubt any of us expect for this speech to be quoted twenty years down the road.

    Not surprisingly, Alonzo Hamby has the

  • Jan 22, 2005

    Rematch?

    by Cliopatria

    Why was there no Rocky Balboa-Apollo Creed III? Creed by all accounts had the second fight won, he refused just to dance out the 15th round, and he still was clearly in astounding shape. Why does Rocky III, then, begin with a montage of Rocky pounding tomato cans? I know they have their private sparring rematch at the end of III, and I know Apollo makes an ill-fated comeback against Ivan Drago, but why did a competitive soul like Creed not clamor for a rematch?
  • Jan 22, 2005

    Keepin' My Lefties straight and My Righties honest ...

    by Cliopatria

    So, Tim Burke and I are walking up the street from the 2nd Annual Banquet of Cliopatriarchs toward the Convention Center in Seattle. And there's this person pamphleting the passers-by – most of whom, at that point, are historians rushing to their next session. Burke dismisses him with one of those Swattie moves."LaRouchite," he says to me. Sounded likely, because the LaRouchies were working the corner ac
  • Jan 21, 2005

    Numbers Aren't My Strength ...

    by Cliopatria

    I managed to avoid college math by taking a course in logic. Like Maureen Dowd says of Condoleezza Rice, numbers aren't my strength. Dowd concludes:
    It is puzzling that if you add X (no exit strategy) to Y (Why are we there?) you get W²: George Bush's second inauguration.
    At Condi's hearing, she justified the Bush administra
  • Jan 21, 2005

    And the Super Bowl Teams Will Be . . .

    by Cliopatria

    . . . I'm not gonna tell you right away.

    As my buddy Rob (Many of you know him from the Red Sox Diaries as"Thunderstick") just said to me in an email, let's start with the JV Game first.

    The Eagles versus the Falcons game may be fun to watch. Dunn, Vick, and Duckett, now known as the DVD boys, may run rampant. Vick may (I daresay will) do something that will make your jaw drop. The Falcons have the most sacks in the league, yet they also give up a whole lot of passing yards.

  • Jan 21, 2005

    Keeping our Eyes on "Eyes on the Prize"

    by Cliopatria

    I love the Eyes on the Prize video series. It is incredibly vivid, utilizes some of the most astounding footage from the civil rights era, and Julian Bond had the perfect voice for the narrative. Sure, it hews too much to a chronological structure that most historians of the topic have broadened significantly. The second series (1990) helps to remedy this by taking the study all the way to the 1980s, though it probably becomes ma bit diffuse by that point. But on the whole, on my list of
  • Jan 21, 2005

    Pardon My Fore! ...

    by Cliopatria

    On 24 March 1892, a Scotch golfer by the name of Alexander J. Gibson fell into a deep sleep. He didn't wake up until 25 March 2000. The world into which he woke was transformed by flat-screened television, bullet trains, women's liberation, digital watches, and a world of leisure for golf. At least, that's the story told in Golf in the Year 2000; or What We Are Coming To. The Victorian science fiction novel was written by Jay McCullough in 1892 and published under the pseudonym J.A.C.K. T
  • Jan 20, 2005

    Bush Like Woodrow Wilson?

    by Cliopatria

    Just watched President Bush deliver his second inaugural address.

    Bob Dallek on NBC said it was like listening to Woodrow Wilson.

    But if so, it was the Wilson who took America to war in his second term, not Wilson at his inauguraion. Wilson at that time was still keeping America out of war and not prepared to indulge in the soaring rhetoric that came to define his presidency.

    If you ask me the inaugural address Bush's sounded like was FDR's in 1941.
  • Jan 20, 2005

    In Memorium

    by Cliopatria

    George Edward Chamberlain (b. 11 July 1917; d. 19 January 2005)

    My father died yesterday. He was 88. The probable cause of death was an aneurism. He owned a rare bookstore in Scottsdale AZ called The Antiquarian (which will continue, by the way. He arranged for that.). He had been at work yesterday, in good spirits. He was having dinner with a companion. Had a bit of stomach pain. And died.

    This is a history blog, so I justify my highly personal intrusion by min
  • Jan 20, 2005

    Inaugural Zombie Error

    by Cliopatria

    There are myths which can't be killed: Zombie Errors. One of them made it into the President's second Inaugural address:
    When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public and the Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, a witness said, It rang as if it meant something.
    The problem with this, of course, is that the Liberty Bell wasn't involved and the story is jus