Fact & Fiction

The History Bush Got Wrong on His Trip

by David Greenberg

After World War I, the political right in Germany developed a myth called the "stab in the back" theory to explain its people's defeat. Though military leaders had helped negotiate the war's end, they fixed blame on civilian leaders—especially Jews, socialists, and liberals—for"betraying" the brave German fighting men. This nasty piece of propaganda was later picked up by

Filibustering Judicial Appointments Is Unprecedented?

by David Greenberg

To justify banning the use of filibusters in judicial nomination debates, Republicans in the Senate are claiming support from history. Until now, say Republicans such as Sen. Jon Kyl and former Sen. Bob Dole, no one has ever used filibusters to block nominees to the federal courts. Because Democrats have broken an unwritten rule, their logic goes, Republicans are being forced to change written ones. But the charge that filibustering judicial appointments is unprecedented is false. Indeed, it

George Washington’s Slave Child?

by Ed Pompeian

Interview with Linda Allen Bryant“Volumes tell how he fathered a nation. Only iUniverse let me tell how he fathered a slave,” proclaimed a two-page advertisement that appeared in the New York Times Book Review, on Sunday, February 20. The advertisement promoted Linda Allen Bryant’s I Cannot Tell A Lie

Two of the Famous Stories About Woodrow Wilson -- And They're Not True

by Thomas Fleming

Two years ago, when I decided to write a book on the American experience in World War I, I thought I had discovered the best opening for an historical narrative I had seen in forty years of writing books.

Was George Washington Really an Anti-Imperialist?

by William Marina

John Nichols has just compiled a volume entitled, Against the Beast: A Documentary History of American Opposition to Empire (Nation Books), coupled with a Nation Online article, "The Anti-Imperialist GW," the "GW" referring to George Washington.While it is important to remind the American people at this juncture in our history, with a number of pundits and policymakers

How the Bush Justice Department Is Rewriting History to Satisfy the NRA

by Saul Cornell

The struggle over ownership of guns in the United States has taken a dramatic turn. In the midst of the winter holidays, when you could bet that everyone's mind was elsewhere, the U. S. Department of Justice decided to revise the Second Amendment. This latest example of politically motivated historical revisionism completes the task begun by John Ashcroft in 2001 in his infamous letter to the National Rifle Association, which cast aside a hundred years of Justice

2 Whoppers Made by President Bush in Past State of the Union Addresses

NOTE: This article was first published January 20, 2004. President Bush has made two serious misstatements of fact in his State of the Union addresses. Iraq Sought Uranium in Africa (2003) The more widely known mistake was the president's claim in 2003 that"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." As Bush subsequently acknowledged, there was no evidence that Iraq had sought or obtained ura

Did the WW II Memorial Makers Slight God?

by Ed Pompeian

A bad combination of a flawed memory of a great speech and an ideological ax to grind has contributed to the birth of a myth concerning the National World War II Memorial and a quote from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Day of Infamy" speech. The email focuses on the words inscribed in stone on the Pacific side of the World War II Memorial from FDR's famous December 8, 1941 war message to Congress. The claim is that the builders of the monument "left out

Media Watch: Text of the So-Called Lovenstein Institute News Release “Intelligence Study”

by HNN Staff

Editor's Note: Below is the text of a hoax. To find out about this hoax click here. In a report published Monday, July 9, 2001, the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania detailed its findings of a four month study of the intelligence quotient of President George W. Bush. Since 1973, the Lovenstein Institute has published its research to the education community on each new president, which includ

Why the "60 Minutes" Story on Emmett Till Was a Disappointment

by David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito

In the wake of memogate,"60 Minutes" has done it again. Sunday’s report on the killing of Emmett Till was an example of slipshod and misleading journalism. The producers have few excuses in this case. They did it with their eyes open. They were warned not just once but several times that their forthcoming report might contain inaccuracies. In a rush to air the story, however, they plowed ahead, instead of fol

The Cuban Missile Crisis Myth You Probably Believe

by Sheldon M. Stern

Debunking the Trollope Ploy narrative propagated by RFK.

Why President Bush Should Stick to Politics and Leave History to the Historians

by Bernard A. Weisberger

President Bush would be well advised not to give off-handed opinions based on American history, which is obviously unfamiliar territory for him. In Friday night’s debate he declared that he wouldn’t appoint judges who put their personal opinions ahead of “strict interpretation” of the Constitution. As an example he cited “the Dred Scott case, which is where judges years ago said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights. That&rsquo

Kerry Got that de Gaulle Story Half-Right

by Aaron Erlich

Note from the Editor: This article is based, in part, on information graciously provided by the H-Diplo historians who answered our request for fast help. In the first presidential debate John Kerry argued that America has lost credibility in the eyes of its allies. In the context of a controversial call for a “global litmus test,” Kerry claimed that whereas now America would fail such a litmus test, in the past America would have passed. To illustrate Amer

Did States Restrict the Voting Rights of Felons on Account of Racism?

by Alexander Keyssar

On September 17, Brent Staples published an editorial in the New York Times sharply criticizing the felon disfranchisement laws that will keep as many as five million persons from voting in this year’s election. Pointing to the fact that many other nations permit ex-felons (or even those in prison) to vote, he understandably asked why America treats “ex-felons so much worse than other democracies.” The answer he offers, attributed to “legal scholars,” is “the racist backlash in the South during Reconstruction.”Staples is not the only person to put forward the view that the felon disfranchisement laws originated in efforts to deprive newly enfranchised freedmen of the vote after the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. I too have heard this claim stated by legal scholars and by voting rights activists, on many occasions. I’m also in complete agreement with Staples’s political perspective: I do not think that any ex-felons (or even those serving prison terms) should be disfranchised, and I think that these laws have often been used with racist, as well as partisan, intent.

Why the Media Should Stop Paying Attention to the New Book that Defends Japanese Internment

by Greg Robinson

Several years ago, I wrote a book on the decisions behind the mass removal and confinement of the Japanese Americans, commonly (if inaccurately), known as the internment, and in particular on the role of President Franklin Roosevelt. I based it on several years of research in a number of archives around the country. The book was published under the title,

So Let Me Get This Straight: Michelle Malkin Claims to Have Rewritten the History of Japanese Internment in Just 16 Months?

by Eric Muller

In her prefatory note to readers of her new book In Defense of Internment, Michelle Malkin says the following about the book's goal: This book defends both the evacuation and relocation of ethnic Japanese from the West Coast (the so-called "Japanese American internment"), as well as the internment of enemy aliens, Japanese and non-Japanese alike, during World War II. My work is by no means all-encompassing; my aim is to provoke a debate on a sacrosanct

Why Dick Cheney Deserves an "F" in History

by Robert E. May

In a critique of John Kerry's presidential candidacy, Vice President Dick Cheney invoked historical memory to mock Kerry's call for a "more sensitive" war on terrorism. Cheney told a Dayton, Ohio, gathering on Aug. 12 that none of America's victories in war can be attributed to "being sensitive." To support his point, he summoned some of the heavy guns of America's wartime leadership: Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Generals U.S. Grant, Dwight D

The Myth of the Media's Role in Watergate

by Mark Feldstein

Thirty years ago, on August 9, 1974, the Washington Post ran what was then the largest front-page headline in its history: "Nixon Resigns." That date marked both the end of Richard Nixon's presidency and the beginning of three decades of debate about what role journalism played in uncovering the Watergate scandal that forced Nixon from office – and how Watergate, in turn, influenced journalism itself. Did media muckraking actually bring down

The Leading Religion Writer in Canada ... Does He Know What He's Talking About?

by W. Ward Gasque

Tom Harpur began his career as an Anglican priest and professor of New Testament at Wycliffe College, Toronto. Just over thirty years ago, he moved from academia into journalism. Today, he is perhaps the leading religion writer in Canada. The Pagan Christ is the story of his discovery of the writings of one Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1880-1963) and two earlier writers (Godfrey Higgins [1771-1834] and Gerald Massey [1828-1907]), who argued that all of the essential ideas of both Judaism and Ch

Why is Richard Clarke Seething?

by Judith Apter Klinghoffer

Yes, I know the conventional wisdom: He is a disgruntled employee. After years of dealing directly with the president, he was forced to make his case to mere deputies. He did not get the job he wanted. He wants to promote his book. All that may be true but the man I watched testify to the 9/11 commission seemed much more enraged by the Bush administration's decision to get rid of Saddam than by 9/11. Nor is he alone in his rage. Determined to understand, I bought the book and discovered that