Some Noted Things ...
Wherein I Acknowledge Some Things I'd Rather Not: Cynthia Tucker has a very tough op-ed in yesterday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution,"Rescue Legacy from Family." Tucker outlines the shameful mismanagement and neglect of the King Center by the King family over the last twenty years. While the buildings, which include the most important archive of civil rights era documents, continue to deteriorate, the family-controlled board pays Martin Luther King's younger son, Dexter, $188,000 a year (including benefits) as chief operating officer of the Center, even though he lives in Malibu, California, pursues the illusion that he is an actor, and rarely even visits Atlanta.
Wherein I Do Some Cheerleading for Greg Robinson: Readers of Cliopatria witness our engagements with the philistines fairly regularly. Greg Robinson told us about one of his encounters just the other day. Well, Philis replied with her own rather jaundiced accounts of it here and here. It's a rare moment when, with all the evidence at hand, you can judge for yourselves. Ladies and gentlement: Greg Robinson and Michelle Malkin at Emory. You go, Greg!
Wherein I Praise Tim Burke on Libertarianism: I recommend Tim Burke's work to you so often that I describe myself as a shameless Tim Burke-sycophant. His rich, dense prose is almost mesmerizing and so I recommend his posts at Easily Distracted almost routinely. Burke's latest,"The Idiot God", ponders the appeal of libertarianism in America. It's the thoughtful, provocative Burke that we know so well.
Wherein I Grudgingly Mention Her Randiness: Burke's reflections on libertarianism's appeal in contemporary America are well read in conjunction with two of the latest contributions to the Rand centennial:
Scott McLemee,"Among the Randroids," Inside Higher Ed, 10 Feb.; and
Cathy Young,"Ayn Rand at 100," Reason, March 2005.
Wherein I Give Up on Allen Weinstein: In April and, again, in July, I joined Jon Weiner and many other historians who raised questions about the nomination of Allen Weinstein as Archivist of the United States. Then and now, his track record of refusing to make his unique archival research notes available to other researchers strikes me as exactly the disposition that one does not want in a national archivist. Long ago, Perry Miller set the gold standard for historians by depositing his research notes for The New England Mind in the archives at Harvard and referencing them in the annotations in his published books for other researchers to follow his trail. That is an essential way in which writing history becomes a collaborative enterprise.
Unfortunately, we've become accustomed to being off the gold standard in America for a long time. Any challenge by Senate Democrats to the Bush administration's forcing of John Carlin out as Archivist a year and a half early was already compromised by President Clinton's appointment of Carlin in the first place. Other than political connections, the former governor of Kansas brought few qualifying credentials to the National Archives in the first place. On the face of it, Weinstein appears to be much better qualified to hold the position than Carlin did. Yet, there lurks the deep suspicion that the Bush administration was rushing to replace Carlin with a more malleable Archivist with his own track record that delights in covering his own trail.
Over on the HNN mainpage, Rick Shenkman breaks new ground on the Weinstein nomination with a piece about Weinstein's brief tenure at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It's a story that got no attention in the Senate hearings on Weinstein's nomination. Even if it had, it seems unlikely that it would have made a substantial difference. Despite close and telling questioning in the Senate committee hearings (see, particularly Senator Durkin's questioning at 53:00-60:00), Weinstein's nomination was sent to the Senate floor without a recorded vote in committee. Weinstein's confirmation by the full Senate seems inevitable. Thanks to Rick Perlstein for the tip.