Paul Buhle Strikes Out Again

Readers at History News Network know of the charges brought against Brown University's Paul Buhle about the accuracy of his scholarship in political history. Over two years ago, Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes accused Buhle of politically motivated dishonesty and obfuscation of the facts in"Radical History" which appeared in theNew Criterion. Klehr and Haynes repeated the charges in their book, In Denial: Historians, Communism & Espionage (2003).

In an article for the OAH Newsletter and republished at HNN, which surveyed reactions among American historians to revelations about the work of Stephen Ambrose, Michael Bellesiles, Joseph Ellis, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Edward A. Pearson (see: footnote #3), I included Klehr's and Haynes's criticism of Buhle's work alongside the charges against the other historians. Understandably, Buhl bristled at the association and replied that he would respond to the charges"in some neutral venue." Naively, perhaps, I took Buhle at his word and looked forward to his doing just that. Eighteen months after that exchange in the OAH Newsletter, either Professor Buhle has failed to find a neutral ground, evidence to refute the accusations, or both.

In the meantime, additional accusations have been lodged against Buhle's scholarship. They might ordinarily not become known to his colleagues in American political history because Buhle has his fingers in many pots. Of over two dozen books he has published, five are on film history and the latest charges are against his scholarship there. Political historians may not read Cineaste, a journal of film studies. Recently, Ron Simon reviewed Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner's Hide in Plain Sight: The Hollywood Blacklistees in Film and Television, 1950-2002. In passing, Simon noted that the book was"often marred by historical inaccuracies." Books are often marred by inaccuracies, but the mere slap on the wrist infuriated one of Cineaste's readers.

"Martin Brady" is the pseudonym of a Cineaste reader who brings the latest charges against Burle's scholarship. In a letter published in Cineaste (Summer 2004, 68-9), Brady refers to Buhle and Wagner as the"demented duo" and cites over five dozen major errors of fact. Evenhandedly, actors, authors, critics, directors, and producers are misidentified. There are errors of character, chronology, genre, and role. Buhle and Wagner reverse the roles played by Sean Connery and Richard Harris in The Molly Maguires. They credit producer Harold Hecht as the screenwriter of The Crimson Pirate. Francis Ford Coppola is credited with producing Finian's Rainbow. And on and on and on."Sometimes," he writes,"every word is wrong." Wrong on the facts, says Brady, Buhle and Wagner offer critical insights that are surreal. He cites Richard Schickel's review for the Los Angeles Times of Buhle and Wagner's earlier book in film history, Radical Hollywood: The Untold Story Behind America's Favorite Movies. The book, Schickel had said, was"a travesty of scholarly and critical standards." Brady might have cited Salon's Michelle Goldberg who held that Radical Hollywood's critical sophistication did not surpass that of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Buhle and Wagner agree with HUAC, said Goldberg, in finding a Commie under every bed, a radical consciousness in every twitch of character, and Marxist propaganda in every turn of plot. The only difference is that Buhle and Wagner see that as a good thing.

"You would think," Brady continued,

that after being publicly humiliated for the egregious shortcomings of their prior abominations that Buhle/Wagner would make some effort at quality control -- but no. Positively defiant in their ignorance -- and arrogance -- they suggest in their introduction this time around that no work as wide-ranging as theirs"in a field with few previous scholars" (if they ever provided such a thing as a bibliography, it would expose that boldfaced lie) could possibly be free of"wild blunders and risible absurdities" -- an extraordinary promise to the reader they then proceed to deliver on to a degree unprecedented in modern publishing.

For all of its errors, Brady charged, Hide in Plain Sight is"almost wholly cribbed from the work of proper writers -- which they try, incompetently, to disguise by sometimes citing the same sources as those other writers." Where other writers offer citations, Buhle and Wagner get them wrong or seem to have made them up.

Hide in Plain Sight is a compendium of misinformation, deliberate falsification, bizarre fantasy, incoherent writing, and fraudulent scholarship that is nothing less than shocking and appalling. Moreover, a simple Internet search on the subject of Paul Buhle reveals him at the center of assorted academic scandals regarding his other outrageous writings and alleged professional misconduct.

Whoever"edited" this latest atrocity and/or accepted it for publication should be called to account - and so should Cineaste for ... persisting in lending credence to these con men by continually drawing respectful attention to their pernicious efforts -- which will poison libraries and corrupt credulous readers and researchers for years to come.

The film histories of Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner, Brady concluded, are"yet more proof of cultural pathology becoming commonplace in journalistic/historical circles." They ought to be"recalled -- and pulped. As for Buhle & Wagner -- it may be that the blacklist is in need of reevaluation, after all."

The author of this attack on Paul Buhle's and Dave Wagner's Hide in Plain Sight explains that"Martin Brady" is"the nom de guerre of a Los Angeles-based screenwriter." He had similarly attacked their Radical Hollywood in Cineaste two years ago. Both Ron Simon, its reviewer of Hide in Plain Sight, and the journal's editors felt that, despite Brady's pseudonymity, his second letter merited publishing because his charges proved to be accurate. The errors he charged against Hide In Plain Sight were only a sample of its"avalanche of mistakes." Simon noted that Buhle and his associates had been" churning out books at an alarming rate.""It is time," he said to them,"for ... you to take a little time, pay a researcher, and get your facts straight." He was equally critical of Brady's pseudonymity and of the farce that replaying Marx v McCarthy made of serious film criticism.

It is conceivable, as Simon suggests, that the most recent charges against Buhle are politically motivated, as he insisted those by Klehr and Haynes were. Buhle cannot dodge these later accusations with that dismissal. Because of Brady's pseudonymity, we cannot evaluate his motivation. Whatever caused him to scrutinize Buhle's work, he found it pitted with blunders at every turn. Buhle's complaint that he is targeted by conservative ideologues is undercut by the fact that both Simon and Cineaste's editors confirm Brady's findings. It is the journal's editors who made the most telling argument. They might simply have refused to publish the letter of a pseudonymous critic, but his litany of charges against Paul Buhle's work was simply too imposing and too accurate to ignore. Most tellingly, they concluded by saying"we feel it is our duty to warn our readers that Buhle and Wagner's latest book, Blacklisted: The Film Lover's Guide to the Hollywood Blacklist (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, also the publisher of Hide in Plain Sight) is likewise awash in significant factual errors and numerous misinterpretations." (Cineaste, Summer 2004, p. 69)

Buhle and Wagner's response to all this criticism appears in Cineaste (Fall 2004, pp. 68-9). Thanking critics for pointing out some typographical errors in Hide in Plain Sight, they say that those errors will be corrected in the paperback edition of the book, as will two or three errors identified by Brady and Simon. Buhle and Wagner challenged 18 of some 60 substantial errors Brady had pointed out, but even the refutations of Brady's charges seems to be pointless. In some cases, they merely repeat that they had written what Brady said that they had written. More importantly, Buhle and Wagner argued that Brady had not engaged their historical interpretation of the films. That might be because he found no significant interpretation of the films that they had not found elsewhere, even in the files of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Despite Buhle's claim to others that Cineaste's editors privately regretted having published Brady's criticism, the editors have no such regret."Cineaste does not consider it petty or flippant," they wrote (Fall 2004, p. 69),"to insist on the accuracy of plot summaries, career summaries, production credits, and attribution of quotes. Nor is poor phrasing or the wholesale misspelling of names and works of art acceptable. The standard is the same as for any other academic discipline."

When I mentioned Paul Buhle's name along with those of Stephen Ambrose, Michael Bellesiles, Joseph Ellis, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Edward A Pearson in the OAH Newsletter two years ago, he had the opportunity to step up to the plate and answer the charges against him. Instead, he has studiously ignored them and continued to crank out deeply flawed work"at an alarming rate." The employers, peers, and publishers of all those others who were similarly accused forced a reckoning with the charges against them. They absorbed severe penalties. Why is Buhle sponsored by the OAH's Distinguished Lecturer Program? When will his employer, Brown University, and his publisher, Palgrave Macmillan, or his editor there force Paul Buhle to face the recklessness of his own work?

Editor's Note: HNN showed Mr. Buhle an advance look at a draft of this article. He declined to offer a response.