Blogs > Cliopatria > As I Was Saying ...

Feb 15, 2004

As I Was Saying ...


by Cliopatria


As I was saying, before Jonathan dropped eight and Oscar dropped seven intelligent paragraphs on my singleton, the lively discussion initiated by KC on tensions between political and social history is carried on by a very thoughtful post by Invisible Adjunct and a discussion generated by her invisibility.
[Memo to self: create all the verbiage you want late at night, but get your butt out of bed in the a. m. to post it while other night owls west of Appalachia still slumber.]

The other interesting piece you should look at is Ed Cohn's commentary at Gnostical Turpitude on the fiasco at Amazon.com's Canadian website which accidentally exposed the fact that John Lott is far from the only writer who has been posting good reviews of his own books under false names at Amazon. Cohn links to an interesting piece about the world of Amazon.com reviewing by Rick Perlstein and a hilarious collection of reviews at Amazon World.

Memo to long lines of Republican historians outside Unemployment Offices across the nation: Duke may not want you, but FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, seeks to hire a President and, ten years after the position was terminated in controversy, the United States House of Representatives announces a search to hire a Historian. Like Duke (wink, wink, nudge), hiring authorities at both places are probably more interested in your skills than in your political affiliations.

Finally, I want to give a belated welcome to Scott McLemee, a prize winning writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education, to Cliopatria's blogroll. He is gathering a whole archive of his work at his website and it is already very rich. Scott reminds us of the official Valentine's Day slogan of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization:

Workers and Oppressed People, Unite to Make Comrade Valentine's Day a Joyous Holiday of Proletarian Class Love and Militant Struggle! Decisively Defeat the Sinister Schemes of the Bush/Cheney Gangster Clique to Thwart the Romantic Aspirations of the L/G/B/T/Q masses! Eternal Glory to Comrade Valentine!

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More Comments:

Scott R. McLemee - 5/12/2004

I've only just now seen these comments. I'm very sorry that the big words caused Grant W. Jones such a fright.

As for the comments about my perhaps occupying an Alger Hiss, Corliss Lamont, or Angela David chair of anything, that amply demonstrates how much difficulty with reading Mr. Jones in fact has. My politics are anti-Stalinist. Indeed, an article on the plagiarism of Philip Foner, a radical labor historian, that I published last year has caused at least some leftists to denounce me as a conservative.

Which only goes to show that Mr. Jones is not the only person to demonstrate the difference between technical and genuine literacy.

Ralph E. Luker - 2/16/2004

Right, Oscar. It never occurred to me -- I doubt that it occurred to McLemee -- that someone might take it seriously.

Oscar Chamberlain - 2/16/2004

While I know no one in the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, I have known a few radical socialists. Contrary to popular perception, they did have a sense of humor.

And I do think someone was giggling when he/she/L/G/B/T/Q penned "Comrade Valentine."

Ralph E. Luker - 2/15/2004

Read some of Scott's other work. He's a very fine writer and there's something there for almost anyone. Actually, one of the fine experiences I had as an undergraduate at Duke was a symposium about a "post-modern world." It was long before "post-modern" became so overworked and tiresome. But surely a prefix which simply signals "after the fact" ("post-war" for example) isn't in and of itself tiresome.

Grant W Jones - 2/15/2004

Worse than that, I find Post-anything pretensions boring in the extreme. Enjoy.

Ralph E. Luker - 2/15/2004

Mr. Jones, You seem skeptical about Scott's work. Have I misunderstood? You find him vaguely subversive or threateningly radical? Tell us more.

Grant W Jones - 2/15/2004

I'm eagerly awaiting some essays from a "poststructralist" Marxist based on his recent readings on "things from the Satre/Camus break." After which I hope he will treat us to some eye-opening views on "postpositivist-realist theory of identity." That should be great fun.

Maybe Scott should apply for the "Alger Hiss Chair in Social Studies" at Bard College or the "Corliss Laumont Chair of Civil Liberties" at Columbia. Does the University of California still have its Angela Davis Chair? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.