Week of June 23, 2008

An anonymous emailer offers this answer to andrew’s question, “why has labor history declined so much as a subfield? I’m not sure I’ve seen a satisfying explanation….”

Labor history suffers because unions are currently moribund. No strikes=no labor history. You can try to write a history of work, but the absence of conflict drives away the audience.

Historians are now thoroughly middle class. Many of them not only don’t care about working people, they secretly distrust labor unions and dislike the white working-class men who have historically run them.

Labor history attracts ideologues who are attracted to struggle for its own sake. They have an embarassing crush on the tiny, widely hated, IWW because Big Bill Haywood was RADICAL, DUDE!!! This kind of silliness can tend to drive serious people away.

Labor history is no worse off than any number of fields. Given the explosion in the number of books, genres, subjects, and methods, there is no center. You often hear political, diplomatic, business, and economic historians complain that “social historians” have blackballed them. But you know what? Women’s historians have the same bitterness. Their work is also largely ignored. Everybody feels unloved.

So, what attracts the recognition of a wide audience? Race, race, race. It’s the only issue that really resonates with the boomers who currently run the profession.

Whether andrew will find that satisfying, I don’t know. It’s certainly vigorous.

No, we can’t: Sen. Obama retires his weird fake Presidential seal. The campaign blog at “Advertising Age” makes the inevitable comparison to RN’s short-lived White House guard uniforms. It should come as something of a relief to Republicans that Obama’s campaign isn’t perfect.

Another continuity between Reaganism and Nixonism was suggested to me by your book [The Age of Reagan], specifically your masterful chapter on Iran-Contra, which made me wonder how Reagan avoided having to resign in disgrace like Richard Nixon. The Age of Reagan suggests an answer. Nixon tried to wriggle out of Watergate by manipulating the press, distracting the public with Cold War pieties, playing the naïve innocent, and sometimes lying outright--but he failed. You show Reagan deploying all these tactics, too, but with far greater skill than Richard Nixon.

On June 21st, 1789 New Hampshire ratified the United State Constitution. It was the ninth state to do so. Article VII of the Constitution states, in full, “The ratification of the conventions of nine states, shall be sufficient for the establishment of this constitution between the states so ratifying the same.” June 21st is therefore, whatever a bunch of crazed July 4th partisans might want to tell you, the birthday of the United States as opposed to the date, give or take, on which a motley collection of colonies declared independence from Great Britain.