Rethinking Newsweek
The headline staring at me from the magazine rack as I got milk this morning was, "The Real George Washington". Great, I thought, just what we need is more revisionism - and from journalists no less. One might wonder if Newsweek was trying desperately to make a certain statement after last week's wholly unreal Koran-flushing story. (Indeed, the word appears again at the Newsweek website, where one "web exclusive" is entitled, "The GOP’s Real Judicial Agenda". The author? None other than the liberal hack Eleanor Clift.)
But the magazine's cover story this week is the intro to a book excerpt, not journalism per se. Though the article (continuing the apparent theme) is titled, Rethinking Washington, amazingly the revisionism doesn't appear to be on the part of the book author so much as (you guessed it) the magazine.
The book is "1776", and the author is David McCullough. A storyteller so adept he's made a career out of narrating for PBS (probably the only thing I find watchable on public television), even the article admits (on page 2, of course), McCullough is far from a revisionist. "Some professional historians find McCullough's work too safe and too smooth," they say. Really? Who are these historians who want "dangerous" history, and what the heck does it mean that writing is, "too smooth"? I might understand if the remark was "not safe enough and too smooth", to suggest a revisionism where the contents are being fabricated. But Newsweek is "Real" this week, just offering puff on a book that's going to make McCullough millions, and the headlines apparently imply controversy that isn't there just to sell magazines.
One might say they are fabricating "a new reality". It wouldn't be the first time.
