Well, now I’m confused. It turns out that the historicity of the Bush years can be reasonably called into question.
Of course as every high-school student knows, almost all of the original digital and analog records of the Guild of Pundits during that period were destroyed during the Great Discontinuity — the early 21st century’s Elite media’s last ditch effort to evade accountability for their crimes. And what few fragments we do have from that time come down to us filtered through the fun-house mirrors of surviving backups of the “fuckingblogs”.
In particular, one figure stands out as implausible: David Brooks.
And as the original events have been sifted and re-sifted by popular culture, fan fiction and hermeneutics, the academic world has more-or-less evenly divided itself into two, irreconcilable orthodoxies — the Historical Brooks versus the Fictional Brooks — each of which finds strong support for its own theory in the literature itself.
Based on the radically divergent accounts of writings attributed to him during a single decade, roughly half of all professional media historians — The Historicals — subscribe to theory that “David Brooks” in an amalgamation of several real but wildly different people. The other half — The Fictionals — maintain that since so much of what he was alleged to have written was so obviously false and absurd, “David Brooks” had to be a literary contrivance: something analogous to Poe’s nameless recounter of “The Telltale Heart” or Greta Van Sustern — a fictional narrator whose own pathological unreliability is integral to the story.
Both sides have good arguments.
Obviously, (the Historicals conclude) like “Alan Smithee” or “Tom Freed Man”, “David Brooks” must have been some sort of collective pen-name behind which dregs of the Punditry Guild could shout all kinds of shameful craziness while avoiding the professional consequences of saying remarkably stupid thing in public.
But (the Fictionals rejoin very effectively) it is the very ludicrousness of “David Brooks”‘s “opinions” which argue most strongly against it being the name — or pseudonym — of any real person or persons. Consider that, in order to make the argument that the United States government is incapable of competently operating a national health-care system with mandates, “David Brooks” simply ignores the fact that the United States government of that era was already operating a very efficient and beloved national health-care system (with mandates!) which was known as Medicare and, at the time, had over 49 million beneficiaries.
I don’t know how to decide. This might help: a fellow atheist and trained historian, Eddie Marcus, contacted me and offered to explain how historians make decisions about the historicity of a different weird, unbelievable person, Jesus. I’m willing to listen — it might help me make up my mind about this bizarre “David Brooks” character — so we’re doing a hangout on Wednesday at 7am Central time, or 8pm Perth time (the hour is a compromise to find a reasonable time when both of us are awake). I’d say “Join us”, but I think that’s only going to reasonably apply to Australians and Asians. So, “Join us, Australians! Half of us will be speaking English properly!” The rest of you can tune in after it’s all over.
How I long for the days when Bush could legitimately be called “the worst president in American history.”
It’s fascinating to look into these ‘historical’ figures and see if they really existed as presented. One of the interesting things about our new-fangled digital age is how you can watch this play out in real time unlike in the past where it might take later generations to piece together the real story.
I’m more familiar with this in the tech world, in particular as regards Robert X. Cringley. It’s a fascinating how a figure can be built in media that people take as ‘real’, even though he’s just a pen name for one or more writers. The Macalope is another example. The interesting thing about studying this in tech is that you can track the development of a ‘historical’ figure without the attendant calls to divinity or partisanship that you encounter when studying religious or political figures.
Sounds like someone is doing a cross-over between Biblical scholarship and “Digging the Weans”.
@1, I don’t know. I still think that James Buchanan retains that title, although the incumbent is making a solid run to win that title.
While that is indeed true and medicaid is also rather efficient, one can hold the counterexample of the Veterans Administration for programs with less efficiency. That, due to 30+ years of budget cuts, resulting in being disastrously understaffed, cuts which continued through the first two years of the “Global War on Terror” and subsequent farming out patients to well heeled private practice consortiums.
Still, the United States of America has long had and retains the absolute best government that money can buy.
@4,
I take it you were inferring tongue in cheek the unstated ending of your comment ‘by vested interests for their benefit only.’ As shown by the 1 trillion dollar tax cut for corporations, which is going to increase the deficit and increase calls for cuts in welfare to ‘balance the books’?
Speaking as a Brit, I feel I may have to reserve judgement on this.
Which kind of Btit? West country? Cockney? Or perhaps a Mancunian, a Brummie, a Scouser,a Geordie, or a Scotsman? As I understand it, only 3% of Brits speak R.P.
Only 3% of British people might speak in RP as our normal accent, but thanks to our vast and overweening social privilege we have managed to classify the ghastly warbles, shrieks and gurgling sounds that the other 97% make when trying to speak as animal noises.
@5, tongue in cheek indeed, my closure should’ve pegged the sarcasm meter. ;)
For, alas, that is entirely true. Even during the Robber Baron era, at least lip service was paid to the good of the nation.
But worse, we now have a hostile nation undermining our government and that government is celebrating those efforts, that only a generation ago would’ve been considered casus belli.
Too true I’ll be speaking English properly, PZ. Despite being the proud holder of an Australian passport and several Socceroos shirts, my birth accent (genetically poured into me by God himself) is pure RP, but, alas, with the short ‘a’ which betrays my origins north of Watford.
So would’ve been the Little Green Men in the Crimea, but you can’t wage war against a nuclear power.
@#6, Rich Woods
English has no recognized authority, the way French does, and therefore the only reasonable way to define correct pronunciation is by number of native speakers. This being the case, it is not the case the Americans do not speak English well, but rather that the English speak American in such an archaic and hard-to-understand dialect.