What’s the Appeal of Angry, Polarized Media?

Tom Jacobs, writing for Pacific Standard, states:

As we embark on yet another political crisis, many Americans will be getting their information from sources with a strong ideological bias. While this is hardly a new phenomenon, the proliferation of cable networks and websites that refract the news through a left- (or right-) leaning lens has made it easier than ever to avoid opinions that differ with your own.

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Asymmetrical Bias

Patriots and Peoples appears to be a neglected blog. Posts have been rare the past two years. Nonetheless, this blog continues to attract readers on a daily basis. I am pleased with the quality of many of the posts here. While I realize that a few are empty filler, and a few others offer wrong-headed analysis or compound errors with error. When I find the errors in my own work, I correct them.

Patriots and Peoples is a work in progress that primarily documents my reading and rereading of two biased history texts. The authors of these texts do not pretend that their work is objective. Both books are explicitly partisan.

Howard Zinn (1922-2010) became explicitly anti-war following his experiences as a bombardier during the Second Wold War. Zinn described his own political orientation as "something of an anarchist, something of a socialist, Maybe a Democratic Socialist" (Glavin and Morse). A People's History of the United States is the work that made Zinn famous. He revised it principally through expansion, not through correction. The work begins with an explanation and defense of the author's biases.

Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen explicitly side with the Right-wing of today's Republican Party.


References

Paul Glavin and Chuck Morse, "War is the Health of the State: An Interview with Howard Zinn," Perspectives on Anarchist Theory 7 (Spring 2003).

Significance

Max Euwe (1901-1981) was a mathematician and the fifth official World Chess Champion. The beginning of his now classic text, The Development of Chess Style (1968)* has a assertion concerning the nature of history and the centrality of questions of significance that is as terse as any I have seen in the writings of professional historians.

To suppose that the history of any subject should be just a collection of independent facts is a serious misapprehension. They may, it is true, make interesting reading; but they may also have little significance for the subject in question. "Introduction," n.p.

*Originally published in Dutch as Veldheersschap op de Vierenzestig (1966)

I Am Joaquin 1969

In commemoration of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed 2 February 1848, a link to a video produced by Luis Valdez in 1969. I Am Joaquin (1969) - Video Dailymotion

Sam Wineburg on A People's History

Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States has few peers among contemporary historical works. With more than 2 million copies in print, A People's History is more than a book. It is a cultural icon. "You wanna read a real history book?" Matt Damon asks his therapist in the 1997 movie Good Will Hunting. "Read Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States. That book'll ... knock you on your ass."

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Where Howard Zinn's "A People's History" Falls Short | History News Network