8/18/2005

Current affairs = history, dontcha know?

History News Network has launched a clean (if colorless) redesign. Part of the newness involves the launch of a do-it-yourself blog, a "group" effort with open enrollment called "Your Take."
Your Take is designed to give you--our readers--a national platform for your views. You do not have to register to post a blog entry. Just click below where indicated and post your entry. Be sure to include a title. And don't forget to write your name if you wish to be known.
How easy is that? Very easy. And yet not easy enough because the last time anyone posted there (as of this writing) was four days ago. And as to quality, the material is profoundly depressing, the kind of second tier letter-to-the-editor that political cranks delight in: "Iran and GWB," "Cindy Sheehan," blah blah blah.

You wonder who on earth confuses the noise and bustle of editorial pages with historical discourse; the answer comes to us in another new HNN blog called POTUS featuring academic presidential historians. Welcome to a site with zero historical perspective, jam packed with would be journalist-commentators: "more sheehan, more theatre," "silence on social security," "watching [Gov.] Mitt [Romney]" - clearly, these are people spending far too much time ingesting news and internalizing the associated party politics.

This is anti-history, and quite a pure form of it.

Perhaps it serves a purpose to gather political obsessives in one place. Good bit of self labeling happens and that is useful. But take down the "history" sign.

If you feel like showing these monomaniacs what history blogging is, go to it at Your Take, and thank HNN for a chance to get your feet wet in blogging. I may join in myself, if it helps a corrective momentum.

On the other hand, "sitting tight" with a good book, reading more, and then having a good ponder works just as well for me. And probably you too.