Justin Elliott, at
Salon:
A reviewer for the official National Park Service bookstore at Ford’s Theatre has recommended that Bill O’Reilly’s bestselling new book about the Lincoln assassination not be sold at the historic site “because of the lack of documentation and the factual errors within the publication.”
Rae Emerson, deputy superintendent at Ford’s Theatre, which is a national historic site under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, has penned a scathing appraisal of O’Reilly’s “Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever.” In Emerson’s official review, which I’ve pasted below, she spends four pages correcting passages from O’Reilly’s book before recommending that it not be offered for sale at Ford’s Theatre because it is not up to quality standards.
For example, “Killing Lincoln” makes multiple references to the Oval Office; in fact, Emerson points out, the office was not built until 1909.
I think the only appropriate response to this is hysterical laughter. I admit I never figured Bill O'Reilly to be the type to pen an attempted "history" book, primarily because of the general conservative loathing of (1) historians and (2) looking stuff up, but I suppose it saves a step. Glenn Beck had to look far and wide (well, under the floorboards, but the same principle) for a right-wing historian willing to make history sound like a good conservative thinks it should sound, then promoted that historian: Bill here is just cutting out the middleman, and producing the stuff directly. A history book from Bill O'Reilly is considerably less terrifying-sounding than a children's book from Bill O'Reilly (also done), so maybe we should take that as comfort. The "bestselling" part is less comforting.
O'Reilly is going to react to this review of his book the only way he reacts to anything: he's going to declare it a conspiracy against him. Just watch. The National Park Service is trying to dodge selling a book from a brilliant conservative mind, and so are "making excuses" for not wanting Bill's history-bending, make-crap-up tome on their shelves. Because they're liberals, damn it. This proves we shouldn't have a National Park Service at all!
Conservatives have an odd relationship with intellectualism. By "odd" I mean overtly hostile, mostly, but they also take stabs at intellectual endeavors themselves, such has "historian" or "economist" or "climate scientist" or "biologist" or what have you. Because they inherently distrust people with too much knowledge, however, the conservative version is to learn a little and then make the rest up. History is told with an eye for ideological storytelling, but the details of actual history are unimportant, and boring. DNA exists, and evolution exists to a limited extent, but then comes the part that's too hard to understand so it all gets crossed out and replaced with "and then God did some magic that completely ignored all the rest of it because he got bored." Economic expertise is by far the most easily faked; assert whatever ideologically-based plan you want, make up numbers wholesale, and if someone actually follows your advice and it turns out to, say, destroy entire economies, just say they didn't implement it right (that damn George W. Bush. If only he was legitimately conservative, none of this would have happened!)
If the Oval Office didn't exist when Lincoln was president, then shut up you damn hippie. If you think it's important to point it out, then it rises to the level of conspiracy: you are trying to discredit the author by pointing out, well, that stuff that ought to discredit them.
Frankly, however, I don't care that much, because this new half-hearted endumbening of history is precisely what I need to launch my new conservative bestseller. In it, Abe Lincoln teams up with Jesus, who was sent via time-travel device invented by Sarah Palin to free the slaves. Lincoln, Jesus, and Paul Revere singlehandedly turned the tide at Gettysburg, where North and South combined their armies to hand a devastating defeat to Stalin and his communist forces. Then the South freed the slaves even though those assholes in the North really didn't want them to, because in reality the war wasn't about slavery, it was about States' Rights. Then a bunch of other stuff happened, and Narnia was saved forever.
Mark my words, though: conspiracy. It's a conspiracy against Bill O'Reilly. It's always a conspiracy against Bill O'Reilly.
Top Comments for today are here.