"Thanks for the info on your blog, but . . ."

Well, you cannot please everyone! From the morning electronic mailbox comes this missive:

Dr. Cebula: 

I found the "Patrick Henry Said What?" entry on your blog while searching for the origin of the attributed Patrick Henry quote about the Constitution not being an instrument. Thank you for exposing the error of this attribution. I teach AP U.S. History, and I am always on the lookout for information exposing erroneous historical claims. 

The food was terrible and
the portions too small.

But I wonder about your hit-and-run attack on the Tea Party. What is the reason for that? Are Tea Party members unique or even unusual in misquoting (and misspelling, ah, that was a nice touch!) the Founders, Framers, et. al.? I think that they are not, any more than those who assert that the Constitution contains the phrase "separation of church and state" in an effort to rebut religious objections to abortion, or the congressman who referred to the "Good and Plenty Clause" of the Constitution to--if I remember correctly--justify ObamaCare. Seems like a cheap shot to to me. 

Maybe you fallen victim to some cultural/geographical snobbery too, although why anyone teaching in Cheney, Washington, population 10,590, would feel superior by reason of location is beyond me. (Perhaps there are cultural wonders in Spokane of which I am unaware.) But, in your "No, You Cannot be a Professor" entry, you note that it's not worth pursuing a history Ph.D., because any professorships would only be available "in some part of the country usually only seen on American Pickers [sic]." Another cheap shot? 

I certainly am not urging you to suppress your political or cultural thoughts or biases. But I think that it would be more honest of you to just do an open and fully developed hit piece on grass-roots conservative political movements, or on the cultural shortcomings of "flyover country," rather than to take snarky little shots in the course of discussing other subjects. 

Sincerely, 

John D. Unimpressed 
Major, U.S. Army, Ret. 
Somewhere, Oklahoma

John, for all I know you may be correct. Certainly with as few readers as I have for this blog, I should not risk alienating any. Let me explain where I was coming from when I wrote those bits.

Wrong on two levels

The Patrick Henry post was aiming for bigger game than debunking a spurious quote from one Founder, the idea was to set out a procedure for fact-checking internet quotes. Near the end of the piece I wrote that "I could have performed this exercise with hundreds of other "quotes" from the Founders that you see plastered on bumper stickers and misspelled on Tea Party signs," my only mention of that grass-roots Koch brothers run political
group. Col. Unimpressed protests that the Tea Partiers are not "unique or even unusual in misquoting ... the Founders."

Actually, they are. In fact there is a whole, award-winning book by Jill Lepore devoted to the Tea Party misinterpretation of the American Revolution. Or just Google about for Tea Party "quotes" pages and fact check them. Here is the first one I found. I checked the first five--four of them are made up.

I have never in my life heard anyone claim that the Constitution contained the phrase "separation of church and state" (though it certainly does establish that principle, and the phrase is an actual quote from Jefferson) or a "Good and Plenty clause." The left has its wackaloons, to be sure, but fabricating "quotes" from the Founders is a right-wing phenomena.

Founders edition

As for the other charge, of elitism and snobbery against the heartland, I don't think that is particularly valid. My post discouraging students to try to become history professors was not to save them from the imagined indignity of living in the Midwest, a place I happily called home for a dozen years while teaching at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin. I pointed out that there are no jobs, that a PhD can take ten years, that there are enormous opportunity costs in starting your career a decade after your peers, that a PhD in history can leave a person prepared to do little outside of academia, and that the pay for professors is terrible.

I also wanted to point out that having any chance at all for a tenure track job necessitates being willing to take a job anywhere at all. So I wrapped up my arguments with this line:

"Frankie! Seen a tenure-track job in here?"

"If you go on for a PhD, instead you will find yourself with student loan payments equivalent of a home mortgage but no home (and no equity), no retirement savings, and banking on the thin chance of landing a job in some part of the country usually seen on
American Pickers."

Dear Readers, I submit that a piece of writing as fine as that requires no further defense.