TrueBlue

I know–they don’t obviously fit together, but check out today’s post on the Huffington Post about Clemens’ news conference, long time baseball writer Murray Chass losing it, and Maureen Dowd’s truly vicious column about Hillary in today’s Times.

It’s become increasingly clear that no matter what Hillary Clinton does as a candidate– smile or not smile, emote or not emote,  hug or not  hug–the categories most folks use to dissect her campaign owe more to sexist categories than any other form of political analysis.

No historian can fail to be pained, however, as some voters replay debates over the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution,  which ended up with the spectacle of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton opposing the 15th Amendment because it didn’t provide for women’s suffrage as well as black male suffrage.

Liberals ought to be excited that both a woman and an African American are leading candidates for the Democratic nomination–and appear to have strong constituencies–and refuse to choose one or the other based on the persistence of racism or sexism.  That Democratic women turned out for Hillary in huge numbers in New Hampshire bodes well for the campaign–as does the fact that young people and independents turned out for Obama in Iowa.  We need all these  folks to win in November.

Well friends, this blog began as an experiment almost exactly a year ago, and I’d say I’ve got a ways to go. As much fun as it is, it turns out that for a older-school historian, even one who loves writing for the general public, it takes a good bit more self discipline than I realized. So the obvious New Year’s resolution here is to write more, and more regularly, and to turn this blog into something more interesting for the rest of you.

The really funny thing is that I’ll be chairing a round table session at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting in Washington next Sunday devoted to “Historians Going Public.” My own talk is entitled, ironically enough, it turns out, “A Pilgrim’s Progress: One Historian’s Adventures in the Blogosphere.” Some progress! The session should be fun anyway, since I’ve pulled together three other really interesting historians, David Greenberg of Rutgers, Leslie Lindenauer, my former colleague at the University of Hartford, now at Western Connecticut, and Allida Black, editor of the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers at George Washington University. If you’re going to the meeting, it’s Sunday morning at 11:00 AM, a terrible time slot since most folks will be leaving around that time. But the good news is the History News Network will be taping the session, and will put some of it up on their site afterwards.

The past couple of weeks I’ve been blogging some on the Mitchell Report on steroids in baseball on the Huffington Post, and I’ll probably keep doing that for a while–you can get to it by clicking on the link in this sentence.

There was a lot of bad news in 2007, most of it abroad. But the death of Roy Rosenzweig at the all-too-young age of 57 a couple of months ago has to be among the worst. The Mark and Barbara Fried Chair and founding director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, Roy was the funniest, most generous–personally and intellectually–historian I’ve ever known. Without his having paved the way for historians to write about leisure, in his extraordinary book Eight Hours for What We Will, I could not have written my doctoral dissertation about the early history of baseball, which became my first book and the foundation of my career as a historian. Roy also gave my manuscript the most searching reading I had ever received, and made it a much better book. You can see what other people have learned from this extraordinary historian and human being on the site thanksroy.org. Thank goodness there’s going to be an event remembering his life and work on Saturday evening in Washington.

Enjoy the New Year–see you then!

Writing about Barry Bonds’ pursuit of Hank Aaron’s record has gotten me into the most interesting conversations and disagreements, even with longtime friends. One, a sophisticated sports historian who’s written beautifully and empathetically about early 19th century fighters who engaged in “eye-gouging,” simply cannot stand Bonds because he expects the home run record-holder to be an admirable human being. Another finds following the last-place Washington Nationals far more engaging than watching Bonds break the record. Much of the email I’ve gotten for writing about Bonds and the possibility that people respond to him on racial grounds is incredibly defensive, on the order of “I’m not a racist, because I rooted for Hank Aaron and Willie Mays.” So where is the racism in American society? Since almost no white people will admit to any racism, in anything, does that mean that we’re finally over it? Or do most white folks take comfort in the occasional hate group, since we can at last point to someone who is, undeniably and unquestionably racist and therefore beyond the pale?

But no matter what you think about Bonds and steroids, you have to admire how he finally hit #755. After a miserable eight days and a terrible batting slump, he went to the stadium early yesterday afternoon and took more than 100 pitches in batting practice, working on his swing. Think about that: Barry Bonds, one of the greatest hitters ever, on the verge of holding the premier record in the game, took batting practice to work on his swing. And then, in his first at bat of the evening, he hit the record-tying shot. Very old-fashioned hard work, and it paid off. Hats off to Barry!

Ok, so I’ve been delinquent–really delinquent. If this blog were a mortgage, I’d be in deep trouble. Lots of stuff has been happening in my personal and professional life (more on that later), and while the importance of being True and Blue (apologies, Oscar Wilde) has only increased, you’ve been, so to speak, on your own. No longer! True Blue is back.

And the funny thing is, Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department—or rather, that agency of which he’s the nominal head—is still in the news, for the same reasons: politicizing the department, politicizing hiring and firing decisions, politicizing prosecutions. What a piece of work!

On the other hand, issues with deep historical roots have burst into public view, in ferocious ways. After 40 years of occupation, an utterly stalled peace process, humiliation and despair in everyday life, mediocre leadership, and an appalling reliance on guns, the two main Palestinian factions are now killing each other—delighting Israeli hard-liners and all but scuttling any chance of a negotiated settlement of anything.

Then the federal government has decided to intensify its attack on illegal immigrants, raiding factories, abandoning children at school in New Bedford (MA), making sure the raids send a message to cities like New Haven—get it, “haven”?—that local efforts to welcome immigrants (like the city’s just passed “municipal id card”) are just so much fodder for the ICE-men. Take that, Emma Lazarus and Lady Liberty! Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses, and stay the hell away! Here’s the great Barbara Ehrenreich’s take on people who break into your country to mow your lawns, wash your dishes, and change your kids’ diapers, from the Nation online.
And of course, we’re back to Barry Bonds, whose assault on Henry Aaron’s home run record has slowed, but who continues to raise hackles that I think are not only about Barry’s alleged steroid use and well-established surliness. I wrote a longish piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education, a shorter version that appeared in several papers, and did a talk show you can listen to on the topic this morning for Wisconsin Public Radio.

Thanks for reading. Back really soon.

You gotta love this guy!  First, he gets the boss’s support–then it turns out he flat-out lied to Congress about his role in firing the U.S. attorneys.  Truly, the gift that keeps on giving. I hope Patrick Leahy, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, thinks about inviting him to testify under oath.  Every now and then, politics provides some great spectacle. This scandal is a beaut.