Debate Over Little Bighorn Battle Monument

NY Times: Debate Over Little Bighorn Battle Monument: "A political tug of war has raged between the National Park Service, Custer buffs and Indian tribes over how best to fix a litany of problems with the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, in south central Montana."

"Custer's Last Stand" by Thomas Hart Benton, 1943.

The above is an interesting article about how a decaying infrastructure at the Little Big Horn is forcing interested parties to come up with a compromise solution. The Crow Nation in particular is flexing its political and moral authority over the issue and demanding a leadership role in interpreting and event which is a turning point in their history and happened right on what became their reservation.

The NY Times has an archive of Custer stories that provide background and snapshots of the man's declining historical reputation:

• A review of Nathaniel Philbrick's new volume on Custer (Times Verdict: meh.)
• A 1997 article about the controversy to build a monument at Little Big Horn dedicated to the Indians killed at that battle. The monument was eventually built.
• A 1993 decision to rename George Custer Elementary School to Thurgood Marshall Elementary School. And in his home state of Michigan!
• A 1991 article about how what had been Custer Battlefield National Monument had just been renamed Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, to much anger is some quarters.
• A 1921 article by Custer's long-surviving widow Libby about how the battle should be remembered.
• An 1880 article describing widow Libby Custer's complaints about a statue of her husband erected at West Point (she considered it insufficiently heroic and eventually succeeded in having it removed.)
• ... and so on, back to this 1876 "Sketch of Gen. Custer" written right after the battle, which informed Times readers that "Major Gen. George A. Custer, who was killed with his whole command while attacking an encampment of Sioux Indians, under command of Sitting Bull, was one of the bravest and most widely known officers in the United States Army." Oh hogwash.
• And my absolute favorite, this article about John Martin, who fought with Garibaldi in Italy before immigrating to America, enlisting in the army and becoming one of Custer's buglers. Martin escaped the fate of his company when he was dispatched just before the battle with a message pleading for reinforcements. Later her served in the Spanish American war and eventually became a subway conductor in New York.

You might notice no articles between the late 1920 and the 1980s above. It seems that the Times has put articles from that era back behind a pay wall. I am  not sure when this happened or why!

Internet Scare Article of the Day

The NY Times had a ridiculous article the other day designed to make parents afraid of the internet all over again.

"Guardians of Their Smiles" dared to ask the question "Is it safe to post children's images on online photo sites?" You just know what the answer is going to be from the illustrating photo--a grim-faced mommy clutching her Macbook tightly to her chest, while in the soft-focus distance behind her a child peers into another laptop. Danger Will Robinson We Must Help the Mommy Protect Her Young!

The article is pure parenting hysteria (cyber edition). It contains exactly two examples of the horrors that can result in putting children's pictures online. The first is of the sternly visaged Jessica Gwozdz, whose picture illustrates the article. It seems that some Brazilian teenaged girls, in a "gut-churning prank," took pictures of her daughters to create “paper doll” profiles at the social networking site Orkut, "giving each other 'sexy' ratings depending on the quality of their work." Gwozdz found out when a family friend saw the profiles. She notified Orkut and profiles were removed. "Such is the stuff of parents’ nightmares," the Times intones.

The remainder of the article contains no evidence of danger from putting children's photos lonline. It does however have a steady stream of parents expressing a weird kind of smug paranoia. Quote after quote:

What’s to stop a pedophile from putting two and two together?


To me, a picture posted on the Internet is a big piece of information. I cringe when I see what people post.


I wouldn’t even post a picture of my son from behind if he were naked.


You should not have any photos of your children on the Internet at all!


If you want to post pictures of my kids online, you’d better ask me first (so I can say no!)

Near the end of the article there are some brief quotes from people who have actually done research on things like the internet and pedophilia who point out that these fears are completely unfounded:

“Research shows that there is virtually no risk of pedophiles coming to get kids because they found them online,” said Stephen Balkam, chief executive of the Family Online Safety Institute. While the debate makes this crime seem common, he said, all the talk is really just “techno-panic.”

So why isn't the title and tone of this article "Irrational Techno-Panic Frightens Helicopter Parents?" Because after all, the Times was not able to come up with a single instance of anything bad happening as a result of posting pictures online!

There is so much paranoia and misinformation out there about privacy and the internet. It is sad to see our leading newspaper adding to people's fear and ignorance.

Henry V Less Virile than Previously Believed

Interesting article in the NY Times--Historians Reassess Battle of Agincourt: "Agincourt’s status as perhaps the greatest victory against overwhelming odds in military history — and a keystone of the English self-image — has been called into doubt by a group of historians in Britain and France who have painstakingly combed an array of military and tax records from that time and now take a skeptical view of the figures handed down by medieval chroniclers."

The revisionist historians have determined that rather than facing thousands of heavily-armed French nobleman, Henry's troops actually fought a couple of char women, a rabid cow, and perhaps a killer rabbit. But what is most interesting in the article is the description of the "new science of military history" that has produced a reevaluation of Agincourt: "The new accounts tend to be not only more quantitative but also more attuned to political, cultural and technological factors, and focus more on the experience of the common soldier than on grand strategies and heroic deeds . . .The approach has drastically changed views on everything from Roman battles with Germanic tribes, to Napoleon’s disastrous occupation of Spain, to the Tet offensive in the Vietnam War. But the most telling gauge of the respect being given to the new historians and their penchant for tearing down established wisdom is that it has now become almost routine for American commanders to call on them for advice on strategy and tactics in Afghanistan, Iraq and other present-day conflicts."

For those wishing to dig further this 1991 article by Peter Paret titled "The New Military History" provides a background.

Finding History Stories at the NY Times

Did you know that the New York Times has a history tag? Subtitled "News about history, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times."There are also tags for Historic Buildings and Sites, National Parks, Monuments and Seashores, World War I, World War II, and many other topics. Each tag comes with an RSS feed. This is a great way to keep up with history in the news! Here are a few interesting stories I dug up:

• National Parks Full of History, if Not Visitors

  A guide to five lesser-known parks that illuminate sometimes murky and forgotten points in American history.

• On a Map of Georgia, Old Words Start a New Rush for Tourists

  Two small towns in Georgia have feuded over which one rightfully holds the title of site of the state’s first gold rush.

• Great Caesar’s Ghost! Are Traditional History Courses Vanishing?

  While the number of history faculty has more than doubled since 1975, a smaller share of departments at four-year institutions have specialists in intellectual, diplomatic or economic history.

"What is Black and White and Red All Over?"

From the Daily Show, this cruel and funny visit to the New York Times seemed to continue the line of thought in my earlier post, The Death of Scholarly Publishing? [Disclaimer: I am a subscriber to the NY Times.]

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
End Times
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

[Hat-tip to Facebook friend Katrina Gulliver.]

NY Times Interactive Feature on North Cascades

Going Down the Road - Places Captured in Time, but Not Frozen There: "They were still wearing Stetsons and spurs, not the tight cycling shorts you see these days, when a writer dispatched by the federal government during the Great Depression reached the end of the road here in the North Cascades." Here is an interesting piece in the New York Times that juxtaposes some towns along the North Cascades Highway (mostly Twisp and Concrete) with descriptions of the same places from the Washington State Guide produced by the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. There is also a neat interactive feature with short videos keyed to a map of the North Cascades highway. This is the first a series of articles that will take the same approach.

This convergence of print newspapers, history, and the web answers several questions at once. How do newspapers make themselves relevant and interesting to a generation that gets its news from the internet? What do we do with the backlog of historical materials that are finding their way online at places like the Library of Congress? Yesterday's post about a Spokesman Review feature on the Spokane River is another example of newspapers making the most of the web.