A Fortuitous Fourth

This past Fourth of July holiday weekend saw a couple of great posts by other people that align quite nicely with my previous post and my book as a whole.

A friend of mine reposted a great 2010 Steve Rendall article entitled, "The Right's Library of Fake Quotes: Putting Words in Dead People’s Mouths." I have been a fan of FAIR for many years, but somehow I had missed this particular piece. I cited many of their articles in my book, including these two which I ritually post every Martin Luther King Day.

Richard Riis posted one called "Independence Day Special: Thirteen Facts About America Conservatives Would Like You to Forget." Item one reminds me of that song in the musical 1776 that Richard Nixon got dropped from the 1972 movie version. In it, the opponents of independence sing their praises of conservatism - "To the right, ever to the right - never to the left." It was put back in for the DVD release. Here is the audio.

And finally, speaking of things I had missed, Bill Moyers & Co. had posted an excerpt of historian Jill Lepore's great 2010 book The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle Over American History. She notes, among other things, that during the 1976 Bicentennial Celebration, it was the left that was claiming the rhetoric of the American Revolution and they had formed a "TEA Party" before - except that their acronym stood for "Tax Equity for Americans" rather than "Taxed Enough Already." They protested against tax loopholes for the rich.

I have just started her book and I am kicking myself for not finding it sooner. I read almost a third of it in one sitting and I am a slow reader who likes to take lots of notes. Forget my book - buy her's!

Just kidding. Buy mine too. Since you are already there and everything.