Fraters Libertas

Howard Zinn - Exposed as Elitist Fraud

During lunch I was listening to MPR. I tuned in hoping to get some tips on good beer specials for this weekend. But instead I heard a replay of Howard Zinn speaking to an audience of learned scholars and students at St. Thomas on Wednesday.

For those of you blissfully unaware, Zinn is a radical chic historian and author of "A People's History of the United States." I never read the book. But I once listened to excerpts of it on tape, with narration by none other than Matt Damon. Because for me, there's no better way to hear revisionist, socialist interpretations of American history than from an unrepentantly wealthy, yet still fellow traveling, member of the arts aristocracy.

In the few minutes I was able to listen today, I heard Zinn talking about the Constitution as a document that legitimized slavery. Then he mentioned that he was once read a Ronald Reagan essay on how wonderful a document the Constitution was (the crowd snickered). Then he said "I think it appeared in a scholarly journal - Parade magazine!" (the crowd guffawed).

One comment, Mr. "Champion of the Working People": As our Sunday newspaper supplement, we in the working class don't get the New York Times Magazine, or the Sunday Utne Reader, or The Chronicle of Wealth Redistribution and Class Hatred, or whatever it is you peruse with your morning coffee. We get Parade Magazine and we have for years. We in the working class were raised on the hard hitting celebrity reportage of Personality Parade, the sound wisdom and puckish logic games of Marilyn Vos Savant, the inspired lunacy of Howard Huge, and the nuanced biographical sketches and hanging prepositions of James Brady's "In Step With."

Believe it or not Professor Proletariat, Parade Magazine is what the working people read. Next time you attempt to write some "humorous" remarks, make sure to get an actual member of the working class to vet it for you first, so you don't blow your cover again. (And no, Matt Damon doesn't count).