John McMurtrie – Book Editor The San Francisco Chronicle

February 2, 2010

John McMurtrie – Book Editor
The San Francisco Chronicle
901 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94103-2905

RE: Howard Zinn – No threat to Thucydides. A comment on your mushy modern American Liberal panegyric in this morning’s Miami Herald

Mr. McMurtrie,

The rule of de morituis should apply except when it shouldn’t.

Howard Zinn is the exception.

Anyone who thought that Stalin and Chairman Mao were good guys, anyone who thought that Castro was the paradigmatic template – “paradigmatic template”? A term that Noam Chomsky, his good buddy and fellow traveler, will love – for running a country, anyone who hates, I mean really, really hates Israel can’t be all good.

I don’t know what the final disposition of his remains will be but I suggest that he be laid next to Lillian Hellman. That way we would only have to add 2 or 3 armed guards to make sure neither of them gets out to infect the citizens and do further damage to the common weal. When the command to fix bayonets is given they are all pointed at the grave marker.

You may remember when the New York State Board of Regents supported the revision to American History X1 to support the imbecilic theory that the 5 Nations – Look it up – influenced James Madison when he was writing the Constitution. I wrote to the good professor and asked him where the Abenaki learned the technique of slicing the top of a prisoner’s skull off and eating his brains before he died. I think we can stipulate that they didn’t learn it from the English. 20 years and still no answer. Now that he’s going to be dead for a very long time I imagine I’ll never get one.

Clio, my favorite Muse, writes exceedingly slow but exceedingly fine.

It took 50 years for the faulty premises and atrocious historiography of the Beards to be exposed.

We live in an age of exploding information.

The clock is ticking.

10 years from now he will be a footnote to a footnote.

You say he was a charming man. You say he had a “radiant, inviting smile”.

To quote the Russian proverb: “Because the wolf shows you his teeth it doesn’t mean he’s smiling.”

Hitler was a charming man also. Small children loved him. He doted on his dogs. No one could smoke in his presence. He was a Vegan before there were vegans. Was he any less of a monster?

Seneca, another of the scribes sitting on the hillside who was offended by Zinn’s vapid scribbles, told us that “Time discovers truth”.

Zinn will soon join Lysenko.


Kevin Smith