Isn’t his main qualification that he went on a date with Monica Lewinsky before the scandal broke? Then he wrote about it in a shitty way which rose his profile and kickstarted his career?
CNN's most visible anchor knows less about the history of his own country than a guy who got here like 8 years ago and never studied any of it, what an absolute embarrassment
Well, anchorpersons here have long been considered jokes, basically just empty heads paid to parrot whatever script they were given. Once Walter Cronkite retired the era of the tv news guy with at least half a brain was over.
If as an American, you know less about US history than I do, you should be demanding a refund from your high school. If you are a journalist hosting a show discussing a topic that touches on US history and know less about US history than I do, your employer should demand a refund from you.
Wow do you remember the book that said that? I remember this being discussed as a myth back in grade school in the late 80s and early 90s. In Florida. It was discussed though, which is kind of weird on its own but the text did point out how it wasn't factual.
It was the new US History textbooks we got that year, printed in Texas by federal contract. California state law said the books had to be used for lesson plans, but my teacher pointed out the law said nothing about *how* to use them. He spent the semester pointing out all the garbage lies in them.
canada history is wild featuring such classics as:
- trading company that still exists owned over half of the country
- taxes on chinese people entering
- no sunday shopping laws
- the fruit machine homosexuality test + mass gay purges
- FLQ
- great maple syrup heist
- 1 PM talked to dead pets
It's all about insisting that racism happened Somewhere Else. I'm from California and I learned about the Chinese Exclusion Act in college. I met someone from Boston who did learn about it, but I'm sure there was a weird gap in her historical learning, too. My friend from Tennessee had a WILD time.
We did learn about the Statue of Liberty, though, for like two paragraphs in all of public school. I didn't remember that much, but even if you just look at it, you can see it was a gift to the whole nation and not a bribe for a sitting president.
I'm not sure what I knew, tbh. Just that it was a gift from France. But I would have gotten a wee bit more detail before I said a 747 from Qatar was really no different.
No one knows any US history unless you are the sort of person who likes learning about history.
And unfortunately even a huge volume of serious US history is boosterism crap unless you make a real effort to find historians who aren’t brainwashed that this is the greatest country ever.
my classes in early american literature were super fun b/c they went deep into “america was new & intimidated by other countries’ long & rich history & culture, so it made a conscious decision to create its own lore, folktales, & myth in real time—which set the tone for how we document our “history”
AND IT SHOWS. It’s not even often overt, it just mostly all starts from ‘this is the greatest country in the whole world and GOD HIMSELF blessed our lil patch of dirt’. Even if you are going on to talk about the slave trade or the whisky rebellion or the haymarket riots.
My question is, why would you watch or listen to CNN’s most visible actor (or almost any of the lot of them), when they’re almost always less prepared than I used to have to be doing print reporting for a small local paper, and their broadcasts are unhealthful, full of fake nutrition and filler.
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(sorry, always throws me to know there are several places named after the slightly quaint town at the bottom of my local river)
also, also... i've come to realise that a lot of americans don't know about their own history—most of them couldn't pass the citizenship exam.
i do remember the george washington cherry tree myth being in official us history textbooks as if it really happened as recently as 2002 tho
- trading company that still exists owned over half of the country
- taxes on chinese people entering
- no sunday shopping laws
- the fruit machine homosexuality test + mass gay purges
- FLQ
- great maple syrup heist
- 1 PM talked to dead pets
And unfortunately even a huge volume of serious US history is boosterism crap unless you make a real effort to find historians who aren’t brainwashed that this is the greatest country ever.