Propaganda Pimping Professor Larry Schweikart Gets Sixth “Fair and Balanced” Appearance On Fox&Friends
Reported by Priscilla - February 4, 2009 -
In their ongoing war on education (or is it a “crusade”), Fox&Friends has embraced, as its personal historian, muy conservative University of Dayton Professor Larry Schweikart. Larry, a darling of the right, interviews with unbiased (just kidding) folks like Dennis Prager and David Horowitz. Commendations of his book, “48 Liberal Lies About American History” appear on numerous conservative websites ranging from the somewhat (and I use the term loosely) rational National Review Online to the “out there” Free Republic. And he’s certainly getting lots of face time on Fox News where he gets to pimp his (and Fox's) message and his book which, judging from the title, sounds more than a teensy bit agenda driven.
Larry is so in synch with the conservative "commentary" on Fox News. This little rant and peek into the liberal mind (Front Page Mag interview), “Liberals hate God-talk, whether it comes from an Orthodox Jew or a "fundamentalist" Christian (by which they mean any Christian who practices what he or she preaches!) They want to rely solely on themselves, which is the ultimate rebellion against God. Yet deep inside, they know this is wrong, and it eats at them,” is straight out of Bill O’Reilly’s playbook. Was America’s Daddy channeling Schweikart when he said, “There you go. The secular-progressive creed. It's only about us, nothing else. No higher power, no greater good.” Anyway, Fox’s “nutty professor” got to trash more history texts last week (January 28th) without, once again, anyone from the reality based community to offer rebuttal. Once again, MENSA member Steve Doocy did the interview. The former weatherguy said, breathlessly, that “books that your children are learning from could be filled with liberal lies. How can you spot the political agendas being pushed in today’s textbooks?" And the answer, natch, is if you listen to Larry Schweikart, the truth will set you free. Doocy informed us that Larry once played in a band that opened for “Steppenwolf” – something very “groovy” indeed! The first cherry picked quote was that “Nixon authorized the break in.” On the face of it, the quote is not accurate; but because the rest of the page was blurred, you can’t tell if the sentence was something like “while there was no conclusive proof that Nixon…” But hey, if Larry said so, it’s gotta be real. But the next two “lies” were not based on blurred quotes. They were statements made by Larry which were superimposed on the image of the book. He was very concerned about “Glencoe Literature: The Reader's Choice, Course 1, Grade 6, Student Edition” because “In a country that is overwhelmingly Christian, yet it has 39 times more coverage of pagan religions than Christianity. Environmentalism gets 777 lines to 27 lines mentioning god or the bible.” While Larry said this, his quote appeared in the “book” image. But in researching the book, I found that it was a literature book which consists of stories from many different cultures past and present. Is there some kind of requirement that history books have a “quota” for references to Christianity? Once again, Larry quotes something with no discussion of context. How does Larry get “39” and what does he mean by “coverage?” Schweikart’s last target was a book that, according to Larry and the graphic (and that’s all the evidence we have) “avoids the terms the Arabs attacked, invaded Israel. This book lists places where “people have suffered from terrorist attacks as Bosnia, Iraq, Northern Ireland.” Larry added “they describe the wars between Isreal and the Arabs as just happening.” (Huh?) The three chyrons used in this piece were “Debunking liberal lies learned in school” - “liberal ideology taught in US classrooms” - “How textbooks distort history.”
Comment: Schweikart is obviously entitled to his opinions – as strange as they are (See Bob Cesca’s brilliant smackdown of Schweikart’s discussion about Lincoln during the Hannity hatefest. I know one thing, if I were a University of Dayton grad, I certainly wouldn’t be inclined to contribute to the alumni fund. If I were a parent of a University of Dayton student, I would have some serious questions about the academic professionalism of the school. If I were the parent of a student, thinking about applying to the University of Dayton, I would not be too thrilled. But Professor Larry has a First Amendment right of free speech which allows him to go on a national news network and be a buffoon on a buffoon show. The issue here is that by not providing any counterpoint, Fox News is, once again, demonstrating their disdain for “real journalism, fair and balanced.”
