January 28, 2010, - 3:48 pm
Two Birds, One Stone: Buh-Bye, Howard Zinn, J.D. Salinger
If you don’t believe in G-d, how else would you explain that he took two extremist liberals from us in one day–two of the most over-rated, far-left, authors on the planet, no less?
Sorry, but I ain’t sad to see either Howard Zinn or J.D. Salinger go. And please don’t give me the absurd lecture about how “now is not the time, ” or “their bodies are barely cold.” Um, if not now, when? Now IS the time to talk about their, uh, “contributions” to America and the world.
Let’s start with Zinn, the far more malevolent and malignant of the two. The guy was a Communist. Period.
This far left “historian” wrote textbooks used in many American high schools and colleges for years. When I was in high school, we used his revisionist, anti-American crap-in-a-volume, “A People’s History of the United States.” Anything that uses “People’s” in the title is already self-evident in its printed Lewinsky to Marxism. It’s the typical drivel:
America and capitalism are bad. Freedom is only good for lefties. Middle Americans are idiots, and we know better how they should run their lives. We were founded on taking advantage of, raping, and pillaging heroic indigenous peoples (who scalped and killed each other and sold Manhattan to us for $24.00 in trinkets; but, hey, we’re the evil White European guys, so we are always the villain). ’60s radicals and abortion are great, as are ugly feminists. As for foreign policy, Evil Zionist Empire and the Jews–bad; Muslim extremist beheaders with four wives, five IEDs, and 72 virgins–the idyllic example for us all.
Zinn taught generations of mindless American high school and college students to hate themselves, their countries, Western civilization, and allies like Israel. In many ways, he’s responsible more than anyone for poisoning America’s minds and its future.
Oh, and then there’s the idolizing of Zinn by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Oprah. Need I say more? If I do, you are at the wrong site.
Then, there’s J.D. Salinger. His “The Catcher in the Rye” is possibly the most over-rated book ever published. Like most American kids, they made me read this ode to juvenile delinquency and attack on authority–this Bible for ’60s radicals–when I was in school. I kept wondering why this is considered a “Great Book.” To me, this literary nothing was the book version of the “Emperor Who Wears No Clothing.” I felt like: so a dysfunctional loser hangs out with a hooker–big whoop. Is that all there is?
When you hear lefty radicals complaining that American English literature classes only read “Old, White European Males,” I don’t need to wonder why they never include J.D. Salinger is this villainous category: his work can’t hold a candle to the real classics. (Plus, until now, he unfortunately wasn’t dead yet.) It’s like, if 50 years from now, English classes are forcing everyone to read one edition of Fabio-encrusted Harlequin Romance, and they all ogle over how well written it is.
Reader Worryo1 says it better than I do:
A radical is dead. I do not regret this person’s passing.
“The Catcher in the Rye” and its main character, Holden Caufield, were used as templates for the youth culture of the 60’s. The idea that you could not trust anyone over 30 came directly out of “Catcher’s” depiction of phony and corrupt adults. A now cliched theme about bad adults versus good young people came out of that novel, and was reproduced time and again for decades after 1951. You had a template for the antics of a Jerry Rubin or Tom Hayden, or even the terror of the Weather Underground in the character of Holden Caufield.
Also, high schools fed into this by having “The Catcher in the Rye” as required reading in literature classes. It was a very mediocre novel, but its impact was huge. Even the Christian Science Monitor’s reviewer back in1951 predicted that novel’s nasty fallout.
Exactly.
While neither Zinn nor Salinger killed anyone as far as I know, they actually perpetrated more harm to America and its future than Osama Bin Laden or any other Islamic terrorist. And their damage is far more long-lasting. We are fighting–and largely, losing–a cultural war within America. Two of the chief warriors for the enemy are now gone, but sadly, their “work” is still with us forever.
Thus, my lack of sorrow whatsoever that these two are gone. I hope they packed light on the way out. It’s hot in hell.
Tags: A People's History of the United States, buh-bye, Catcher in the Rye, far left, Holden Caufield, Howard Zinn, J.D. Salinger, over-rated, The Catcher in the Rye
I thought J.D. Salinger had died years ago. His work is outrageously overrated. In, I think, the early ’60s, Mary McCarthy wrote a great essay, ripping him apart.
Good riddance to bad rubbish, Howard Zinn.
Miranda Rose Smith on January 29, 2010 at 1:56 am