Doris Kearns Gettysburg speech makes no mention of the men who died in battle

Submitted by Mastodon on Mon, 2013-07-01 20:45

Article here. Excerpt:

'On Sunday, a stunned audience sat in silence as Doris Kearns Goodwin turned the keynote address at the opening ceremony for the 150th anniverary of the Battle of Gettysburg into a political lecture focusing on women's and gay rights.

Missing from much of her keynote: Gettysburg.

Self-centered, insular, and oblivious to the occasion, the historian who was infamously caught plagiarizing merely recycled much of what she has said before about herself in previous speeches. And her rambling, self-promoting, and borderline inappropriate lecture touched upon nearly everything except for the heroic sacrifices made on that battlefield.'
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After briefly--and in an obligatory manner--actually mentioning Gettysburg and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Kearns Goodwin could not stop herself from rehashing her civil rights stories.
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Her speech just got worse from there. She continued to speak about the 1960s instead of the 1860s. And it was all stuff she has said before.
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Clearly mistaking the Gettysburg 150 audience for the Aspen Ideas Festival crowd, Kearns Goodwin then lectured the audience on the "women's liberation movement" and spoke at length about Eleanor Roosevelt. She emphasized that World War II led to a "new birth of freedom" for women and reminded attendees, "Still, we await our first female president."
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The closest she came to discussing the Battle of Gettysburg at length was when she mentioned "Stonewall." But instead of talking about how different Gettysburg could have been had the great Southern General Stonewall Jackson lived to aid Robert E. Lee, Kearns Goodwin instead spoke about the Stonewall gay riots that united the gay community, which she used to discuss how women's rights and civil rights and gay rights were all "human rights" while quoting Robert F. Kennedy's "ripples of hope" speech. She even compared "Stonewall" to "Selma," linking the gay rights movement the black civil rights movement.'

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It's too difficult these days to re-write history since there are far too many sources that duplicate one another's accounts. So the strategy certain classes of revisionists are taking is simply to ignore it. This is a perfect example.

It's already happening. For instance, Marie Curie. She was a pioneering researcher in radioactive materials who unfortunately died of radiation poisoning since at the time, ppl didn't know radiation killed. She was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, and in Physics. But did you know she was a co-recipient of the award, her husband Pierre and the man who discovered radioactive phenomenon, Henri Becquerel also receiving it? They don't get mentioned, but guess what? Becquerel also died of radiation poisoning. Know of him? Probably not. Knew he laid the research foundation for the Curies, too? No. So while it's tragic that Marie Curie died of radiation poisoning, it's likewise for Henri Becquerel. But as we know, since Curie was female and Becquerel male, who gets remembered for their (admittedly unwilling) fatal self-sacrifice for scientific knowledge?

In a few years, I predict the only thing about the Vietnam War American kids learn about will be the brave nurses who served. Yes, they were brave. Yes, they served. But so did many more men serve as actual fighting soldiers. That'll get skipped.

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Submitted by Matt on Mon, 2013-07-01 21:23