Will the Real David Barton Please Stand Up?
Comment of the Week
August 26, 2011
(Ravi Joshi/Tablet Magazine)
Winner gets a free Nextbook Press book appropriate to his or her comment (provided he or she emails me at [email protected] with his or her mailing address).
This week’s winner is “sk,” who wondered, apropos the arch-conservative historian David Barton’s involvement in Glenn Beck’s rally in Jerusalem, “I thought David Barton was a gym owner in Manhattan, not a historian.”
As columnist Michelle Goldberg explained, Barton is at the very least a pseudo-historian, one who uses dubious methods and interpretations to push an extreme, Christianist narrative of American history.
A different David Barton is, however, a gym owner in Manhattan (although his chain recently filed for bankruptcy).
For being on top of this distinction with a difference, “sk” gets a copy of Melvin Konner’s The Jewish Body.
Glenn Beck Is Restoring Courage
Related: The Jewish Body [Nextbook Press]
History Lesson [Tablet Magazine]
The Man Who Made Working Out Cool [NYT]
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.
