A grave and stupid mistake of mine

I just deleted the last post before this one, after being informed that it amounted to a grave mistake. I misunderstood a satirical imitation for an original statement. If it were to matter a damn, I would offer my apologies to Barrack Obama and Tom Harkin, and if anyone wants them, they have them.

The most important thing, however, is to avoid one of those damned chains of misinformation that the Internet makes so easy. The worst thing that could happen is that, in two months' time, someone's blog were to reprint my gross mistake as a genuine piece of information about Senators Obama and Harkin. So, if anyone has saved my most recent post (the one about Senators Harkin and Obama) and took it for serious information, PLEASE PLEASE delete it. It was wrong. It was yours truly failing his own duty as a historian, not following a quote to its source, and so finding that a piece of satire never meant as anything but satire was published as real. I have kept a screencap for my own information and thanked the person who informed me of my mistake, but I beg any reader of this blog to make sure that the false quotation does not enter circulation as a true one, because once it does, it would be the Devil's own business to take it out again.

(no subject)

Anyone who thinks that I was too harsh about Jonah Goldberg's repulsive and politically motivated rewriting of my own country's history ought to read today's Thomas Sowell column, where it is taken entirely at its own valuation and highly recommended as summer reading for the children of conservatives. This unhistorical, culturally imperialistic propaganda, that distorts my country's and my continent's history in the service of provincial American concerns, is going to enter the bloodstream of a whole American party, If it has not already done so. This will increase further the mutual incomprehension between USA and Europe, because you cannot stand on your two hind legs and inform anyone who knows anything of continental history - France, Italy, Germany, etc. - that Nazism and Fascism were "left wing". This sort of rubbish, especially if spoken with the arrogance of Goldberg and Sowell, will increase European contempt for American viewpoints and culture. Do we really need this sort of trash further complicating our already difficult relationship, and all for the sake of a few Republican votes in the next election?