Who Were the Sea Peoples?

George Will continues to be in the news for his controversial op-ed column claiming "that when [universities] make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate." He really put his foot in it when he next discussed rape, implying that there are now many flimsy rape charges being forwarded. His host of critics called this "stupid" ( this search turned up 165,000 results for me today) and have gotten him fired from at least one newspaper . George Will seems to just know this sort of thing is going on, while his critics seem to just know that it is not going on.* What amazes me is that both sides simply bring their presuppositions to the table and state them as facts. Neither side seems to of heard of research . I do not claim to be more virtuous than these people, but I am fortunate enough to have been trained in historical thinking. When an historian resorts to talking about the likelihood or implausibility of something having ha...

I've got plenty of complaints about what he's done since he's been in office -- although, as I said to my friends who knew him back from the day in the Chicago hood, I don't expect we could have hoped for better, given the state of our polity -- but it really disturbs me to see the lengths to which many "conservatives" will distort reality in order to discredit Obama. For instance, the "meme" that Obama uses the word "I" more than any previous president has been thoroughly debunked, by simple computer analysis, over at the Language Log many times now. And yet, even a columnist of the stature of George Will (whom I usually expect to be at least a little better that the Fox News miscreants), continues to repeat it . Has the entire "right" totally lost their minds over Obama? The possibility leaves me with mixed feelings: On the one hand, if even such a moderate rightist like Will has so lost touch with reality as to have no con...