So, Bellesiles has a new book out on violence and unicorns. It may as well be about unicorns since his last notable work was fantasy. But what’s striking is the treatment his utter fraud is getting. You see, he lied about data that didn’t exist to put forth the notion that some political ideology is being supported by this fake data. He lost his job and had his awards yanked thanks to Clayton Cramer. So, how does his publisher treat that scenario? Like this:

1877 is also notable as the comeback book for a celebrated U.S. historian. Michael Bellesiles is perhaps most famous as the target of an infamous “swiftboating” campaign by the National Rifle Association, following the publication of his Bancroft Prize-winning book Arming America (Knopf, 2000) — “the best kind of non-fiction,” according to the Chicago Tribune — which made daring claims about gun ownership in early America. In what became the history profession’s most talked-about and notorious case of the past generation, Arming America was eventually discredited after an unprecedented and controversial review called into question its sources, charges which Bellesiles and his many prominent supporters have always rejected.”

Ah, the old swiftboating accusation, which usually translates as someone is telling inconvenient things about me. Additionally, there was no campaign by NRA. Clayton Cramer discovered the errors and, in fact, NRA wouldn’t even give him a travel grant. NRA had nothing to do with it and it wasn’t a nefarious plot by them.

Revisionist history, all the way.

Posted in uncategorized on May 13th, 2010 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |