Jon Meacham and Michael Beschloss are billed as “historians.” They have the academic credentials and professional resumes to legitimatize those labels. More importantly, however, they are partisan political operatives who examine history through very biased partisan lenses. That is why I refer to them as political “hacks.” One does not have to be a “dese-does-and-dem” pot-bellied ward heeler to be a hack.
These guys are high-class hacks, who speak with great eloquence and trained authority. It is their devotion to the Democratic Party script and narratives as the foundation of their historical analysis and opinions that makes them more political publicity merchants than an objective analysis of history. Their view of history is jaded by political allegiance. They are more the academic propagandists than educators – as we usually think of those we call “historians.”
Make no mistake about it. Their bias is the reason they are so richly paid to appear regularly on the most left-wing cable news networks. For obvious reasons, they are most frequently seen on MSNBC. Well duh!
I have previously commented on Meacham – and his hardcore political and media career prior to his being transformed into an academic historian. The fact that he taught history at his alma mater, the University of the South, does not make a difference. Academia is overrun with political hacks posing as professors.
Meacham has been a regular donor to Democrat candidates and organizations. He makes no secret of his longtime close personal friendship with President Biden, who he lavishes with high praise. Beacham was fired as a paid contributor to MSNBC in 2020, when he failed to disclose that he was actively involved in the Biden campaign – and served as a speechwriter, including the drafting of Biden’s victory speech. He was quietly re-hired a short time later.
Beschloss is less coy or more obvious in his political leanings. His analysis of current events is more extreme and strident than Meacham’s.
Beschloss wallows in speculation as history. Of course, he is in high praise of the work of the January 6th Committee – calling it the most important congressional hearing in American history. He proffers the Democrats’ argument that American democracy was on the precipice of extinction on January 6, 2021.
Like all fearmongering propagandists, Beschloss bolsters his opinion with baseless speculation. In a recent bobble-head appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Beschloss talked about all the things that did not happen on January 6th. We could have seen assassinations … the taking of hostages … the toppling of the government. Those are not the judicious comments of a real and objective historian, but the rants of a political partisan spinning political events … a hack.
And like Meacham and the Democrat/media establishment, Beschloss sees the potential of his inaccurate vision happening again. What if THEY do what THEY did not do this time next time?
That is what Beschloss and Meacham put out on a regular basis. Call it what you like, but it ain’t history. It is left-wing interpretations of events that is not different than that of Biden, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Schumer, Joe Scarborough, Rachel Maddow, Nicole Wallace and the rest of the MSNBC line-up. And they are NOT historians.
Meacham and Beschloss operate in the spirit of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. who — in the days of Kennedy political Camelot – was billed as a “historian.” In fact, he was the official flattering biographer of President Kennedy and the rest of the clan. It was his political bias that prevented Schlesinger from maintaining his own place in history as a … historian. I suspect the same fate awaits both Meacham and Beschloss as real historians write the real history of our times.
Footnote: I referred to Beschloss as a bobblehead. Those who have seen him on the telly will know why. He emphatically bobs his head in the affirmative at virtually every comment attacking Trump, Republicans, and conservatives by other panelists. In case you wondered.
So, there ‘tis.