in re Starkey: I hate to say, "I told you so" but I will
I didn't sign the David Starkey letter published in the THE. I was part of the group, and even wrote up bits that I think were used. But in the end, I didn't sign because I didn't think that people had a clear enough idea of what they were protesting, and they weren't expressing it clearly enough. I think Starkey's a prat, and I think that some of his comments were unequivocally racist. I think other of his comments were more stupidly or unintentionally racist. For all of them, I think he needs to apologize, but I'm not the boss of him.
Said comments, and the sorts of things he drew upon for examples, make me think less of him as an historian as well -- he was clearly trying to pronounce with expertise on an area far beyond his grasp. But that doesn't make him unqualified to be a historian. That makes him an idiot who didn't do his homework.
What I wanted was a letter that highlighted what I think is the underlying problem: news media and documentary producers (and so on) are lazy and they hire people who have the wrong qualifications for the job. It's not that Starkey is unqualified -- it's that his qualifications show nothing that would indicate that he would comment intelligently on the topic. This is where his lack of interest in social history comes into it: there were certainly riots in England in the Late MA and in the Early Modern period, so he should have been able to comment on them, at least.
But the BBC keeps hiring him, presumably for the entertainment and outrage value. And despite being the wrong man for the job, they introduce him as if he is. That's worthy of our objections.
Sadly, however, that's not the letter that got written.
Said comments, and the sorts of things he drew upon for examples, make me think less of him as an historian as well -- he was clearly trying to pronounce with expertise on an area far beyond his grasp. But that doesn't make him unqualified to be a historian. That makes him an idiot who didn't do his homework.
What I wanted was a letter that highlighted what I think is the underlying problem: news media and documentary producers (and so on) are lazy and they hire people who have the wrong qualifications for the job. It's not that Starkey is unqualified -- it's that his qualifications show nothing that would indicate that he would comment intelligently on the topic. This is where his lack of interest in social history comes into it: there were certainly riots in England in the Late MA and in the Early Modern period, so he should have been able to comment on them, at least.
But the BBC keeps hiring him, presumably for the entertainment and outrage value. And despite being the wrong man for the job, they introduce him as if he is. That's worthy of our objections.
Sadly, however, that's not the letter that got written.