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Mashup thread because I am livid over a recent @voxdotcom column about sugar tariffs in the 1880s. I’ll tell you why in a few tweets. But first, threading. There’s the one set of threads going around responding to a @chronicle piece about pedantry that itself seemed pedantic. /1
Here is Cotlar's /3
Here is Beorn's /4
That Chronicle essay took a sidelong swipe at @KevinKruse’s effective threading strategy, summarized in his own thread of threads /5
Then there was @TheTattooedProf’s thread in defense of his institution against what one person described as a low blow, and I think that was an apt description /6
Both Kruse & Gannon show the valued effectiveness of threads, which is what several of those other threads about their threads said. A lot of this history threading was in the shadows of threads not long back about Max Boot op-ed saying historians don’t engage. Or something. /7
Or a different one saying historical thinking is in decline. The first of those was not very good; the second one was. Plus the one thread about the “historovox,” which I only found out about from one of the just-mentioned threads. /8
Here's the first one /9 newyorker.com/news/news-desk…
Here's a thread about the other one /10
Plus the one thread about the “historovox,” which I only found out about from one of the just-mentioned threads. /11 nymag.com/intelligencer/…
And all of the threads develop commentary more than singular or decontextualized, which is hard to do on-line, with forums structured to promote a binary public debate. We love a point or hate it. Hot takes everywhere. Takes so hot, as @stonev would say, they melt paint. /12
So why am I talking about this? As someone who’s only been tweeting a month and doesn’t want to get into this mode? (If I’d been here longer I could’ve weighed in on the observation that 2018, was the year of the history thread, per @rebeccaonion.) /13
Well, rhetorical asker, I’m glad you asked. For one thing, all of this makes me think of blogging days a decade ago, since the threads and responses seem to have the same tenor and impetus as those long-ago blogging forums. /14
Even then the knock on blogs was that they were a diminishment, a degradation of more valued “public discourse.” (I don’t have a reference for that right now but maybe someone has a thread on it.) /15
But people then, and people now, were trying to leverage public forums, social media, on-line conversation, as best they could. Or at least, as they could. Like they are now. We’re trying to adapt to the instability of forums of communication. /16
(I sure as cheese hope someone has a thread of threads about when there were only three networks on TV. Cronkite! Sooo trustworthy.) /17
But for another thing, what am I going on about. Pedantry, naturally. Did you already forget where this thread started? Are you looking at other tabs? (I saw a thread in response to suggestions for closing tabs if they’re up there for more than a week. Fuck that.) /18
So the real reason I’m brought here, now in tweet 19, is that Vox had an essay by @mattyglesias about the 1888 tariff debate that the current President apparently keeps going on about, senselessly, and I thought, Hey, that’s MY era, the Gilded Age. /19
These past threads have taught me that I HAVE TO WEIGH IN BECAUSE I WORK ON THAT ERA. Also, if you’re just tuning in, I just used ALL CAPS TO SHOW HOW IMPORTANT MY POINT IS since that’s a whole thing, I am performing, and ALL CAPS TELLS YOU THIS SHIT JUST GOT REAL. /20
Cos you know what? That @voxdotcom column falls flat on its face and I’ll tell you why. @mattyglesias references our general lack of public knowledge about the Gilded Age and then says, There’s even a Simpsons song about how little known its President are. /21
Hold on, I have to get the all-capser function on, clearing throat, record scratch, something something so pretty soon I can say thank you for coming to my TED talk: /22
4 OUT OF THE 5 PRESIDENTS IN THAT SONG ARE FROM THE ANTEBELLUM PERIOD!! Not the Gilded Age! How can we accept the Vox argument if its laden with that bullshit? The answer: we cannot. /23
There’s Taylor, there’s Tyler, there’s Fillmore and there’s Hayes. Guess what, readers—there’s William Henry Harrison. We know what happened to him: He died in thirty days. Hayes is the only Gilded Age president and even then barely. /24
Once more, who can remember where this thread started. Or why. Or if I'm doing the thread thing correctly. (I'll have to continue it, I ran out of room.) It's ok, I’ll wait, scroll back up. … … Pedantry. The pedantic humanist. It me! /25
Don’t come at me, Vox, with a takedown of the mendacious baldfaced and blatant dumbassery of the current president by then making what was a pretty solid review of seriously obtuse tariff debates from ~130 years ago and then using MY favorite Simpsons song as evidence. /26
Oh, I’m sorry, Vox and the twitter commentariat police, did my thread veer off into a ditch? Talking about threads about threads while also mocking myself for thinking there is any reason to mock threads of threads is what it’s for. Also, I don’t like that Mrs. Maisel show. /end
