Reply #2: Ready for a storm of abuse... [View All]

[Briar]

There's an interview with Schama here:

"We are talking about his latest book, which seems likely to bring down on him a serious storm of abuse when published in the US next year. This is because now is not a good time for a 400-page skewering of the most cherished notion that America has about herself unless you want to set off an almighty media slugfest — and Schama has written that skewering. He has dared to mock America’s claim to have been founded on the idea of freedom...

...Here are slave-owners founding a country on the premise that “all men are born free and equal”; slaves fleeing to fight for the British against independence, and sailing in their hundreds for Sierra Leone on the strength of one Englishman’s promise; a mass anti-slavery movement half a century earlier in Britain than in America; and “the first identifiable African-American political leader”, Thomas Peters, an escapee from Carolinan bondage and, to this day, a total stranger to US school textbooks.

...For months now, Schama has been urging the US Democratic Party “to reattach its testicles” in its contest with the Bush White House. You get the feeling that when he comes to fight his corner over the history of freedom, his own equipment will be perfectly in place.