On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:35 AM, <WJhonson(a)aol.com> wrote:
<<In a message dated 1/6/2009 7:26:34 P.M.
Pacific Standard Time,
cbeckhorn(a)fastmail.fm writes:
That's exactly my point. There is no lack of academic analysis of
politicians, of artists, etc. But we do not seem to use any of it.
For example, I can find numerous articles on George W. Bush on JStor.
And once he is out of office there will be no lack of biogaphies written
to analyze his presidency. >>
First to attack your second point, why does W have to be out of office to
have a biography ? There are several books about Bush out, which analyze
his
presidency.
Mhm. His presidency hasn't even ended yet. So the only thing we could
possibly find would be books on, say, the first term of his presidency or
"the first term of his presidency + 2 years of his second presidency" and
still, I would be rather reluctant to cite these... If you want to seriously
review a thing such as a presidency, you will always want to have at least
some distance to it, for various reasons (hint: most archive material from
the Bush administration is not accessible at all yet).
I do not (in any way) feel that "academics"
have any toe-hold on
"biography". In fact, professional writers, tend not to be in academia at
all, and they
write prose that is much more interesting (apparently from their book
sales)
then academics.
Oh sure. Moreover, what the Sun writes is much more interesting (apparently
from their newspaper sales) than what the Guardian or the Times write. So
let's rely on the Sun for our future encyclopedic coverage.
We are not an academic encyclopedia anymore than we are a science one, a
religion one or a fancruft one. In trying to represent the world as it is,
we
must use what resources are present. In general, for biographies,
newspapers
and hard-cover biographies, are much more *present* and readable than
anything in a humanities journal. We're not trying to be technical as we
can be,
we're also trying to attract more readership.
We're trying to be as serious, neutral and fact-based as we can. We're not a
tabloid, we don't want to attract more readership by having the most
juiciest stories, irrespective of their accuracy respectively verifiability.
So again it's a balance. But by *ALL* means, if you have peer-reviewed
biographical material, add it. However "peer review" is not necessarily
the
standard for all articles. TV Guide is not "peer reviewed" and yet we
assume
it's a reliable source for what's on TV
Yes. But we don't assume TV Guide's description of the movie "W"
)or any
documentary on the topic) to be a reliable source of analysis of Bush's
presidency.
Michael
--
Michael Bimmler
mbimmler(a)gmail.com