Day: June 25, 2012

Co-author of Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President, Michael Coulter, was interviewed for this Current.org article which goes in depth about the firing of Alabama public TV executives. One fired executive suggested that the firings related to refusal to air David Barton’s DVD series about the founding era. The current APTV board says the firings were unrelated to disagreements over programming. After reading the article, I think there is room for skepticism about that denial.

Please read the entire piece, but here is some of the money:

Pizzato [fired CEO] asked a group of APT staff members to watch the Barton videos and give him feedback in April, according to Howland, who participated in the review process. The programs “talked about how our government forefathers were very religious men,” Howland said, “how the country was founded on religious principles and how we need to go back to that.” The content “was very much advocating that position.”

Pizzato and his staff had “grave concerns” that the Barton content was inappropriate for public broadcasting due to its religious nature, Howland said.

Pizzato also sought advice from the station’s attorney in Washington, D.C. Todd Gray of Dow Lohnes confirmed he spoke with Pizzato about the Barton programs but he declined further comment.

In a brief interview with Current, Pizzato declined to discuss the programs or describe how he responded to the commission’s request that APT broadcast the Barton videos.

But minutes of the June 12 meeting, which have not yet been formally approved by the commission, reveal that he proposed a different set of programs for broadcast. Pizzato unveiled a new show, In the Public Interest, which would “tackle issues that have been of some concern to the Commission.” Pizzato also offered to run a 1992 documentary on creationism, Voices for Creation. Creationism also was a potential topic on In the Public Interest,Pizzato told commissioners.

Soon after, the minutes say, commissioners went into executive session to discuss Pizzato’s “general reputation, character and job performance.” About an hour later they returned to announce that they had voted to oust Pizzato and Howland.

According to the article, Pizzato appears to be preparing a suit against the Alabama PTV board. Discovery will be intriguing if it gets that far.

 

Brent Bozell runs Media Research Center and founded ForAmerica but is promoting a quote falsely attributed to Thomas Jefferson. See the picture below exploding all over Facebook.

The problem is that Jefferson did not make this assertion. The folks at Monticello have the whole story on the quote:

Quotation: “My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”

Variations:

“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government has grown out of too much government.”

Sources consulted: Searching on the phrase “bad government” and “too much government”

Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition

Thomas Jefferson Retirement Papers

Thomas Jefferson: Papers and Biographies collections in Hathi Trust Digital Library

Earliest known appearance in print: 1913

Earliest known appearance in print, attributed to Jefferson: 1950

Other attributions: John Sharp Williams

Comments: This exact quotation has not been found in any of the writings of Thomas Jefferson. It bears some slight resemblance to a statement he made in a letter to John Norvell of June 14, 1807: “History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.” However, the quotation as it appears above can definitely be attributed to John Sharp Williams in a speech about Jefferson, which has most likely been mistaken at some point for a direct quotation of Jefferson.

Click the link to get the sources for this note on the fake quote. Over at the Facebook page where this image is listed, over 85,000 people like the false attribution and over 2700 people have commented on it. Some, including me, have posted the Monticello link. The picture and the quote remains.

ForAmerica describes itself as follows:

ForAmerica’s mission is to reinvigorate the American people with the principles of American exceptionalism: personal freedom, personal responsibility, a commitment to Judeo-Christian values, and a strong national defense. We believe in limited government with Constitutionally-enumerated powers only. We believe that the size of the federal government should be dramatically reduced and that government’s regulatory stranglehold on the free enterprise system should be lifted. We believe in freedom.

I suppose that one of those Judeo-Christian values is honesty. I hope this means that the reinvigoration of the people can happen with honesty. As far as I can tell, Jefferson was pragmatic about the role of government. He saw a limited role for government in reinvigorating citizens with religious values but did want the government of Virginia to generously fund the University of Virginia, and public education in general.

Here is the earliest use of the quote found by the Monticello researchers and it was not by Jefferson but by Mississippi Senator John Sharp Williams who delivered lectures about Jefferson at Columbia University, published in 1913. Williams was a democrat and supported Woodrow Wilson’s call for an income tax.

Last year when an atheist group got caught in a spurious quote snafu, they acknowledged their error. Will ForAmerica?