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Thursday, January 28, 2010

Howard Zinn on "The Greatest Generation"



They tell me I am a member of the greatest generation. That's because I saw combat duty as a bombardier in World War II, and we (I almost said "I") won the war against fascism. I am told this by Tom Brokaw, who wrote a book called The Greatest Generation, which is all about us. He is an anchorman for a big television network, meaning that he is anchored to orthodoxy, and there is no greater orthodoxy than to ascribe greatness to military valor.

. . .


The crews who flew those planes died in great numbers. We who flew the more graceful-looking B-17s sardonically called those other planes Bdash2crash4. I wrote from my air base in England to my friend Joe Perry, who was flying B-24s out of Italy, kidding him about his big clunk of a plane, but the humor was extinguished when my last letter to him came back with the notation "Deceased."

Read the rest.

1 Comments:

  • Has there ever been anyone more eloquent when holding a mirror up to the spin we Americans love to attach to our history? RIP, Professor Zinn. You da man.

    By Blogger Editor, at 1:17 PM  

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