right and center and left?

[GoodTaste]

Right and center and left what? Right and center and left wings (of politics)?


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Andrew Sullivan
@sullydish
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How many Pulitzer prizes have gone to essays that have had to subsequently publicly correct one of their core claims? Or been challenged by every major historian in the field, right and center and left?

 

[bubbha]

Yes, I think it refers to political leanings.

 

[jutfrank]

I can't think what else it could refer to other than political leanings, but I don't get the point of categorising historians by their political leanings.

 

[GoodTaste]

I can't think what else it could refer to other than political leanings, but I don't get the point of categorising historians by their political leanings.

That is exactly why it sounds puzzling to me.

 

[Rover_KE]

It sounds odd to me as the standard expression is 'right. left and centre (BE spelling)'.

 

[emsr2d2]

I think the suggestion is that historians perhaps cannot help but write (at least partly) based on their political leanings. They are not necessarily writing impartially.

 

[SoothingDave]

Historians are not immune. Of course they lean right and left.

Just like with journalists, what they cover and how they do it is driven by, and reveals bias.

 

[jutfrank]

Historians are not immune. Of course they lean right and left.

Just like with journalists, what they cover and how they do it is driven by, and reveals bias.

Well, hopefully not. They obviously have political leanings in their private lives but their academic work shouldn't show that.

Anyway, I now think it's more likely a mix-up of the phrase left, right, and center, meaning 'all over the place'.

(Interestingly, Rover_KE has it as right, left and centre, which sounds odd to me.)

 

[emsr2d2]

I use "left, right and centre".

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I can't think what else it could refer to other than political leanings, but I don't get the point of categorising historians by their political leanings.

I think the writer was just saying it happens across the spectrum ideology.

Point well taken, though. What worries more is that I've never seen a center wing. Hm.

 

[jutfrank]

It's not just that the idea of historians being associated with political leanings seems odd, it's also that the comment doesn't seem to be related to politics in any way, which makes me think that the phrase in question just means 'of all kinds' generally.

I think we might need to know more of the context of the comment. Does anyone know what the essay in question is?

 

[SoothingDave]

It's not odd at all. It's quite easy to see biases when you don't share them.

Do you think Howard Zinn, for example, was just an impartial chronicler of human events?

The topic of the tweet is the NY Times propaganda piece "1619," which, despite being criticized for inaccuracies by historians across the political spectrum, has just won a Puitzer.