So I’m sitting in good old Waidner Spahr Library, working on some final things for my Historiography (for Pinsker’s 304). I was going to tweet something about one of my sources, then I wondered how much any of my friends would actually care. At that point, I remembered that I have never actually written anything on this blog about any history work I’ve done. So here I am.
My historiography is about the formation of Clinton’s legacy, the reliance on oral history in many works about his life, and the emphasis – fairly or not – on the Lewinsky scandal over his political career. (It is worth noting that my title incorporates both of these facts, and is, in my mind, hilarious.) One of my sources is called The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton. If it sounds pretty bold, that’s because it is. It’s easily the most slanted of the works I’m using in my paper. In the context of my other sources it fits nicely though.
What astonished me about this source was not that there are such ardent Clinton defenders out there or anything like that, but that of all of the great books and sources that exist on this remarkable and complex president, this work is the only one to have been made into a movie. In our 304 we have talked a good deal about the importance of movies and history, and in the capacity of media creating a legacy for a president, movies are undoubtably very powerful. Now this is not a Saving Private Ryan or Pearl Harbor or anything like that, but it was still interesting – if not necessarily surprising – that of all the books, this was the one that got the movie deal.
If the library internet was any better than awful, I could watch the trailer and see what the movie is like, but alas, it is not to be. It’s probably for the best, though. I still have other work to do.
TvA