To call the piece Zimmerman writes an article is probably an insult to the concept of article as a news story. An opinion? Perhaps, but I'm willing to bet my last blog entry managed just as many words. Perhaps more. Damn readable stuff, too, if I do say so myself.

Where was I? Ah yes; Zimmerman and Carter.

Despite its relative shortness, however, the opinion Zimmerman writes is still interesting, especially when read alongside Carter (almost as if someone intended us to make the comparison. How sinister). In it, Zimmerman details a law I was unaware of; a resolution on the part of Florida to end this apparently degenerate revisionist trend and to bring back the "good ol' days of fact-based learnin'" (I admit, I find it funny to use a quote in this context, especially when writing about Carter: it feels so rebellious).

Ignoring the fact that those "good ol' days" ended in about 1925 and had their end firmly declared and at least the essence of relativist history laid out in Carl Becker's speech to the AHA in 1931; that historians must, while engaging a lay audience, strive ever to approach the unobtainable objective truth while understanding that all viewpoints are subjective.

Carter makes this same claim in his own piece detailing the ethical standards of journalists (standards which are quite relevant to the historical profession). While he admits that there is no avoiding subjectivity in Journalism, and that the transgressing or near-transgression of some of the standards he has lain out is nearly inevitable, he also comes to the same conclusion; the point is in striving to avoid those ideas which are so intentionally subjective--composite characters, inventing quotes, constructions of situations and thoughts that didn't occur. The point is to strive for the greatest practical purity; to come ever-closer to approach the unobtainable 'Truth'.

From this common truth--this striving for ultimate 'Truth' with the understanding that we can never reach it and the obedience of the strictest limitations of ethics and source-usage in our pursuit--there are two lessons all history students must learn. One is that sloppiness is unpardonable; the field is difficult, our work challenging, but we can reduce our challenges if the work we are doing is too hard or rise to meet them if it is too important. No less important is a lesson Zimmerman plays with in his whole quiet critique of the outlook on relativism; we must not isolate ourselves from the public. Scholarly work is all for the good, but of equal importance is our public acceptance. Too many historians now take refuge in the comfortable, highly-specified system that guarantees them a textbook and a publisher for works that demand a PhD in the field to even understand what the point is; it is in some ways far more challenging--and far more influential--to be able to relate the subjective flow of events to the vast majority who are not Historians.

The irony of which, I think, will not be lost on our professors.