Andrew Ferguson Response

Andrew Ferguson Weekly Standard is very critical and skeptical, which is great trait for a journalist or media analyst to have.  I like having my assumptions questioned and whether that was on the usefulness of Twitter or my own assumptions about President Lincoln, Andrew Ferguson did that well. Overall, I think Ferguson fits in with the conservative image of the Weekly Standard, although his more or less favorable review of Barack Obama’s literary works was surprising. The characterization of him I got from these readings is that he’s an even-handed journalist and patriot, a characterization I will explore through three of the articles we read.

The first impression I had when I saw Andrew Ferguson give his speech on his book, the only thing I could think of was how much he looked like Einstein but with a better hairdo. He was comical, but not overly so; I got a chuckle when he said “I wanted to be a writer so I didn’t have to speak.’ But he wasn’t a bad speaker; his introduction to and passages from his book were very compelling and gave insight into a world I never knew existed: Lincoln Fandom. I had no clue there were so many books written about Lincoln, and Ferguson’s explanation of them shed a great deal of light on how there was such a variety of books and such vast similarities and differences between them at the same time.

Ferguson gets to the crux of the matter when he says that “Lincoln was a great national possession that we have had privatized.”Our readings this semester, from Adonro and Horkheimer to Benjamin have talked about this sort of branding in politics. It seems like as Americans we like to use dynamic public figures like Lincoln to justify our own way of viewing the world. But there’s great promise in the fact that even though people glorify such different aspects of the man, we still come together on his belief that “all men are created equal.” His anecdote on the Czechoslovakian concentration camp victim was a reminder of why we look up to Lincoln and why we write so many books about him.

Ferguson’s course in writing this book was an honorable and desirable one; to set out to find a universal Lincoln beyond the Lincoln restaurant, Lincoln pest control, and Lincoln towing. Also, his story about the Thai restaurant was fascinating. He said that when he saw the “Thai restaurant in an Arab neighborhood making a Buddhist statue to honor a Jewsh president, my interest is peaked.” You and me both! A quick note on the article titled “History Hobby,” where he says the Lincoln field is where “the most interesting writing and research is often done by hobbyists. It's been this way from the beginning.” I think Ferguson was right to honor this man who contributed to this field by just being interested in his and our nation’s history and it’s a shame he didn’t get more attention. People who dig through the information out of a sole desire to find the facts and the persona beyond how others are painted are true patriots.

When it comes to the Obama article, Ferguson reviewed Barack’s two books “The Audacity of Hope” and “Dreams of My Fathers.”  I found it interesting that he would say that “there's never a chance that Obama will come down on any side other than the conventionally liberal views of the Democratic party mainstream. It turns out that much of his on-the-one-hand judiciousness is little more than a rhetorical strategy,” when he spent the entire review talking up his use of the ‘on-the-one-hand judiciousness.’ It seems to me more like after reading the book he just wasn’t ready to give up his own ideology even though Obama so eloquently made the case for his. But he doesn’t hate the entire article; he compliments Barack’s writing ability, especially in the first book.

He was kind of patronizing though in the Twits on Parade article. The story was about the website Twitter, which allows users to send periodic updates to their personal webpage from their phone or web browser. Barack Obama is the #1 user of twitter. His indictment of the usage of internet screen names is all too true when he says “In the real world you can either have me take your political opinions seriously, or you can call yourself "dogmeat69." You can't do both.” The immaturity and randomness of the handles people choose to associate themselves with is totally damaging to the credibility of the people that use these sites. It’s a personal pet peeve of mine that people don’t take these platforms more seriously because I want them to promote our democracy and public discourse. Still, I believe all is not lost for the new age of technology, but from Ferguson’s conclusion, it seems he does.

 

Questions for Andrew Ferguson:

What would Lincoln say about a black man running for the United States, both in policy and social impact?

Do you have any hope in the future of technology when it comes to advancing our democracy and discussions of politics?

Who do you support in the upcoming election and what do you think of the media’s coverage of the election?