"Nearly half a century ago, a new fashion swept the historical profession. Rather than focus on the “great men”—or would-be great men—of history, the decision-makers who initiated, fought, won and lost wars, or passed laws, or ran for office, many historians argued for examining the experience of ordinary—or marginalized—men and women, whom they argued had been neglected in the past. It took time for this new idea to spread outside the academy." DK
Where did that new fashion come from? From New Deal liberalism going back to Wilsonianism? From populism all the way back to Jackson? Where?
I may have an answer for you, at the end.
Let's hold those questions, and read on:
"In the early 1990s, Ken Burns met with a group of professional historians after the screening of his first great documentary on the Civil War, and they took him to task severely for his traditional approach. His subsequent work has increasingly reflected their criticism. Now, however, this view of history has become mainstream in much of the press and in the media—and it is very much on display in Christopher Nolan’s new film, Dunkirk. One way to illustrate this is to look at what Nolan left out—the political and military context of the events he shows on the screen." DK
Thus a group of history academics dressed Burns down for not being historical enough in their sense, a sense he points out shared both by the press and the entertainment media as well as by academia.
Thus DK properly identifies the press' and entertainment media's view of history with recent historians' view, as the same unenlightening story, depicting unenlightened men unenlighteningly but entertainingly.
It is now, thus, as little the entertainment media's job to educate the public regarding other historical or political contexts as it is the press's, or the academic historians'. They are all, now, in, how you say, cahoots.
There was a time when the historical and political academy had at times pointed the finger mainly at the press.
This was the kind of interchange that had occurred, back then:
(Lorch) Newspaper Editor's retort to assembled Scholars:
"Don't you know what the newspaper business is all about, you bloody fool...For the past ten minutes you've been trying to make me out as some kind of hideous ogre devoid of any shred of social consciousness.
"You act as though you think the job of a newspaper is to be an educational institution for the masses.
"Education is your job, not mine.
"I run a business. That business is to make money. My stock in trade is something called 'news'. It isn't really news all the time-- it's entertainment in the guise of news quite often.... I am not going to print educational stuff that'll put me in the poor house."
Similar charges, no doubt, were levelled, at various times, at Hollywood, for many of the same reasons.
Nowadays, it is the sterile hobby of some in the press, notably Brooks, to point the finger at schools and colleges, not, of course, at themselves, for the failings. They don't talk much about our hamstringing historical constitutional requirement of decentralized education, and of various private and state institutions in cutthroat duplicative and blind competition to foist their their increasingly obsolescent credentials, and historically setting their own picayune and wayward agendas.
There really is almost no one else left to blame, except, of course, the government in general. (But then remember what President Kennedy had said, about a sentiment like that: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country!)
That seems to be the direction in which the discussion in the press and entertainment media on the right has gone, and gone for a long time now: governments in general have all failed, fleeced, and deceived all of us, and everyone everywhere! In the United States, as well as in any state or local government, there are some elements of truth in that.
This is one reason why a few right politicians like Trump have finally, in the last ditch, turned on their erstwhile partners, the press, especially the liberal press, since the press generally had long shown itself to be interested really only in its own dominance over politicians left liberal or right, had kept on accruing power, until the technology tables recently turned, and now finally if not dominance, then, interested at least mainly in its own survival, and must still always always kill to eat.
The liberal press, and now tech media outlets, require governments weak enough to continue to serve as their main prey and facilitator. This has been a problem for the West since the 17th Century. Recent web tech has rendered it insoluble.
Sadly, for these right politicians, the rightist press has a similar, if even more bestial, agenda going forward...
As Newt himself had so well put it, back then, a cannibal agenda.
So, in the last analysis, whose job is it in the United States, whose job has it been since the 18th Century, really, to educate the masses?
Here are some questions I was going to answer as well:
Where did that new fashion come from (ie DK's new fashion in history)? From New Deal liberalism going back to Wilsonianism? From populism all the way back to Jackson? Where?
The best answer I can think to give to all these questions, going back to the 18th Century:
The market.
