I’m a history buff. I love the Museum of Natural History.
—Massachusetts senator-elect Scott Brown
He’s right, you know: the Hall of Paleobiology, the Insect Zoo, and the “Butterflies + Plants: Partners in Evolution” exhibit are like flypaper for history buffs.
(via langer)As a historian I object to this term “history buff”. I don’t even care about the Museum of Natural History bit of what Brown said. Self-proclaimed history buffs, I have found on the web, are usually people who know a tonne of tiny details about a historic period or event, but they spew the most infuriating and retarded nonsense about the bigger picture. They commonly distort motives and cause-effect-relations to suit their outlook on life. That really ought to be fine, were it not that if you compare their claims (“analysis”) about any given topic to academic studies, you realise how full of it they are.
So, Scott Brown. I really hope he goes beyond history as a trivia game. I fear the worst though.
