If Zinn's concept is that the bias of a writer skews the information he is writing about, then this post only proved his point.

And again- I don't know Zinn- but I seriously doubt he expects anyone to have an "automaton’s level of clinical impartiality". Humans are humans, after all. It's good to at least make an *attempt* at impartiality- but it is clear that Mr. Chapin made no such attempt.

I'd say stop worring about trying for 100% objectivity, and try for 90%. Heck, even 50-50 would be an improvement.

The trouble with writers like Zinn and Loewen are that there are hordes of otherwise intelligent (and not so intelligent people) who mistake the things they write as scholarship (check out the glowing reviews he gets at amazon.com where his work is called scholarly 7 times). Almost everything Zinn writes has a factual or common knowledge basis, yet every bit of what he makes of those facts is strung together with ceiling wax, bubblegum and a drearily offensive presumption of white-male guilt. He documents nothing, provides no rationale for his contrary interpretations (other than there are poor people, so we must be oppressing them), and denounces all real scholarship as flawed far more than his own. His writing style is readable; and it may be people think that makes for good scholarship. Real scholarship provides supporting documents, references, sources and quotations for every assertion that cannot stand on its own or contradicts established understanding. He bring no new material to light and does not give us the least novel insight (other than we a despicable people, which was hardly novel as of his first publication). In the end, Zinn is merely a contradiction: an outraged iconoclast not really at odds with those he means to contradict.

Yet, he is believed and defended; not only by fellow radicals, but by people who claim to be neutral. Were I a liberal, I would be embarassed rather than delighted in Zinn. I might even begin to wonder if I might be afflicted with the same disease.