The Truism That Facts Are Facts Is History

History is bunk, Henry Ford once said.

History, Richard Nixon once said, depends on who writes it.

Maybe you’re tempted to dismiss their opinions as nothing more than sour grapes. After all, Ford made his remark while testifying in a libel trial, and Nixon made his in the post-Watergate period.

C’mon, did those two Sunshine Boys really mean that history is a sham? If so, how about a class-action lawsuit for all of us who sat through sleep-inducing history class in school? Where can we get a full refund?

I was an odd child; I loved history. I spent hours as a kid at the public library, reading newspapers on microfilm or poring through history books.

I believed Newton figured out gravity by watching an apple fall from a tree. I believed Washington chopped down a cherry tree but couldn’t lie about it. I believed Babe Ruth called his shot against the Cubs in the ’32 World Series.

Recent newspaper stories, though, make me wonder about everything.

In the last two weeks, these bombshells:

* Some religious scholars are questioning whether Judas Iscariot really was a villainous betrayer of Jesus or just a part of the big plan.

* Many dinosaurs likely were warmblooded.

* The universe itself is flat, rather than curved, as had been the conventional wisdom.

* Playwright Eugene O’Neill died in 1953 not of Parkinson’s disease but of a rare form of brain deterioration. In addition, researchers said, alcohol abuse played no part in his death.

Those are not exactly insignificant finds.

It’s one thing to discover a year or so too late that Milli Vanilli were lip-syncing; it’s quite another to find out a few hundred million years after the fact that dinosaurs were not, as the article described them, “drab, coldblooded, lumbering mega-lizards.�

Revolting Developments

We news hounds consider ourselves mini-historians (it builds our self-esteem). An editor once tried to give us a bit of an escape valve, though, by describing what we do as providing history “on the run.�

What he meant was that in putting out a newspaper every day, we’re bound to make a mistake or miss a nuance here and there.

Still, our game is credibility. We know we make mistakes, and it kills us.

Historians and scientists are cut from a better cloth. They’re supposed to know what they’re talking about, or to remain silent until they do.

That’s why these new revelations are unsettling.

Who could blame us for not believing anything we read in the history books? How are we to distinguish the History Channel from Comedy Central?

Ponder these possibilities for future historical revision:

* Genghis Khan was a sissy, but he had a good PR team.

* Abraham Lincoln’s beard was a fake, glued on to attract a larger male vote.

* Sinatra lip-synced everything. The real “voice� in his recordings belonged to Harry Daniels, a crude, unattractive drunk who was too afflicted with stage fright to perform live.

Here in Orange County, history is definitely made on the run. Just when you think you have a fix on something, you don’t.

Case in point: The Board of Supervisors is considering a fourth election on the proposed El Toro airport. Each outcome has the potential to expunge the history of the previous one, as Measure F did when it passed in March and scuttled two earlier countywide votes.

Who can keep up with it all? Shouldn’t we nail some things down?

If we don’t, what’s to keep us from all going crazy and, as people did in previous centuries when their basic scientific and spiritual beliefs were overturned, rising up in spontaneous global revolutions?

More to the point, what’s to prevent this generation of schoolchildren--the smartest ever--from demanding to know:

“If history is bunk, what about algebra?�

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by e-mail to [email protected]