THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

FOR THE MEDIA, AMERICA BEGINS AND ENDS IN THE NORTHEAST | 2003-11-22

Camelot, the Kennedy Days, was the last time when the Northeast was everything.

Those were The Good Old Days, and the liberals want the Good Old Days back.

In the 1960s the media explained their version of American history in a multi-part series narrated by Dick Cavett. The program was put together under the supervision of the National Education Association (NEA).

At the beginning of the program Cavett gave a quick overview of the NEA-Big Media view of American history. Cavett explained he would describe "how America grew from a small settlement in Massachusetts to become a nation that reached from coast to coast."

Back then you routinely said that the first permanent English settlement in America was the Plymouth Colony in 1620. Nobody dared to contradict that.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in America.

But if you mentioned Jamestown back in the 1960s the NEA and the media would lose patience with you. The NEA would humiliate you by saying, yes, there was a Lost Colony in North Carolina and a Jamestown down in Virginia, but serious history meant the history of the Northeast.