Killing Lincoln by Bill O'Reilly

[L Verge]

What a great lesson plan, Jamie! Too bad we can't clone you and send this style of teaching into classrooms across the nation. Members of my staff and I work with National History Day students, and one of the most difficult lessons to teach both the students and their teachers is how to use primary sources and citations. Years ago, I actually participated in a museum workshop where we conducted classes on this for just teachers (most of whom were very weak in that area).

Way back when Killing Lincoln first came out, I tried to find out more about O'Reilly's "co-author" because I suspected that he might be the real historian. Not so. Martin Dugard left the corporate world of marketing to pursue journalism - mainly writing articles for sports magazines. I'm not sure how he and O'Reilly hooked up, but I still suspect that Dugard did the bulk of the writing.

My respect for National Geographic dropped when they produced the film. I understand that they still have plans for doing his Killing Patton script, and Macmillan's Henry Holt and Co. division still has him under contract for more of his "Killing" series (who's left?). Here are some statistics that I found that will make you groan: Henry Holt and Company says that that series has sold 9.5 million copies to date. National Geographic says that 3.4 million viewers watched the Lincoln movie - surpassed only by the Killing Kennedy one.

Of course, Nat Geo is owned by Fox, so it will be interesting to see whether the fall-out of advertisers due to O'Reilly's alleged indiscretions and his firing will hurt that subsidiary also. I'm betting that sales will increase. I also feel that the lack of good history teachers on a national level, as well as the elimination of history classes in many areas, have led to this acceptance of weak/bad history because the average reader does not know any better.