Lunchtime Must-Read: David Weigel: Rick Perlstein’s Critics: The Plagiarism Dead-Enders

David Weigel: Rick Perlstein’s Critics: The Plagiarism Dead-Enders Alexandra Alter… [said] Sam Tanenhaus…

‘Lamenting the lack of primary sources’… ‘wrote that Mr. Perlstein had “adopted the methodology of the web aggregator”‘. It was a serious accusation, but now that Tanenhaus’s review is up, there’s very little to it. Tanenhaus[‘s calling]… the mid-1970s… the moment when right-wingers became ‘inverse Marxists’ and ‘revanchists’. How is this different than Perlstein’s argument? Perlstein just lacks Tanenhaus’s pompous fatalism…. The ‘web aggregator’ line looks even worse…. Reading [Tanenhaus], you might assume that Perlstein abandoned the archives to write this book. But Perlstein’s online notes refer to findings from Michael Deaver’s papers… Reagan’s papers… Nixon’s papers… half a dozen other primary source archives. Perlstein does use more online sources than his 2001 book. Has anything happened since 2001? Have more sources been placed online? Why, yes, they have…. Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s replacement level gossip columnist, reports… ‘the Atlantic magazine said Perlstein has shown in his latest political history that he is less a researcher-historian than a simple “web aggregator” who collects publicly available information and stitches it into a book’…

The Atlantic Monthly and the New York Times have, I think, some explaining to do…