You can be a historian, too

Professor Gingrich was at it again last week flashing his Official Historian's Membership Badge, this time to explain why President Historian Gingrich, "just like Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR,"  would "take on the judiciary."

Before examining the professor's historical analogies, could I point out that unlike, say, being a chemist, physician, lawyer, engineer, accountant, plumber, tree surgeon, piano tuner, or barber, being a "historian" means absolutely nothing in terms of professional qualifications or special expertise?

The cartoon professor

The ignoramus wing of the Republican Party has for some time now been purveying a caricature of the intellectual as someone who is elitist, arrogant, smugly certain, impractical, and out of touch with the common man if not with reality itself.