On the death of William L. O’Neill: History as Annoyance

Sam Roberts continues to build his idiosyncratic pantheon in the New York Times obit section of historians-you’ve-never-heard-of with a paean to William O’Neill, who made a career out of disparaging the New Left and Sixties counterculture.  “Many protesters, lacking serious reasons for being in college, resented having to study” was typical O’Neill scholarship (from Coming Apart, his 1971 bad-mouthing of the anti-war movement). This was evidently tenure-making rhetoric at Rutgers, as well as perennial music to the ears of stiff-necked Times editors. O’Neill wrote at remove about subjects that annoyed him when he imagined himself in close proximity.  Perhaps this was the permanent sour taste left in his mouth after student protesters expressed their resentments by occupying his classroom, he claimed, at Wisconsin in 1967 (presumably during demonstrations against recruiters from Dow Chemical). On feminism: “I have avoided the question of whether or not women ought to have full parity with menI was very cialis buy cialis much dejected and almost lost hope in medications that would prevent hair loss. The brain sends sexually provocative signals right through the spinal cord, it may stress the nerves on the spine. discount cialis You are using your laptop on lap: – Laptop generates tadalafil super active heat and harmful rays and if you use it more than this then it may result in the various chronic digestive disorders as well as chronic pancreatitis. Therefore, it is free from cialis 25mg side effects. . Such a state of affairs obtains nowhere in the modern world, and so, since we do not know what genuine equality would mean in practice, its desirability cannot fairly be assessed” (from Feminism in America: A History, 1969). Was this supposed to be funny?  Thank goodness he also avoided the question of whether or not black people ought to have full parity with whites.  Roberts can be expected to continue to comb through the collegetown death announcements for professors who were adept at cloaking with academic syntax their endless annoyance over the fact that Sixties youth just wouldn’t behave.

UWisc 1967

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