Where I Stand—Mike O’Callaghan: A history full of lies

Tuesday, July 17, 2001 | 9:47 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

PROFESSOR JOSEPH J. ELLIS had everything going for him in the world of journalism and academia. He had a Pulitzer Prize and was a leading national authority on 18th century America. Ellis had taught history for three years at West Point and was a highly respected professor for 29 years at Mount Holyoke College where he also taught his signature course on Vietnam.

All of these accomplishments weren't enough for the professor. For some strange reason he found it necessary to weave himself into the history he taught. Teaching history at West Point wasn't good enough so he placed himself in Vietnam and later in the antiwar movement at Yale. He was lying to his students.

So how did all of this come apart?

The Los Angeles Times reports: "Ellis set his own trap through an interview published in the Globe last fall, said investigative reporter Walter Robinson. In a story about 'Founding Brothers,' Ellis' exploration of the Founding Fathers in the first year of the Republic, the professor said he had been a civil rights worker in Mississippi in 1964, a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division and a platoon leader in Vietnam in 1965 and later had joined the anti-war movement at Yale, where he was a graduate student."

Ellis isn't the first Vietnam historian who got carried away with his teaching and writing. B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley in their book "Stolen Valor" relate the background falsehoods told by historian Shelby Stanton. It wasn't long before Stanton had reality and his fabrications all mixed up in one big mess.

"Stolen Valor" authors noted that, "The fallout from Stanton's deceit is enormous. He produced entire books, plagiarizing virtually verbatim from government documents and other people's writings with no accreditation or acknowledgment. For years, he's cited documents supposedly in archives that other researchers are unable to find. They are no longer there. What is real and what is not real in Stanton's 'histories'? How can anyone know?

" 'Stanton has lied so often he doesn't remember the story he last told,' one Army investigator handling his case said.

"The point is, once you know a historian has deliberately fabricated a single 'fact,' his work is rendered, if not invalid, then at least questionable. History demands accuracy."

So what makes respected writers and professors throw everything they have accomplished to the wind by trying to be someone they are not? This seems so prevalent among those who lived during exciting times in which they didn't actually participate actively.

We all know men and women who believe they have done nothing exciting in life but are the true backbone of our social structure and American way of life. They find no inner need to lie about their roles in history and yet they are quiet heroes in their own lives.

Maybe our worlds of journalism and academia haven't given enough emphasis to roles played by Americans who hold their families together during difficult economic times; the families working together in our fields and orchards; the single mother feeding and raising several children in a ghetto; the students who work long hours at jobs and also attend classes; the people building our roads, dams, houses and bridges in both the extreme heat and cold; or the people who pick up our garbage, deliver our mail and answer our emergency calls.

Have writers and historians been overlooking the true strengths of our nation by stressing the exceptional and ignoring the millions of small important acts performed at home and on the battlefields?