As I’ve written in earlier posts, I read Amity Shlaes’ hamfisted, unsupported, cherry-picked attack on the New Deal despite a growing sense of revulsion as I turned each page. At least, I thought, in a sort of nebulous way, at least I’m reading something by someone qualified to write on these matters even if I disagree with the execution. Today, Matthew Yglesias writes:

I hadn’t realized that Amity Shlaes is a “senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations.” I kind of wonder what it takes to get made a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations. She’s got a bachelor’s degree in English and her columns once won a prize from a libertarian organization for some articles that “compared the failing economy of high-taxed and over-regulated US state of Maine to the success of the increasingly economically liberal Ireland; and showed that US workers benefit from taking responsibility for their own pensions.” That’s it.

This summer, I was discussing a book on the New Deal with a publisher. He said, “Sorry, Steve. You’ve only got a bachelor’s in history and a background in sports. You’d be in competition with the academic historians there. Nope, only academic historians get to write history.”

!@%$#@#%$# that.

Yes, I’m bitter.

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