Surely, Book TV Isn't That Hard Up for Programming

When C-Span told Deborah Lipstadt they wanted to tape a lecture on her recent book, History on Trial, a blow-by-blow account of the libel suit David Irving filed against her for calling him a Holocaust denier, only to get his ass handed to him on a platter, she was pretty excited. But then, she tells the NY Sun, "I learned that they were intending to juxtapose my talk with one by Mr. Irving. In essence, they were planning to create the debate between us, a debate I have long refused to have...There are many things to debate about the Holocaust, e.g. precisely when did the Nazis decide to murder European Jewry. Whether it happened is not one of them." Then, amazingly, she was informed that even if she backed out, they would still air his talk, since he'd done something for them years ago.

"When I protested to C-Span," Lipstadt remarks, "they insisted that they broadcast all opinions." Now, apart from agreeing with her immediate incredulous reaction ("Holocaust denial is an 'opinion'?"), I have to say this simply doesn't ring true. I, for one, am finding it difficult to recall any authors with openly racist or anti-Catholic views who have gotten themselves onto Book TV, unless you want to stretch the field wide open and count Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's 2002 lecture accusing the Catholic Church of limited moral culpability in the Holocaust. Nor, save apparently for David Irving, can I think of any instances in which C-Span has given the floor to folks who think the National Socialist leadership was swell. And whatever reasons they had for giving Irving air time back then, I fail to see the wisdom in rerunning that material after it's been well established that as a historian, the guy's trousers are ablaze and hanging off AT&T cables.