Dr. Arrangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Jon Stewart

I don’t often write about issues in archives-land, but when it comes to making fun of archivists, I’m kind of the expert.

Apparently there is some concern on teh interwebz over Jon Stewart talking smack about archivists. Now, I’ve accused our profession of some pretty bad stuff: Twittering instead of working, not bathing, getting off from old manuscripts. I could go on. And I’ve been getting away with it for a while.

“But Dee Dee!” you cry. “We’re all archivists here!”  Not so! Thanks to the relative obscurity of our profession, I’m less likely to be introduced as “the archivist” than as “the one who draws a webcomic,” and so we have a few readers who don’t know much about archives. (Hi there! Thanks for reading!) And I have to say, explaining archives works so much better when there’s the payoff of understanding a joke at the end. I know because I do it all the time.

Thank you, Jon Stewart, for providing archEYEvists with this valuable teaching moment, and for hosting the only news show worth watching.

And now, your Moment of Zen:

Image by tommaync