Historians and Pop Reporters

熹微

So far as contributions to historiography are concerned, I think we have to hand it to the unofficial historians, and let the official historians come second---for nowadays the knowledge of history we gain is from TV plays, which are based on the works of those unofficial historians. And the plays are very popular, because they show a lot of secrets of great men. And the very charm of such TV plays, their very watchability, depends on showing the human side of a great character which is so similar to ours. And then, for the above reasons, certain historians embroider the facts and falsify the history to suit us.
   So certain so-called historians are flying around the dead day and night, as the pop reporters are flying around the pop stars.
   That the stars are hounded day and night by the reporters is hateful to us. We call distorted stories about pop stars Eight Trigrams; however, all distorted stories about history are acceptable. Maybe the difference between certain historians and pop reporters seems to be that the historians concern the dead, especially the great characters, while the pop reporters concern the living, especially the pop stars.
   So, I think when a pop reporter turns his attention from a living pop star to a dead great man, perhaps he could be a great historian.