For the defense …

… Sarah Ruden's Mistakes | Mark Bauerlein | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The factual errors start with the phrase “anoints Whitman America’s greatest poet.” This isn’t true. Edmundson didn’t do this. It’s been done 100 times before by countless poets, writers, critics, and professors (Harold Bloom: “If you are American, then Walt Whitman is your imaginative father and mother”).