[VIDEO] Ken Burns’ Thomas Jefferson Documentary , Parts 1 & 2
Posted: July 4, 2017 Filed under: History, Think Tank, White House | Tags: 1700s, America, American Revolution, Britain, Declaration of Independence, documentary, Film, Founding Fathers, July 4th, Ken Burns, Revolutionary war, Thomas Jefferson, United States, video Leave a comment
[VIDEO] Happy Birthday Thomas Jefferson: Ken Burns’ America Thomas Jefferson Documentary
Posted: April 13, 2017 Filed under: History, Mediasphere, White House | Tags: American Revolution, Declaration of Independence, Founding Fathers, Ken Burns, Thomas Jefferson, University of Virginia, video, Virginia Leave a comment
Ken Burns’s Unquestioning Embrace of the Roosevelt Myth: Great Television, Poor History
Posted: September 24, 2014 Filed under: History, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Ken Burns, Pennsylvania Railroad, President of the United States, Roosevelt, Roosevelt family, Theodore Roosevelt, Upton Sinclair, William Howard Taft Leave a commentKen Burns and the Myth of Theodore Roosevelt
Michael Wolraich writes: The Roosevelts, a new PBS documentary by director Ken Burns, presents President Theodore Roosevelt as a political superhero. In photo after photo, Burns’s famous pan-and-zoom effect magnifies Roosevelt’s flashing teeth and upraised fist.
The reverential narrator hails his fighting spirit and credits him with transforming the role of American government through sheer willpower. “I attack,” an actor blusters, imitating Roosevelt’s patrician cadence, “I attack iniquities.”
“For the most part, Roosevelt pursued ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ with Morgan and other industrialists in order to avoid litigation. The rapport was so warm that many of them contributed to Roosevelt’s 1904 election campaign.”
Though exciting to watch, Burns’s cinematic homage muddles the history. Roosevelt was a great president and brilliant politician, but he was not the progressive visionary and fearless warrior that Burns lionizes.
“Burns’s narrator describes how he proudly defied J. Pierpont Morgan but neglected to mention that he sued far fewer trusts than his conservative successor, William Taft.”
He governed as a pragmatic centrist and a mediator who preferred backroom deal-making to open warfare. At the time, many of his progressive contemporaries criticized him for excessive caution. The “I attack” quote, for example, came from a 1915 interview in which Roosevelt defended himself from accusations that he had been too conciliatory.
[Check out Michael Wolraich’s book “Unreasonable Men: Theodore Roosevelt and the Republican Rebels Who Created Progressive Politics” at Amazon.com]
Two Republican titans dominated Congress during Roosevelt’s presidency: Senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island, a suave associate of J. Pierpont Morgan; and House Speaker “Uncle Joe” Cannon, an irascible reactionary from rural Illinois. Rather than challenge their authority, Roosevelt cooperated with them to accomplish what he could. “Nothing of value is to be expected from ceaseless agitation for radical and extreme legislation,” he reasoned.
This Day in History: Sept. 14, 1901: Theodore Roosevelt is Sworn in as President After William McKinley is Assassinated
Posted: September 14, 2014 Filed under: History, Mediasphere, White House | Tags: Buffalo New York, John F. Kennedy, Ken Burns, Leon Czolgosz, McKinley, Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, William McKinley 1 CommentOn this day in 1901, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of office as President of the United States upon William McKinley’s assassination. Roosevelt was 42 at the time, making him the youngest President until John F. Kennedy.
McKinley, who had been extremely resistant to accepting security measures, was shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz about a week earlier in Buffalo, New York. Afterwards, Congress assigned the Secret Service the duty of protecting the President.
[a preview video of McKinley’s assassination from Ken Burns’s The Roosevelts]
Photo: Assassination of President McKinley. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
This Day In History: The Statue of Liberty Arrives in America, June 17, 1885
Posted: June 17, 2014 Filed under: Art & Culture, History, Mediasphere | Tags: France, Grover Cleveland, Ken Burns, Liberty Island, Library of Congress, New York City, Statue of Liberty, United States 3 CommentsOn this day in 1885, the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York. France’s gift to America crossed the Atlantic dismantled in crates aboard the French steamer Isère, which nearly sank in a storm during the voyage.
It took a year to completely assemble the statue on Bedloe’s Island, now called Liberty Island. On October 28, 1886, President Grover Cleveland presided over the dedication ceremony. Read the rest of this entry »