Posted on 10/01/2007 5:59:05 PM PDT by american_ranger
Hahahha
Well, ranger, lured in for a bit by some of the incredible heroism and sacrifice, I saw it soon turn to what horrible things were done by us to free this continent from Nazism...although that just doesn’t get mentioned.
So I, like you, turned it off. The message, I guess, is saving western civilization and your own homes and way of life, and libertating Europe, is not worth it...just too mean.
Why would you want to watch PBS/Ken Burns’ version when there are loads of WW2 newsreels, raw film footage, and existing documentaries on CDs already? (Victory At Sea, World At War, even one narrated by - gasp! - Martin Sheen).
Burns managed to drain the life out of “Jazz”, so I figured he’d do the same for this.
I think it’s an extraordinarily good and realistic series. I do not see this as anti-American. It makes me cry to realize the sacrifices of that generation, and I say that without needing to believe that they were all saints. They were still remarkable. And we owe them more than we can ever pay.
The “World at War” series, narrated by Laurence Olivier, is the definitive WWII documentary, as far as I’m concerned.
The blankets had smallpox...that was 150 years earlier...and they named a town after the guy
At least we name helicopters after the warring tribes who tried to wipe us out...
Excellent suggestion. Unlike Ken Burns, Frank Capra was a real American.
Burns & Co. also botched the story of the Sullivan’s...got their home town totally wrong. Burns is a wanker.
I'd say more like the men taking care of business. In one of the first episodes featuring the Pacific theater, one Marine said that they'd found fellow Marines that had been killed and mutilated by the Japs. Their heads were cut off, slashed horribly, and some had their private parts cut off and shoved in their mouths. He said after that...they never took another Jap prisoner. He said one day they'd captured about five Japs, and they were marched into the jungle and killed. He said most of the men would deny it, even to this day, but he knew it was true, because he'd been there. The one thing that has impressed me most about all the old vets is that time has never diminished the memory of the things they saw and did. Sixty-plus years later, and they still get choked up talking about their buddies who didn't make it home. It makes me choke up too, and I've found myself openly crying for what these men went through.
Thanks for posting. Ping. Ping.
But it IS a comment representing Burns's point of view. All of the MSM use the same technique. They find someone "off the street" to deliver their talking points in order to legitimize their propaganda.
I often think that we merely delayed the inevitable.
Burns is so exquisitely talented it is too bad he is a lefty. The photos, the music (I haven’t heard boogie woogie bugle boy once), the people... The way he works the photos with pans and zooms to make them look almost like movies. I can’t help it, I love this guy’s work.
And I don’t find it as anti-american as some of the paleos on here. I think some of these folks just might have already formed an opinion going in.
Also, I like the year by year pace of it. It helps me understand what was going on in the country at the time.
While it's not pleasant to hear that our military in WWII wasn't perfect, it isn't bias to point it out. The fact we won in spite of these screwups is quite the testament to the men with boots on the ground, I'd say.
So yeah, flame me if it makes you feel better, but I'm just not seeing the leftist slant here, at least not in the episodes I've viewed. And certainly not enough to justify the hand-wringing, name calling and general wailing, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments that has cropped up on this thread.
Let’s blast PBS...let’s tell them what we all think of this ANTI-AMERICAN garbage. My local pbs has been holding fund raising more than usual lately. I think because of this anti-America crap people have stopped giving to them.
The first episode bored me to sleep, although I did notice how quickly they skipped over Pearl Harbor.
The North Vietnamese took that attitude too. The last part of the book “We Were Soldiers Once and Young” tells the story of the “second” battle as our soldiers were trying to make it to another LZ. They got shot up pretty bad, with the guys that managed to remain hidden and escaped had to listen throughout the night to our wounded moaning until a gook shot them. That was a VERY hard part to read. (I believe the movie ends before this second battle).
No the mexicans have gotten there two cents in too.
For the war in the Pacific “Victory at Sea” was always my favorite. A bit dated now, but still great.
liberal or not, racist or not, slanted or not, who else is recording the memories of these heroes who are dying at the rate of something like 1,000 per day?
There’s some great stuff here.
In honor of their ability to FIGHT!
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