Posted on 10/05/2008 5:15:50 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
Fresh on the heels of slamming Sarah Palin, film documentarian Ken Burns is now upset at John McCain. Why? Because McCain is being too aggressive in waging his campaign and not politely allowing Obama to ride over him to victory in November. Burns begins his New Hampshire Union Leader Op-Ed piece moaning that this is not the John McCain he used to know, the one who would happily allow Obama to defeat him:
WHAT HAPPENED to John McCain? What happened to the man so many of us in New Hampshire have admired and respected for so long? The fierce bipartisan warrior, the straight talker, the maverick whose ideas nearly everyone found some common ground with now seems missing in action. He seems to have betrayed the very attributes that originally commended him to us and earned our earlier trust and support.
What happened to the John MCain we used to know who would meekly stand aside and allow Obama to rush into the White House without the necessity of being forced to campaign? And now Ken Burns, without the slightest sense of irony about how John Kerry in 2004 kept reminding us that he was in Vietnam, now accuses McCain of "shamelessly" using his POW experiences:
We continue to stand in awe of his heroic service to his country during Vietnam, but now he shamelessly uses those experiences at every opportunity, as if it excuses him from having to answer any really tough questions about the economy or foreign policy. The answer to everything is not to mention his admittedly harrowing POW days. My experience interviewing heroes of war is that most prefer to deflect attention from themselves and let their record speak for itself. McCain seems to think that it buys him a permanent pass. But it is impossible to know how to fight the new wars if you are hopelessly lost in the old ones.
"I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty." Oh, and did you know that he was in Vietnam? Burns then goes on to pretend how he loved the old John McCain only to be betrayed by the new McCain because he dared oppose the mighty Obama:
We in New Hampshire bear some responsibility, I suppose. Thinking we had the old McCain, we gave him a decisive victory in our primary that permitted him to vanquish those challengers. But he betrayed us. If you have to say you're a maverick in your ads, it's clear you're not.
Are you ready now for a really good Ken Burns money quote in which the documentarian completely rewrites history? Here we go:
The real maverick turns out to be Barack Obama, who bucked his party's establishment and whose once-lonely positions have been adopted by nearly everyone including even the Bush administration. Nearly everyone, that is, except John McCain. So what happened to him?
And what were those "once-lonely positions" that Obama supported that were adopted by nearly everyone? Burns does not say. He isn't referring to Iraq policy, is he? Oh, yes. We sure do remember how "maverick' Barack Obama bucked his party's establishment to urge the Iraq surge upon a reluctant Bush administration. Barack's leadership was so effective that the Bush administration was forced to sign on to it which finally led to victory in Iraq.
I guess a film documentarian feels it is permissible to rewrite history when it is politically expedient to do so. However, many of the readers of his screed don't exactly agree with his history rewrite as you can see in these comments below Burns' Op-Ed piece:
Hey Ken Burns, thank you for documenting so well your penchant for using the sinister tactics of personal destruction. Nary one sentence in your pathetic essay above is about the national issues of this campaign, or where the candidates stand on the issues. Instead, you have merely focused on their personal behaviors and relationships, and similar hollow abstractions.
There is no need for Burns to criticize John McCain for "shamelessly" mentioning evens of his past. .... On the other hand, if you are a community organizer from a corrupt Chicago neighborhood with no record of your own, you need bottom feeders like Burns to slam the other guy's record.
No surprises here, Ken Burns is voting for Obama. I would have expected, however, that such a talented and intelligent man would use something more than basic Obama campaign talking-points in a written piece.
Oh, and on the subject of film documentaries, your humble correspondent highly recommends a viewing of this 2002 film about the Weather Underground on YouTube. You can watch it in 9 parts and among the terrorist "stars" are the friends of Barack: Bernardine Dohrn and her husband, Bill Ayers. This is definitely not a documentary that film documentarian Ken Burns produced.
F*G with an extremely extremely BAD toupee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So, I see the Dems are bringing on their political psyops operations. Lots of people, indoctrinated with the Ken Burns views, thinking, like, maybe he knows what he's talking about.
My kids just smiled, found very creative ways of disagreeing with Ken Burn's essays so they wouldn't be grade punished; And survived beyond the Ken Burn's "burnt worldview".
My husband tried to watch the Ken Burns "civil war" documentary. He had to give it up; All Ken Burns did was focus on negatives; the overall meme was "all wars are bad". Too bad the guy comes across as having a obviously bipolar issue. Maybe it's just an Eeyore complex.
“The last four weeks of this election will be about whether the American people are willing to turn our economy and national security over to Barack Obama, a man with little record, questionable judgment, and ties to radical figures like unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers. Americans need to ask themselves if they’ve ever befriended an unrepentant terrorist, or had a convicted felon help them buy their house — because those aren’t smears, those are true facts about Barack Obama.” —Tucker Bounds, spokesman McCain-Palin 2008
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/05/ap-palins-a-racist-for-bringing-up-ayers-or-something/
The real question is what the American people will do...and that is becoming more and more clear.
What is with that Monkees type flop on his cue ball? He looks like a drag king-(women impersonating men)./Just Asking - seoul62.......
Burns is the most overrated PBS parasite of them all.
Wow, what a p.o.s.
Burns to Rape Victim: Lay back and take it. This guy is a jerk!
Yeah, what happened?
He has done practically nothing to win this campaign.
It’s a start, what Sarah has been saying, but not enough.
She and McCain need to hit Obama hard every day.
McCain needs to forget ‘etiquette’ and ‘running a respectful’ campaign, as he put it.
If he doesn’t get off his duff and get out there and hit Obama every day, he’s handing the presidency over to Barack Hussein Obama.
Why is he not mentioning such things as Obama trying to turn Missouri into a police state? Obama trying to turn our children into ‘Hitler youth’?
Email Republican headquarters/McCain.
REMIND McCAIN THAT HE HAS AN OBLIGATION AS OUR CANDIDATE TO FIGHT BACK!
To h*ll with bipartisian BS!
To h*ll with PC!
To h*ll with ‘conducting a respectful campaign’as McCain has said, and vowed to do.
RESPECTFUL CAMPAIGNING WENT STRAIGHT OUT THE WINDWO WITH OBAMA’S NASTY, BRUTAL COMMENTS SUCH AS;
‘lipstick on a pig’ and ‘You can wrap AN OLD FISH in a piece of paper called change. It’s still going to stink after eight years.’
Take off the gloves, McCain!
Hit the Marxist/Muslim hard with Ayers, Acorn, Violation of Logan Act, abortion, 2nd admendment, Campaigning for Odinga!!
FReep ‘EM!!!!
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SEND THEM DAMAGING INFO ON OBAMA. DEMAND THEY DO THEIR JOB AND INVESTIGATE.
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Here was Michelle Obama's "rally" in Madison, Wisconsin a couple of weeks ago:
And here are photos from a B. Hussein Obama "rally" around the same time:
Nobody is as vain and selfish as a liberal. Whew... He does look like a friggin idiot.
Some people just don't get embarrassed, I guess.
LOL....Ken Burns is just an Oliver Stone who never served in the military, and a Spike Lee who was never black.
I’ve been calling Ken Burns ‘The Donald Trump of PBS’ for years. It’s not flattering!
What now!? Does Ken Burns have an Obama book in the works too? ;-)
I told someone not long ago that I never watch the polls.
I watch crowd sizes. I look at communities and know which way they are voting by the campaign signs, bumper stickers etc.
I have been traveling alot lately and have seen more McCain campaign things out there than Obama. Sure I have seen pockets of Obama supporters but as many as McCain.
Also the crowd sizes have jumped considerably for McCain and Palin even when they are not appearing together. Obama’s have been getting smaller.
Just a personal note: A community near me was asked to allow Obama to hold a rally a large township sports park. They said no. Obama appeared a few towns over instead and the crowds were not large and garnered few news reports.
A buddy of mine recently gave me the five DVD set of “The Civil War,” by Ken Burns. Politics aside, I thought that it was a world-class production. The music alone was enough to insure that there wouldn’t be dry eye in the house for five straight nights.
I watched “The Civil War” on TV many years ago when it first came out. I’ll berudgingly acknowledge that it’s well made from a technical standpoint, an it certainly made a lot of Americans look back at a time of our history that they would have otherwise continued to gloss over. Having said that, I still think Burns’s subsequent efforts have been mediocre, increasingly agenda driven, and riding on the coattails of the success off “Civil War”.
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