Free Republic

Get off Michael Moore's back. That was the message yesterday from fellow documentarian Ken Burns, fed up with right-wing carping against Moore's anti-Bush rant Fahrenheit 9/11. "Of course he's entitled to express his opinion --that's what this country is all about," says Burns, best known for epic documentaries The Civil War, Baseball and Jazz. "You're supposed to be able to stand up here and say, 'This guy is a schmuck.' " Burns concedes that Moore has an agenda, but so what? "Whatever your argument about his methodology, this is a man with a deep, abiding sympathy for the working man,"...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- With presidential security helicopters circling over the Yale University campus, filmmaker Ken Burns denounced the war in Iraq on Sunday and told graduating seniors to remember history as they work to repair divides in American culture. President Bush came to the campus for a private reception with his daughter, Barbara, who graduates from Yale on Monday. Bush did not hold any public events, and Barbara skipped Sunday's baccalaureate services and the day-before-graduation senior Class Day festivities where Burns spoke. While Bush was not in public view, his presidency was a hot topic of rhetoric at Class...

November 27, 2003 -- Joseph Dunn, a Democrat senator from California, reacting to a book by some flaming leftist California academic, is part of a movement to pay reparations for a 1930’s mass deportation of California Latinos to Mexico. A class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of those expatriated against their will, and on behalf of their survivors. The PBS News Hour segment on this subject showed trainloads of Mexican nationals and Latino-American citizens being put on trains and locked inside until they crossed the border into Mexico. The segment narrator expressly pointed out that federal agents were...

Oregon Magazine "Ken Burns' "Congress" May 26, 2003, 9:00 PM -- The most powerful accomplishment of tonight's segment of the PBS program, Ken Burns' "Congress," is that Mr. Burns managed to describe the period of official racism in America from just prior to the Civil War to the post-Reconstruction era, without once identifying a pro-slavery congressman or senator as a Democrat. When the Republicans outlawed slavery (which is exactly what actually happened), guess who walked out of the House and the Senate. Their party begins with the letter "D." Guess who after the Civil War worked to disembowel the black...

May 26, 2003, 9:00 PM --The most powerful accomplishment of tonight's segment of the PBS program, Ken Burns' "Congress," is that Mr. Burns managed to describe the period of official racism in America from just prior to the Civil War to the post-Reconstruction era, without once identifying a pro-slavery congressman or senator as a Democrat. When the Republicans outlawed slavery (which is exactly what actually happened), guess who walked out of the House and the Senate. Their party begins with the letter "D." Guess who after the Civil War worked to disembowell the black franchise. You have it. The same...

Perhaps the most moving moment of Ken Burns' 11-hour documentary "The Civil War" is the reading of Sullivan Ballou's July 14, 1861, letter to "My very dear Sarah," written days before he was killed at the first Battle of Bull Run. Americans hearing his words 129 years later treasured them almost as much as the Union major's widow must have, reciting the letter at weddings and funerals.The Ballou letter epitomized the great achievement of Burns' film, which PBS is rebroadcasting over five nights beginning tonight. (8 p.m. on WEAO Channel 45/49 and at 9 p.m. on WVIZ Channel 25).Burns gave...

SEPTEMBER 3!