Posted on 10/10/2017 7:48:48 AM PDT by pabianice
The recent PBS ten-episode The Vietnam War, produced and directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, and written by Geoffrey Ward, is billed as a critical reexamination of the war in Indochina that claimed more than 58,000 American lives and more than two million Vietnamese lives. It is nothing of the sort. Burns, Novick and Ward do not reexamine any of the conventional liberal perspectives on the war. The shibboleths of the Left are all reinforced. The production of this new series was, objectively, a waste of time and money, for PBS had essentially told the same story in 1983’s 13-part Vietnam: A Television History.
(Excerpt) Read more at realcleardefense.com ...
I’ve heard a lot of good things about this series. Almost entirely from Liberals.
There is a very good website, Vietnam Veterans for Truth, from which I’ve shared articles there that take the Ken Burns documentary and identify and discuss the various misrepresentations portrayed in each episode.
Yes, I agree.
It highlighted our atrocities and left out the North Vietnamese atrocities.
From what I have heard he didn't spend much time with the wives of the men who fought, were captured or were killed.
Then he woulda had something.
I quit watching the globalists propaganda years ago.
Vietnam Veterans for Truth,
Thanks. Can you post the link? I Google it and couldn’t find it for all the John Kerry Truthers.
I absolutely hate how the Left gets away with rewriting history in a false narrative that always puts them in a good light. Basically, this was a fictional account written by the 60's hippies.
This was confirmed throughout the series but especially when it came to Nixon. All the same left-wing crap. Johnson? Whitewashed. Kennedy? Just a walk through the hagiographic park.
You got 2 and a half more episodes into it than I did. I have read some reviews that it got more even handed as it went on but I’d had enough already. Everybody that served (in country or not) had a different experience during that time frame so the whole thing is apples vs pine cones.
Did they say anything about the traitorous john kerry and how he lost the war for us or his plaque of thanks that is in the Vietnam war museum?
POS PBS
Now why, why I ask would you even consider wathcing?
Its good toknow what the enem.......nah never mind I know them like the back of my hand and did not watch.
The commercials for the program pissed me off I knew exactly what they were going to portray.
Yeah, they pointed out what Kerry did, sandwiched between glowing accounts of how incredibly articulate he was.
The bill him as hero of the anti-war left. They don’t explain that going to Pairs and interjecting himself in the negotiations was tears. They show his speech before congressional committee and if you’re against the war, he is your hero. They did find in about 45 seconds not emphasizing how she elected moral and that she was by definition a traitor.
I generally liked the series. The battles for some hills was described by some who were there and heroic acts described in detail. It shows a lot of N and long speakers, but found it interesting. Good portrayal of Tet as a major enemy loss despite how the media portrayed it here.. good detail on the evacuation.
I saw the firsts series and i liked this one better because of more testimony on both sides. Good coverage of the French period more detail than the first series. All in all, watch both series and I think you have a thorough picture. Maybe a book someone here can recommend and that’s your VN dosage for awhile.
Stream for free on PBS before they take it down.
Those who wonder what Burns did well other than Vivil War, watch Jazz and Baseball.
#1 shibboleths and agitoprop
I do not want to look up meaning of words so early in the morning : )
and hagiographic !
1) I was there. In Nha Trang, a relatively quiet “rear” area, to be sure, but I was there Sept ‘67 to Sept ‘68.
2) Yeah, the left a lot out. He (they) also left a lot in.
3) Speaking as a former professional film and video editor, to edit is to make choices — and every edit leaves something out, and emphasizes something else. It’s the nature of editing.
4) Coming from his liberal bias, he did pretty good. It could have been a lot more lopsided. Maybe that’s all we get.
5) I thought, on balance, he did a pretty good job. He did catch the deeply essential insanity of many decisions of the commanders. Those feckless calls are simple facts and simple history.
6) Here’s the Killer Question, however:
After all that time, after all that blood, after all that expense... ...what was ultimately gained?
7) It was America’s Obsessive-Compulsive Psychotic War.
8) I honor all who served there.
9) The Vietnamese are clever, intelligent, and very resourceful. Give them a few years, and they will become an economic and manufacturing powerhouse that will give other Asian economies a good race for their money. The essentials of Liberty and Free Market will do what the idiot commanders of the military of the times could not:
make it a free country. Give it time. Liberty is a good hunger of the individual, and it will seek to find ways.
(P.S. — I was a guest for a day on an oil exploration vessel operated by Chevron. I have always known from that day that there was a nice amount of oil there on the conshelf.)
The series was a PBS repeat of the hack job done by public TV back in the 80s.
Anything by Ken Burns is pure liberal garbage.
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