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July 7, 2010
"America: The story of us"
"America: The story of us" is described as "an epic 12-hour television event that tells the extraordinary story of how America was invented". I dunno about that, but there are parts of this television series that I like. It uses computer generated graphics and re-enactments to bring a lot of stuff in the history books to life. Plus, it sort of takes inventions and shows how they impacted history. It's fast moving so you don't get bored by all of the little trivial details. It does a good job of painting the birth of America with a broad, albeit somewhat liberal brush.
It's widely panned for the quotes from celebrities explaining U.S. history. Like, just because they're on the cover of Cosmo...I'm not clear that that qualifies them to tell me about history. Would prefer to hear it from historians, not a bunch of glassy-eyed liberals.
They pretend that the War of Northern Aggression was fought over slavery. It wasn't the Civil War was a war over the rights of the states. Abraham Lincoln said the South could keep their slaves if they'd just stay in the Union. The Civil War started in 1861. The Emancipation Proclamation wasn't issued until 2 years later in 1863, freeing the slaves in the South - where Lincoln had no jurisdiction, but not freeing the slaves in the North, where he clearly had jurisdiction.
So, a bunch of hogwash around the civil war.
Then comes the Trail of Tears. Much hand-wringing over this, of course. I'm not saying what we did was right, necessarily, but everything has to be judged on the merits at the time that it occurred. The Native Americans were a Stone Age primitive culture of savages. They fought each other tooth-and-nail over territory all of the time. They'd just never been up against an adversary that was packing gunpowder and small pox. So, they lost. As they say, war is hell.
In WWII, they demonstrated that they clearly don't know the difference between an M1 Garand and an M1 Carbine.
But, if you can get the Hollywood celebrities foaming-at-the-mouth pacifist, apologist, revisionist propaganda, there are parts of it that are fascinating. The creation of the Bessemer steel mill in Pittsburgh by Carnegie. How we used the steel to build Manhattan and the railroads. The invention of the telegraph. All fascinating and fast paced. Very cool when they stick to the facts and don't editorialize.
Rebels / Revolution - Episodes 1 & 2
Westward / Division - Episodes 3 & 4
Civil War / Heartland - Episodes 5 & 6
Cities / Boom - Episodes 7 & 8
Bust / WWII - Episodes 9 & 10
Superpower / Millenium - Episodes 11 & 12
http://www.history.com/shows/america-the-story-of-us
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%3A_The_Story_of_Us
Posted by Rob Kiser on July 7, 2010 at 9:01 PM
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