Ken Burns Uses 'Prohibition' To Bash Conservatives, Ignores Mika the Modern-Day Version
If Ken Burns ever decides to stop making documentaries, he could always go into comedy . . .On today's Morning Joe, Burns claimed he was non-political, despite repeatedly attempting to draw parallels between Prohibition, the subject of his current film, and themes in current conservatism, particularly immigration. At the same time, Burns ignored the modern-day prohibitionist sitting right across the table from him--Mika Brzezinski--the neo-Carrie Nation who would ban everything from cigarettes to soft drinks, transfats to fast food. Video after the jump.
Watch Burns strain to use Prohibition to bash conservatives, while giving a pass to the prohibitionist who was interviewing him.
KEN BURNS: It's Ecclesiastes--there's nothing new under the sun. This is the story of single-issue political campaigns, wedge-issue campaigns that metastasize with horrible, unintended consequences. Sound familiar? This is about the demonization of recent immigrants to the United States. Sound familiar? This is about the decay of civil discourse in our country and smear campaigns during presidential election cycles. Sound familiar? This is about a whole group of people who feel that they've lost control of their country and want to take it back.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Explain the immigrants that at the time that were being scape-goated.
BURNS: As always, America has this dream of itself, a small-town, agrarian, Jeffersonian vision that actually never was. As the big cities were filling at the end of the 19th-century. As they're filling up with Catholics, Jews, newly-freed African-Americans. What are you going to do?
. . .
DONNY DEUTSCH: It's fascinating how you bring up the relevance of the times. [Inaudible] onto something with Boardwalk Empire. The reason we need artists like yourself, and every time right-wing people say what's with this art?, is because it does teach us and remind us.
SCARBOROUGH: [mocking] it is right-wing people living in the Hamptons --
DEUTSCH: It's the truth. It's why left-leaning people always come down [on the side of?] the arts, and it's the right wing. And it's not pontification. There's a reason you are doing this now. There's a reason Boardwalk Empire exists. It's in the air, and it needs to remind us of the problems of absolutism.
BURNS: I'm fascinated--and you know, we don't point arrows, I'm not a political film-maker. We're just saying, this is a great story. When the Germans are vilified at the end of WWI, which is the final straw which permits us to equate beer with treason--they re-named sauerkraut Liberty Cabbage. Sound familiar? So the more things change, the more they remain the same.
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Comments
Prohibition was
Submitted by adamsmith on Thu, 09/29/2011 - 10:40am.
a Progressive movement. I love how these commies twist history. The Twilight Zone for real....
This is why Progressives changed their name to Liberal
Submitted by Fredy on Thu, 09/29/2011 - 11:54am.
I just watched LIAR Ken Burns on Fox Business claim that CONSERVATIVES pushed the 18th ammendment.
Burns is absolutely LIEING in an idiotic attempt to rewrite history!
This FRAUD by Burns must be CONDEMNED by everyone as the propaganda that it is!
People were already referring
Submitted by redfish on Thu, 09/29/2011 - 3:30pm.
People were already referring to themselves as liberals during the Progressive era. Woodrow Wilson was always called a liberal, never a progressive. Progressives in the early 20th century politics, like Theodore Roosevelt, were generally seen as coming from pro-business, pro-Constitution, pro-religion conservative backgrounds but moving themselves away from what they termed as "reactionary" conservatism, believing that the federal government needed to be more muscular.
So it isn't entirely untrue, its just not completely true either.There were plenty of traditional conservatives at the time who opposed Prohibition, and plenty of religiously-oriented liberals who supported it. William Howard Taft opposed it at first, although, he eventually did end up supporting it:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,738938,00.html
(Mar. 31, 1930) "The conversion of the late great William Howard Taft from Wet to Dry was the high spot of last week's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, sitting in judgment on measures to modify or repeal national Prohibition."
Anyway, progressivism didn't become a specifically liberal movement until after the Progressive era.
The sixth Beatle has become a muppet of himself.
Submitted by SickofLibs on Thu, 09/29/2011 - 10:52am.
WTH was that WWI German-vilifaction comment supposed to mean?
I guess we should have dispensed with all that, then we wouldn't have had to wait so long for WWII.
Demonization sound familiar?????
Submitted by stunned on Thu, 09/29/2011 - 11:04am.
This is about the demonization of recent immigrants to the United States. Sound familiar?
No Kenny it doesn't. As a child of legal immigrants, friend and co-worker of legal immigrants and neighbor of legal immigrants who grew up in a circle of legal immigrants I don't know a single individual who demonizes them. They spent years, a lot of money and worked their butts off to get here and make it. They are the proudest flag waving "nationalistic" bunch I know. First to line up at the Memorial Day parade, hang the flag outside their home every day, sing out loud and often embarrassingly off key, (sorry Mom) our national anthem while standing with their hand over their heart, the first to rip apart anyone who dares criticiizes this country in their presence and who raised their kids to be proud to be Americans. They also are those that "demonize" illegal immigrants the loudest.
It is the illegal immigrants who broke our laws, steal identities, flood our ER's and pay NO taxes who are a concern. They include criminals, terrorists and non-immunized individuals who are a drain on our society since most don't even have a grammer school education the take jobs from teens, seniors and those who only have a high school diploma. The lying proponents of illegal immigrants will never tell you about their true agenda of open borders with the end goal of fundamentally changing the US into a socialist worker's paradise.
tired of liberal lies
No one is demonizing immigration
Submitted by CobraMan on Thu, 09/29/2011 - 12:04pm.
"This is about the demonization of recent immigrants to the United States."
No one is demonizing immigration. It's the ILLEGAL "immigrants," who, by the way, are NOT "immigrants," but are, instead, interlopers, which we, as Americans, reject. WHY is that so hard for some people to admit?
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. The US Constitution
Unless you're a fetus. The US Supreme Court
Or Anwar al-Awlaki.
On a related subject, I
Submitted by redfish on Thu, 09/29/2011 - 12:07pm.
On a related subject, I watched a teaser for Burns' documentary, it seemed to have the same old boring take on the Prohibition. The Prohibition was stupid, it was a failure. Everybody knows that.
Nobody today believes that the Prohibition was a good policy, and neither do I, but I always bring attention to several things:
1. All the gangs that existed during the Prohibition era all existed before it. Waves of poor immigrants arriving in America in the 19th century created crime, gangs, ghettos, political graft, and exacerbated racism through ethnic tensions. Before Prohibition all of these gangs were already connected with local politicians, and had traded in drugs that were "decriminalized" in that they were legal but had stiff regulations on sale -- opium, cannabis, etc. The black market for alcohol just made them more powerful, because there was more money in that. However, by the time the Prohibition era ended, many of these gangs -- which again, existed before Prohibition -- were shut down.
2. The Prohibition was advocated because of real social problems, not just the overzealous whims of religious people. The reason that feminists were involved in the movement was because drunken husbands, who went to pubs after work, would often come home and beat their wives. Feminists would invoke Christianity in the fight for Prohibition, but this was less an appeal to some specific Christian doctrine than an appeal to what society regarded at the time as good morals. People were just more connected to religion then. And, in fact, Catholics took a stance against Prohibition.
3. It was a result of Progressive politics, not "old-fashioned Victorian morality". Although there were increased regulations, Prohibition movements never quite gained ground in the Victorian era. Bans on alcohol, even bans on cannabis, were rejected, because nobody thought that was the role of government. Part of having good morals was having self-responsibility and self-discipline. The strongest thing Victorian era lawmakers did was regulate how drugs and alcohol were sold on the market. Drugs, when they weren't sold at a pharmacist with a prescription, for instance, were given a 'Poison' label.
4. After the Prohibition era, we had more regulations on alcohol than we did before it, such as legal age requirements.
i remember when
Submitted by misterbee241 on Thu, 09/29/2011 - 12:50pm.
Burns came out with his Civil War series. I had good friends who were re-enactors in Civil War units and they laughed at it and shot it full of holes while pointing out the historical mistakes. After a little checking i found out they were right. So Burns has zero credibility as far as I'm concerned. He and Michael Moore are the same only that Burns is a little more into hygiene and is not as obnoxious as Moore.
None of these brilliant thinkers called him on this?
Submitted by GONAVY on Thu, 09/29/2011 - 1:53pm.
"This is about the demonization of recent immigrants to the United States."
He conveniently left out illegal. How.....convenient.
Of course no one is
Submitted by Beukeboom on Thu, 09/29/2011 - 2:52pm.
Of course no one is demonizing legal immigrants but folks like Ken Burns wish to hyperbolize things via the Saul Alinsky handbook and demonize those who demand the U.S. Government actually enforce existing immigration laws and work properly to combat ILLEGAL immigration.
A lot of the references to
Submitted by redfish on Thu, 09/29/2011 - 3:03pm.
A lot of the references to people in the 1920s and back in the 1800s being bigoted towards immigrants are also questionable. Its true that there was a lot of racism and ethnic rivalry back then , but its also true that unrestricted immigration caused a lot of social problems, and it was the social problems, not the racism, that led to the creation of immigration laws. Like I said in my above post, poor ethnic ghettos created gangs, not the Prohibition.
It's about self-proclaimed
Submitted by Beukeboom on Thu, 09/29/2011 - 2:47pm.
It's about self-proclaimed unbiased documentarians pushing a biased agenda. Sound familiar?
Here's a brief open letter to
Submitted by Beukeboom on Thu, 09/29/2011 - 2:53pm.
Here's a brief open letter to Ken Burns from my friend:
Dear Ken Burns,
Paul McCartney called from 1963. He wants his haircut back.
Sincerely,
Captain Obvious
Sound familiar?
Submitted by kata on Thu, 09/29/2011 - 3:19pm.
Yes! I expected to get sold a slap-chop any second. And if you act now...!
His breathless sales pitch really put me off right away and made it hard to focus on what he was even talking about. I am not familiar with his work but I want to slap the guy that makes this broad brush BS statement that right wingers "don't understand art".
Kata,
Submitted by Trix Rabbit on Thu, 09/29/2011 - 9:57pm.
That really was a broad brush that this fool used. For example, Salvador Dalí and Oscar Wilde were artists. Andy Warhol and Allen Ginsberg were absolute and unaldulterated caca de vaca.
How's that for a "right winger" understanding art?
For the MSM: In your pomp and all your glory, you're a poorer man than me. As you lick the boots of death born out of fear.
Ian Anderson "Wind up"
Ken Burns = Troll
Submitted by djwolf12 on Thu, 09/29/2011 - 8:09pm.
Never trust a man that pals around with Keith Olbermann, period.
The bangs are covering his lobotomy scar.
Submitted by drsamherman on Thu, 09/29/2011 - 9:34pm.
And the collared shirt covers his neck bolts.