Ken Burns

During a discussion of the new film Lincoln on Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, documentary film maker Ken Burns ranted about one of the supposed lessons he took away from the movie: "Race is always there in America....Do you think we'd have a secession movement in Texas and the other places, faddish secession movement, if this president wasn't African-American?  Do you think the vitriol that came out of some elements of the Tea Party would have been at the same level had this President not been Africa-American?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

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.

AP reports something that's not very shocking: hallowed liberal PBS filmmaker Ken Burns (in between his Kennedy tribute films for Democrat conventions and the tens of thousands in donations to Barack Obama and other Democrats) is decrying Republicans for a "show trial" atmosphere in proposing cuts to public broadcasting subsidies:

"I just don't think they have fully thought through what they're doing," Burns said of House Republicans who want to eliminate or significantly reduce funding for the arts, humanities and public media. Such cuts would devastate film producers, he said.

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.

From Reuters and the Hollywood Reporter comes news that PBS filmmaker Ken Burns used a New York panel discussion preceding the news and documentary Emmy Awards as a forum to denounce the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, as proof the selection process devolved "into a high school popularity contest and an American Idol competition" and insisted "in the whole history of the republic there has been no one with as thin a credent

PBS demonstrated it clearly isn’t afraid to fly the flag of liberalism when it allowed one of its multi-millionaire stars, filmmaker Ken Burns, to not only make a syrupy socialist tribute to Ted Kennedy, but then to appear late Monday night on MSNBC to add his own personal tribute to the star of his film: "He was talking not just about the audacity but the possibility of hope. And that’s a wonderful, wonderful message to be carrying on. He's so committed to health care. He’s so committed to national service. He's committed to an honorable end to this horrific war." He mentioned Teddy’s "martyred brothers," and added: "we endow them with the immortality that they so clearly deserve. And yet here is the youngest brother, the little engine that could that keeps going every single day, adding something to our agenda, adding something to this country."

About ten minutes before midnight, the tributes to this "amazing, amazing man" began. MRC's Colleen Raezler took it down:

In the October 1 issue of Time magazine, TV critic James Poniewozik interviewed PBS star Ken Burns -- star filmmaker, to be sure, but still a star, someone they rush out to Congress at PBS funding time -- and he bashed the Bush administration along a traditional liberal line on the subject of his new World War II documentary. Comparing the sacrifices of that era to now, Poniewozik wrote "Today the government is loath to lay out a price, or ask one." Added Burns:

"People yearn for the memory of shared sacrifice that the Second World War represents," Burns says. "Now we're all free agents. We don't give up nothin'. We were asked after 9/11 to go shopping. It was sort of 'Don't worry your pretty little head about it.'"