Ken Burns

Ken Burns on McCain: Make Nice and Allow Obama to Defeat You

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.

PBS Star Ken Burns Appears on MSNBC to Praise 'Amazing' Teddy

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 Time: PBS Star Ken Burns Bashes Bush, 'Extreme Rightward' Court Tilt?

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.'"