Saturday, September 22, 2007

Two-Tone

It's odd behavior for a filmmaker so adept at chronicling the black experience in this country. "Race is at the center of all of American history," Burns has said. Yes, it is. But there is more to the story than just black and white.

-Cecilia Alvear, complaining in the post that Ken Burns shortchanges her peoples
Dear Cecilia Alvear,

The only color Ken Burns cares about is sepia.

Regards,
IOZ

5 comments:

Scruggs said...

Looks like Cecelia Alvear has discovered a workable variation on the "insufficient condemnation" game.

AlanSmithee said...

Burns is too busy furthering the nostalgia-tinged "Tragic But Noble War" idea to worry about racial balance.

norbizness said...

Didn't he dye the worst beard in the world (his) sepia?

Prof. George Edward Challenger said...

Burns on World War II: "Every thing sort of becomes draped in this bloodless gallant myth and what I think we have to remember is this is the worst war, it’s responsible for the deaths of 60 million people. We understand why people call it the good war because the country was more or less united, our causes were unambiguous. We didn’t debate it every night—whether we should be in or whether we shouldn’t…

"As the decades have come, as we’ve removed ourselves from it, we’ve begun to see it as a safe black and white war. It’s exactly what’s happening on the streets of Baghdad. It was horrible and these young men had experiences common to all wars. I was scared, I was bored, I was hot, I was cold, my officers didn’t know what they were doing. I didn’t have the right equipment. I saw bad things, I did bad things. I lost good friends.—Now we have a separate military class that suffers its losses apart; alone from the rest of us. We are disconnected. We weren’t asked to do anything after 9/11."

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/09/23/ken-burns-the-war-talks-about-the-parallels-between-iraq-and-wwii/

Seems pretty right on.

Still, that beard's got to go.

puppylander said...

what? it's not enough that i buy a burrito every other night?