Posted on 09/13/2014 8:10:16 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
Let’s start with the end. When it’s over — when you make it through the marathon that is Ken Burns’s beautiful, seven-part documentary “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History,” which begins Sunday night on PBS — you may find yourself with a lingering, nebulous grief. You’re sorry it’s over. You’re sorry they’re over. You’re sorry a certain expression of American ideals is, or often appears to be, completely over.
My study habits haven’t improved since college; like an idiot, I put off watching all 14 hours of “The Roosevelts” until I absolutely had to watch them on a deadline binge this week. Yes, the entire series sat on my desk for most of the summer, while there was still plenty of time to savor it. When I emerged from my office for a break, midway through the amplified noise of World War I, a co-worker reminded me (spoiler alert) that all of the major players eventually die, so why bother watching the whole thing? Why not skip ahead or skim through most of it?
Because I was absorbed. Within the first hour, “The Roosevelts” will probably have you hooked in a way that Burns and his collaborators haven’t quite achieved since 2007’s “The War.” Unlike the intimidating climb offered by “National Parks” or “Prohibition,” you easily glide through “The Roosevelts’ ” sublimely constructed narrative arc. The series is among Burns’s best works.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The thing I most remember about his Civil War documentary was the endless, horrible, weeping fiddles. The part about Civil War medicine was really bad because he didn’t show much of anything about medical procedures and advances, but just concentrated on how horrible the wounds were.
Yes. The series includes Teddy, FDR, and Eleanor.
How many of the people who voted for Roosevelt in 1944 would have voted for him if they had realized that he would be dead within three months after starting his fourth term?
If you’re sorry to see them go, it’s only because you were sorry to see them come in the first place.
Unpleasant, but reality often is.
Bkmrk
14 hours?
I wouldn’t give them 14 minutes.
One thing I will NEVER forgive Ken Burns for was this:
In the Civil War Series, the camera was panning over the aftermath of Gettysburg with the usual period music in the background. The music was a quick-step called “Mockingbird”. The tune became a theme song less than 100 years later for a burlesque trio known as The Three Stooges (sing the theme song in your head right now!)
Although I love the Stooges, and although “Mockingbird” was a legitimate melody of the period, it was stupid and insensitive for Ken Burns to play that particular piece of music while showing the famous photos of bloated bodies on the Hallowed ground.
Anyone who grew up in the latter half of the Twentieth Century would have recognized the tune as the Three Stooges theme. Either Ken Burns is SO out of touch with reality and popular culture that he did not recognize this, or he is an idiot of the first order. After that, I couldn’t take any of his “documentaries” seriously.
It would have been like playing “Ahab the Ayrab” while showing pictures of 9/11/01.
And may I add, FDR’s policies were patterned after those of Benito Mussolini.
FDR did not represent and will never rpresent ANY kind of “American ideals.”
The thing was that in the early days American idealism could stay ideal....before reality set in
Sorta like Hope and Change
YES, the Roosevelts dealt many blows to certain capitalist excesses, which were truly excessive, like children laboring long hours in dirty factories and never going to school. But the Roosevelts are part of history and I intend to watch every minute.
Ken Burns is a genius with visual details. In the preview, I was surprised to see that Eleanor was a rather nice-looking young woman. But FDR was such a cad, no wonder her face fell.
I give up, how many?
I do know that we wouldn’t have had FDR after the 1940 election, if America had voted with the Protestants.
Not entirely true.
Roosevelt did not recognize that the USSR was our enemy.
It may have been better to have delayed as much as possible giving military aid to the Soviets.
Then the Nazis, having gutted the majority of the Soviets strength, at the end of the war we could have finished off the USSR.
I realize of course that this would be unlikely because Roosevelt’s government was crawling with Soviet spies.
But I think it would have been a better outcome for everyone; Russians, Europeans and US.
FDR’s mother ran his life. When he and Eleanor returned from their European honeymoon, they found that his mother had bought them the house next door to hers and connected the houses with a breezeway. She never trusted Franklin with the family finances and kept the checkbook until she died in her 90s. So FDR had two dominating women telling him what to do. Little wonder he had a mistress.
You got farther than I did.
Winston Churchill had trouble convincing Roosevelt to go for total victory, if even that. Roosevelt was swayed by Uncle Joe. Read it for yourself in Triumph and Tragedy: Closing the Ring
I don’t know about being sad to see them go, but the last time only death loosened their grip on the country, so the bond must have been pretty intense.
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