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.
I’m sure the be-banged Ken Burns was not allowed by his mommy to watch the mean, nasty 3 Stooges. I can’t bear that sanctimonious, psalm-singin’ old maid!