Posted on 01/13/2008 8:57:58 AM PST by Red6
About 11:30 Central Time (History Channel)
As my wife was sitting in our study grading papers I happened to walk in. On the TV was a show about the Vietnam war and it immediately struck me when some self proclaimed expert stated that the “Domino Theory” which was used as a justification for continuance of intervention was hand waved away and the pundit literally stated: “As we all know today, that didn’t occur.”
Excuse me? Does this guy have a clue about what happened in Cambodia? What happened in Laos? Or who attacked Thailand? Who has naval bases in Vietnam to this day? Does this expert know who was backing Pol Pot? Does he understand why Thailand (The last domino) didn't fall even though attacked? Why the largest Soviet/Russian naval base outside the Soviet Union is in Vietnam: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1964253.stm
I watch the History Channel often. Many of the programs are clearly left leaning. Hit the MUTE button & enjoy the video.
The HC knows they are lying, but many viewers don’t, so it is propaganda for the ignorant.
Revision becomes easier in the Internet Age because people study History less and YouTube more!
This is why Queen Hildebeast can speak of her experience without being asked to defend the Murderous attack on the Branch Davidians in Waco! We are coming up on the 15th anniversary and no one has yet to explain how the death of all those children made our country better!!! ..and she wants to establish Universal Child Care!!
The quality of the History Channel has gone off a cliff. What once could be counted on for some “educational” programming has turned into nothing but the National Enquirer.
They used to have some very good programs (some still remain: Modern Marvels, Dogfights since canceled) but all their specials have a large political tilt (see: the Lincoln documentary they did.
Nothing surprises me anymore with the channel, they should just change their name to the Hysteria Channel. Between specials on Bigfoot, UFOs, Ice Road Truckers, movies, Martial Arts reality shows, more UFOs, and more Bigfoot. Finding a true History program on the History Channel is now rare. There was one point it was jokingly referred to as The Hitler Channel, finding any WWII programs today takes an act of Congress. It seems that the higher ups in the network are convinced the major events in human history were predicted by soothsayers and fought to protect giant UFO cover ups so the true identity of Bigfoot would not be released.
Sad to say but PBS (flame suit on) has much better history programs than the History Channel these days.
While not a program, the book: “A Patriot’s History of the United States” by Larry Schweikart & Michael Patrick Allen is a great book that book that removes liberal bias from history.
History is so messed up now. Someone called Talk Radio last week and said that America was founded by criminals. She said that England sent the criminals to USA on the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, to form a new nation. Kinda jumbled up with Australia history. The talk show host tried to set her straight. She was orininally from Denmark. But how many EU citizens believe all that crap that they are hearing SOME PLACE!?!?!?!?!
One of the things the History Channel was wrong about was their claim that W C Fields was filming a movie about the Los Angeles earthquake and the earthquake was caught on film because of it.
After the L.A. earthquake, W.C. Fields filmed a piece of film as a joke, making it seem like that movie crew was filming and, then, the earthquake happened.
Wherever William Claude Dukenfield is today, he would be laughing his butt off at that mistake by the History Channel.
I’ve seen others dismiss the Domino Theory as well.
It’s one of those things that can only be explained as a liberal mental disorder.
Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam all went down together in April 1975.
History Channel pissed me off when they spent an entire Memorial Day weekend running and re-running John McCain, True American Hero (and a couple of other documentaries about him) a few years ago. McCain was catching a lot of hell from conservatives, so the History Channel took revenge on their conservative viewers by plastering his ugly mug on TV nearly 24/7 over a Memorial Day weekend.
Whaddya eggspect actual factual history? Or Gangland smuckumentaries?
Let them eat tanks and flamethrowers!
Well, they often do give differing opinions, and if you only hear part of a program, one "expert" verses the other, you can get the wrong impression. But even on the straight documentaries, they do get things wrong, although I certainly don't catch them very often.
In general though, aside from a tendency to editorialize when not appropriate, they generally are pretty good. Especially the "tech" shows, be they military or otherwise. From time to time they show episodes of a show called "Tales of the Gun", which usually feature an NRA expert, curator of the NRA museum, I think. Their "Dogfights" is also good and seems accurate.
The History Channel is a joke - a while back they were advertising a series on The Battle of New Orleans and in the background they were playing “Dixie” ... Dixie wasn’t written until 1859 .... the Battle of New Orleans took place in 1810 or there abouts ....
The mods at the History Channel Board delete posts that they disagree with, meaning any criticism.
I did not see the program; however, it depends on what is meant by the domino theory. I teach American history and Cold War chronolgy reflects several different foreign policy approaches beginning with Kennan’s containment, the Truman doctrine etc. The domino theory did presuppose monolithic communist agression with the key word here being “monolithic” and a (wrong) assumption that communism was united in its opposition to the United States and its allies. That this united opposition was manifest in the falling of nations to communism like a “line of dominoes” was proven wrong as seen in often chilly relations between the Soviet Union and Communist China, China and Vietnam etc. Cold War communism is now viewed a something less than monolithic and its “wars of liberation” more a reflection of nationalistic impetus than a communist conspiracy and a domino theory. So in that regard, the statement on the History channel may not have been too far removed from historical validity.
At least Robin Williams, the star of "Good Morning Vietnam" has been in the sandbox, both this go round and the last, IIRC, entertaining the troops, and not just at the big (and safer) bases either.
In this case, they did. It was "Reel to Real", where they show a Hollywood movie, and discus it and the real world events it portrays.
Boy, was I wrong, and I didn’t realize it until the Professor introduced himself at the beginning of the course and proudly boasted he was a draft dodger during the Vietnam War, had ran away to Canada, received a degree in History of the British Empire, Jimmy Carter pardoned him in 1978, and he returned to the U.S. to teach history.
As we all know, the only way you can get through college is to give the professor what he wants to hear, but I’ll be damned if I could do that and it almost caused me to fail the course. Every time this professor spouted something like, “The Domino Theory was false, or the 1968 Tet Offensive was a great communist victory, etc, etc,” I openly challenged him. To have to sit there quietly as this draft dodger spouted untruths about the Vietnam War was more than I could force myself to do.
What we now see on the History Channel and most of the other “educational channels” are only products of our leftist dominated institutions of higher learning. It was once said that the victorious are the ones who get to write the history of a conflict, but that is no more. Now, sadly, it is the ones who run away and hide who get to write the history of what took place.
I think the justification to most libs for dismissing the domino theory is that communism didn’t ultimately show up on our doorstep, which was originally part of the concern. It did sweep through southeast Asia, however, killing 3 or 4 million after we fled Vietnam, which the mainstream media promptly ignored. See any similarities between that and what the libs want for Iraq?
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