Posted on 09/23/2008 12:32:52 PM PDT by pissant
From Reuters and the Hollywood Reporter comes news that PBS filmmaker Ken Burns used a New York panel discussion preceding the news and documentary Emmy Awards as a forum to denounce the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, as proof the selection process devolved "into a high school popularity contest and an American Idol competition" and insisted "in the whole history of the republic there has been no one with as thin a credential" as Palin.
The reporter on this story, Paul J. Gough, treated Burns as an eminence and not as a partisan liberal who endorsed Obama in December 2007. He also completely ignored that Burns made a sappy tribute film to Sen. Ted Kennedy for last month’s Democratic convention in Denver, and then went on MSNBC to tout him as an "amazing, amazing man." At the same event, CBS’s Bob Schieffer insisted the media coverage of Palin was fair, and that "It seems to me that some would suggest we should just accept on faith that Sarah Palin is qualified."
Gough reported that Burns declared at Fordham University:
"He (McCain) selected someone who is so supremely unqualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, and he has turned the selection process into a high school popularity contest and an 'American Idol' competition," Burns said. He said that McCain made a "cynical" pick in what he said was the most important decision of his presidential candidacy.
Burns, whose body of work has focused on American history, said that "in the whole history of the republic there has been no one with as thin as a credential" as Palin. He said it was, for McCain, a "Hail Mary pass" that will be decided in November.
Burns, who became famous due to a ponderously long documentary series on the Civil War, surely knows Abraham Lincoln had four terms in the Illinois House and one term in the U.S. House of Representatives – not unlike the experience of Sen. Barack Obama.
Jill Zuckman of the Chicago Tribune reported the Burns endorsement of Obama on December 18, 2007. Experience was hardly his emphasis:
Burns said he liked Obama right off the bat and felt he could stamp out society's "creeping cynicism" with his "unironic posture."
"I have been attracted from the beginning to his authenticity," he said. With the country facing difficult times, he said, the nation needs "someone able to dream and suggest a future without being tied to the past."
He also said he appreciated Obama's stand against the war when other candidates supported it.
"I think this is a human being who knew in advance how unnecessary and foolish this war was," Burns said, adding that Obama knows how to distinguish between "fraudulent wars," and "those that really need to be fought."
Gough reported that Schieffer didn't take a stand like Burns did, but he did defend the national media's coverage of Palin after she was named McCain's running mate.
"Sarah Palin is a 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency. The presidency is the most powerful office in the world," Schieffer said. "It seems to me that some would suggest we should just accept on faith that Sarah Palin is qualified."
Bob Schieffer is 71, so this assertion of frailty might sound a little strong. Conservatives weren't arguing that Palin's experience should be accepted "on faith," but that the Eastern elite media shouldn't rush to endorse instant Democrat judgment. Gough said Schieffer paid tribute to Palin and her remarkable and compelling life story but insisted that the media didn't mistreat her.
Just another sexist ugly liberal who hates pretty people.
I challenge the obama people to give me a list of all the previous candidates that he is MORE qualified than.
Carter - former military, governor of Georgia
Reagan - California governor, president of SAG, actor
Bush 41 - former wartime military,House of Representatives,
CIA, Vice President for 8 years
Dukakis - governor of Massachusetts?
Dole - former military during wartime, Senate Majority Leader (maybe minority leader too)
Gore - former military, Senator,Vice President for 8 years
Kerry - former military (i forget where), lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, 20 years in Senate
Clinton - former governor, Arkansas
Bush 43 - former National Guard, part owner of Texas Rangers, former two term governor of Texas
obama - community organizer, 143 days in US Senate, IL state senator (when he wasn’t voting present)
And that is just off the top of my head...
One needs only to consider the mortgage scandal, the credit crisis, the nutty energy policy and the continuing spending deficits to ask the logical question. If Sarah Palin's opponents have this kind of experience, then why do we need them at ALL?
But his hairstyle isn’t original.
He copied it from MO in The Three Stooges!
GMTA #53 :)
This brings to mind the Republican Congress’ half-hearted attempt to de-fund PBS. The Dems defended PBS like a mother bear defends her cub. The Republican backed-off. Shouldn’t have done that. Now PBS is going to take pot-shots, like this one from Ken Burns.
Apparently, liberalism isn’t just a mental disorder, it’s a contagious one.
stick to your movies ken....
I agree, nevertheless, I loved the Baseball documentary, as well as his Civil War series. I think he’s elevated the documentary to a new level.
What about Obama? And HE'S running for the TOP spot!
In spite of some distracting incidentals, I enjoyed it also, mainly because I love baseball history. I really like the old pics and film. However, Burns’ work is a prime example of not taking any documentary as complete fact. Enjoy the documemtary as is and then do your own additional research. You might be surprised at what you find out.
Barack Hussein Obama - Communist community “organizer/agitator”, Do-Nothing State Senator, U.S. Senator for about two years, using the office to run for President the whole time - thin, thin resume.
PBS “artists” seem to think conservative Republicans don’t contribute to PBS - and come to think of it, this one won’t be in future and also won’t be feeling guilty about it either.
Ken, GOVERNOR Palin makes Obama look plain unqualified, and he IS unqualified; being black doesn’t annul that fact. White guilt won’t get it for him. - People like GOVERNOR Palin are about the only hope this country has not to become a corrupt cesspool of creeping communism.
He won a place on MY avoid-list for his History of Jazz series, in which he fell for the stupid old-school definition of jazz as expressed by Wynton Marsalis, whom Burns bought-into as the end-all and be-all of "real" jazz authorities. What a wanker.
Louis Armstrong defined jazz as strictly Dixieland -- Louis thought that Bird and Coltrane and straight-ahead jazz and hard bebop wasn't jazz at all -- just like asshat Wynton thinks electric-fusion jazz ala Eddie Harris, Pat Metheny, Miles Davis (in his later years) and Steps Ahead (Brecker Bros./Michael's Brecker's supreme work on the Electronic Wind Instrument, or EWI, etc.) isn't jazz at all because the instruments are electronic and there is a touch of rock cross-over in the mix. The Old School wankers like Wynton have DECLARED IT SO, and Ken Burns made them the end-all and be-all of authoritative figures.
So interesting, good, adventurous electric jazz, a fusion of jazz forms and rock, is all but DEAD in American radio, and taken over by bland, insulting, but palatable Metamucil "smooth jazz" because stubborn old farts like Marsalis their old-school narrow-minded crap of insisting that it's either Straight Ahead Bop or Nothing at All.
And Ken Burns VALIDATED that, thereby enabling the languishing of a truly great and genuinely AMERICAN music form. Ken Burns and Wynton Marsalis can both go jump in the lake, the big phony-baloney racists.
I can’t watch his stuff. His documentaries just have a coating of liberalism all over them.
Of course when real historians jump on him for having the Monitor and the Merrimac fighting it out in the open ocean instead of the confined spaces of Hampton Roads he can make corrections.
I just finished watching the Jazz series, and to tell the truth enjoyed it. Of course, it had typical Burns bias, but I liked the old footage and listening to the tunes.
It was kind of interesting to go through the history. My first exposure to jazz from a musician friend was Song X.
Ornette is not for the uninitiated.
Yep, if it wasn't for Pat Metheny, very few people would have ever heard of Ornette.
People think they don't like jazz because they think that hard-driving, frenetic bop players like Coleman represent what "jazz" is. Do yourself a treat and go online and buy "Stephane Grapelli: Shades of Django." It is not fusion -- indeed, it's old-time acoustic jazz, but not straight-ahead and CERTAINLY not masochistic bebop, but is most certainly REAL JAZZ, as is (to be fair) bebop and straight ahead. Keep in mind, too, that the music played by Pat Metheny and his superb, incredible keyboard player Lyle Mayes is also "jazz," whether Wynton likes it or not. I hear people tell me they don't like jazz, and when I find out what they've been told is "jazz," I think, "No wonder!!"
Truly, go get Shades of Django. I've found and bought many copies on Amazon (people come over, hear it, and love it, so I give it as gifts) for a few bucks. You'll thank me.
“GMTA #53 :)”
Oh, it’s supposed to be a parody?! Well, I guess i know that much less now about Black History!
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