Is Ken Burns a Secret Propagandist for Socialism?

Los Angeles Times ^ | September 24, 2009 | Patrick Goldstein

[nickcarraway]

Ping

[pissant]

He seems like an out in the open commie to me

[uncitizen]

i don’t think it’s a secret

[waterhill]

Yesth...

[Tublecane]

What are national parks but tiny hamlets—where people go to ooh and ahh when they get tired of the cities they’ve voluntarily crammed themselves into—scattered among huge swaths of land maintained by private companies? So overrated. People really have no notion of how wild the world is, locked up in civilization.

[roses of sharon]

They are everywhere...watching Chavez on CNN, wow.

Here’s hoping with this much exposure, the commies in this country will be shunned.

[what's up]

Ken Burns' documentaries are interesting, nicely filmed and peaceful viewing for a mellow evening.

But you gotta read between the lines because he almost always takes the socialistic view on stuff which is oh-so-typical for public broadcasting.

[Jim Noble]

I wouldn't exactly call it a secret.

La wik sez: Burns is a longtime supporter of the Democratic Party, with almost $40,000 in political donations.[3] In 2008, the Democratic National Committee chose Burns to produce the introductory video for Senator Edward Kennedy's August 25 speech to the Democratic National Convention.[4] The speech which Burns' video introduced would prove to be Kennedy's last in a 46-year career of public service."

[GonzoGOP]

There is one big difference. And it is all about who owns the property. The land that the parks were built on was for the most part already government land. Now prior to the parks it had been policy to lease out the land. But a property owner always has the right to say he won't lease it out. The American people (not the government) are the property owners. The government is just the landlord. If the American people decide that they are willing to give up the income provided by the timber companies in order to have a park it is their right as the property owner to do so.

The national parks were like your neighbor refusing to sell you land so that you can put an addition on your house. What Obama is doing now is like saying that even though you own a piece of propery you can't put an addition house on it. Big difference.

[Vaquero]

he looks like a south park caricature...in the flesh.

[FormerACLUmember]

The United States lost the Cold War. A dedicated huge cadre of communists first seized the democrat party, and then the reins of Washington power.

Ken Burns is just on of many thousands of communists receiving taxpayer money.

If the Stupid Party ever stumbles back into power, it must defund the evil NEA and Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

[Brilliant]

What’s the secret? He works for PBS.

[the OlLine Rebel]

“Burns’ films, with their lilting music and cozy slo-mo zooms, can make the most incendiary historical events appear almost as soothing as a glass of warm milk.”

Oh, don’t get me going!

This jackass is not only exactly that - a communist liberal suck-up - but his documentaries are BORING.

I don’t get anyone’s love affair with this idiot.

He made baseball seem boring (well, it is to a good extent, but it should be fun and light-hearted, not heavy-handed).

Every show about some general subject is injected chock-full of “woe to the ‘African-Americans’” as an entire chapter. About how evil America was/is because of blacks.

That tips me off right there that this dude is an America-basher.

[GonzoGOP]

it must defund the evil NEA and Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Don't just defund them because they are evil. Defund them because we are broke and need the money. Heck going back to my original post start looking at some of the national parks and forest to see if they can be rented out (National wildlife refuge in Alaska for example). People may have been willing to give up the revenue back when the parks were formed, but now facing 13 trillion dollars in debt it may be time to sell off some of the family heirlooms. Or at least rent them out for a while.

[fso301]

You only need to listen to him briefly to realize he’s light in his loafers.

[Motorheadlemmy]

His WWII series was okay. The 1970’s series WORLD AT WAR kicks its’ butt in every way imaginable. Oh, and he looks like a homo...

[CitizenUSA]

The author of the article doesn’t have a clue. Yeah, there’s such a thing as public property, and that isn’t the same thing as communism. There’s also nothing wrong, from a conservative standpoint, about public property. So long as all citizens share in the ownership and have equal access to the property, it’s OK. A national park is basically the same concept as a road, a monument, etc. So long as the original owners of the property were paid fair market value for it and the land now serves a public use, it’s OK.

What’s not OK is taking private property from one person so that it can be turned over for another person’s exclusive use. It’s also not OK, from a conservative/moral and constitutional standpoint, to seize private property for public use without paying fair compensation to the original owners.

[the OlLine Rebel]

That may be true largely (especially out West), but it wasn’t true in the Shenandoah.

VA kicked out poor people and took their land by eminent domain. The view was they were too stupid too care for themselves, so should be shifted somewhere where they could get “help”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenandoah_National_Park

[The4thHorseman]

Your post made me crack up because you perfectly captured my opinion about Burns and his documentaries.

I work for a parks agency (yes, I keep my libertarian leanings on the down-low at work) and my co-workers all LOVE Ken Burns (I mean LOVE LOVE). And I just don’t get it because even disregarding his obvious bias, I haven’t been able to sit through one of his documentaries because they are so boring.