Historicide II Entertainment

The Breed's Hill Gazette November 2009

PART II
ENTERTAINMENT

Historicide: CSI America

Who is Killing American History? Episode II

ENTERTAINMENT

By Dan Shippey & Michael Burns

2nd of a 3 part series

BHI Headquarters 7:00 PM. I went looking for a killer; instead I found a thousand suspects with a thousand smoking guns all holed up in America’s own University system. The funny thing here was that no one was denying anything. From their philosophical point of view it was justifiable homicide. “History is dead, long live our new history.” It was a very Stalinist approach to history: to gain power in the present you rewrite the past. Most detectives would have called it “case closed,” and maybe I should have too. But I couldn’t stop looking; I knew there was more to this case. The second crime scene was Entertainment; a whole new nest of vipers to pick through.

News programs, history-themed cable channels, movies and books all fall under the heading of Entertainment. These are the diversions we choose or choose not to engage in during our free time. It seemed to be an unlikely place to find our killer/s. Entertainment is provided for willing consumers with profit as the bottom line. If the killing had occurred here it would likely be negligent homicide, not murder 1. Or so I thought.

The shelves are full of books about America’s founding. History may not sell as well as Harry Potter, but America’s past seems to be a thriving market. Hmm, close inspection shows that a high number of books in this area are extremely critical of the founding. Free speech would support the idea that these books are a good thing, right? The most successful modern American history book is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. I knew Zinn from my investigations in academia. Professor emeritus at Boston University. Historian. Social critic. Anarchist/Marxist. (Anarchist/Marxist?) Well, never mind that, his book purports to tell the story of the United States from the perspective of real, average people instead of Generals and Presidents. That sounds good, a side of history that we have not often seen. In practice it is a non-stop account of all of America’s shortcomings and Zinn’s own patri-phobic imaginings. This is a quote from a Zinn article that should give you some perspective:

“The Founding Fathers did lead the war for independence from Britain. But they did not do it for the equal right of all to life, liberty, and equality. Their intention was to set up a new government that would protect the property of slave owners, land speculators, merchants, and bondholders. Independence from England had already been secured in parts of the country by grassroots rebellion a year before the battles at Lexington and Concord that initiated hostilities with Britain.”

By this thinking the whole eight years of war was unnecessary; England would have let us be independent anyway. I guess those thousands of soldiers Britain sent were just here to throw a large-scale going away party. If it weren’t for those pesky Founding Fathers, who obviously knew the best way to protect property is to have a war in your backyard, everything would have been fine.

But hey that’s just Howard Zinn. True, his book does not contain the same footnotes or references to original sources that any high school term paper must include, but who needs that when you are the best selling book on American history? There are other books available, and even with the Zinn disciples like Ray Raphael adding their books to the deconstructionist pile, only a little over half of American adults read one book a year, and the majority read fiction. So how effective a killer can written history be? Still, we should take note that Zinn’s DNA has now shown up at two crime scenes.

Moving on, we find Cable TV channels that feature history, such as A&E, History (Previously known as The History Channel), Military History and Discovery Channel. They can’t be history killers right? After all, they make money showing history documentaries, at least in between episodes of Ice Road Truckers and Shark Week. They cannot be held responsible if some of the documentaries they air are inaccurate. I mean it’s not like they have a political agenda right? History (the former History Channel) for instance is owned by A&E, which in turn is owned by Hearst, Disney and NBC (General Electric) all well known for being totally politically neutral. Ok, maybe they have some political leanings. Maybe it isn’t by accident that every year a new heartwarming documentary on Woodstock appears on the channel. Looking at the cable guide for the month, History has a new series with lots of great actors reading famous diaries, letters and speeches. The show is called “The People Speak” That sounds nice. It’s from the extremely political actor Matt Damon. That’s odd, Matt Damon grew up near family friend Howard Zinn, oh look the show is based on yet another Howard Zinn book. Still, we cannot say that there is a deconstructionist view of American history or any kind of anti-American agenda being forwarded here. Just don’t look for a positive view or actual facts. However, they did recently have a documentary on how America is actually a Masonic conspiracy in heavy rotation.

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Movies are still good right? Let’s see, movies made in the last 15 years featuring the founding of America, Revolutionary war or any of the Founders…I found two. The Patriot, which can be criticized on many points including historical accuracy but is not anti-founding, was released in 2000. Jefferson in Paris, released in 1995, is the scandalous story of Jefferson’s relationship with his slave Sally Hemmings. It was based on very little data, but was dramatically told. I have to give the film business a bit of slack here. They aren’t putting out a large amount of deconstructionist history; they just ignore history most of the time. History is expensive to film and harder to sell. However, there is a real problem with not making founding films. Americans learn from movies. You could argue that movies are the great educators of our day. As a result, most American adults could not tell you much about America’s rebellion against the British Empire, but we know almost everything about The Rebel Alliance in their fight against Darth Vader and the Galactic Empire. I like Yoda too, but it’s a shame I had to trade Ben Franklin to get him.

I could go on about TV news and how often they get history wrong, but why bother? I found signs of a struggle here in entertainment, but not the same level of violence as in academia. The worst offences in entertainment occur when academia touches entertainment in books and documentaries. The most disturbing thing I found here was the apathy. While academia was fighting American Foundational history every way they could, entertainment just didn’t care. They stood by with their hands in their pockets (or our pockets) and watched as history was beaten to the ground. Possibly the greatest storytellers of all time, with the most amazing tools and technology at their disposal, and they never seem to find the central American story worth telling.

I had one stop left in my investigation, the home. What would I find there?

Next episode: THE WAR AT HOME.

For part 1 of this article : Click Here

For past articles, click HERE