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Self-Love at PBS: 'Firing Line' for Ken Burns Was More Like the Shoe-Polish Line
When PBS hosts a talk show where they interview PBS star Ken Burns, you know it’s going to be like an infomercial for Burns Incorporated. It’s especially appalling when the program has stolen the title Firing Line, which used to be a show hosted by a staunch conservative, William F. Buckley, who would have put Burns through some philosophical questions.
Margaret Hoover did not bring anything conservative to challenging this elitist network’s hero. Instead, she set him up to proclaim preposterously he's an objective filmmaker. Late in the program came this passage:
MARGARET HOOVER: Ken, you publicly endorsed Kamala Harris for president last year saying that quote, ‘Our democracy hangs in the balance.’ At a Brandeis University commencement a few months before, you said this:
KEN BURNS clip: “Which brigs me to a moment I've dreaded and forces me to suspend my longstanding attempt at neutrality. There is no real choice this November. There is only...’”
HOOVER: What were you dreading?
BURNS: I think I’m a private citizen, and I have my own political views. I respect people who have different and opposing political views of mine. That's the essence of a democracy, is the respect for the idea that someone could feel the opposite about it. And so I've tried in my work, and I have succeeded in my work to never putting a political thumb on the scale to favor any one thing or any one person or candidate or whatever. At the same time as a citizen, when you see things that you don't like, you have a right to speak up. And so I was speaking up as our First Amendment, one of the extraordinary byproducts of this revolution gave us, as a private citizen. But I wasn't saying it as a filmmaker.
Like a paid PR operative, Hoover is completely overlooking the frankly rabid passage in this commencement address, when Burns suggested America could be “re-enslaved” or the victim of “national suicide” if Trump were re-elected:
The presumptive Republican nominee is the opioid of all opioids, an easy cure for what some believe is the solution to our myriad pains and problems. When in fact with him, you end up re-enslaved with an even bigger problem, a worse affliction and addiction, “a bigger delusion”, James Baldwin would say, the author and finisher of our national existence, our national suicide, as Mr. Lincoln prophesies. Do not be seduced by easy equalization. There is nothing equal about this equation. We are at an existential crossroads in our political and civic lives. This is a choice that could not be clearer.
This puts the lie to the line “I respect people who have different and opposing political views of mine.” It’s obvious he thinks Trump voters are re-enslavers and America’s Kevorkians.
Earlier, Hoover set up Trump's executive order against woke history (like "The 1619 Project" stuff) for Burns to knock down. Burns repeatedly refers to Trump and his voters as the partisans of ignorance.
HOOVER: You started this project at the end of the Obama presidency. We are now in the beginning of the second Trump presidency. President Trump just signed an executive order earlier this year, entitled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. He declared that there was, quote, "A widespread effort to rewrite our nation's history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth." He targeted institutions like the Smithsonian and directed to remove exhibitions that, quote, "Degrade shared American values, divide Americans by race, or promote ideologies inconsistent with Federal law."
What do you make of that?
BURNS: You know, the great genius of the American experiment is that before, people were subjects subject to authoritarian rule. And what the revolution did is it created citizens. And it is in the interests of the authoritarian to have people have a simplistic view of things, or to make a them out of somebody or to be ignorant. You know, subscribing to superstitions, subscribing to conspiracies, subscribing to things that aren't true. So if you are going to take something as important, not just to the United States, but to the world, you are obligated as citizens of a democracy to show the complexity of it. And at the same time, that patriotism at the heart of everyone's pursuit is enlarged. I think we've made the most patriotic film we've ever made because we were willing to say, we're not gonna just have a sanitized Madison Avenue version of this, where there are no women in a battle, there are no Black people, there are no slaves, there are no Native people who own the land.
And so that doesn't diminish or take away from this, it actually enhances it. So we're all, and have always been, for robust, complicated, deep dives. I mean, we've done this in public broadcasting 'cause it's the only place that would give us 10 years to do a deep dive because the marketplace actually insists on something quick and dirty. And we can't do that because it's not honest to what actually transpired in the Revolution.
HOOVER: So does that mean you agree or disagree with this executive order?
BURNS: Oh, I disagree with an executive order that would, in any way, limit the possibilities of understanding the complex dynamics of American history. Because the more you appreciate that, the more you realize what an extraordinary thing we have.
HOOVER: President Trump's executive order says, quote, "Casting historical milestones in a negative light can foster national shame." Does it? –
BURNS: The question is, what kind of use do you put to the word shame? Do you use the word shame as a cudgel? Do you use it as a weapon? Or do you say this happened?
HOOVER: It is a tool for learning. –
BURNS: Use it as a tool for learning. And that if you do anything besides call balls and strikes, right, then you've limited that. And by limiting that, I will label as shameful. –
HOOVER: So you're saying the real shame is in ignoring the difficult history?
BURNS: I think so, but even then, I don't -- But the purpose of the shame is not to make people feel shame today for previous actions. It's to use shame as a tool for how to build a future. - And it is the weapon, when the word shame is weaponized, then it's just in support of ignorance and superficiality, rather than the depth and complexity that every human being deserves. If you want to superficialize everything, then we're just a highlight reel of only good things. And then Babe Ruth only hits a home run every time.
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