The History Channel Really IS propaganda [View All]

[Neecy]

Okay, this is weird but true - the night before last, a friend gave me a copy of the four-part PBS American Experience program on Roosevelt. I watched it yesterday morning (all four and a half hours of it - it's excellent).

I'm now watching The History Channels' program on Roosevelt - I know, I know, I should be FDR'd out by now - and they've clearly lifted directly from the PBS program. They use the exact same clips, the same Eleanor voice-overs, the same jumpy sequencing, the same commentators (Kearns-Goodwin, Curtis Roosevelt), the "Dear President Roosevelt" letters are different but they use that device, too. You'd swear it was simply an edited version of the lengthy PBS program.

What the History Channel *does* give us that's different are their crude attacks on the New Deal that appear in the first fifteen minutes of their programming. The personal digs are new, too - about how he was a "loner" for collecting stamps (not generally a group activity, but it was made to make the 'man of the people' a hypocrite because he --- collected stamps. Desperate.

It's been amazing watching this so soon after seeing the PBS program - it really makes the propaganda just jump out at you. Just in time, I suppose, for the Republicans to dismantle the last bits of the New Deal.