Unchainme
05-31-2010, 03:18 AM
I think that doing a special on the history of the country is a great thing, but this one leads much to be desired. Having taken two history courses (one about europe in the modern era of history from 1500-pres., the other of American History from 1492-1865) in college taught by two excellent professors, it sort of concerns me that this show has lead to comments by people on facebook as to inferring that they've learned more in this special than in average HS american history class, which pretty much speaks volumes about the quality of education in this country, but that is for another time, with this all being said here's my issues with this program:
first off, the historical inaccuracies are astounding, from discussing Jamestown and not even mentioning why it was under attack (A bunch of prissy nobility level Englishmen were starving and resorted to STEALING from the local Native Americans) to having Paul Revere's mid night ride being incorrectly remembered as "The British are coming!" (He NEVER said this, he said "The Regulars are coming"
also the use of guilt trips and overall discussion of bad incidents occuring in this are pretty outstanding, I'm not saying that things like slavery and say, the trail of tears should be overlooked, and I do believe they SHOULD be mentioned in such a documentary, but in every other story there's some big down side to a major positive event in American history, even in the more positive ones, like the building of the Hoover dam. Rather than say highlighting the overall amusingness of how such a thing was built, and the many positives that it did end up providing, we're pretty much dragged down yet again by showing the amount of deaths that it caused several workers.
Finally, why should I really give a flying rats ass about what Al Sharpton felt about the war o 1812 or about how Michael Douglas felt of the great depression. I am not saying that those two may not be familiar with history, but for fucks sake, give me a historian or a professor well-versed in that time period, not some guy who happened to be able to make millions off of this country,
the only really positive out of all of this is that it could lead to another person garnering an interest in history, and it's better than say, wasting time watching some mindless reality show, but really, if you really want to learn about history, my suggestion is to pick out a couple of books, be they from the local library or from the local borders, and go from there.
first off, the historical inaccuracies are astounding, from discussing Jamestown and not even mentioning why it was under attack (A bunch of prissy nobility level Englishmen were starving and resorted to STEALING from the local Native Americans) to having Paul Revere's mid night ride being incorrectly remembered as "The British are coming!" (He NEVER said this, he said "The Regulars are coming"
also the use of guilt trips and overall discussion of bad incidents occuring in this are pretty outstanding, I'm not saying that things like slavery and say, the trail of tears should be overlooked, and I do believe they SHOULD be mentioned in such a documentary, but in every other story there's some big down side to a major positive event in American history, even in the more positive ones, like the building of the Hoover dam. Rather than say highlighting the overall amusingness of how such a thing was built, and the many positives that it did end up providing, we're pretty much dragged down yet again by showing the amount of deaths that it caused several workers.
Finally, why should I really give a flying rats ass about what Al Sharpton felt about the war o 1812 or about how Michael Douglas felt of the great depression. I am not saying that those two may not be familiar with history, but for fucks sake, give me a historian or a professor well-versed in that time period, not some guy who happened to be able to make millions off of this country,
the only really positive out of all of this is that it could lead to another person garnering an interest in history, and it's better than say, wasting time watching some mindless reality show, but really, if you really want to learn about history, my suggestion is to pick out a couple of books, be they from the local library or from the local borders, and go from there.