We Need to Talk About Ken Burns’s PBS American Revolution Documentary

Howard Zinn smiles...

So, I’ve watched the two episodes of Ken Burns’s documentary, The American Revolution, in spite of my stated zero desire to do so. Why? If you are not up to speed with the MSNBCification of Ken Burns over the last decade, catch up.

Anyway, as Mrs. Salamander knows more about the American Revolution than 99.7% of people out there, she insisted we watch it. I’ve been married for over three decades for a reason, so I sat down with her to watch.

FFS.

…and…it started with a land acknowledgement. ISYN.

It doesn’t get better.

By the end of episode two we’ve gotten through the Battle of Bunker Hill, yet there has been no mention of John Locke, Montesquieu, or any of the other philosophical drivers of the revolution. They have plenty of time to quote the memories of an old man about what he thought of George Washington when he ran into him when he was 8 (it wasn’t good).

Let’s pause there a bit. It is clear that they made a decision that for every good thing they say about GW in the first two episodes, they insist on finding a way to smear him with presentism. It is also clear that he really wants to do a documentary on African Americans in the Revolutionary War, but couldn’t get the funding for that. Instead there is a constant referring back to slavery and racial issues. Just overdone to the point of being obvious, given that they were, at best, tertiary issues during the war. It deserves mention, but not in this ham-fisted, patronizing manner it is being done…and done mostly to smear GW up.

The presentism and biased scholarship is not shocking if you’ve read my reports at my Substack over the years about the absolute woke-soaked state of American historical organizations such as the American Historical Association. (see my FEB 2021 Substack, “The War on (Military) History: Half a Century In” for reference.)

The smearing of GW like this is more than “balance” - it is emblematic of the presentism that makes so many modern virtue signaling tiresome — and exactly meets the low expectations I had for this documentary.

There is also the pettiness of their choices of what to comment on, and how—the smug New England perspective of the Acela Corridor that is Ken Burns’ intellectual terrarium. Just one example from the second episode: the arrival of the Virginians to support the patriot forces around Boston. Might as well have called them rednecks.

Even Mrs. Salamander, halfway through Ep. 2, had about enough of the shoehorned in identity politics of “inclusion” … as if everyone ever got over the fever of 2018-2022.

I am still amazed all the real foundational players, philosophy and actions that led up to the Battle of Bunker Hill were either swept to the side, or given little mention. While all great men who do great deeds have imperfections, there seems to be a deliberate effort to gloss over the great, but focus on the imperfections. Just so tiresome.

If you were narrowly read into the American Revolution and only watched the first two episodes, you would think our revolution was because the selfish Americans didn’t want to pay their fair share of taxes and were just greedy land-grabbers because they were uniquely evil people (some of the graphics chosen here were especially terrible, zooming in on the most angry and unattractive characters in paintings they could find).

I will continue to watch, mostly because I want Ken Burns to prove me wrong. To be better. Not to be so obvious in this effort to be for historical documentaries what Howard Zinn was to the teaching of American history. I really want the rest to be better, but the start is a mess.

You know The Jefferson Bible, where he cut out the distracting and what he saw as supernatural foolishness? That is what this documentary needs. There is some good stuff here and some solid commentary, especially by some of the British historians…but you have to pick around the other lesser-quality content to get to it.

We’ll see if things get better, but until then, if you are not going to watch it, at least see the not-very-thinly-veiled land acknowledgement they start with.