To: History Channel
\nFrom: Mitch Berg, Mere Peasant
\nRe: “America: The Story Of Us”<\/p>\n
Dear History Channel<\/p>\n
I watched an episode of “America: The Story Of Us” – an episode focusing on the history of slavery.<\/p>\n
In and among all your traditional low-budget camera herky-jerkery, there was a fairly well-told story there.<\/p>\n
Your show follows the current fashion, interspersing commentary from experts – or “experts” – into the cinemetic story. \u00a0Anyone who’s ever watched a PBS cinementary knows the technique; academics adding bits of, well, academia to a larger story.<\/p>\n
Now, some of the “experts” you picked – Colin Powell, Al Sharpton, Henry Louis Gates – are pretty predictable in a story on slavery. \u00a0So far so good.<\/p>\n
But “Mack” Machiewitz, the overdramatic former SEAL whose claim to fame is having hosted “Future Weapons?”<\/p>\n
Bill Maher? I say again, Bill Maher?<\/p>\n
Who, to be fair, was at least more measured and sober than noted historian\u00a0Sheryl “Share Your Toilet Paper” Crowe, whose comment “I think in the south today there are still people who believe in the rightness of slavery?” still strikes me, three days later, as one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To: History Channel From: Mitch Berg, Mere Peasant Re: “America: The Story Of Us” Dear History Channel I watched an episode of “America: The Story Of Us” – an episode focusing on the history of slavery. In and among all your traditional low-budget camera herky-jerkery, there was a fairly well-told story there. Your show follows […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-and-its-making","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22643"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22754,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22643\/revisions\/22754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}