Ken Burns Baseball on...

[FrankWakefield]

.

[Rob D.]

Originally Posted by FrankWakefield

I obviously didn't, from looking at your post.

Nevertheless, the effort was appreciated.

[tbob]

Speaking of documentaries, I think the three greatest documentaries I have ever seen were:
3. Ken Burns' Baseball
2. Ken Burns' Civil War and
1. The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century

All three were outstanding and heartily recommended. According to many blogs, websites and writers, President Bush felt the World War I documentary was actually a veiled pacifistic effort and had an anti-war bent and did his part to see that it was pulled from production on VCR tape and never released on DVD. The reason given for this is that we were involved in a war in the Middle East and viewing this film series was counter-productive to the attitude toward the war effort. In 1996 when it was released on PBS, it won two Emmys including one for Best informational Series and in 1997 won a Peabody. To this date, it has never been released on DVD and is extremely difficult to find. I have seen copies of the 4 VCR tape set go for $500 on ebay when they are available. I haven't checked lately but over the last 7-8 years I have watched their sales, they were extremely rare. Regardless of your political leanings, this is an incredible series and should be watched.
Amazingly you can go to the PBS web site and order any of their past documentaries and shows on VCR or DVD, but this one is glaringly absent.
http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/

[Peter_Spaeth]

http://cgi.ebay.com/The-Great-War-an...item1c0fddb0d7

[bmarlowe1]

tbob says:
President Bush felt the World War I documentary was actually a veiled pacifistic effort and had an anti-war bent and did his part to see that it was pulled from production on VCR tape and never released on DVD.

Paranoid and delusional beyond comprehension. Peter - you better watch out, they're gonna come and get you for posting that subversive info.

Released in 2005:

[tbob]

Originally Posted by bmarlowe1

tbob says:
President Bush felt the World War I documentary was actually a veiled pacifistic effort and had an anti-war bent and did his part to see that it was pulled from production on VCR tape and never released on DVD.

Paranoid and delusional beyond comprehension. Peter - you better watch out, they're gonna come and get you for posting that subversive info.

Released in 2005:

Peter- wow, that is incredible! I can not believe a set went for that cheap. I saw one a few months ago sell on either Amazon or Half.com for around $250.

BMarlowe- that picture you posted is not the same documentary as the one I mentioned. I didn't say that I had any specific and first hand knowledge of George and the boys getting in the way of the film's release, only that I had seen many articles attributing the documentary's strange disappearance and failure to be available on VCR or DVD to the Prez and his attitudes toward the film. Maybe akin to his not wanting the nightly news showing coffins coming back, wanting to orchestrate the war effort for the news, etc.
I guess it may be paranoid and delusional to some but what's the old saying, "I may be paranoid but that doesn't mean someone isn't following me."

[mintacular]

But too much of the time Burns seems to think that baeball was invented somewhere between White Plains NY and Brocton MASS, and that anything played outside of the Boston NYC corridor really doesn't count as major league at all.

History is an interpretive and selective presentation of facts and a historian will no doubt choose a narrative and build a story around this. To think that every farmtown minor league team should be covered as equally to the big city NY/Boston squads is very boring history in my book...Ironically, many progressives think a scrappy minimum wage steel-worker in Homestead PA deserves equal coverage to the Titans of Industry Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, et al., well I don't. But now I digress.

As for the minor points about "doctored tapes", and Doris Kearns Goodwin I think those are ticky-tacky criticism....If these criticisms underline a pervasive manipulation of tape/footage then they are worthwhile topics of discussion. If not, then so what? They are minor asterisks in the big scheme of things.