Ken Burns is the most famous documentary filmmaker in America. He has made 35 films over the past 5 decades on historical and cultural subjects like the Civil War (which is the most streamed film in public television history), baseball, jazz, the Roosevelts, Jefferson, Vietnam, Benjamin Franklin, the Statue of Liberty, Muhammad Ali... and many, many more. But of his most recent film,
I just listened to Bari’s interview with Ken Burns and found it repugnant. It all but obliterated my respect for, and trust in, Ken Burns as a filmmaker.
Burns waxes poetic about the importance of storytelling to adequately communicate all perspectives on a subject. He is not the first to make this point, and I agree. Our culture is based, to a great extent, on the perpetual telling of stories. He also adds this: “The writer Richard Powers…said, ‘The best arguments in the world won’t change a single person’s point of view. The only thing that can do that is a good story.’”
Ken Burns proves this is the case in this interview, in which he repeatedly cherry picks stories to advance his own political agenda, without making even a nod to the competing stories or, for that matter, the “best arguments.”
Here’s a remark that caused me to stop the recording and rewind to make sure that I had heard it correctly: “Is there murder in the United States by the State in the biggest and broadest sense of that word, against African-American citizens? Yep! And it still goes on to this day.” To Ken Burns it doesn’t matter that the data contradict this. The George Floyd story evidently looms large in his mind, and it's irrelevant to him that only about 15-20 unarmed black men are killed by police each year, and about double that number of unarmed white men. Pedantic individuals can debate about whether or not those numbers are proportional to overall population, or how they compare to relative police encounters, but it doesn’t matter. The numbers are TINY relative to the population and are indicative of nothing more than a few random, inexcusable tragedies. There is no valid statistical information in them, but that doesn’t matter to Mr. Burns….because he’s got his “story” and he’s sticking with it.
It gets a lot worse as the interview continues. Burns evidently uses the last three minutes of his production to exploit as many parallels as he can between the Holocaust and actions of people he doesn’t like in 2023… and they’re all on his opposite political side. This is a common practice among Progressives: Anyone who doesn’t toe the Progressive line is a “Nazi.” George W. Bush is a Nazi, Mitt Romney is a Nazi, Ron DeSantis is a Nazi, and, of course, Donald Trump is a Nazi, and the conservative members of the Supreme Court are all Nazis.
Mr. Burns has the comic audacity to state that drawing a direct line between the Holocaust and Donald Trump is “not political.” He talks about the “authoritarian playbook” and mentions one firing in the state of Florida, completely ignoring the scores of firings and cancellations being promoted under Leftist, “Woke” philosophy. No one is more aware of this hypocrisy than Bari, and I’m disappointed that she did not challenge him on this point.
To Burns, nothing HE says is political. It only becomes political is someone challenges him.
I had been looking forward to watching “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” but now I don’t know if I can trust anything Burns has to say. He has made it clear that he deliberately chooses the stories that suit him and will present them as fact. He has undermined his own credibility and integrity, and I can no longer assume that anything he tells me is not just pushing a narrative.
Having lost scores of relatives in the Holocaust, I don’t need to be convinced that Adolf Hitler was a murdering tyrant, but if Ken Burns tells me Hitler was a murdering tyrant, I’m not sure, at this point, that I would believe him without checking elsewhere first.
In defense of Bari not pushing back harder: If she doesn’t give free platform for people, they won’t do interviews with her and don’t reveal themselves for who they are and what their agendas are. Now we know Ken Burns’ intentions. Thank Bari and share far and wide for as long as we are still allowed freedom of speech.
I just listened to this and so disappointed in Ken Burns and his inability to see the Holocaust as the realization of antisemitism and uniquely awful for Jews. His need to try and tie the Holocaust to his misrepresentation of Florida’s laws about teaching sexuality to young children and his repeated references to Fox News - just so awful. I have no words. This has completely changed my view of Burns and his work and how he seeks to promote his political agenda.
Will watch this. Think Bari tried a couple times to push back and Burns just ignored the question or talked around it. Really enjoy her stuff but she should have pushed Burns a little harder at the end.
I truly enjoyed the first 35 to 40 minutes of that presentation. I was left rather angry with the last 20 minutes or so. It’s impossible for anyone to be 100% fair in treating both sides of our current binary political team system. I am no Trump supporter. But the cavalier approach to governor DeSantis and his political decisions was informative of how left leaning Ken Burns is. I was surprised that she didn’t challenge him on that. You generally embrace these difficult discussions. He got a free pass and got a couple of left jabs in. I think you can be better whether they are punching from the right or punching from the left.
At about minute -14 Burns says: "When somebody disagrees with you and your fire them, ..." of what do you think. When I heard him say this I thought of cancel culture, the most powerful religious force in our society today. But not Burns, he thinks of someone fired for plausible cause by DeSantis. Perhaps Rebekkah Jones, fired in Florida for a history of violating DOH policy. Or perhaps Andrew Warren, the Tampa Bay prosecutor fired by DeSantis for ostentatious selective enforcement of the law. Of course, Burns vigorously promotes a partisan political agenda, it's obvious, and he's willing to twist history to support his agenda. I dramatically lowered my expectation that he's a remotely reliable documentarian.
Burns repeatedly trots out this tired trope that Trump rhymes with Hitler. I think that Trump rhymes better with the Gracchi brothers but your ear may hear things differently. More importantly, what is the most powerful authoritarian forces in our society? Take the anti-semitism on which his documentary focuses. Yes, we have some ridiculous white supremacists and we have the occasional (too frequent) white Nazi attacking a synagogue. But we also have frequent attacks on Jewish people by black haters aligned with the left, the Crown-Heights pogrom inflamed by the still popular Al Sharpton, and the casual anti-semitism of Ilhan Omar, a duly elected US Representative. Which source of anti-semitism is most powerful in our society today? In college classes some students still read Mein Kampf, do you think they read it with the same adulation and expectation of insight that they read the anti-semite writer James Baldwin? Who is more persuasive in modern America?
Alas, one could go on and on about the obvious failures of perception Burns demonstrated in the interview. Sadly, I now have to revisit my opinions about his other documentaries with my new much-lowered assessment of his capabilities.
I guess we can give Burns credit for admitting he's a story teller, not a historian. Must be nice to be able to dismiss all those troubling facts and arguments that get in the way of a good story. ...Lord he was difficult to listen to but it served to shine a light on the left's thinking these days, not that it surprised me. So self aggrandizing and so dismissive of any accountability. So disappointing. And slippery, my God that man is slippery.
Bari: can you interview someone else to rebalance this discussion? I sensed that you wanted to push back harder but pulled your punches... I hope that is true..?
Burns' statement that the US government is murdering blacks today was especially infuriating.
I agree with all of the previous comments. I came home after listening to the podcast today and thought I had to write a comment for the first time because I was so disappointed with how you handled Ken Burns and the subject matter. Looks like I wasn't the only one and I don't have much to add. I knew he was a big lib but I hoped for an even-handed look at a very difficult subject. Didn't happen. You pride yourself on your journalistic ability to cut through the partisan bullshit, on both sides. That's why I listen. Boogie Man Trump again. Doesn't matter what he accomplished with the Abraham Accords. Oh no, that's another film. He'd never make that one. I will never watch another of his films now that I know he has an agenda and I'll have to consider whether to continue with my subscription. What a shame.
I appreciate Bari for airing people with a wide range of viewpoints but am very disappointed that she didn't push back against Burns' overtly political and disproportionate conflation of Nazi atrocities with present-day conservative leanings. While the story he tells deserves to be heard, he destroys his own credibility by embracing tired, old, cartoonish caricatures of present-day Republicans and others who support the humane and sensible enforcement of immigration laws.
The media too often conflates the really horrible ideas held by the Nazis, with their model of government, which we describe as fascism. Yes anti-semitism is horrible and it was practiced by Nazi fascists. It is also practiced by a fringe minority of white supremacists in this country; but they are not fascists. Idiots yes, fascists no. Fascism is a type of government in which several supposedly separate entities work together, “bundled” to a common purpose. Such actors include the state, the press, and corporations. By definition a minority faction of any sort cannot be fascist. Ironically, in this country, the organization that comes closest to fascism is the Democratic Party, in concert with the mainstream media and social media, and a significant number of “woke” corporations. Indeed it is only the republican minority that keeps these “democratic” authoritarians from running rough shod. See: the lockdowns following covid in blue states.
All this hand wringing about Trump and “right wing” conspiracy makes me puke. Bari should have pushed back against this garbage.
“I’m just the storyteller, the onus is on you, the listener” just feels like a huge cop out. I knew what I would get before I hit play, I just wish Bari would have pushed back more. Perhaps she was just trying to avoid more random bizarre tangents about the state of Florida?
Ken Burns is one of my favorite storytellers. I have watched with interest many of his documentaries. I appreciate that this project did a deep dive into a history there is still, after all that has been written and documented, room for more examination. This includes the perspectives that influenced how and to what degree the US intervened. I am sure that I am not well versed in America's attitudes at the time.
However Mr. Burns blatant political bias revealed in this interview, and his tangling of the holocaust with today's current events left me wondering how much I could trust what he has included in the story. A shame really, that what could otherwise have been an important reveal of a different perspective on the holocaust, he chose to inject his world (US) view of the facts as he sees them. This is one of his documentaries that I plan to skip. And given what he revealed as his POV, I will watch his other documentaries with a more critical eye.
That Ken Burns is a brilliant filmmaker is without question. The interview was troubling, though, as he reaffirmed his elitist, unctuous credentials. He correctly points out instances of authoritarianism on the right, but conveniently ignores the issue of authoritarianism and anti-free speech behavior on the left: Government agencies during COVID; Big Tech's partnership with the White House to suppress free speech; Transition of legacy media from reporting to narrative; Speech codes at universities, etc. All of this leads one to wonder: Is Ken Burns shining a light on an important and tragic historical event, or is he leveraging this as a cudgel to advance his polemic political view?
Brilliant filmmaker? Well you could say the same about Leni Riefenstahl I guess. I find Burns to be a very accomplished propagandist He should stick to actual history.
I just listened to Bari’s interview with Ken Burns and found it repugnant. It all but obliterated my respect for, and trust in, Ken Burns as a filmmaker.
Burns waxes poetic about the importance of storytelling to adequately communicate all perspectives on a subject. He is not the first to make this point, and I agree. Our culture is based, to a great extent, on the perpetual telling of stories. He also adds this: “The writer Richard Powers…said, ‘The best arguments in the world won’t change a single person’s point of view. The only thing that can do that is a good story.’”
Ken Burns proves this is the case in this interview, in which he repeatedly cherry picks stories to advance his own political agenda, without making even a nod to the competing stories or, for that matter, the “best arguments.”
Here’s a remark that caused me to stop the recording and rewind to make sure that I had heard it correctly: “Is there murder in the United States by the State in the biggest and broadest sense of that word, against African-American citizens? Yep! And it still goes on to this day.” To Ken Burns it doesn’t matter that the data contradict this. The George Floyd story evidently looms large in his mind, and it's irrelevant to him that only about 15-20 unarmed black men are killed by police each year, and about double that number of unarmed white men. Pedantic individuals can debate about whether or not those numbers are proportional to overall population, or how they compare to relative police encounters, but it doesn’t matter. The numbers are TINY relative to the population and are indicative of nothing more than a few random, inexcusable tragedies. There is no valid statistical information in them, but that doesn’t matter to Mr. Burns….because he’s got his “story” and he’s sticking with it.
It gets a lot worse as the interview continues. Burns evidently uses the last three minutes of his production to exploit as many parallels as he can between the Holocaust and actions of people he doesn’t like in 2023… and they’re all on his opposite political side. This is a common practice among Progressives: Anyone who doesn’t toe the Progressive line is a “Nazi.” George W. Bush is a Nazi, Mitt Romney is a Nazi, Ron DeSantis is a Nazi, and, of course, Donald Trump is a Nazi, and the conservative members of the Supreme Court are all Nazis.
Mr. Burns has the comic audacity to state that drawing a direct line between the Holocaust and Donald Trump is “not political.” He talks about the “authoritarian playbook” and mentions one firing in the state of Florida, completely ignoring the scores of firings and cancellations being promoted under Leftist, “Woke” philosophy. No one is more aware of this hypocrisy than Bari, and I’m disappointed that she did not challenge him on this point.
To Burns, nothing HE says is political. It only becomes political is someone challenges him.
I had been looking forward to watching “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” but now I don’t know if I can trust anything Burns has to say. He has made it clear that he deliberately chooses the stories that suit him and will present them as fact. He has undermined his own credibility and integrity, and I can no longer assume that anything he tells me is not just pushing a narrative.
Having lost scores of relatives in the Holocaust, I don’t need to be convinced that Adolf Hitler was a murdering tyrant, but if Ken Burns tells me Hitler was a murdering tyrant, I’m not sure, at this point, that I would believe him without checking elsewhere first.
John L
In defense of Bari not pushing back harder: If she doesn’t give free platform for people, they won’t do interviews with her and don’t reveal themselves for who they are and what their agendas are. Now we know Ken Burns’ intentions. Thank Bari and share far and wide for as long as we are still allowed freedom of speech.
I just listened to this and so disappointed in Ken Burns and his inability to see the Holocaust as the realization of antisemitism and uniquely awful for Jews. His need to try and tie the Holocaust to his misrepresentation of Florida’s laws about teaching sexuality to young children and his repeated references to Fox News - just so awful. I have no words. This has completely changed my view of Burns and his work and how he seeks to promote his political agenda.
I think he missed a few indigenous tribes; but he proved to me what a virtuous human being he is - a model to strive to be.
Will watch this. Think Bari tried a couple times to push back and Burns just ignored the question or talked around it. Really enjoy her stuff but she should have pushed Burns a little harder at the end.
Barri
I truly enjoyed the first 35 to 40 minutes of that presentation. I was left rather angry with the last 20 minutes or so. It’s impossible for anyone to be 100% fair in treating both sides of our current binary political team system. I am no Trump supporter. But the cavalier approach to governor DeSantis and his political decisions was informative of how left leaning Ken Burns is. I was surprised that she didn’t challenge him on that. You generally embrace these difficult discussions. He got a free pass and got a couple of left jabs in. I think you can be better whether they are punching from the right or punching from the left.
At about minute -14 Burns says: "When somebody disagrees with you and your fire them, ..." of what do you think. When I heard him say this I thought of cancel culture, the most powerful religious force in our society today. But not Burns, he thinks of someone fired for plausible cause by DeSantis. Perhaps Rebekkah Jones, fired in Florida for a history of violating DOH policy. Or perhaps Andrew Warren, the Tampa Bay prosecutor fired by DeSantis for ostentatious selective enforcement of the law. Of course, Burns vigorously promotes a partisan political agenda, it's obvious, and he's willing to twist history to support his agenda. I dramatically lowered my expectation that he's a remotely reliable documentarian.
Burns repeatedly trots out this tired trope that Trump rhymes with Hitler. I think that Trump rhymes better with the Gracchi brothers but your ear may hear things differently. More importantly, what is the most powerful authoritarian forces in our society? Take the anti-semitism on which his documentary focuses. Yes, we have some ridiculous white supremacists and we have the occasional (too frequent) white Nazi attacking a synagogue. But we also have frequent attacks on Jewish people by black haters aligned with the left, the Crown-Heights pogrom inflamed by the still popular Al Sharpton, and the casual anti-semitism of Ilhan Omar, a duly elected US Representative. Which source of anti-semitism is most powerful in our society today? In college classes some students still read Mein Kampf, do you think they read it with the same adulation and expectation of insight that they read the anti-semite writer James Baldwin? Who is more persuasive in modern America?
Alas, one could go on and on about the obvious failures of perception Burns demonstrated in the interview. Sadly, I now have to revisit my opinions about his other documentaries with my new much-lowered assessment of his capabilities.
Anything that is promoted by Public Television is going to be slanted to the left. Too aggravating to bother watching.
It infuriates me that we are forced by taxation to support programming that is so blatantly biased.
I guess we can give Burns credit for admitting he's a story teller, not a historian. Must be nice to be able to dismiss all those troubling facts and arguments that get in the way of a good story. ...Lord he was difficult to listen to but it served to shine a light on the left's thinking these days, not that it surprised me. So self aggrandizing and so dismissive of any accountability. So disappointing. And slippery, my God that man is slippery.
Bari: can you interview someone else to rebalance this discussion? I sensed that you wanted to push back harder but pulled your punches... I hope that is true..?
Burns' statement that the US government is murdering blacks today was especially infuriating.
Once upon a time he made a great documentary about the Civil War. since then, not so much.
I agree with all of the previous comments. I came home after listening to the podcast today and thought I had to write a comment for the first time because I was so disappointed with how you handled Ken Burns and the subject matter. Looks like I wasn't the only one and I don't have much to add. I knew he was a big lib but I hoped for an even-handed look at a very difficult subject. Didn't happen. You pride yourself on your journalistic ability to cut through the partisan bullshit, on both sides. That's why I listen. Boogie Man Trump again. Doesn't matter what he accomplished with the Abraham Accords. Oh no, that's another film. He'd never make that one. I will never watch another of his films now that I know he has an agenda and I'll have to consider whether to continue with my subscription. What a shame.
I appreciate Bari for airing people with a wide range of viewpoints but am very disappointed that she didn't push back against Burns' overtly political and disproportionate conflation of Nazi atrocities with present-day conservative leanings. While the story he tells deserves to be heard, he destroys his own credibility by embracing tired, old, cartoonish caricatures of present-day Republicans and others who support the humane and sensible enforcement of immigration laws.
The media too often conflates the really horrible ideas held by the Nazis, with their model of government, which we describe as fascism. Yes anti-semitism is horrible and it was practiced by Nazi fascists. It is also practiced by a fringe minority of white supremacists in this country; but they are not fascists. Idiots yes, fascists no. Fascism is a type of government in which several supposedly separate entities work together, “bundled” to a common purpose. Such actors include the state, the press, and corporations. By definition a minority faction of any sort cannot be fascist. Ironically, in this country, the organization that comes closest to fascism is the Democratic Party, in concert with the mainstream media and social media, and a significant number of “woke” corporations. Indeed it is only the republican minority that keeps these “democratic” authoritarians from running rough shod. See: the lockdowns following covid in blue states.
All this hand wringing about Trump and “right wing” conspiracy makes me puke. Bari should have pushed back against this garbage.
“I’m just the storyteller, the onus is on you, the listener” just feels like a huge cop out. I knew what I would get before I hit play, I just wish Bari would have pushed back more. Perhaps she was just trying to avoid more random bizarre tangents about the state of Florida?
Ken Burns is one of my favorite storytellers. I have watched with interest many of his documentaries. I appreciate that this project did a deep dive into a history there is still, after all that has been written and documented, room for more examination. This includes the perspectives that influenced how and to what degree the US intervened. I am sure that I am not well versed in America's attitudes at the time.
However Mr. Burns blatant political bias revealed in this interview, and his tangling of the holocaust with today's current events left me wondering how much I could trust what he has included in the story. A shame really, that what could otherwise have been an important reveal of a different perspective on the holocaust, he chose to inject his world (US) view of the facts as he sees them. This is one of his documentaries that I plan to skip. And given what he revealed as his POV, I will watch his other documentaries with a more critical eye.
That Ken Burns is a brilliant filmmaker is without question. The interview was troubling, though, as he reaffirmed his elitist, unctuous credentials. He correctly points out instances of authoritarianism on the right, but conveniently ignores the issue of authoritarianism and anti-free speech behavior on the left: Government agencies during COVID; Big Tech's partnership with the White House to suppress free speech; Transition of legacy media from reporting to narrative; Speech codes at universities, etc. All of this leads one to wonder: Is Ken Burns shining a light on an important and tragic historical event, or is he leveraging this as a cudgel to advance his polemic political view?
Brilliant filmmaker? Well you could say the same about Leni Riefenstahl I guess. I find Burns to be a very accomplished propagandist He should stick to actual history.