Stone's History

I searched for Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States more or less at random today because I didn't see the Showtime series (I don't have broadcast or cable TV) when it came out months ago, and I was curious about its current status.

Here's the entire series.  I would like to think this allowance resulted from a gentlemen's agreement between Stone and Showtime, an allowance designed to take advantage of an educational opportunity.

I could be wrong about that, but when I think about the intellectual property wars that regularly light up the Internet I must assume that Stone is uninterested in wringing out every ounce of profitability from his creation.

In other words, the message counts for something more than show biz here.

If this series is not being used in U.S. high-school classrooms throughout the country today, another grave injustice is being wrought by those more concerned with keeping alive the flames of American mythology than the intellectual lives of our children.

This project captures U.S. historicity and nuance better than anything I've seen in the documentary genre. (Don't bother to question my authority on this.  I am a historian, political scientist, writer, publisher, and all around great guy.)

While it has its flaws and gloss (things history students should talk about), I think this is the most important piece of work Oliver Stone has ever produced. The naysayers have called it a hatchet job on the U.S., scorning Stone as a rich Hollywood interloper, a fabulist, a sick and hypocritical socialist, or worse.

It's pretty sad when a real former warrior like Stone, who served in Vietnam, must go up against the sympathizers of the Bush/Cheney-influenced coterie of draft-dodging faux warriors who dominate conservatism in the U.S. in these times.

You know the types, right?  The guys with the thickest armament portfolios?

Communist sympathizers, Stalin's revisionist dupes, Henry Wallace bootlickers?  Is any of this in some manner more relevant or abhorrent than being William Kristol's errand boy?

Old Joe McCarthy would be proud of this piece, too.

The mythologists of U.S Exceptionalism, or dissenting historians? Can we have some history here without the tone-deaf ideologues of American virtue bleating their same-old songs?

I know whose version of history I'm going to believe.

BTW, you and I know GW Bush was too stupid and cowardly to fly an airplane in combat. That aircraft carrier-landing-w/codpiece-covering-limp-dick-photo-op when he announced the "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq was more Hollywood than anything Stone ever dreamed up.

History--what else--already bears that out.


TS