Documentary of the Day

The Century: America's Time is a 15-part documentary produced by the History Channel and ABC in 1999. Peter Jennings read the narration.

The series gave surprising (given its genesis) credence to the idea that America was built on strife and activism, that the struggles of ordinary Americans throughout the twentieth century were as much a part of the historical record as the "Big Events" often cited as the end-all of Americanism, particularly now that a segment of the polity would prefer to regress, despite logic, to an imaginary and unreal past rather than confront the challenges of the future.

It was produced and aired prior to 9/11. That day marked, ironically, the biggest calamity in the majority of Americans' lives, the day this nation lost its mind and turned a blind eye to the post-World War II miscalculations of a geopolitical world run over by newly minted imperialists on both sides of the long, abysmal Cold War.  Our subsequent failures of leadership have created a compendium of ongoing, contemporary messes--bounty for a new historiography.

As a program of ideas and a stark reminder of historicism's malleability, the discussions in this series, not 9/11, ought to be touchstones for today's politicians and policy thinkers.

Out of Congress and the rest of the bizarre crowd today, we are hearing strange and unnerving babbling that doesn't even begin to approach an understanding of the past--much less a plan for the future.

That the
world be guided by Whitman
and not Scrooge
a poet
not a miser
and object of
ridicule


TS