Anyone watching Truman on PBS?

[proud2BlibKansan]

American Experience. It's about Truman this week.

It's very good.

[mucifer]

1. yup

[boobooday]

2. yeah, really interesting n/t

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. He lived here in my metro area when I was growing up

and I heard so many Truman stories when I was a kid. He was just idolized in Independence. The day he died, it was freezing cold and my dad took us to see him lying in state at the Truman Library. The line was incredibly long. I will never forget it.

His house is still in Independence and it is just beautiful. The opposite of a McMansion. I just drove by it a few weeks ago.

[BrotherBuzz]

6. My mom visited the Truman library and home last week.

Prior to her trip, she joked about not being able to tour the house the first time we visited it in the fifties because he was still living in it.

When we visited the library in 1959(?) and Harry Truman came out and greeted us. How cool is that? I doubt any living president could be bothered to do something a trivial as that today. Well, Carter would if he wasn't so busy traveling the world repairing Bush and Rice's diplomacy or pulling their collective bacon out of the fire.

[SharonAnn]

8. I've really enjoyed this and the FDR series.

[King Bacon Fat]

3. What I don't get...

There are six of these so far. I get FDR. I get Truman. I get LBJ. I get Carter. I even get George Bush (the real one).

But they did one on Reagan? Why?

It is my great hope that that shyster gets a re-evaluation with America looking at him as disapprovingly as possible.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. Yes that would be nice, wouldn't it?

[TheMightyFavog]

11. Aren't they doing one of these for all of the presidents?

If they are, good on PBS, this is the kind of project I could really get behind.

[Oeditpus Rex]

12. If they hadn't

the Republikaaners would've screamed to pull PBS and NEH funding.

[Captain Hilts]

7. This is where I learned Bess bailed on the White House for extended periods of time.

Being 'first lady' really sucks.

[AzDar]

9. I watched last night, and saw something quite disturbing : during the Potsdam Conference,

there was a still photo of Truman sitting across a large round table from Stalin. Behind Truman, appears to be Prescott Bush (!)
I looked all over the intertubes today to try to find out if and why the Great Satan Himself would be attending Potsdam (especially given his hatred of the Roosevelt Administration/Agenda), but found nothing enlightening.

Does anyone know anything about this, or am I a loony ? (entirely possible)

[FourScore]

10. I had a great-aunt

who was close friends with Truman. She was a self-made millionaire at a time when women didn't do that sort of thing. She drank and smoked and cursed, AND she played poker with Truman in the White House...or so the family legend goes...and when she got upset with him she'd lecture him on what he was doing wrong. I loved that aunt. She was really something else.

[tom_paine]

13. 1947. Truman signs the Death Warrant of the Old American Republic.

Thank God she hung on for 53 more years so we could at least live SOME of our lives in relative freedom.

The Death Warrant:

http://www.texascollaborative.org/SilverblattModule/act2-1.php

[EFerrari]

14. Do you mean the National Security Act? The link is not working.

1947 Truman also told the NAACP he was going to de-segregate the military, among other things, and some people believe that voting block helped him defeat Dewey.

[tom_paine]

15. I just checked the link. It works. I am not arguing here that Truman was a bad guy or a Bushie

He made a mistake, just like FDR in 1935 when the Bushies tried to run a coup on him, were turned in by American hero Gen. Smedley Butler, and then at the conclusoon of Congressional Hearings (1935 House Committee on UnAmerican Activities) instead of hanging the bastards for High Treason as he should have done, FDR buried the evidence and let the Bushie Traitors go "for the good of the nation".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml

A mistake, even a terrible one, do not invalidate or negate the many good things FDR and Truman did.

[EFerrari]

16. Oh, I understand. And, agree. I read Vidal's explanation

some time ago -- it was news to me. And unfortnately, it's very easy to see where that led us when little Bush gives us nearly daily illustrations.