AlterNet: Outraged Citizens Campaign Forces History Channel to Rethink Miniseries About the Kennedys

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Daniela Perdomo

Outraged Citizens Campaign Forces History Channel to Rethink Miniseries About the Kennedys
Robert Greenwald launches growing campaign that calls historically revisionist series backed by a producer with ties to Roger Ailes, "right-wing character assassination."

February 19, 2010 |


Media observers are abuzz with talk of a History Channel mini-series called "The Kennedys." While the scripts for the eight-part show, slated to air in 2011, are still unfinished, that hasn't stopped 40,000 people from signing a petition calling the series "right-wing character assassination" and "politically motivated fiction."

The populist rage stems from two roots. The first is that the History Channel gave the green light -- and $30 million -- to Joel Surnow, a producer with significant ties to right-wing media. Known for producing "24," the hit terrorist-fighting series that has normalized torture techniques for many Americans, Surnow is tight with Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes, the president of Fox News. His ties with the channel extend beyond the personal, as he also executive produced its now-defunct "1/2 Hour News Hour."

"The History Channel made a major mistake by turning this project over to a man with a publicly right-wing agenda," says Robert Greenwald, the progressive filmmaker who heads Brave New Films and has produced such documentaries as Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism. "Would you want me to be doing a Bush mini-series?" he asked. (Disclosure: Greenwald sits on AlterNet's board.)

Perhaps not if the intent is to be politically unbiased.

Greenwald himself is behind the second reason fueling the campaign to quash the mini-series. A leaked script for "The Kennedys" found its way into his showbiz-connected hands, which he shared with prominent Kennedy historians who have since gone on the record calling the script everything from distorted and nonsensical to propaganda. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/media/145742/outraged_citizens_campaign_forces_history_channel_to_rethink_miniseries_about_the_kennedys_

[Frustratedlady]

1. Great! If they'd produced such a series on the Kennedy family,

they would have left the gate wide open for one on the Bush family, and I doubt many would want to tackle that.

[scarletlib]

2. I have never been a conspiracy theorist but it occurred to me recently to

wonder why so much 'information' on JFK supposed dalliances was released years after his death. Since we know that the bush clan was involved with the CIA etc. it makes me wonder.

I have no doubt that Kennedy did have affairs. However, he was ill & had back problems. He was also an actively engaged president. With all that he did I don't think he good have been that busy with extramarital sex.

He was a smart and thoughtful man. Rumors are he was going to end our involvement in Vietnam and was wary of the military.

I can't help but wonder if all that came out years after his death was a disinformation campaign of some sort.

[Zoeisright]

3. Exactly. This salacious voyeurism of the right wing is weird.

Plus it's just sick to publish, air, or print this shit about people who are dead and can't defend themselves. I have no doubt Poppy Bush was involved in the assassination. How many people of his age claim they 'don't remember' where they were when JFK was assassinated? And were in Dallas at the time?

[tonysam]

5. I'll tell you why the revisionism.

Note that it came into full flower during the Reagan years, just as the right was really getting their propaganda machine underway.

One of their chief strategies was to malign the 1960s and to malign the memory of those politicians who were slain. The lie, promulgated by the likes of Horowitz and Collier in their trashy book about the Kennedys and by other so-called revisionists, was to paint the Kennedys as frauds, as crooks, who didn't deserve all of the grief expressed by people around the world. The tragedies weren't real, the grief millions felt wasn't real. It was all lies. If the right could be successful in knocking the Kennedys off their pedestal, they believed they could put their own idols (such as Reagan, etc.) in their place.

It WAS disinformation. I never believe JFK dallied around that much because of his precarious health situation. If you look at old footage of him when he was president, he could barely walk.

I called bullshit on this revisionism years ago. I felt it was a con game put forward by propagandists.

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. One should not speak ill of the dead. At least, not so-recently deceased.

And I'm not sure being a partisan of the American right, believed by most of mankind to have been responsible for his murder, will be viewed as a mitigating circumstance by the Almighty, in the next life.