When I first heard that yet another television mini-series about the Kennedys was being produced, my first reaction was low key — they have done so many of them.
Then I heard that it was being executive produced by Joel Surnow, a right wing activist who’s so close to Rush Limbaugh that they’ve gone on vacation together in the Dominican Republic. This is a guy who refers to Bill Clinton as a “yuppie, baby boomer narcissist” and who supported Rick Santorum for Senate. What is he doing producing a series about one of the greatest progressive political families in American history? What’s his agenda?, I wondered.
Soon after, I started hearing the chatter from my friends in the film and TV world. I heard from friends in the industry that I absolutely had to read the script for the latest Kennedy mini-series.
Then I got a copy of the script.
It turns out that “The Kennedys,” an upcoming mini-series on The History Channel, is nothing more than a right wing political hit job. Its aim is to turn all the wonderful and important accomplishments of the Kennedy family into a cheap story of sexual titillation, opportunism and failure, of backstabbing and political intrigue. Historically misleading, demeaning and disgusting, this piece of far right propaganda goes beyond the bounds of decency, let alone historical accuracy. I was shocked and infuriated at this character assassination and sexual exploitation of the highest order, driven by a right wing agenda. I couldn’t believe what I was reading.
On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised. After all, this is par for the course for the right wing. The recent ‘Citizens United’ Supreme Court decision, travesty that it was, was merely the capstone of a generations-long effort by conservatives to rewrite history and litter it with suggestions and outright fabrications of sleaze, crimes and conspiracies by progressive icons, from Hillary Clinton to John F. Kennedy. That’s how hacks like Jonah Goldberg and David Horowitz draw their paychecks.
Right-wing zealots, of course, hail the Citizens United decision as a victory for “free (corporate) speech.” But yet, when the mythology of their own pantheon of heroes is challenged, these same right-wing activists drop the “free speech” mantle like a hot potato and sing a different tune, such as when they successfully pressured CBS to drop its plans to air a mini-series on the Reagans a few years ago.
It’s time to defend our own pantheon and stand up for responsible historiography. Sign our petition to the History Channel telling them that this upcoming mini-series is right-wing character assassination, not “history”:
I come from the world of commercial film and television production, having directed and produced over 55 movies, mini-series and TV shows. I can’t remember anything I’ve seen in that world that was so full of overt character assassination, that was so hackish and malevolent.
And yet, this series is being produced for The History Channel.
It doesn’t seem possible. But sadly, it is.
I cannot understand how or why the History Channel, with its ostensible commitment to historical scholarship, would even consider airing this propaganda. Why would a channel that stakes its reputation on its commitment to responsible historical scholarship turn over its programming to a partisan, right wing attack dog like Surnow, with a clear intent to launch an attack on the reputation of the Kennedys to coincide with the 50th anniversary of JFK’s inauguration?
Join me and let them know that the History Channel should not be financing and supporting propaganda and smears of the lowest order.
See now this is why I am often irked by what is coming out of what passes for the left lately. “…one of the greatest progressive political families in American history.” This hyperbole is just a bit out there don't you think, a bit of nostalgia, selective memory. There is plenty of negatives that an honest discourse on the Kennedy's would bring to light. It's this same attitude that seems to blind the left to Obama's centrist right political nature. This documentary is surely a hatchet job of the highest order. Joel Surnow is a pig and the production should be halted for all the reasons those people said in your video. But let's not rewrite history along the lines of the other extreme. And also, Clinton is “yuppie, baby boomer narcissist” as well as a centrist right triangulator, much like his war-hawk wife. The truly progressive left has been so marginalized because democrats think what we have on the left is good enough. It's not. I'm sure you know this.
The fact of the matter is the Kennedy's are hated because they had and have a vision of America that including people other than a rich greedy white Anglo-Saxon class.
Who feels to this very day that they were betray by the Kennedy's and will continue to do anything they can do to tear down his legacy as President as long as they have the
power to do so. Like George Orwell's “1984″ if they could have written him out of history by now they would have done it a long time ago!
These personal smears against him and his family are rooted in hate not politic! By the way these are the same forces that were responsible for his death in the first place they still exist!
The Kennedy's – then and now – did not have to spend their lives trying to change the world. Why do these producers – these evil doers – why are they doing this. What do they get out of it?
Make no mistake that the Bush Crime Family is behind this and are joined by the same odd bedfellows who lay down with them in the run-up to the oil grab ….the Zionist neocons, or Ziocons. These are to the overwhelmingly democrat and progressive voting American Jews what the neocons were (and are) to the population at large….a loud and ugly minority who hide behind religions they couldn't possibly believe in to intimidate critics and silence debate as well as to profit from war.
BushCo wanted oil and the right to blow shit up so Texas “construction” companies, like Cheney's Halliburton could steal tax dollars by the billions, war profiteering branches could dump huge inventories at astronomical mark-ups and the ZioCons, always Israel firsters, wanted their enemy du jour, an already neutered Hussein, out (and always willing to sacrifice American lives and treasure in the process). Meanwhile the boogeyman, Bin Laden, is allowed to escape. With drones, satellites, spies, assassins, Hussein could have been taken out without boots on the ground but then the oil would be out of their grasp (the priceless history of civilization was looted from museums while the oil ministry was heavily guarded).
Why strange bedfellows? Well 'W's granddaddy was a traitor who continued doing business with the Nazis long after it was a treasonable offense. (know your Bushes;
http://tarpley.net/online-books/george-bush-the…
BushCo brought the muscle and dough and the Ziocons, who unarguably control, not only much of the mainstream media, but the Hitler….er…History Channel as well brought the propaganda and censorship.
George Herbert Walker Bush may be the last living devil directly involved in the murder of a sitting president. Bush was pissed that Kennedy didn't back the paranoid play at the Bay of Pigs, an operation that, as a CIA agent, cost him many of his flunkies and bruised his Machiavellian ego. He did so at the behest of Nixon who hated JFK because Kennedy and his old man were better at stealing elections than his gang (Nixon was “discovered” by a group of greed merchants led by “W”s granddaddy Prescott), not to mention JFK's avowed religion and the fact that, with his also murdered brother, he appeared to be heading towards an “FDR,” that is, a betrayal of the social stratosphere in which they were born to dare make things better for the average American.
Bush, when in control of the CIA, killed Senate committees when they got too close and sent out an army of disinformation specialists like Posner to muddy the waters. Sadly JFK was all too mortal (banging everyone, smoking weed on the white house roof) and had made scores of enemies like Hoffa, the Mob, Federal Reserve, anti-papists and on and on) so confusion was easy.
Again and again we see attempts to kill the collective subconscious of an overwhelming number of those of us who've lived through this and know damn well it was a conspiracy of the highest levels (of the lowest lives) and that our country has not been we, the people's, ever since. When one examines the oil-Bush-CIA-neo and ziocon government we've had since this incident the path to the place in which we now suffer is clear. Nixon resigned what he killed for only because the truth was aiming toward exposure (had to pay a million to E. Howard Hunt in hush money when he was arrested during this time). BushCo buried the JFK files until they figure all we who witnessed the murder were dead. Bush Sr., as president, buried the Nixon Tapes which expose him and others. Ford, a dull tool, is brought in to pardon Nixon (our nation needing “healing” instead of truth). Reagan, of mediocre intellect and 'B' actor, learns his part but doesn't kiss Bush ass well enough so a Bush family friend attempts to kill him so Poppi Bush can step up from VP. But Poppi Bush has always had to cheat, gerrymander, set up tool dems to divide the mainstream dems voting block or fix voting machines to get elected. I wouldn't be surprised if they set up that obvious loser Dukakis to run. Being an individual the public never truly liked Bush couldn't get re-elected.
How to explain the silence of Carter and republican-lite Clinton who passed through that office where they must have learned the truth I can't explain other than they may have gotten a visit like J. Edgar Hoover did the day after the assassination by a CIA agent named George Bush. One in which their lives were threatened (and does it explain Obama's hair turning gray within 90 days of taking office?)
In 2000 we are allowed to consider only two individuals for the highest office, one a Yankee born and educated rich man's son who was a member of Yale's secretive “Skull and Bones” and the other, a Yankee born and almost educated rich man's son who was a member of Yale's “Skull and Bones.” The difference was the one pretending to be a cowboy had his murderous father's pals at Diebold fix the voting machines and still had to send Brooks Brothers clad goons to Florida and who knows what form of threat to SCOTUS to steal the presidency. To show further proof of BushCo's unwarranted arrogance and belief that the American public are dumbed down lemmings, they attack a decorated Vietnam Vet as anti-patriotic and weak while propping up a wastrel who hid from the fighting with the help of his CIA daddy and couldn't even carry out his meager duties in that soft place.
The truth is available folks (thank god or someone for the yet free internet). Invest some time reviewing it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26CaVAy6vxU
The link leads to a disturbing video that you can purchase for as little as 99 cents on Ebay.
We've suffered through several attempts to kill or distort our memories. Peter Jennings weak 'Peter Jennings Reporting: The Kennedy Assassination – Beyond Conspiracy (2003)' attempted to be the “final word on the assassination,” several nonsense “forensic” dog and pony shows, an absolutely disgusting, thinly veiled attempt to make George Herbert Walker Bush a great historical hero, without mentioning his name, in a made for TV mini-series 'The Company' with Chris O’Donnell as the hero, seen at the end sailing off into the sunset on a ship whose name was one of the three actual Bay of Pigs vessels Bush named. One for his wife 'The Barbara' (coincidentally his longtime mistress' name), his “oil business” located on an island not far from Cuba, 'Zapata' and that center of right wing hell and pollution “The Houston.”
None of this has had the desired effect, in fact it seems the number of folks looking for and adding to the truth swells. No one has been sued for slander, no public statements vilifying the increasing number of books, articles and videos managing to find the light outside the controlled distribution of the mainstream is heard from those at the center (plenty of lap dogs to yap however). This is why they will now use the History Channel to attempt to do what defense attorneys and even some prosecutors commonly did not long ago to rape victims, attack them.
Folks wake up! Demand the release of the JFK files (if BushCo didn't destroy them while in control) and the Nixon tapes. Do this, not only to take your country back but to keep many of us from uncontrollable retching when the devil George Herbert Walker Bush has his grand and expensive funeral procession as we are forced to hear of his greatness and any more buildings are named after him. Who knows, if you move fast enough maybe they'll be arrested before they can run to their 100,000 acres neighboring the Moonies in Paraguay, over an immense aquifer.
Mr Greenwald and Staff,
PLEASE initiate a petition or website to encourage people to boycott the FOX series “24″. The controversy of a couple years ago over the torture content of the series died off, but it remains a valid issue. Add to that recent revelations about Joel Surnow and his Kennedy deal with History, I think a boycott – or at least a STRONG education campaign – would be appropriate. Thanks!
It is my understanding that The Hearst Corporation, who own The History Channel, are also business partners with Oprah Winfrey in publishing her magazine. Any chance of persuading her to use her clout, directly or indirectly, to ensure objectivity and ethics at the History Channel?
The script for the upcoming “The Kennedys” miniseries on The History Channel is right-wing character assassination, not “history.” Until The History Channel stops running politically motivated fiction as historical “fact,” I will refuse to watch their programming.
the campaign from BNF actually contributes (I'm sure inadvertently) to right-wing and fascistic trends in the media, broadly. John F. Kennedy was a perpetrator of terrorism and other war crimes who, had he lived, should have been prosecuted for the supreme crime of aggression under the Geneva Conventions. That is the most important story on the history of John F. Kennedy as President of the US. The willingness of BNF to allow the discussion to focus on his sex life does just as much to dissemble the real issues as the History Channel does. The fact that liberals consider JFK a hero and come to his defense when moronic fascination with his private life is offered as historical information demonstrates that such liberals care little when the murderous crimes they decry when perpetrated by their idealogical enemies are actually committed by those whose personae they worship.
Perhaps the History channel is joining forces with or is an element of the ELITE media in an effort to to dumb us down further.There will be hell to pay when the guillotines are taken out of storage,cleaned and lubricated.Perhaps they will follow the route of the Bourbon dynasty.God bless America and The Constitution.Freedom must be eternal.
Interesting, the program has not been shown, and alread I'm reading condemnation of the series?
The Kennedy's were not the altruistic family the left is fond of portraying to be. It's time the light of truth be put on them!
It's a television show decrying the great nation of Camelot?! Oh noes!
Let's face it folks, this family is NOT the storybook fairytale everyone makes them out to be. They ARE adulterers. They ARE miscreants. Granted, they got some stuff done in their time in Washington, but they aren't this godsend you all are making them out to be. Funny part is, if this was a show on The History Channel about how George W Bush was the anti-christ, you'd all be telling everyone to set their TiVos and lauding the channel for it's strength to tell the truth, no doubt campaigning for Emmys at the same time. If you're going to spread your “information” on the internet, let's make it less one sided please. ALL government officials, regardless of party, are dirty and corrupt in some way these days. Let's stop acting like the Democratic party is infallible.
Andrew Ing-322…
хороший урок по нашей теме вот тут http://richardleo.ru/, посмотрите не пожалеете…
You guys need to ease up on cannonising your ex-presidents, notice that the right is trying to do the same with that fool Ron Reagan despite the fact that at one time during his last term he was the most unpopular president in historic record and lets not forget selling arms to Iran for cash to conduct secret wars against democracies in the terrorised countries of South America :/
p.s regarding Kennedy's dad, nice to see that a Nazi can so easily buy political carreers for his kids and everyone stay silent about it. I am on the left, and I mean the LEFT and I rate Nixon higher than any Kennedy any day.