Filmmaker Ken Burns to Chris Cuomo: Re-Write Democratic Party History

Ken Burns
Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns

What happens when liberals plot to deny and rewrite history?

My former CNN colleague Chris Cuomo interviewed a fellow liberal, the Democrat and filmmaker Ken Burns, about the renaming of military bases bearing the names of Confederate generals as well as the removal of Confederate statues. The interview was written up here at Mediaite.

The story was headlined this way:

Civil War Documentary Filmmaker Ken Burns Calls for Confederate Statues to Be Removed: ‘They’re an Attempt to Rewrite History’ by White Supremacists

It said in part, this. With bold print for emphasis supplied.

“During a discussion with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, the director of numerous historical documentaries, including the seminal, nine-part movie Civil War, strongly came out in favor of sweeping prestigious symbols of the Confederacy from the public landscape.

… ‘But I would say that the Confederate monument for me is an easy decision. We have to get rid of them. They’re not about heritage. This is a specious argument. This is about the reimposition of white supremacy in the South at various periods. The names of the bases and forts should be changed. We’ve taken down the statues. It’s a good thing to do. And we now need to continue this reckoning by looking as carefully as we can, monuments are hugely important. They’re acts of fact but also acts of mythology. They are acts of symbols.’”

Full stop.

Let’s be blunt here. Ken Burns is not simply a great filmmaker. He is also a serious left-wing Democrat, the record showing serious financial contributions to his party not to mention film contributions. An example of the latter was written up here in Politico back in 2008 as the Democratic Convention convened.  The opening of the story about a film salute of then-Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy went this way:

“Most people have to fight a whole Civil War before getting a Ken Burns documentary. Not Teddy Kennedy, who staged a triumphant appearance before the Democratic National Convention Monday night complete with a Burns-crafted tribute casting him as the modern Ulysses bringing his party home to port.”

In other words, Ken Burns is a serious Democrat. So let’s go back to what he told Chris Cuomo about the Confederate statues. Said Burns of the statues and bases: “They’re an attempt to rewrite history.”

Rewrite history is exactly right- but isn’t that exactly what pulling down the statues and removing the names from the military bases is all about? Yes indeed, it is.

All those Confederate leaders, not to mention the leaders of “white supremacy in the South” that Burns mentions? Yes indeed – they were Democrats. They were slaveowners and later segregationists that were the political backbone of the Democratic Party.

Is there any wonder that Burns would want to disappear the history of the thoroughgoing racism that established his own Democratic Party? These statues and names on military bases are a living, breathing reminder of just which political party put race at the very center of its existence. Burns quite correctly says they “are acts of symbols.” Indeed they are.

They are symbols of the ideas at the very core of the history of the Democratic Party. And make no mistake. Erasing them is exactly the political objective here – to pretend that the people responsible for what this party and its leading lights did to African Americans, not to mention America itself – are never historically accountable. Disappearing history as if it never happened.

Except that it did.

Alas, Mr. Burns’ partisan instincts are overwhelming his bent towards documenting reality – historical reality.

Now he wants to hide that historical reality.

Not good. And it won’t work.

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