[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 157 (Wednesday, October 17, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2165]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     ``THE WAR'' AS OPINED BY WINSTON GROOM OF POINT CLEAR, ALABAMA

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                             HON. JO BONNER

                               of alabama

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, October 17, 2007

  Mr. BONNER. Madam Speaker, earlier this week one of my constituents--
nationally-renowned author and historian, Winston Groom--wrote an op-ed 
piece for the Mobile Press-Register offering at least one theory as to 
why the reviews of Ken Burns' recent documentary series, ``The War,'' 
have been panned by several of America's leading and supposedly ``most 
respected'' national publications.
  As you may know, ``The War'' recently aired throughout the Nation on 
PBS. While admitting that the ``Second World War was fought in 
thousands of places, too many for any one accounting,'' Mr. Bums and 
his extraordinarily talented team tell the story of four American towns 
and how some of the citizens from those towns experienced and remember 
``The War.''
  The personal accounts of these men and women in their own unique 
dialects and accents tell an important and powerful story of World War 
II and the men and women that Tom Brokaw, among others, has deemed 
``The Greatest Generation.''
  This documentary shows the significant sacrifices made by the brave 
men and women of the American military, as well as the millions of 
American families whose loved ones were fighting the forces of evil 
during the Second World War.
  As Mr. Groom so eloquently explains in his article, the underlying 
complaint of ``The War,'' shared by many in the mainstream media who 
reviewed the film, is ``grounded in the new liberal fad of `moral 
relativism' '' and self-hatred. Unbelievably, some of these critics 
appear to believe that Mr. Burns' documentary was simply too ``pro-
American'' and not sympathetic enough to the Germans and the Japanese.
  After watching this fascinating documentary with my wife and 
children, I, personally, could not be more proud to be an American. 
Moreover, I believe this film should be required watching in every 
school in America.
  Today, Madam Speaker, I rise to ask that this op-ed piece be entered 
into the Congressional Record in its entirety, for I believe Winston 
Groom may be on to something:

                       Hatchet Job on ``The War''

                           (By Winston Groom)

       Many of you who enjoyed Ken Burns' ``The War'' may or may 
     not be surprised that much of the mainstream media trashed 
     the series.
       At the simplest level, their complaints illustrate the 
     common literary fallacy in which the critic reviews not the 
     film (or book) that was written, but the one that he wanted 
     to see written. But this is merely one technique of doing a 
     hatchet job.
       The underlying complaint against Burns' film by such 
     revered organs as ``The New York Times'', ``The New Yorker'', 
     ``Slate'' magazine, etc., is grounded in the new liberal fad 
     of ``moral relativism'' or ``moral equivalency, ``a doctrine 
     that seeks to have us believe that in the real world, there 
     are in fact no ``good guys'' or ``bad guys.''
       Instead, everything is ``relative'' (i.e. Oh, poor Adolf. 
     He was simply misunderstood.).
       Thus, Alessandra Stanley of the Times felt compelled to 
     inform her readers that, ``Examining a global war from the 
     perspective of only one belligerent is rarely a good idea.''
       I myself had a similar run-in with that kind of thinking 
     when the Times trashed my history ``1942: the Year That Tried 
     Men's Souls,'' so 1 know whereof I speak.
       In that instance, the Times for some reason assigned the 
     hatchet job to its theater editor, who carped that I was 
     ``cheerleading'' for America and ``conducting a pep rally for 
     the Allies.'' It made me wonder just who she wanted me to 
     cheer for--Hitler? Tojo? Or were we all of us--Japan, 
     Germany, America, England, Russia--equally at fault for the 
     war?
       In the online magazine ``Slate'', Beverly Gage was 
     constrained to label ``The War'' ``manipulative, nostalgic 
     and nationalistic, `` and lamented that it offered ``no 
     commentary from the German or Japanese'' side.
       To be fair, she also complained that it offered no 
     commentary from the British or Canadians, to which she might 
     also have added that we didn't hear about the Norwegians or 
     the Peruvians--or the Ugandans, for all it matters.
       The point is, that was not what the film was about. It was 
     about America and Americans in World War II, as was plainly 
     stated at the beginning of each episode. To be fair again, 
     Ms. Gage acknowledges this, or, in her words, ``Burns admits 
     this,'' but then she goes on to complain about it anyway.
       Ms. Gage also spears the film for offering ``fantastically 
     sentimental stuff--Ken Burns at his most indulgent.''
       I, for one, didn't see anything particularly sentimental 
     about pictures of dead American Marines floating face down on 
     the beaches of Tarawa or being carted off the battlefield.
       Ms. Gage also hints in her review that the story told by 
     Mobile's Eugene Sledge about some Marines pulling gold teeth 
     from dying Japanese soldiers smacks of American racism, since 
     in the European Theater, the absence of that unpleasant 
     custom presumably denied similarly situated Germans their 
     experience of a lifetime.
       In The New Yorker, Nancy Franklin's objection, rather than 
     moral relativism, is that ``The War'' is just plain bad film-
     making.
       ``They've taken a subject that is inexhaustible and made it 
     merely exhausting,'' she writes, before going on to complain 
     about the sound track and narration and that a lot of the 
     footage Burns selected had been used before--as if Burns, 
     being unable to conjure up some stash of unused footage, was 
     somehow obligated to use old bad footage instead.
       She also found tedious Burns' style of using real 
     participants in the war to describe their experiences rather 
     than, one supposes, using analysts, historians and 
     politicians. Myself, I rather enjoyed hearing from such 
     contributors as Dwain Luce, Sid and Katherine Phillips, 
     Maurice Bell, Willie Rushton and others who actually lived 
     it.
       As Ms. Stanley writes in her review, `` `The War' gives 
     generous voice to a wide variety of voices, but they are all 
     American voices,'' which, she complains, ``is the only tale 
     Burns wants to tell.''
       The strange implication here is that surely Burns could 
     have dug up a Hiroshima survivor or a fugitive Nazi SS man to 
     tell his side of the story--or better yet, a Kamikaze pilot.
       What really underlies this ``moral relativism'' is the 
     fetish of self-hatred that has become so pervasive in the 
     mainstream media and the halls of academia. Whatever the 
     issue, ``America is at least no better than the rest of them, 
     and probably worse'' is their mantra, and anything that 
     smacks of patriotism is automatically suspect.
       Heaven help us if this had been the bunch in Philadelphia 
     on the Fourth of July, 1776, when they were trying to find 
     people to sign the Declaration of Independence.




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