[Original version at History News Network, 21 September 2017]
I began my first book on Vietnam (Masters of War) with a poem, Adrian Mitchell’s “To Whom It May Concern”:
You put your bombers in, you put your conscience out.
You take the human being and you twist it all about
So scrub my skin with women
Chain my tongue with whisky
Stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.
When written in 1968, Americans were finally realizing and tiring of the lies they had been told about Vietnam. And the point of the poem was that, against that flood of lies, was some kind of truth, one that a majority of Americans began to understand as they opposed the American war on Vietnam.
“Triangulating” (or Teaching?) the War
Now, a half-century later, America’s best-known documentarians and teachers of popular history, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick have produced an 18-hour examination of the war for PBS (a “masterpiece” according to George Will, with sponsorship and promotion from the Koch Brothers, Bank of America, and Pentagon, inter alia) which is getting a huge amount of attention already. Like their documentary on the Civil War, The Vietnam War will surely become a major work of public history and be ingrained in our national consciousness. But what do Burns and Novick do, is it anything new, and what consequences will their work have?
Burns and Novick, in their public relations blitz for the show (which debuted Sunday night, September 17th) have stressed that this documentary is different than the studies of Vietnam that have preceded it because they focused on the people who were involved in the war and especially representatives of the enemy (the “North Vietnamese” in their parlance, not the “revolutionaries” or “the NLF”). Their goal was to “triangulate” the telling of the war—speak to people from North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the United States. Their main purpose is to “honor the courage, heroism and sacrifice of those who served,” and “we have tried to do this by listening to their stories.” They add that they conveyed the tragedy of the war through “good storytelling.”
In addition to telling the stories of Americans who fought in Vietnam, Burns and Novick talk to partisans from the enemy, who talk of battles and tactics and their simultaneous respect and hatred of the Americans they fought. In fact, the documentarians seem to suggest that the Vietnamese were unaware of much about the war until educated by Americans. In Vietnam, Novick was surprised to see “a willingness, an openness” to talk about the war in a way “they never speak about it in Vietnam, which is the human story . . . . The war there is sort of a grand sort of victorious narrative without people in it.” And the people to whom Novick spoke “want the next generation to know how terrible it was, how difficult it was.” (Emphases mine).
I haven’t been to Vietnam, so maybe they’re right. But I’m pretty certain the Vietnamese talk about the war and know how terrible and difficult it was . . . I’ve talked to a lot of Vietnamese about the war, in depth . . . the war fought for decades in their country. They lost 2-3 million people in the American phase of their long struggle, which means that virtually every family had an immediate member die. There are cemeteries and memorials all over, constant reminders of the war. There are museums to honor battles fought and soldiers and civilians killed. There is a museum dedicated to the dead at My Lai. A close friend who spent 3 months traveling in the area told me that remembering the war in general and its victims is “one of the most significant parts of their identity, more so than here.” There are tributes to the dead. There is a replica of the Washington D.C. Vietnam “Wall.” And if they’re somehow not aware of how terrible the war was, the continued loss of life, perhaps as many as 50,000 people after hostilities ended, from unexploded bombs, and the continued impact of Agent Orange in high cancer rates and countless deformed babies, would help them remember. Did the Vietnamese really need two Americans, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, to finally teach them about the bloodshed and devastation their own land suffered because of the Americans?
And therein lies the core flaw of the entire project—it’s a series of stories, but not really a history of the war. That’s the Burns-Novick trademark and it’s worked for a long time, making them famous and I suspect wealthy. But it substitutes vignettes for ideas, personal anecdotes for larger structural factors, bathos for analysis. And it ends up providing a misguided view of the war, one that has politically conservative consequences (ironic because Burns himself is openly liberal) by shifting attention away from the historical, material reasons for American intervention and focusing on 79 people interviewed who were directly involved in Vietnam. Instead of an exposé of aggressive militarism, they give us sentimental stories of survival and perseverance.
Burns and Novick, despite their claims of originality, provide a pretty boilerplate liberal examination of the war. It “was begun in good faith, by decent people.” The people of South Vietnam created a state, the Republic of Vietnam (RVN), which was invaded by “North Vietnam” and precipitated the war because of the American mission to prevent Communists from taking over “free” countries. After the partition of Vietnam at Geneva, the conflict became a “civil war” in which the U.S. became involved to save the “free” southern half of Vietnam according to Cold War logic. Americans made anguished decisions to invade and then escalate the war, they kept blundering further along and then couldn’t get out, there were decisive battles at places like Ap Bac and Ia Drang, Americans turned on the war, it was a tragedy, there are only victims, and so on . . . It’s not a bad history, but in no way original and in its pursuit of “all sides” it creates a false equivalency. The intervention into Vietnam was a war crime, and PBS isn’t going to fund a documentary saying that, and Burns and Novick don’t go beyond the liberal consensus to think about it.
More Reconciliation and Healing
Burns and Novick talk a lot about reconciliation and healing, sort of a Vietnam War version of Dr. Phil and Oprah. “For more than a generation, instead of forging a path to reconciliation, we have allowed the wounds the war inflicted on our nation, our politics and our families to fester,” they claim. “ . . . alienation, resentment and cynicism; mistrust of our government and one another; breakdown of civil discourse and civic institutions . . . so many of these seeds were sown during the Vietnam War.” The war wracked American society, pitting generation against generation, even family against family. These are troubling issues to be sure, and Burns and Novick seem to easily pin them on Vietnam. But their explanation is facile and self-serving. Continue reading
or were alive in the 1970s, or even just heard of Muhammad Ali, then you’re familiar with “The Rumble in the Jungle,” his epic bout against then-Heavyweight Champ George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire in October 1974. Ali may have been “The Greatest,” but he stepped into the ring as a 3:1 underdog (not exactly Tyson-Douglas [42:1] or even the first Ali-Liston [8:1] odds but a risky wager by any means). Ali was 32 at the time and had lost three prime years when he was suspended for resisting the draft, while Foreman, a big puncher, was 25 and undefeated in 40 fights, with 37 knockouts.
Impeachment. Indeed, Slate, something of a Better Homes and Gardens for the liberal elite, has even spared Congress the effort of writing up the 
way a lot. Still, some are funny and make a good point in a few lines in a way that might take paragraphs otherwise. Today I came across one that I put up on Facebook:
the 1972 campaign . . . “Who’s Afraid of Edmund Muskie?”) then of course it matters. Indeed, there are rumors flying all over the place about arrests, indictments, subpoenas, Trumps getting shackled, and even a future Orrin Hatch presidency. Anything is possible and everything here could be irrelevant the minute I hit “Publish.”
should be onomatopoetic. Kelsey had a blast. Kelsey blasted through life. Kelsey could get angry and blast me. Kelsey got blasted. In a crazy family, he stood out. My Kid Blast.
as I did.
So Kelsey was probably 13 or so and we were riding our bikes in The Heights. Out of the blue, I hear him sing “you didn’t have to be so nice, I would have liked you anyway.” I looked and him and we both had broad smiles. So I picked it up, “If you had just looked once or twice,And gone upon your quiet way.” And we more or less finished the song together. I don’t know how he knew the Lovin’ Spoonful and what prompted him to sing it, but it’s always going to be one of the best memories I’ll ever have.
stone of the great Marx and thought of his epitaph: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” After I thought of Kelsey, and Marx, for a while, I started walking away. I looked down and saw Bert Jansch’s gravesite. I smiled. Kelsey was with me there that day and Marx had something that wouldn’t get lost.
The problem of guns in America is the problem of suicide in America. There are 30,000-plus guns deaths in the U.S. every year, and about 2/3, more than 20K, are suicides. Of the 40,000-plus suicides, half or so involve a gun. Guns are deadly and effective. Almost all suicidal action involving guns ends up in death, unlike, say, overdosing or cutting. Making guns available to people who wouldn’t otherwise even think of having them, like university students, will inevitably increase the suicide rate. With mental health issues omnipresent and stress and pressure rising, having access to a firearm is ensuring many more self-inflicted wounds. Fuck the NRA, Fuck Texas gun cowards.
found out about the show a few days before that, and on the way heard on the radio that The Pretenders would be opening. Kelsey knew a little Who music but never heard of The Pretenders. A few hours later, after sitting mesmerized looking at the stage, the show ended, and I said “so what do you think?” and he looked at me and said, with awe, “it was amazing!” For Xmas that year he bought me the DVD of the show.
Caddyshack, and a ton of others. I think his favorite was Office Space, which he seemed to have on every time I went into his room. He used to sing the Geto Boys song. He had a t-shirt with Milton and his stapler on it. His understanding of comedy and satire were, I think, the best indicators of his wicked intelligence and wit. The kid was a baller.
Kelsey was a throwback. He really didn’t belong in 21st Century Texas USA. It’s a cruel and angry place and it accelerated his worst problems. I called him every day, with insane frequency if I couldn’t get hold of him and I was worried. He had so much trouble living on his own, navigating through the perils and venom of life that we all have to accept. When he died, a ton of his stuff was missing and he had a bunch of stuff, clothing, etc. that belonged to others. He coulda been a modern hobo. He really didn’t have a home, but damned if I didn’t try.
